‘The Morning Show’ Review: Jennifer Aniston Wakes Up with Jon Hamm, Who Channels Elon Musk in Best Season Yet

Morning show season 3 is finally here.

The series remains an Apple TV+ flagship, an A-list vehicle headlined by Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon and a stellar supporting cast (Greta Lee, Billy Crudup, Julianna Margulies and, briefly, a sharp wedge of cheddar named Mindy Kaling) — all of them who have a good time butting heads in an elegant, expensive production.

And you couldn’t find a more current topic: The behind-the-scenes battles to prop up the founder’s network, UBA, and squeeze every last drop of value out of its cash cow morning program.

But the series never felt as cutting-edge or as clever as it should have been. Let’s say you open up an iPhone and discover that the innards are made up of springs, screws, and tiny ticking discs. It is Morning show.

The ‘Morning Show’ crew is ready to ‘burn it all down’ in the Season 3 trailer: ‘It’s time to smash and smash’

If that really hasn’t changed with season three — everything finally falls into place with sheer awesomeness — this is still the show’s best move yet.

For one thing, the show got rid of Steve Carell’s troublesome Mitch (and those irritating Italian women!) and brought in Jon Hamm, smooth as a seal, as an Elon Musk-like Paul Marks tycoon who wouldn’t mind adding UBA to his toolbox.

Hamm seductively emphasizes — when not? — as the plot delves into the juicy topic of whether new technology can or should save “legacy” media. Endless maneuvering and counter-maneuvering to make or break a deal is fun, thrilling and fast-paced.

Jon Hamm in the 3rd season of ‘The Morning Show’.

Courtesy of Apple TV+

The ‘Morning Show’ team is looking for a ‘straw of salvation’ in season 3. Teaser: ‘Let all the secrets come out!’

They also give Crudup’s Cory Ellison and Lee’s Stella Bak, as UBS’s toughest tactical minds, ample opportunity to steal scenes. Like mice, they find entrances everywhere.

Marks was initially skeptical of the corporate value of Aniston’s superstar handler, Alex Levy — “What kind of magic is Alex Levy?” he asks – but soon feels different. (Think if Musk changed his Twitter name to “XO.”)

Aniston’s performance remains casually glamorous, occasionally tough and occasionally biting, though she also sulks delightfully, as if she’s one of director Greta Gerwig’s Barbies struggling to overcome a nagging taint of cognitive dissonance. And that’s okay — this is Alex Levi, not Lydia Tár.

The only performer at a disadvantage this season is the fiercely committed Witherspoon as Bradley Jackson. In a flashback episode that places Bradley in Washington, DC on January 6, 2020 – inside the Capitol building itself – she makes a disastrous decision in a moment that could destroy her career.

Reese Witherspoon in the third season of the ‘Morning Show’.

Apple TV+

Unfortunately, this ripped-from-the-headlines script, dramatizing a pivotal moment in which the tectonic plates of American politics and culture were grinding against each other, is far less interesting than the question of whether Hamm and Aniston will cook at home or turn in.

This is usually a problem with Morning show. His attempts to come to grips with actual current events are commendable, and perhaps even essential and inevitable, but rarely satisfying: Current events (at least the ones America is going through these days) do require a struggle—a cut and a thrust, an argument, a friction—but no real debate Morning showjust perceived media wisdom grafted onto the plot.

The season will also cover the leak of Supreme Court documents that became a turning point in the 2022 decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but here, too, you might be more interested in whether Hamm and Aniston will be cooking at home or just ordering out.

All in all, the series is closer to Carrie Bradshaw than to Logan Roy: Alex, in a moment of emotional crisis, cries in a closet surrounded by so many shoes that Imelda Marcus would faint from ecstasy.

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morning show’The first two episodes of Season 3 are now streaming on Apple TV+. New episodes arrive on Wednesdays.

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Source: HIS Education