Alex Levy and Bradley Jackson Come to the Rescue of Siobhan Roy

It may not be Shakespearean but I love “The Morning Show”

“Batshit drama;” “outrageous storylines;” “trainwreck;” “unhinged and senseless;” “insane;” “bonkers;” “ridiculous melodrama; “soapy silliness;” “a mess.” Those are some fairly typical descriptions I’ve plucked from a random array of reviews of “The Morning Show.” Sounds to me like the show is a woman about to get her period: unstrung, hysterical, making mountains of drama out nothing. Take a midol, please, and go have a hissy-fit elsewhere.

With reviews like that, I wasn’t surprised when this season “The Morning Show” tried to take some pages from the “Succession” playbook. More scheming and jockeying for control than in the first two seasons. Constant plot complications, some of which required multiple viewings to sort out. A charming, manipulative billionaire tech-wizard with his eyes on buying the company and suspect motives. A surplus of clever banter with no point other than to provide memorable “best lines of the episode” for witty reviewers. A climactic boardroom scene with an unexpected twist.

It all damned near ruined the season, almost did turn it into the “mess” reviewers had accused it of. After two seasons with strong, clear story-lines, this season was all over the place, and unlike “Succession,” a show that is literally timeless—its universe, although echoing with allusions to events, institutions, and characters from recent history, makes no actual references—it also peppered the fictional with the really real: COVID, George Floyd, the January 6th insurrection, the Dobbs decision. The new story runner Charlotte Stroudt apparently decided that it was time for a show about a news show to have something to do with the news besides #MeToo. She’s also said that she wanted to capture the disorienting nature of events in our recent history, which kept us off-balance while the usual trivial nonsense meant to keep us entertained on a feel-good morning show continued, normalizing and soothing.

Unfortunately, with some exceptions, the news of the day got briefly jammed in and then abandoned. (Mia weeps over George Floyd and then he’s forgotten; The Dobbs decision shocks everyone, then gets absorbed by Alex firing Chip for not adequately preparing her for a lefty interviewee who wants to talk Big Business rather than Women’s Rights.) That may also have been deliberate on Stroudt’s part. She describes the constant displacement and “tonal” shifts of watching the news nowadays: “You get these newsfeed updates about wars and under that it’s Taylor Swift’s new boyfriend. It’s all context collapse. The tone of The Morning Show reflects how we’re getting information.” “Context collapse” was a new one for me. But it’s pretty apt as a description of the hectic narrative line of this third season, which starts with a rocket launch and a cyberattack, backtracks to the pandemic, January 6th and a plot-line involving deleted footage, touches down on the Dobbs decision, chronicles the ups-and-downs of at least four love affairs, and ends, a la “Succession,” with a momentous meeting of the board.

Still, the season had plenty of what I’ve loved about the show. Like “Succession,” “The Morning Show” features characters that do and say horrible things and treat each other badly. But unlike “Succession,” we aren’t put in the position of constantly trying to decipher the “true” feelings of people well-trained to hide them, ever conscious of their position in the ongoing play of power. Does Siobhan really love Tom? Fans spent months in Facebook groups debating that, and it was fascinating and fun. But Stroudt doesn’t want the characters (with the possible exception of Paul Marks) to be inscrutable. She wants viewers to “understand why someone is doing or feeling what they are” and she wants the actors to be able to draw on that, too. They are written (and brilliantly acted) with their emotions right there—on full display or leaking out of whatever composure they’re trying to maintain. “Soap opera”ish or not, it’s a big part of what makes the show enjoyable.

Sometimes it’s done through a subtle habit that we come to understand as revealing something important about the character: Alex (Jennifer Aniston) straightening her body, pulling her shoulders back, and smoothing out her clothes when she’s about to put on a together face for the world. (Make sure that face is bright and that tight little body doesn’t show a wrinkle.) Sometimes it goes over the line into kitsch: I don’t know who decided to turn Bradley’s girlfriend Laura (Julianna Margulies) into a snarling, scary vampire when she finds out that Bradley has (oh my god) violated journalistic ethics. But it’s too much, WAY too much. (We knew Laura was—in her own words—“judg-y.” But she’s riding a really high horse in this scene. Bradley didn’t murder or sexually abuse anyone. And how can she resist Reese Witherspoon’s crumpled, tearful little face?) Sometimes, it’s tonally perfect—as in virtually every scene with Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup), the most complicated, layered character in the series: jokester, schemer, caretaker, reckless, brilliant, vulnerable, devious, touching—and haplessly in love with Bradley. We don’t need to have Facebook debates about that—it’s written all over him. (If Billy Crudup doesn’t get an Emmy…!!)

Falling into the category of emotionally “perfect” is a scene in the third episode. I had been wondering, through the first two episodes (rocket launch and cyberattack) what series I was watching. Then there was “White Noise” to remind me why I love this series and never stopped watching it even when it went off the rails this season. The episode is “about” racism. Not the violent horrors we see on the real news, but the kind that is casually, “benignly” scattered through our workplaces, sheltered in private, off-the-cuff remarks and email “jokes”—the kind that no-one “means anything by.” The premise is that the cyberattack (at this point, origins still unknown) has shaken loose all manner of administrative and personal communications. They reveal not only gross pay discrepancies between white and non-white employees, but an email sent by board member Cybil Reynolds (Holland Taylor) whose family founded the station, about the proposed hiring of Black Olympic star Christine Hunter (Nicole Beharie), in which she makes an allusion to “Aunt Jemima.”

The email becomes the central (although not the first) of several cringe-worthy moments in which oblivious white people show just how oblivious they are. First, CEO Cory invites Chris to his office and, clearly interested only in sweeping it all under the rug, offers money to keep the incident “in-house,” (“We should do the news, not be the news, right?”) without even once asking Chris how she feels. Then, in a “talk session” among the staff, weatherman Yanko (Nestor Carbonell, who has been gifted with the most envious natural eyeliner), drawing on a mishmash of critical race theory and right-wing talking points—calls race a “fiction” that’s being “weaponized” by the “woke” (Chris leaves the room at that point.) And finally, when Chris insists on interviewing Cybill on Alex Unfiltered, Cybill just keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper. Cybill’s problem is that she’s been sheltered and rendered clueless by a lifetime of privilege. She thinks Aunt Jemima was on a cereal box. (I guess the colored maid did pancakes for her when she was a kid.) More importantly, she doesn’t really think she’s done anything wrong, and although she begins with an apology, can’t refrain from justifying herself. She’s arrogant. And defensive. And utterly unused to being out-maneuvered by a smart, young Black woman. I challenge you to watch her decompose without squirming in your own chair. And saluting Holland Taylor.

Episode 4 (“The Green Light”) was great, too, beginning with Cory’s morning walk from car to make-up (a mashup of struts from “GoodFellas” and “Saturday Night Fever”), in which we literally see him putting on his face for the day. The network is in trouble and the deal with Paul Marks (Jonathan Hamm) is looking like it’s fallen apart, so Cory strong-arms all the girls—stars and staff—to use their charms to snare backers and advertisers. The uglier side of Cory is in full display here, and if “White Noise” made us cringe over clueless racism, this episode does the same for the unhindered—and obediently submitted to—exercise of male power in its crudest, most blatant form. In service to “the network,” the girls do his bidding, and while Alex, who has the least disgusting task (courting Paul Marks, who flirts—but politely—with her) is seasoned and smart, Stella (Greta Lee), who misses the social distancing of COVID (“Can’t we do all of this on Zoom?”) gets stuck with a bunch of Ellipse execs who drink and talk like frat boys and get the server to lick the table in exchange for a big tip for her and the deal for Stella. It makes Stella’s stomach turn, but she keeps her game face on. And then, we get an absolutely perfect shot of her—disgusted, weary, and angry—in the car on the way back to Cory’s party. And the deal falls through, anyway.

Richard Lawson is among the reviewers who heap scorn on “The Morning Show.” After episode five, he described the show as “not terribly interested in realism.” “It’s difficult to know,” he wrote “whether the people behind The Morning Show are trying to make soapy nonsense or if they are operating on the belief that this is heavy, important stuff.” The episode, which portrayed how the isolations of the (pre-vaccination) Pandemic year affected the relationships of some of the main characters, was one of my favorites, and having it called “soapy nonsense” was beyond irritating. What a guy thing! I thought, to cut down my mother’s favorite form of tv viewing at the same time as dismissing a show focused largely on intimate relationships.

it didn’t seem at all “soap-opera”-ish to me when Mia (Karen Pittman) spits fire and then collapses in angry, hurt, frustrated tears when her lover Andre comes back to their previously safe “love island” (the episode’s title) having been to several crowded bars, getting unmasked drunk because he’s just learned of Mia’s earlier relationship with Mitch. Doing everything you can to keep a safe space for intimate relationships to provide comfort and consolation, and then having your efforts destroyed by the carelessness of those you want to be with, was as realistic a depiction of the non-fatal but devastating effects of those days as I’d seen.

And then there was Bradley’s (Reese Witherspoon) total meltdown after her mother’s death. There had always been some reason not to go. There was the insanity of travel and quarantine, only to have to turn right back again. There was the luxury and love she was enjoying in Laura’s (Julianna Margulies) gorgeous Montana get-away. There was the reassurances of her brother that things with her mother were going ok. “Just stay where you are. I don’t need you getting sick too.”

And then her mother dies. And Bradley becomes so unhinged that she projects all her own guilt onto Laura, in a fight that escalates into sheer mutual cruelty that’s almost (though not quite) as venomous as Siobhan and Tom’s spewing poison on each other on the balcony outside their apartment on “Succession.” It’s the “Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf” recognition that when people who know each other intimately let loose, it can become volcanic, un-moored from fact, oblivious to consequences. Paradoxically (at the same time as it makes perfect sense) it’s those with whom we feel the safest that we allow ourselves to go over-the-top hurtful with. The Bradley/Laura fight may have been one of the moments that seemed “unrealistic” to Richard Lawson. Not to me.

What didn’t work for me, couples-wise, was the affair between Paul Marks and Alex Levy. Stroudt has a good explanation for why Paul would appeal to Alex:

Paul does say to her, “I like that you’re strong. I like that you don’t just try to flatter me. I like that you’re a person who’s really interested in your own power.” And I don’t think anyone’s ever said that to her. Men don’t say that. She had to laugh at Mitch’s gross jokes, and everybody else has been like “Alex, stay in your box,” except for Bradley. Everyone else is in a way trying to manage her. Paul is one of the first people who initially doesn’t try to manage her, which is exciting to her.

That makes total sense—in theory. But (for me, anyway) it didn’t add up to on-screen chemistry. Maybe it was because both the characters and the stars that play the characters are so perfectly contained, each such a complete universe-unto-themselves, that it was hard to believe in them melting together. Maybe they are both too smoothly gorgeous (although Hamm is older and less glossy than he was in “Mad Men”—and he has a little under-the-chin sag—thank God someone does in the show) to imagine them doing anything as unprocessed as falling passionately in love. Maybe they look too much like the quarterback and the head cheerleader. I don’t know. Except for one brief, early morning shot of Alex lying naked on Paul’s back, there was just no eros there for me. The moment they kissed each other, they alchemically were transformed into the two movie-stars they actually are—Hamm and Aniston—rather than fictional characters I was interested in.

I could go on with a list of hits and misses, but I don’t want to get that “too long for an email message” without talking about the boardroom scene, which is what prompted me to think about the intersections with “Succession,” which I followed on Substack throughout the final season. I spent a lot of time that season defending Siobhan Roy. I’m not going to rehearse all my arguments in this post. (If you’re interested, my discussions can be found here.) I will only say that despite the fact that no one is an angel in “Succesion” (to put it generously), no one was the object of as much fan-vitriol as “Shiv” Roy: “I can’t tell you how much I hate her.” “She’s absolutely the worst of the lot.” “I have no sympathy for that conniving twat” “And couldn’t she even be bothered to put her hair up properly for Connor’s wedding?” Some viewers were gleeful when Kendall “told her off” when (in the election night episode) he found out that she lied to him about her alliance with Mattson. “I’m so glad that lying, manipulative POS was exposed” one of the “fans” of the show wrote, conveniently ignoring that before Shiv teamed up with Mattson, her brothers had over and over betrayed their promise to be a triumvirate.

Whenever I run across pure undiluted hatred for a woman—you know, the kind that produces phrases like “cold bitch” and “nasty cunt” (and not said affectionately) I know something deeper is going on. I saw it every day when Hillary Clinton was running for President. (I wrote an exhaustively—and exhaustingly—researched book about that election, so I’m kind of familiar with the phenomenon.) Among her enemies (and even among some who were not) Hillary rubbed people the wrong way. Why, you might ask? The reasons people gave rarely had anything to do with her competence. She “thinks too much of herself.” “Too haughty.” “Too controlling.” “Sure wouldn’t want to have her for a wife.” “Why doesn’t she loosen up a little?” “Poor Bill; I don’t blame him for fooling around with a wife like that.”

To judge from the comments of many “Succession” fans, Siobhan Roy, while nothing like Hillary Clinton, stirred up a similar desire to knock her off her perch. And ultimately, it’s not just the Shiv-hating fans but Jesse Armstrong, the head-writer of the show, that does that, giving her husband Tom the position that she and her two brothers had coveted—but that, of the three, only Siobhan was actually equipped to handle— and leaving (pregnant) Siobhan, as Armstrong so sympathetically puts it, in a “terrifying, frozen, emotionally barren place.”

(Above quotes are from“Controlling the Narrative” post-show documentary, said by Jesse Armstrong, creator and head writer of “Succession”)

In many ways, the ending was exactly what it needed to be. I’ve always seen Succession as a tragedy, albeit one conveyed by way of the most astute, clever satire, and I often was irritated by the way “power rankings” and “funniest lines,” dominated commentary and conversations. So I never expected any of the siblings to become CEO. Still, I (along with a not insignificant number on “Team Siobhan”) had fantasies about her transforming ATN and preventing it from becoming a Fox. And although I wasn’t expecting that to happen, I woke up the morning after the finale in tears, feeling silly to be so emotionally wrecked by a television show. As I free-associated to my feelings, I realized that I was in a kind of frustrated rage, not so much about the ending itself as about Armstrong’s words. Until then, I’d blamed fans, not the show, for the misogyny directed against Siobhan. The interview with Armstrong left me wondering. Was Siobhan being punished by Armstrong? For Kendall, the ending was tragic, and in the classical sense: he brought it on himself, as his own fatal failings turned fate against him. But what had Siobhan done to disqualify herself? I mean, besides being a lousy wife?

The ending of the last episode of “Succession” was a heartbreaking moment for many of the women who sympathized with Siobhan, defended her, called out the misogyny that she continually faced (both from the men in the show and the Shiv-haters on the internet), and were dismayed to see her become an adjunct to Tom.

But our girl Siobhan gets her (vicarious) revenge in the finale to the third season of “The Morning Show” in which the resolution to the question of “who will run things” is virtually the mirror opposite of what happens in “Succession.”

The third season itself didn’t have a singular arc (as I said at the beginning of this post, it was all over the place.) But if you look back to the very beginning of season one and extract the “Alex Levy” story-line from all the other comings-and-goings, there’s a very clear narrative there.

Like Siobhan, Alex Levy is smart, hyper-controlled, imperious, and—in the eyes of her detractors—too ambitious “for her own good.” She’s a lousy wife: unfaithful and neglectful. Like Siobhan, she struts across a room as though she’s leading an army into battle. And, like Siobhan, she is battling: for every scrap of power and respect that, at the start of the show, can only be dolled out by the men in charge, who treat her like a demanding child or a nagging wife, to be coddled, humored, and even lied to when necessary, but never treated as an equal. She is continually left out of important decisions, while they snicker over how “delusional” and diva-like she is. A diva she certainly can be, and a drama queen (“the worse day of my life” “let’s go do this fucking event so I can go home and just die” etc.) But she’s often savvier than the lot of them, and she’s right that after 15 years with a successful show she’s earned the right to more “hands-on-control.”

After Mitch is fired, they refuse to give her co-anchor approval, and behind her back they are planning to replace her. And at an event at which she is being given an award for leadership in journalism, Cory, himself brand-new at the job, lets her know just how dispensable he thinks she is:

C: Well, hello, Alex. Are you ready for your big speech?

A: You know what, Cory? Let's just cut through the second-party bullshit. I know we're supposed to go through our agents and legal and stab each other off-screen, but I just wanna say this to your face. I'm not closing without cohost approval.

C: Well, I'm sorry to hear that, because you're not getting it. We're not breaking precedent. I'm not putting the network at risk for future deals.

A: Then I'll walk.

C: Then walk, Alex. I don't want you to be unhappy.

By the way, we bought this award for you.

Nasty and humiliating. Can you blame Alex for grabbing what won’t be given freely, and using her speech to pre-empt the boss’s deliberations and announce that Bradley Jackson (sitting bewildered and flabbergasted) will be her new co-host?

In the car on the way home, Alex consoles her very upset daughter Lizzy: “Honey, oh, baby. Honey, listen to me. Sometimes women can't ask for control. So, they have to take it, okay? Okay. I want you to remember that. Okay, baby?”

Cory has other plans; he tells the network head Fred:

“So what we're gonna do is, we're gonna give her this victory. A Pyrrhic victory. Make her think that she's won. But really, we're gonna let this "nobody" in to freshen the show. Juice the ratings for sweeps and finally push Alex Levy off the shelf for good when it is convenient for us and when we don't have to look like the bad guys.”

The best laid plans, Cory.

That was episode two of the very first season. Skip ahead now to the last episode of season three and the meeting of the board at which it is to be decided whether or not to sell UBA to Paul Marks, who has been secretly planning to buy it, then dump it “for parts” (as well as other evil deeds, like surveilling Bradley, trying to blackmail her, etc.) Everything, at the start of the meeting, is looking rosy for him, including his romance with Alex. He doesn’t yet know that Alex, informed by a small army of intrepid girl investigators (Bradley, Stella, and Stella’s friend, former Hyperion employee Kate) is wise to him, and has another proposal to offer.

Staring down a dumbfounded Paul Marks, Alex presents her proposal, which she’s worked out with Laura Peterson, for a “true partnership”—of equals, she stresses—between rival networks UBA and NBN. (Jon Hamm is so good in the scene; if you think he never looks like anything but the Marlboro Man, check out his expression as Alex delivers her punch.) Marks, after trying to convince Alex to postpone the vote (she refuses) withdraws his offer and skulks off, with whatever between his legs.

Showrunner Charlotte Stroudt calls it the “What if the Women Solve the Problem?” twist. We might also call it the “Vengeance for Siobhan Roy” turnaround. It’s not Shakespearean. But it sure is a delicious moment

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