The Morning Show

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.