Director: Mimi Leder
Writer: Kerry Ehrin
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell, Mark Duplass, Billy Crudup

Episode 01×01: “In the Dark Night of the Soul It’s Always 3:30 in the Morning”
Air Date: 01/11/2019
The Morning Show is currently available to stream on Apple TV+, with the first three episodes available.

With the launch of Apple TV+ comes several original programs, and leading them is
The Morning Show—or, as it’s titled in Australia due to an existing network show, Morning Wars.
Jennifer Aniston returns to TV for the first time since Friends and stars alongside
Steve Carell, Reese Witherspoon, Mark Duplass, and Billy Crudup as
Apple merrily chucks millions of dollars at star power. But it’s not just the attraction of stars that
makes this series stand out—it’s the subject matter. Apple isn’t playing it safe with its flagship title:
The Morning Show tackles a Me Too scandal surrounding Carell’s Mitch Kessler and how that affects the
network and his co-host, Aniston’s Alex Levy.

The pilot is heavy-handed, with clear aspirations toward Aaron Sorkin-style characters and
zippy, overlapping dialogue, but it rarely hits the mark. There are several back-and-forth, fast-paced newsroom
walk-and-talks (reference intended), yet the drama the episode aims for isn’t earned—we don’t know these
characters yet, and the show assumes we do too quickly.

After Kessler is fired, Alex is left to process the loss of her on-air partner. She wanders into his dressing room,
and the scene lingers on Aniston’s tears as she looks over his things; it’s oddly inert. Kessler, accused of sexual
misconduct and shown to be an angry bastard, isn’t sympathetic, but Alex reads as a self-interested ego. The pilot
frames both of them luxuriating in comfort—Mitch raging in his mansion, Alex brooding in her lavish home with a team
protecting her image—cue the silent violin.

What Mitch has done, specifically, isn’t detailed here. He insists it’s all lies and even blames the situation on
Weinstein, a denial we’ve seen repeatedly in real life. Carell spends most of his scenes shouting—
there’s even a moment where he beats his TV—that plays unintentionally funny.

Billy Crudup, as studio executive Cory Ellison, chews the scenery. Cory is ruthless, and Crudup gets the
episode’s only monologue that truly crackles as he lays out his plans opposite Mark Duplass. Duplass, playing
The Morning Show’s executive producer Chip Black, is solid—though as a Duplass fan, I’ll admit I was just
happy