The Morning Show

Apple TV+'s series is less about the intricacies of the business than the firestorms resulting when talent egos clash against management callousness. One might understand that more precisely after a slog through the first two episodes. But maybe audiences will forgive the clunky pacing and derivative scenes in those episodes, since "The Morning Show" less about the script than the performances and the star power.

The Morning Show is a fine drama. But when launching a streaming platform you expect people to pay for, you need more than fine. You need to break the mold and give us a TV show we didn’t even know we needed but cannot live without. The Morning Show is not that.

There is much that The Morning Show wants to chew on thematically, and to Ehrin’s credit it succeeds more often than it fails.

It’s honestly pretty fun to watch, all glossy and zippy. But it’s also fundamentally at war with itself.

It’s OK. Just OK. ... I was consistently underwhelmed by the show’s hazy point of view.

It’s not good, but it’s bad in an extremely satisfying (to me) way. Like The Newsroom and Smash before it, it is an earnest, mediocre, insider-y look at an insular entertainment world of extreme interest to New York media types.

To the extent The Morning Show is Apple's way of sounding the alarm for its new service, feel safe to hit the "snooze" button.

Simplified storytelling and giving viewers what they signed up for — Jen and Reese together 4ever — would have benefitted The Morning Show. Future episodes may reward us with those, but as far as first impressions go, this Morning Show made me want to hit the snooze button.

The Morning Show isn’t terrible. It has several excellent performances beyond Crudup’s. ... But the series is a well-polished snore.

After a brutally dull pilot and a meandering second episode, there are distinct hints in the third hour of a more satisfying and confident The Morning Show, one that actually gets value out of leading ladies Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon.

Mostly "The Morning Show" is a show in search of itself, uncertain of what to say about the #MeToo movement and workplace misconduct, or how to explore those real world parallels (Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer). This is because "The Morning Show" is often a mashup of verisimilitude with outright balderdashery.

Aniston infuses Alex’s story with genuine emotion, and reminds us what a gifted dramatic actor she is. But the rest of the show lets her down. It’s a solid performance lost in a sea of jumbled ideas and missed opportunities.

Early tonal inconsistencies can be expected, but they still make these first three episodes hard to gauge and, worse still, there’s very little to just enjoy. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to compare an ongoing TV series about morning news to a two-hour film about the financial crisis. But if that can be entertaining and incisive, than this should be, well, either.

The Morning Show, as is standard for expensive dramas in the age of too much television, is also desperate to be About Something. And in that regard, it falls flat. Its politics are baffling – notably Bradley’s insistence on being neither politically red nor blue but “human” – and it’s not yet smart enough to say anything insightful when it comes to sexual misconduct in the workplace.

After three episodes, this tech company’s first venture into TV is good only at appearing to be good. It’s like something assembled in a cleanroom out of good-show parts from incompatible suppliers. Under the gleaming surface, as sleek and anodyne as an Apple Store, it is a kludge. ... Carell is good in his role, as are his co-stars. But they’re appearing in different shows.

A conspicuous fender bender, in which ambition has been rear-ended by self-importance, causing it to bump into a dump truck full of cliches.