The Morning Show

It’s Aniston and Witherspoon who really anchor the series. Both actors are on top of their game and not for one second lose sight of who their characters are and how they should react in dicey, unexplored situations.

The Morning Show takes on a lot this season, but it impressively succeeds at most of it. By integrating topics in a way that's natural and featuring riveting friendships, romantic relationships, and power struggles, it gives the majority of its characters their moments to shine.

The loopy plotting may be hard to embrace initially, but it straightens out before the last few episodes and gives Aniston one of the best acting showcases in her career. .... When the third season gets to its oh-so-good last episode, you can see the grand contributions producers Mimi Leder and Charlotte Stoudt have been able to make.

No wonder a fourth season of this slick TV newsroom drama has already been confirmed. It makes for hugely pleasurable viewing.

If there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure, then watching this is a kind of glorious masochism. That everyone involved is so talented helps. And there’s just something about watching the whole thing unfold that is addictive, like most bad habits.

Before long, “The Morning Show” is back to its old tricks, building to a conclusion that’s short on coherence, long on overacted theatrics, and despite it all, a total delight to watch.

Aniston and Witherspoon, plus star newbie Jon Hamm, power up the best season yet for this gossipy insider look at the corporate corruption of TV news and entertainment, making a solid case for the series as something more than the mindless fluff of its reputation.

Although the focus of the show has widened to include other dynamics, TMS is still at its strongest when it pairs Aniston and Witherspoon together.

What makes The Morning Show Season 3 so watchable is that its intrinsically soapy qualities help undercut that smugness… while it tries to both reflect growing pessimism about the state of media today, and shine forth beautiful ideals about truth and journalism and the American way.

“The Morning Show” isn’t exactly the sharp analysis of modern journalism that it might have promised in its first season, but it’s become almost more enjoyable by simply getting more ridiculous.

Even when developments are dripping in melodrama, the first-rate cast is uniformly excellent — Crudup is a standout among standouts, delivering some of the best work of his career.

So, sure, it’s all a little glossy and undercooked. “The Morning Show” got fluffier when it stopped being about the dark underbelly of a silly little morning show and became an earnest drama about the fate of a network instead. But hey: It’s still a lot of fun to watch — maybe over a pastry, with a cup of coffee.

We are hoping against hope that most of The Morning Show‘s third season will be more like the first episode’s first 45 minutes and less like the last 15. But given the evidence we’ve seen to this point, we don’t have a lot of faith that it will be that way.

As much as it’s improved since Season 1, The Morning Show is always going to be a little goofy. The new episodes continue to portray a world of absurd coincidences, where the same two dozen characters, not all of them famous or influential, keep resurfacing in connection with every conceivable news story. .... But the show is really onto something with Cory.

The series is fascinating not for its innovation, but for how it has managed to morph into a bog-standard primetime soap in the glossiest of packaging, and become so much more watchable for it.

The Morning Show tackles everything from online privacy to Roe v Wade as moments and messages fly by at a breakneck pace—and while everything hits the wall, only some of it sticks. But even in all its messiness and political flailing, The Morning Show remains an addicting series absolutely worth watching.

Even when it misses the mark, the performances help anchor the theatrics, and new additions for season 3, like Jon Hamm and Nicole Behari, shine while the returning Karen Pittman and Greta Lee grapple with some of the big themes. Two A-listers lead the cast, but this drama utilizes its ensemble and guest cast with maximum impact.

Fake news, real soap — and still watchable.

To join top-tier dramas, as opposed to just a breezy diversion, it needs to be smarter about fighting the battles that it does.

There’s a fine line somewhere between a show about the news and a show about the people who put on the news. The Morning Show is at its best when it leans into the latter idea, but Season 3 is caught in the unending web of world events.

You can see, in the new episodes, all of the ways in which the series knows what works (dazzling one-liners; the absurdity of a TV program that requires anchors to segue from pie-eating contests to racism) while also being handicapped by the most unshiftable hindrance of all: its stars. .... You can almost sense the writers’ relief at having someone as fiendish as Cory to write for. Imagine a series in which every character could be this peacocking, this nakedly self-interested, this fun.

Anything can be said or done at any time in “The Morning Show,” which makes it easy to get sucked in. Watching is a rollercoaster of fleeting delight and persistent embarrassment.

“The Morning Show” is not a snore, as the many plot lines seem to yell out to viewers, “Hey, look at me.” With season three, which premiered on Wednesday, it has shed any remnants of quality ambition and given into soap operatics of the highest order. In short, the series has gone fairly bonkers, with more attention-seeking and more ill-advised ripped-from-the-headlines material than ever.

I’m finding it irritating. Or, rather, I’m finding Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon’s Alex Levy and Bradley Jackson, two news anchors on an American news network, irritating.

It hasn’t jumped the shark; it never got in the water to begin with. Instead, we should treat it just as we treat those rubbish, addictive shows I listed earlier: with a sigh, an eyeroll and a misplaced but undying dedication to watching every single episode.

The addition of Hamm, alongside newcomers like Stephen Fry and Tig Notaro, adds star power but little refinement. Increasingly, the show feels like it is moving away from a serious, if silly, drama and becoming a satire, and not a very effective one at that.

“The Morning Show” tries to be many things—camp comedy, workplace drama, and hard-hitting treatise on the wobbly intersection of politics and show business. The trouble is that each of those conflicting modes collide at any given moment, so you’re never sure what side of the line the writers and performers are on.

When the show isn’t carrying the banner for women — especially women of color — being underused and mistreated in the workplace, it’s underusing many of its women, especially women of color. Sure, Witherspoon and Aniston are the show’s centerpieces and both have heightened drama to play, but they’re also stuck in familiar The Morning Show tropes.