THE MORNING SHOW – Season Four

Apple TV’s media melodrama The Morning Show returns for a fourth season. The series started as a response to the #MeToo movement and has covered every buzzword topic since, from COVID-19 to MAGA. There’s no hashtag or headline-making story that The Morning Show won’t shoehorn into its narrative, and this season’s no different, although it finally understands how to do it more subtly.

Season 4 opens with UBN pitching their brand-new A.I technology. For the upcoming 2024 Summer Olympics, they have new deepfake tech that can help their news presenters talk in a range of languages and reach new audiences. The newly merged UBN (UBA combined with NBN) hopes that the Paris Olympics will be their victory lap, but things are never that easy for the news network. Considering the skeleton crew and constant fear of losing their jobs, morale is low for the production team.

With a two-year time jump, the world of The Morning Show feels different this time; players have moved around and relationship dynamics have noticeably changed. After numerous misfires in previous years, the changes made during this season are for the positive. While the show had previously struggled with over-explaining things, this run of episodes struggles with under-explaining and re-contextualising things. The Morning Show throws audiences into this future world and forces them to catch up with where everyone is.

Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) now has a seat on a female-dominated board, but the sharks are circling her, out for blood. Executive Stella (Greta Lee) and news leader Mia (Karen Pittman) are on her side, but their new boss Celine Dumont (Marion Cotillard) is less star-struck by the former morning TV journalist. Moving Lee and Pittman to the forefront of proceedings is one of the smartest moves Season 4 makes, as both actresses have been the backbone of proceedings without ever getting their deserved flowers. On the other hand, Cotillard’s Celine is underused and underwritten, and it’s hard to understand why they would have picked an Academy Award winner for such a forgettable role.

Another newcomer to UBN is controversial podcaster Brodie (Boyd Holbrook), just one of the additions The Morning Show makes to reflect the current media landscape. He’s disgusting, chauvinistic, and repulsive to this feminist executive board, but he brings in a huge amount of revenue with topics like ‘Why is American sperm count falling lower than Biden’s approval rating?’ He’s a character who represents a huge sector of the current zeitgeist, yet the writers don’t know how to use him to his full potential. A mid-series moment with former athlete turned sports broadcaster Chris (Nicole Beharie) gives him more sympathy than many feel that archetype deserves.

Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) has been removed from the immediate world of UBN after hiding her brother’s involvement in the January 6th insurrection last season. She’s now teaching journalism back in the South and trying to stay out of trouble. But then a message from a mysterious whistleblower about an environmental disaster lures her back the fold. You can tell the writers didn’t have any future plans for Bradley when writing her third season fate, because it’s almost forgotten in favour of trying to bring her back to New York.

The opening episode places all the leading characters geographically, professionally, and personally in very different places. Then, the writers spend significant time getting them all back to NYC and UBN’s studios. Even Chip (Mark Duplass) has a minor role after leaving Alex Levy’s side and becoming a decorated documentarian. In a perhaps overloaded cast, Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) gets lost in the shuffle; ousted from the world of network news, he’s now in a smoke-filled Hollywood trying to be taken seriously as a producer. One of the better performances in previous seasons, Cory’s very much shoehorned into the main NYC-set plot and unnaturally forced back into the show’s centre.

Not only do we have the huge cast of main and supporting actors, but we also have new additions—like Celine’s husband (a charismatic yet wasted Aaron Pierre) and the head of sports Ben (William Jackson Harper, who vanishes mid-season). Of all the wasted cast members and unnecessary plot lines, the exploration of Alex’s relationship with her father (newbie Jeremy Irons) is the most pointless. The show just doesn’t have enough spare time to explore the complexities of Alex’s feelings towards her controversial academic father.

If the TV series wants to continue for multiple seasons, it needs to take risks and permanently disrupt the status quo. Sometimes, people leave their jobs and are never seen again, and that’s okay. But in The Morning Show, no one ever truly quits or gets fired, even when a new character comes in to take over their professional or personal role. Writers also need to take more risks in not always redeeming villains and justifying their actions, but for a show about the bravery of journalism, the writers often take the safe route with their characters.

The quality of the writing is much improved from the lacklustre third season. The team better understand the show’s ensemble and know who their acting MVPs are. With a loaded ensemble of old and new characters, the amount of different leading and side plots can feel overwhelming, but there’s some semblance the writers have a grip on the direction they are going in.

This fourth season can, at times, feel more like an anthology drama than a continuing series. Each episode often focuses on something different from the previous instalment, sometimes inter-connecting, but often leaving the characters having little to no repercussions for their actions. Even the tone and filming style differ per episode. For example, episode six features a random film noir style voiceover from Stella, while others have the pacing of a 1970s political thriller. For audiences, this lack of cohesion can feel like narrative whiplash. For those unaccustomed to binge-watching, The Morning Show often returns to plots in later episodes that you may have forgotten were even a thing.

The Morning Show once again struggles to balance its attempted points about the state of the media in the US and the many interpersonal dalliances between its cast. The drama’s at its best when it focuses more on the newsroom and less on the bedroom. This series does improve its focus on the topic du jour, finally working out how to incorporate the zeitgeist into the world of its characters. And sure, the series still likes to shove the latest headlines into scripts, but they feel nowhere near as inappropriately placed as prior seasons.

The thrilling, edge-of-your-seat episodes this season come when the characters are allowed to be journalists. Alex infiltrates a climate change activist rally, upsetting the network’s sponsors and raising the question: ‘Do the media have an obligation to report the news even when those in power don’t approve of the message?’ In another episode, a personal moment for a member of The Morning Show team is ruined by a plane crash unfolding on air. It’s moments that celebrate the rush of live journalism that are worth sitting through the sex scenes, bickering, and backstabbing.

Female characters and the powerhouse performances from the women who play them dominate this fourth series of The Morning Show. Jennifer Aniston holds the show together in a career-best performance as Alex Levy. But while Reese Witherspoon may be on the posters alongside Aniston, Bradley’s actually one of the more forgettable characters on the show. Not even Witherspoon’s star power stops the feeling that Bradley has run her course.

But the show finally understands that Nicole Beharie, Karen Pittman, and Greta Lee have been quietly delivering amazing performances in the background, so finally rewards them with the material their talents deserve. These women all portray complex human beings, struggling to maintain power and respect in a world that appears to be regressing.

The main focus of The Morning Show this season is conspiracy theories. The show sensitively portrays the ever-growing divide in America and the way the media must tread carefully when reporting the facts. A.I, whistleblowing, and ‘fake news’ are all dominant themes. A few obvious plot directions aside, the series delicately understands how to explore the changing post-COVID landscape of the US without pointing fingers.

USA | 2025 | 10 EPISODES | 16:9 HD | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writers: Charlotte Stoudt, Zander Lehmann, Micah Schraft, Jiehae Park, Christiana Mbakwe, Vanessa Baden Kelly, Bill Kennedy, Sharon Hoffman, Colleen Bradley & Joey Longstreet.
directors: Mimi Leder, Stacie Passon, Millicent Shelton & Miguel Arteta.
starring: Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Néstor Carbonell, Karen Pittman, Nicole Beharie, Jon Hamm, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Aaron Pierre, William Jackson Harper, Boyd Holbrook, John Hoogenakker, Rachel Marsh, Haaz Sleiman, Violett Beane, Wesam Keesh & Will Speck.