I went into The Morning Show not knowing anything about it other than it starred Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. I hadn’t seen a trailer. Hadn't read anything of the show. Had no idea of the context of the title. Nothing. ‘Then how did you even land on watching it?’ I hear all two of you ask.Ted Lasso.
I was fresh off of a two season Ted Lasso binge. Adored the absolute hell out of it. And so I figured I’d see what other gems be lurking on Apple TV. And thus, The Morning Show. Only it’s far from a gem. It’s a mess. The mess is what kept me watching. But the mess is also what makes this show so bad, because it wants to focus on just creating mess, more than it does trying to tell a good story which involves mess. It’s also the complete opposite of Ted Lasso. Where-as Ted Lasso is a show with lots of heart, characters who learn life lessons, and every episode imparts something meaningful; The Morning Show is cold as all fuck, with characters who learn not a damn thing, and every episode just ends with you wondering what the hell you just watched. I was left so confused by the end of season 2, because I had no idea where a third season could go, and what the purpose of the second season even was.
But what really made me settle firmly on how bad this show is, is how it so flagrantly pimps headlines and social commentaries for the sake of a story, just for them to have no actual bearing on the story at all. The Morning Show is more concerned with being seen to be current and including things that other shows won’t, than it is with committing to a storyline and a commentary which actually works.
The Morning Show is hollow as hell, but it's also problematic as fuck. It manages to spill out a narrative of terrible white women, gross white men and disgraced Black women with aplomb; which to some may sound juicy. I’m sure the writers room of The Morning Show felt the same. But what The Morning Show show thinks it’s doing and what it actually does are two very different things. And the end result is a show which does too much damage and perpetuates too many negative things without consequence for it to be taken seriously or for me to be able to say it’s good.
Put on your wellies folks. ‘Cos we about to go wading through some mess.
The Morning Show is set in a fictional New York based broadcasting network by the name of UBA, who are responsible for the titular daytime news show which was fronted by two anchors; Alex Levy (played by Jennifer Aniston) and Mitch Kesslar (played by Steve Carrell). The show kicks off in the wake of Mitch having been fired for sexual misconduct, and the story follows the unravelling of the network, the show itself and everybody who had proximity to what Mitch had done.
The Morning Show seems like it’s heavily inspired by Matt Lauer’s firing from The Today Show in 2017; even down to the casting of Steve Carrell who happens to bear some resemblance to Lauer. But the show is actually based on Brian Stelter’s 2013 book Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV - which I actually think is an important thing to know going into the show, because it at least explains why the plot and the show’s focus is so all over the place; especially in its second season.
Season 1 focuses pretty succinctly on Mitch’s sexual misconduct, and how he and Alex navigate that from where they find themselves after the doo-doo hits the fan following Mitch’s fuckery being exposed. 'Exposed' being the key word here, because UBA and people at The Morning Show always knew what Mitch was doing, but turned a blind eye to it. Alex included. The only reason Mitch was fired was because Mitch and his unwarranted dick slinging through the office halls was leaked to the press by The Morning Show’s producer Chip (played by Mark Duplass); in a bid to protect himself and as some form of penance for his complicity in Mitch’s fuckery. People doing shitty things for their own gain, and never because it’s what’s right is the main focus of The Morning Show. But the problem is that The Morning Show wants to be more than this. It wants to be seen as topical and challenging things. So the Me Too movement permeates through this show, and is in many ways the identity of it. At least to begin with.
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| PRISON, HONEY | The Morning Show |
The way The Morning Show plays out is fairly typical given the setup. A male host is fired due to sexual misconduct. The female co-host keeps her job, but this leaves people wondering how much she knew about what was happening. And everybody in Alex and Mitch’s orbit is trying to save their own ass in the chaos which is ensuing. All the while two camps form; those who were loyal to Mitch and feel what he did was just a silly little mistake, and those who are glad to see the back of him in light of the allegations. But regardless of where people fall, they try to harness the chaos to leverage their own careers. Mitch included, who continually justifies his own actions.
What happens in this scramble becomes such a sole focus that the sexual misconduct feels like a mere foot note, and it’s a bit icky. The Morning Show opens big as though it’s going to really go THERE on the topic of sexual misconduct in the workplace; only to then reveal itself to be another TV show about work shit drama with twists and turns which are thrown into the mix for the sake of having twists and turns. By the second season, the focus is on the drama around the fallout and not even the sexual misconduct itself. And the show then chooses to try and make its audience feel sympathy for two white people who have done such abhorrent things, at a point where they’ve not come remotely close to earning it.
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| Alex Levy, doing white woman shit | The Morning Show |
The Morning Show handles so many different situations so flippantly, and raises certain topics just to raise them. The Morning Show seems to think that it did such a good job navigating Me Too in its first season, that it decides to throw race, politics, cancel culture, sexuality and even the damn pandemic into the mix for its second. It’s a train wreck, because so much of it feels unnecessary and has no real bearing on the overall story that’s trying to be told. The pandemic isn’t a plot line. Neither is racism. So why try to shoehorn them into the story?
Ah, yes. ‘Woke’ points.
Before you say 'OH. HE'S ONE OF THOSE', I'm not in the brigade of people who is like 'Spare me the woke shit'. I’m just really tired of shows feeling compelled to include certain issues for the sake of being seen to include them. The Morning Show tries to act like it’s playing a part in doing due diligence to social wrongs, all the while contributing to them. The Morning Show sympathises with gross wrong-doers, celebrates terrible white people, side-lines its characters of colour with stupid identity plotlines, and just straight up fucks over all of the Black characters. All the while trying to act like it cares about victims, that these horrid white people will get their comeuppance, and that Black people should have seats at the table.
The Morning Show is performative. And wokeness being so performative these days is what has monopolised the term to such a point that people roll their eyes when they see or hear it.
Protect Karen
The Morning Show makes a conscious decision to centre white women. And not just white women. But unlikable white women. I thought that this was a deliberate thing the show was doing, until I realised how the show wants us to feel about these white women. The show wants us to root for them. Meanwhile Black women who are trying to mind their business are dragged through the mud across both seasons. At this point you could probably guess that most of the team behind the writing and directing are white, and you’d be right.
Come collect your prize.
There’s a lot in this show that I can’t get on board with. The dismissive ways in which is handles Me Too and the ‘Fuck the Black people’ bullshit are enough of red flags, and we’ll get to that. But to also have this insistence that we root for terrible white women!?
Gurl.
Jennifer Aniston is an executive producer on the show. After the whole 'Friends ripping off Living Single and being white as hell' which has plagued Friends even in the wake of its mammoth success, and Jennifer Aniston not featuring in films or shows with the most diverse casts - I’d expect no less from her. But Reese Witherspoon, who is also an executive producer on this show, has a book club which highlights the work of Black women, and executive produced another TV show based on a book by a Chinese-American author, which featured Kerry Washington!? *Puts on Tyra Banks voice and wig* I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU.
I don’t know if there was a memo which went out in Hollywood for there to be films and shows about white women who do awful things, but still come out as heroes; because it feels that way, between WandaVision, Cruella, Black Widow and The Morning Show.
Alex Levy is not a likeable character. No matter how much Jennifer Aniston switches into Rachel. (I say ‘switches’, but Rachel from Friends is pretty much the only role Jennifer knows how to play). Alex does TERRIBLE things in this show. But at every turn she is made out to be some form of beacon for the good of womankind. When she loses it on The Morning Show and exposes UBA, she’s told how much of a hero she is; as though she played no part in being complicit in all that Mitch was doing. And in season 2, everybody gasses Alex up as being a feminist hero, when all we’ve seen Alex do across an entire season is put women down to leverage herself, and keep men around her who can allow her maintain power, time and time again. Even when the show tries to show Alex being good, she's doing awful shit.
Every decision Alex makes is self serving and always comes at another woman’s expense. When Alex chooses to announce Bradley as her co-host, it’s unbeknownst to Bradley; who is given a great opportunity that few would refuse. But once Bradley is a part of the UBA machine, Alex neglects her and seeks to sabotage her career, which leads to Bradley spiralling and playing pages from the Alex playbook by the time season 2 comes around. When Alex finds out that Mitch and Mia (played by Karen Pittman) were a thing, she sees to it that Mia is booted from her and Mitch’s circle, and gets her demoted. We find out in season 2 that Alex is the reason why Laura (played by Julianna Margulies) got fired back in the day, because she outed Laura as a lesbian to the network. Alex is very clearly not a good person. But the show wants you to think that somewhere at her core, she is good, and goes out of its way to try and frame her in the most sympathetic of ways in the wake of her doing awful things to people. It’s trash.
Before you say 'OH. HE'S ONE OF THOSE', I'm not in the brigade of people who is like 'Spare me the woke shit'. I’m just really tired of shows feeling compelled to include certain issues for the sake of being seen to include them. The Morning Show tries to act like it’s playing a part in doing due diligence to social wrongs, all the while contributing to them. The Morning Show sympathises with gross wrong-doers, celebrates terrible white people, side-lines its characters of colour with stupid identity plotlines, and just straight up fucks over all of the Black characters. All the while trying to act like it cares about victims, that these horrid white people will get their comeuppance, and that Black people should have seats at the table.
The Morning Show is performative. And wokeness being so performative these days is what has monopolised the term to such a point that people roll their eyes when they see or hear it.
Protect Karen
The Morning Show makes a conscious decision to centre white women. And not just white women. But unlikable white women. I thought that this was a deliberate thing the show was doing, until I realised how the show wants us to feel about these white women. The show wants us to root for them. Meanwhile Black women who are trying to mind their business are dragged through the mud across both seasons. At this point you could probably guess that most of the team behind the writing and directing are white, and you’d be right.
Come collect your prize.
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| Alex. Doing more white woman shit. | The Morning Show |
Gurl.
Jennifer Aniston is an executive producer on the show. After the whole 'Friends ripping off Living Single and being white as hell' which has plagued Friends even in the wake of its mammoth success, and Jennifer Aniston not featuring in films or shows with the most diverse casts - I’d expect no less from her. But Reese Witherspoon, who is also an executive producer on this show, has a book club which highlights the work of Black women, and executive produced another TV show based on a book by a Chinese-American author, which featured Kerry Washington!? *Puts on Tyra Banks voice and wig* I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU.
I don’t know if there was a memo which went out in Hollywood for there to be films and shows about white women who do awful things, but still come out as heroes; because it feels that way, between WandaVision, Cruella, Black Widow and The Morning Show.
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| Alex cosying up with a harasser. Doing white woman shit vol. 3 | The Morning Show |
Every decision Alex makes is self serving and always comes at another woman’s expense. When Alex chooses to announce Bradley as her co-host, it’s unbeknownst to Bradley; who is given a great opportunity that few would refuse. But once Bradley is a part of the UBA machine, Alex neglects her and seeks to sabotage her career, which leads to Bradley spiralling and playing pages from the Alex playbook by the time season 2 comes around. When Alex finds out that Mitch and Mia (played by Karen Pittman) were a thing, she sees to it that Mia is booted from her and Mitch’s circle, and gets her demoted. We find out in season 2 that Alex is the reason why Laura (played by Julianna Margulies) got fired back in the day, because she outed Laura as a lesbian to the network. Alex is very clearly not a good person. But the show wants you to think that somewhere at her core, she is good, and goes out of its way to try and frame her in the most sympathetic of ways in the wake of her doing awful things to people. It’s trash.
What would have worked better is if the crux of Alex's arc was about her playing men at their own game. This is something which the show implies is the case early on in season 1. But then it takes an already unlikeable character, and makes her worse in season 2 by showing Alex to just be a 'silly woman' who is just making bad decisions. The calculated nature of Alex who played hard ball in season 1 just becomes a bumbling mess in season 2, who is unable to get anything done without men.
The problem with making a Black character’s struggle that they’re Black, when it needn’t be
There’s a lot about The Morning Show which just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The Morning Show is run by white people. White execs. White staff. It’s just white, white, white. It’s like we’re in the TV news era of the 1960s.
There is a whole side story line about a host named Daniel (played by Desean K. Terry) who does a side segment on The Morning Show, and just so happens to be Black and gay. He wants to be a main anchor and is exasperated at always being side-lined to cover theatre and music; which he feels he’s been boxed into because he’s gay. But The Morning Show can’t decide whether it wants Daniel’s conflict to be that he's side-lined because of his sexuality, or because of his race. So the writers choose to zone in on race as the angle, when it needn’t have been. ‘But it’s spicier’ I can imagine a white writer saying whilst twirling a Sharpie in-between their fingers.
Just having the character’s battles at work be one concerning their sexuality and how that is determining their work would have been fine. Sure, it's been done before. But this would make far more sense, and create an interesting link to the arc of Bradley being outed for her relationship with Laura mid-way through season 2.
Black people are overlooked and side-lined in workplaces. This is absolutely a thing. But Daniel’s struggle in the beginning doesn’t seem to be his race, until it suddenly is. And it also highlights how little sense it makes for The Morning Show to be so white, and for Daniel to feel that his being Black is the reason why he’s not advancing in his career at a news show, especially during a point in time when Black anchors and anchors of colour are the faces of all the major US daytime Television shows. Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan on Good Morning America. Hoda Kotb on Today. Gayle King on CBS Mornings. The Morning Show is fictitious. But given its insistence on pulling in real life events, and pretty current ones at that, it’s strange that they wouldn’t even try to have the hues and shades across those working on the show reflect that of actual morning shows in the US. The Morning Show’s rival show Your Day America even has a co-anchor of colour played by Mindy Kaling, who calls out how white The Morning Show is. Gimme a show on THAT show.
Black people not getting the opportunities they deserve and not having their work be acknowledged is a very real thing. But to have a show where all of the Black characters (we’ll get to the others) are experiencing this is a bit much. Or at least it’s too much FOR ME. Daniel’s shots at covering better stories being shut down. Mia not being taken seriously. Hannah’s career progression being in the hands of Mitch. I don’t get why every single Black character in this show had to be dealing with some form of work related struggle which other non Black characters aren't having to deal with.
The Morning Show is trying to be ‘woke’ in depicting the work struggles for Black folk, but there’s no nuance to it. And there’s also no legitimate reason for it, because the show doesn’t try to make any point with any of it. The struggle for these Black folk at The Morning Show is just...there. Shows like Insecure do a far better job of showing the spectrum of Black people in the workplace. Not every single Black person in existence faces struggles in their workplace because they are Black. And this isn’t to counter-argue and dismiss those who have experience racial bias at their places of work. It’s just to say that it’s not an intrinsic thing that every single Black person experiences. But The Morning Show wants to use it for plot devices for characters which it doesn't even care about any way.
White women are given agency that Black women and women of colour aren’t given
All of the white women in The Morning Show are shown to try and steer things in a way that can benefit them in some way. The tagline for the second season of the show is ‘Control is an illusion’, but this only seems to apply to any and everybody who isn’t a white woman. When Alex and Bradley are against the ropes, they find ways to swing things in their favour and come out of it with everything still intact.
Alex exposed UBA on their own show, resigned, disappeared, but then managed to get her job back AND bag a deal for her own show. Then she quits the show again, is exposed for having an affair with Mitch in a book, exposes her co-workers to COVID and yet still manages to still be the star of a show on UBA. Bradley gets in the face of the new CEO (played by Billy Crudup), decides to call in sick for weeks despite being spotted out and about and living her best life, and yet still manages to keep her job despite the board calling for her to be fired (which she deserved to be). In season 2 we’re introduced to the a new character Paola, who falls in love with Mitch (which is problematic for numerous reasons). But, HENNYWAY. It happens. Paola is at a dead-end with her career, but manages to turn it around, even in the most dire of consequences, via a chain of events and interactions with characters which make no actual sense. Laura is the only white woman on the show who appears to be wholly decent. But even so, because she's white, she gets that bounce-back arc. Despite her career imploding in the past, she still managed to enjoy a lucrative career, and guest co-anchor on the rival show that she was fired from. The white women of The Morning Show are the Teflon dons.
Meanwhile...
Black women get screwed over, every which way
Mitch has many victims, but the two The Morning Show seems to harrow on and high-key torture are Black women; and we see both of their lives fall apart in different ways as a result of their entanglements with him.
Mitch had an affair with Mia, which everybody knew about. And as a result of this, Mia’s reputation at The Morning Show is left in the toilet. People refuse to acknowledge that she got herself to where she’s at in her career due to the fact that she is good at her job (which she is), and not because she slept with Mitch. Mia is treated like absolute shit, and there are numerous times where her co-workers call her all sorts of slut, useless and rubbish, and she’s just made to take it.
Mia’s situation could have made for a really layered dialogue on victimhood. Mia consensually embarked on an affair with Mitch, therefore she may not seem like she's a victim, but she is. People’s minds probably go to a very specific image when they think of the word ‘victim’ in conjunction with ‘woman’. But victimhood is a very broad spectrum. Not only can being a victim affect people in different ways, but there are so many different circumstances under which any of us can become a victim. Mia in this instance wasn’t a victim because of Mitch's sexual advances. She was a victim due to the power that he and Alex wielded at their place of work. There's also something to be said here about how Alex was actually the one who made a victim out of Mia, more-so than Mitch.
The thing that struck me is that The Morning Show makes no real connection between the men who make derogatory comments to Mia and the culture in the office that turns a blind eye to men AND women making women victims. Both in this context are examples of misogyny and a clear power balance which favours men and subjugates women who appear to have no power. There was no sexual misconduct on Mitch’s part when it came to Mia, and he didn’t verbally abuse her; but Mia has experienced both as a result of of her relationship with him. They are connected. But The Morning Show doesn't really show how intangibly linked the two are. And the show oddly keeps Alex separate from the whole situation, when she is heavily involved in the dynamic that caused Mia to become a victim in the first place.
Mia has a moment in the show where she finally addresses the fuckery, which comes as a result of a white male staffer insulting Mia during a meeting, and Chip (her then boss) firing him for it. Even though this Fraggle looking white man was fully in the wrong for what he said, others (old white men) blame Mia for him being fired, and lambast her for ruining somebody's career over a joke, which wasn’t a joke at all. It was an attack and an insult, for which he was rightly fired for. A Black woman is attacked by a white man and made a victim, and yet the Black woman is made to be at fault, and somehow, the white man becomes the victim. Sounds about white right. Mia is all too aware of the optics and pleads with Chip immediately to bring the white Fraggle man back. But when she does ask Chip to hire him back, Chip throws her relationship with Mitch in her face and then makes himself out to be a victim.
White men making themselves out to be victims at the expense of Black women, who are actual victims is a theme of The Morning Show. And we'll get to the worse instance of this later.
But when Mia does address the fuckery to everybody, it’s more of a ‘All my life I had to fight’ type moment, as opposed to Mia calling everybody the fuck out as she should have. It also comes so late in the game when the damage has been done. The show broke Mia to her lowest ebb in order for her to take action; a point no white character has to hit to do the same, and that was all I could think of in that moment.
Mia’s address didn’t do what the writers seem to think it did. Mia got no vindication as a result of it. Mia is addressing the elephants in the room, but it’s not like she was ever avoiding them, because nobody ever allowed her to. Nobody took accountability for the part they played in making Mia’s life hell. Mitch is a piece of shit and certainly needs to take ownership for at the very least not protecting Mia, but he isn’t the one firing shots at her every day. White men at UBA felt they could disrespect Mia because they saw a powerful white man do the same. This cascade of behaviour is ingrained in many corporate work cultures, and it’s something that The Morning Show never really addresses with Mia, despite them addressing it with Alex. But Mia is Black woman, so fuck that bitch, I guess.
Then there’s Hannah (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who ends up committing suicide because she’s unable to deal with having to relive her encounter with Mitch; as part of a case that’s being built to get the president of UBA fired for the part he played in not acting on the allegations. She’s basically used as a pawn. Hannah dying is one thing, and you’d think it’d be the biggest thing. But there’s more. Because in season 2, Hannah’s Black ass is still getting tortured, because the president of the network (who is ousted between season 1 and 2) is trying to run all sorts of stories on her, and smear her name in the press. And it turns out her white father is also a piece of shit. So it’s not enough that the writers had a Black woman commit suicide, they also decided that they wanna drag her corpse through the second season.
Black women are officially the punching bag of The Morning Show, although Alex would swear blind it's her.
The storylines for both Mia and Hannah are a mess. But having Black women be the victims in both cases highlights two things.
First, is that Black women do not receive the same level of support as white women when they are victims of anything. Early on in the first season, an intern is made to come forward to corroborate claims against Mitch. She’s put on the show. She’s looked after. There is no fallout for her coming clean about her entanglements with Mitch. Yet, both Mia and Hannah are made to pay for theirs with their jobs and their lives respectively. Then there’s Alex, who also had entanglements with Mitch, which a select few people were sorta aware of. Yet she manages to keep her name, job and reputation in good standing. And even when the truth comes out by the end of season 2, Alex still has a job AND fans rally around her, including Bradley of all people. Somebody who was set up to be the COMPLETE opposite of Alex. And yet... *Gestures*. Black women don’t receive the same level of support as white women in any capacity. But again, despite there being a window for the show to make a commentary on this, it doesn’t. It’s all just a by-product of the caucasity.
Second, is that Black women always have to put on a brave face and just deal with things, without being given the space to process their trauma. This is too common a thing in shows and stories written by white women. WandaVision did the exact same thing with the character of Monica Rambeau. Black women being strong, resilient and getting shit done is not a fallacy. But this isn’t at the expense of refusing to acknowledge trauma and pain. A Black woman can be strong, resilient and get shit done, AND process her own traumas, work on herself, go to therapy, show vulnerability, be a victim, be flawed; all those things. But apparently not according to white women in writers rooms. A Black woman being strong is her just dealing with shit.
I would say I can’t believe that nobody flagged the optics of having the only two prominent Black women in this show be victims of abuse, but this is what you get with RGB (255, 255, 255) productions. And it’s something which could have been so easily corrected by changing the race of at least one of these characters. Having two of Mitch’s most prominent victims be Black also makes Mitch potentially look like he has a thing for preying on Black women specifically; which nothing is made of in season 1, but is an angle that the tabloids coincidentally take on their coverage of Mitch in season 2. This is also problematic, because it shows white people putting a spin on a situation that makes Black women collective targets and victims. But it also shows that the writers of The Morning Show are fully aware that they've made most of Mitch's victims Black - just to run it for a plot device which leads to Mitch dying. It's foul.
The Morning Show is insistent on ensuring that Black women in the world of this show are not only victims, but continually and publicly tortured. It completely undercuts what I thought was an attempt to course correct Mia’s character in season 2, by having her take over her boss’ job. Even during her address of the fuckery in season 1, she says that she just wants to move on with her life and be known for something other than fucking Mitch. So when season 2 starts it’s like her Mitch slate is wiped clean, and I was on board with that. But then, BANG! Not even a couple of episode in, and Mia's caught in torrential downpour of doo-doo.
I get that this isn’t just a Black woman thing, and this goes beyond the show. Monica Lewinksy is white as hell and was pretty much only known as the woman who did THANGS with Bill Clinton. The Morning Show isn’t wrong in how women who end up being ensnared into situations with men in power often end up with that being their legacy. But to have the two most prominent victims of Mitch be Black women, the show to acknowledge this, and then be like 'Mitch had a thing for Black women', it's beyond a mess. It also shows that in the eyes of white women, Me Too only applies to white women.
The Morning Show was clearly aware that it had an optics issue in its first season. The season ended with Alex and Bradley blowing the lid off of the sexual misconduct at UBA; forcing the company to restructure and put more women in senior positions. This provided the writers an easy way to bring in new characters and make the line-up look a little more diverse. Mia is promoted to show producer, taking over Chip’s job. Cybil (played by Holland Taylor) is the chairwoman of the UBA board. And we have Stella, a Korean head of news (played by Grace Lee). But Stella is constantly undermined by white men and women, and is seen to play the same game that all the white folk be playing, which includes playing Daniel and the Cuban weather man Yanko (played by Néstor Carbonell). Grace is also subjected to racial slurs and is blamed in the street for COVID. But as The Morning Show does, it just includes that moment for the sake of including it - because of course the only Korean character in the show would be subjected to this. Mia is still forced to deal with the Mitch bullshit and inherits the mess that Chip had left behind. Meanwhile the president of the UBA has no conflicts whatsoever. But she wouldn’t. Because she’s white.
If networks wanna make a white ass show, then they can make a white ass show. Cast it full of white people and be done with it. But don't give me a cast that looks diverse on a poster or a panel, just to side-line every character who isn't white. And don’t create something to tick boxes, do it badly, and then pat yourself on the back because you included a bunch of popular buzzwords. If you don't give a fuck about diversity, then don't entertain it. The Morning Show features Black characters and a couple of characters of colour for no reason other than Apple TV being able to say ‘Our cast is diverse’, and this for me is worse than not putting any colour in a cast at all. At least Friends stood up in the fact it was a white ass show. Shit went wonky and showed its entire ass the moment Friends tried to work in a Black character, because nobody knew how to write her, and as a result, squandered the great talents of Aisha Tyler.
Stand up in your whiteness. Don't use Black people and people of colour as window dressing.
The writing in The Morning Show is generally pretty bad. Many a white character is also squandered. I, for the life of me, cannot figure out who and / or what this show wants Bradley to be, because her motivations and her goals flip-flop all over the place. Bradley’s role in the story doesn't feel ancillary. You could effectively take her out of it and things would still happen more or less in the same way. This may lead some to say ‘See, it’s not a Black thing’. But it is, because the writers made it so. As aforementioned, many of the problems highlighted, would not have been problems if the writers didn’t choose to shine a light on them for the sake of faux wokeness. And if the writers were truly considerate of the hues of its cast, then the roles many of these characters play would have looked very, very different. Mindy Kaling would be part of the main cast, as would Janina Gavankar.
The Morning Show creating this show where it wants audiences to sympathise with terrible white people, downplay sexual assault and just brush off the casual disrespect of Black characters and characters of colour is damaging, because it speaks too true to life and where America and England is at right now. The media caping for racist sock-puppet-looking-ass white men in power, justice systems which allow white killers of Black people to walk free, and rich white men protecting abusers. With the right writers, this could have been a divisive commentary, but one which actually said something. Instead we end up performative wokeness, and an unintentional reminder of the world we live in, with no commentary linked to it what-so-ever. The Morning Show provided a look at the world we live in...and that was it.
And as for Me Too, I don't know what The Morning Show is even trying to say about it, when the entire second season is spent trying to paint Mitch as a redeemable figure; as though what he did wasn't really THAT bad. You know your writing is fucked when the man who committed sexual assault is more empathetic and likeable than most other characters in the show, and that this wasn't by design.
The Morning Show seems proud of what it's managed to do, which is nothing. Which in and of itself is perhaps the whitest thing ever. Despite all of the things The Morning Show does to side-line its Black characters and characters of colour, it doesn't even manage to give you more than one main white character who is actually likeable. And for all of the impact the show made initially in regards to Me too, it completely dusts its hands of it in season 2 and gives the offender a redemption arc. And yet this show is getting Emmy awards thrown at it. Yet of course it would. Because it's The White People Show. Written by white people, for white people. I just wish the show had saved me the time and been upfront sooner that THIS is what it was. But I guess I'm the fool for not spotting it sooner and sitting through 2 seasons of it.
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| Bradley and Alex present The White People Show | The Morning Show |
There’s a lot about The Morning Show which just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The Morning Show is run by white people. White execs. White staff. It’s just white, white, white. It’s like we’re in the TV news era of the 1960s.
There is a whole side story line about a host named Daniel (played by Desean K. Terry) who does a side segment on The Morning Show, and just so happens to be Black and gay. He wants to be a main anchor and is exasperated at always being side-lined to cover theatre and music; which he feels he’s been boxed into because he’s gay. But The Morning Show can’t decide whether it wants Daniel’s conflict to be that he's side-lined because of his sexuality, or because of his race. So the writers choose to zone in on race as the angle, when it needn’t have been. ‘But it’s spicier’ I can imagine a white writer saying whilst twirling a Sharpie in-between their fingers.
Just having the character’s battles at work be one concerning their sexuality and how that is determining their work would have been fine. Sure, it's been done before. But this would make far more sense, and create an interesting link to the arc of Bradley being outed for her relationship with Laura mid-way through season 2.
Black people are overlooked and side-lined in workplaces. This is absolutely a thing. But Daniel’s struggle in the beginning doesn’t seem to be his race, until it suddenly is. And it also highlights how little sense it makes for The Morning Show to be so white, and for Daniel to feel that his being Black is the reason why he’s not advancing in his career at a news show, especially during a point in time when Black anchors and anchors of colour are the faces of all the major US daytime Television shows. Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan on Good Morning America. Hoda Kotb on Today. Gayle King on CBS Mornings. The Morning Show is fictitious. But given its insistence on pulling in real life events, and pretty current ones at that, it’s strange that they wouldn’t even try to have the hues and shades across those working on the show reflect that of actual morning shows in the US. The Morning Show’s rival show Your Day America even has a co-anchor of colour played by Mindy Kaling, who calls out how white The Morning Show is. Gimme a show on THAT show.
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| Audra spills the tea | The Morning Show |
The Morning Show is trying to be ‘woke’ in depicting the work struggles for Black folk, but there’s no nuance to it. And there’s also no legitimate reason for it, because the show doesn’t try to make any point with any of it. The struggle for these Black folk at The Morning Show is just...there. Shows like Insecure do a far better job of showing the spectrum of Black people in the workplace. Not every single Black person in existence faces struggles in their workplace because they are Black. And this isn’t to counter-argue and dismiss those who have experience racial bias at their places of work. It’s just to say that it’s not an intrinsic thing that every single Black person experiences. But The Morning Show wants to use it for plot devices for characters which it doesn't even care about any way.
White women are given agency that Black women and women of colour aren’t given
All of the white women in The Morning Show are shown to try and steer things in a way that can benefit them in some way. The tagline for the second season of the show is ‘Control is an illusion’, but this only seems to apply to any and everybody who isn’t a white woman. When Alex and Bradley are against the ropes, they find ways to swing things in their favour and come out of it with everything still intact.
Alex exposed UBA on their own show, resigned, disappeared, but then managed to get her job back AND bag a deal for her own show. Then she quits the show again, is exposed for having an affair with Mitch in a book, exposes her co-workers to COVID and yet still manages to still be the star of a show on UBA. Bradley gets in the face of the new CEO (played by Billy Crudup), decides to call in sick for weeks despite being spotted out and about and living her best life, and yet still manages to keep her job despite the board calling for her to be fired (which she deserved to be). In season 2 we’re introduced to the a new character Paola, who falls in love with Mitch (which is problematic for numerous reasons). But, HENNYWAY. It happens. Paola is at a dead-end with her career, but manages to turn it around, even in the most dire of consequences, via a chain of events and interactions with characters which make no actual sense. Laura is the only white woman on the show who appears to be wholly decent. But even so, because she's white, she gets that bounce-back arc. Despite her career imploding in the past, she still managed to enjoy a lucrative career, and guest co-anchor on the rival show that she was fired from. The white women of The Morning Show are the Teflon dons.
Meanwhile...
Black women get screwed over, every which way
Mitch has many victims, but the two The Morning Show seems to harrow on and high-key torture are Black women; and we see both of their lives fall apart in different ways as a result of their entanglements with him.
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| The white man in the back isn't a main character, but he is trash. | The Morning Show |
Mia’s situation could have made for a really layered dialogue on victimhood. Mia consensually embarked on an affair with Mitch, therefore she may not seem like she's a victim, but she is. People’s minds probably go to a very specific image when they think of the word ‘victim’ in conjunction with ‘woman’. But victimhood is a very broad spectrum. Not only can being a victim affect people in different ways, but there are so many different circumstances under which any of us can become a victim. Mia in this instance wasn’t a victim because of Mitch's sexual advances. She was a victim due to the power that he and Alex wielded at their place of work. There's also something to be said here about how Alex was actually the one who made a victim out of Mia, more-so than Mitch.
The thing that struck me is that The Morning Show makes no real connection between the men who make derogatory comments to Mia and the culture in the office that turns a blind eye to men AND women making women victims. Both in this context are examples of misogyny and a clear power balance which favours men and subjugates women who appear to have no power. There was no sexual misconduct on Mitch’s part when it came to Mia, and he didn’t verbally abuse her; but Mia has experienced both as a result of of her relationship with him. They are connected. But The Morning Show doesn't really show how intangibly linked the two are. And the show oddly keeps Alex separate from the whole situation, when she is heavily involved in the dynamic that caused Mia to become a victim in the first place.
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| Mia and her 'All my life I had to fight' moment | The Morning Show |
White men making themselves out to be victims at the expense of Black women, who are actual victims is a theme of The Morning Show. And we'll get to the worse instance of this later.
But when Mia does address the fuckery to everybody, it’s more of a ‘All my life I had to fight’ type moment, as opposed to Mia calling everybody the fuck out as she should have. It also comes so late in the game when the damage has been done. The show broke Mia to her lowest ebb in order for her to take action; a point no white character has to hit to do the same, and that was all I could think of in that moment.
Mia’s address didn’t do what the writers seem to think it did. Mia got no vindication as a result of it. Mia is addressing the elephants in the room, but it’s not like she was ever avoiding them, because nobody ever allowed her to. Nobody took accountability for the part they played in making Mia’s life hell. Mitch is a piece of shit and certainly needs to take ownership for at the very least not protecting Mia, but he isn’t the one firing shots at her every day. White men at UBA felt they could disrespect Mia because they saw a powerful white man do the same. This cascade of behaviour is ingrained in many corporate work cultures, and it’s something that The Morning Show never really addresses with Mia, despite them addressing it with Alex. But Mia is Black woman, so fuck that bitch, I guess.
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| Gugu Renslayer | The Morning Show |
Black women are officially the punching bag of The Morning Show, although Alex would swear blind it's her.
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| Mia in her cute office. But was it worth it babes? | The Morning Show |
First, is that Black women do not receive the same level of support as white women when they are victims of anything. Early on in the first season, an intern is made to come forward to corroborate claims against Mitch. She’s put on the show. She’s looked after. There is no fallout for her coming clean about her entanglements with Mitch. Yet, both Mia and Hannah are made to pay for theirs with their jobs and their lives respectively. Then there’s Alex, who also had entanglements with Mitch, which a select few people were sorta aware of. Yet she manages to keep her name, job and reputation in good standing. And even when the truth comes out by the end of season 2, Alex still has a job AND fans rally around her, including Bradley of all people. Somebody who was set up to be the COMPLETE opposite of Alex. And yet... *Gestures*. Black women don’t receive the same level of support as white women in any capacity. But again, despite there being a window for the show to make a commentary on this, it doesn’t. It’s all just a by-product of the caucasity.
Second, is that Black women always have to put on a brave face and just deal with things, without being given the space to process their trauma. This is too common a thing in shows and stories written by white women. WandaVision did the exact same thing with the character of Monica Rambeau. Black women being strong, resilient and getting shit done is not a fallacy. But this isn’t at the expense of refusing to acknowledge trauma and pain. A Black woman can be strong, resilient and get shit done, AND process her own traumas, work on herself, go to therapy, show vulnerability, be a victim, be flawed; all those things. But apparently not according to white women in writers rooms. A Black woman being strong is her just dealing with shit.
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| The TVA shoulda come got her ass up outta here | The Morning Show |
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| Yep. The TVA DEFINITELY shoulda got her ass up outta here | The Morning Show |
I get that this isn’t just a Black woman thing, and this goes beyond the show. Monica Lewinksy is white as hell and was pretty much only known as the woman who did THANGS with Bill Clinton. The Morning Show isn’t wrong in how women who end up being ensnared into situations with men in power often end up with that being their legacy. But to have the two most prominent victims of Mitch be Black women, the show to acknowledge this, and then be like 'Mitch had a thing for Black women', it's beyond a mess. It also shows that in the eyes of white women, Me Too only applies to white women.
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| Daniel and Mia talkin' about white people | The Morning Show |
Black Lives don’t matter on The Morning Show
The second season of The Morning Show is set in 2020, so there’s talk of the Presidential election and also the pandemic. But strangely (or not, because whiteness), one event that rocked the entire world in 2020 is absent. Black Lives Matter. Another instance of The Morning Show not only shitting on Black people, but doing something egregious which could have oh-so-easily been avoided. All they had to do was NOT include real life events in the show. Neither the Presidential election or the pandemic have a bearing on the story at large, and feel unnecessarily shoe-horned anyway. Had The Morning Show not featured either of these things, the omission of Black Lives Matter wouldn’t have been so glaring. But here we are. If The Morning Show really wanted to give Daniel a ‘Y’all are side-lining me and not letting me do good stories ‘cos I’m Black’ storyline, they could have had him question why there is no coverage of Black Lives Matter. But they don’t, because The Morning Show doesn’t care about Daniel as a character. And we already know that it doesn’t care a fuck about Black people.
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| iPhone 13 featuring Stella | The Morning Show |
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| The 'diversity' long shot | The Morning Show |
Stand up in your whiteness. Don't use Black people and people of colour as window dressing.
The writing in The Morning Show is generally pretty bad. Many a white character is also squandered. I, for the life of me, cannot figure out who and / or what this show wants Bradley to be, because her motivations and her goals flip-flop all over the place. Bradley’s role in the story doesn't feel ancillary. You could effectively take her out of it and things would still happen more or less in the same way. This may lead some to say ‘See, it’s not a Black thing’. But it is, because the writers made it so. As aforementioned, many of the problems highlighted, would not have been problems if the writers didn’t choose to shine a light on them for the sake of faux wokeness. And if the writers were truly considerate of the hues of its cast, then the roles many of these characters play would have looked very, very different. Mindy Kaling would be part of the main cast, as would Janina Gavankar.
The Morning Show creating this show where it wants audiences to sympathise with terrible white people, downplay sexual assault and just brush off the casual disrespect of Black characters and characters of colour is damaging, because it speaks too true to life and where America and England is at right now. The media caping for racist sock-puppet-looking-ass white men in power, justice systems which allow white killers of Black people to walk free, and rich white men protecting abusers. With the right writers, this could have been a divisive commentary, but one which actually said something. Instead we end up performative wokeness, and an unintentional reminder of the world we live in, with no commentary linked to it what-so-ever. The Morning Show provided a look at the world we live in...and that was it.
And as for Me Too, I don't know what The Morning Show is even trying to say about it, when the entire second season is spent trying to paint Mitch as a redeemable figure; as though what he did wasn't really THAT bad. You know your writing is fucked when the man who committed sexual assault is more empathetic and likeable than most other characters in the show, and that this wasn't by design.
The Morning Show seems proud of what it's managed to do, which is nothing. Which in and of itself is perhaps the whitest thing ever. Despite all of the things The Morning Show does to side-line its Black characters and characters of colour, it doesn't even manage to give you more than one main white character who is actually likeable. And for all of the impact the show made initially in regards to Me too, it completely dusts its hands of it in season 2 and gives the offender a redemption arc. And yet this show is getting Emmy awards thrown at it. Yet of course it would. Because it's The White People Show. Written by white people, for white people. I just wish the show had saved me the time and been upfront sooner that THIS is what it was. But I guess I'm the fool for not spotting it sooner and sitting through 2 seasons of it.