The Morning Show recap: God help UBA’s overworked PR team

Does anyone on The Morning Show ever think before they act in a crisis? For a bunch of high-powered journalists and executives who are supposed to be a few steps ahead of the public at any given time, these characters seem to spend an awful lot of time being the news rather than reporting on the news, but that is precisely what makes this soapy show so endlessly watchable. God help UBA’s overworked public-relations team. They haven’t had a day off in years.

After igniting a social-media firestorm (and getting doused in red paint on her way into the office) for her impassioned response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Chris hasn’t exactly been reprimanded by the higher-ups at UBA. But given that she is now seen as a political liability at the network and facing additional threats to her safety, Chris has been given a bodyguard and reduced to doing fluff pieces on TMS for the foreseeable future, which does not go over well with her at all. Looking to blow off some steam, the former Olympic gold medalist found herself back on the running track, but a pulled muscle in her leg quickly reminded her that she was past her prime—one of the rudest awakenings for a former professional athlete—and that it was time to turn the page on that chapter of her career. A lot of people want to talk about how the addition of Jon Hamm’s charming aerospace billionaire, Paul Marks, this season has helped get TMS out of a creative rut, but make no mistake: Nicole Beharie is just as responsible for helping to breathe new life into this show. She has the kind of magnetic screen presence that the show wasn’t always able to capture in its first two seasons.

Meanwhile, in light of recent events, Alex has decided to pivot away from her exclusive interview with her new billionaire beau to focus on the impending SCOTUS decision, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world is prepared to do the same. Alex discovers that The Vault has published the incriminating photo of her and Marks, and despite refusing to release a statement about her personal life and insisting to her colleagues that the ruling should take precedence over all of their current coverage, Alex finds herself having to acknowledge the relationship multiple times. After working with Chip to recut Alex’s on-camera conversation with Marks, Cory eventually agrees to preempt the interview to allow Alex to focus on abortion. But Cory insists that there is already an issue of perception with news of Alex and Marks’ relationship spreading on social media, and he goes as far as to say that Alex, on the verge of getting everything she ever wanted out of UBA, will now be reduced to the plus-one and the girlfriend of the man who bought her legacy media company. Every decision she makes, he says, will be scrutinized simply by association. “Ain’t love grand?” Cory says with his signature sarcastic smile.

Things quickly go from bad to worse for Alex when speaking with a female journalist who correctly predicted, in 2016, that Roe would eventually be overturned. The young woman argues that there is a direct line between the Supreme Court judges, politicians, lobbyists, and billionaires (who have an outsized social influence on the media) and that we can no longer talk about these social and political issues in a vacuum. Alex attempts to steer the conversation to focus more on reproductive rights and less on billionaires, but the journalist raises a valid question: Is Alex still capable of “speaking truth to power” now that she has hooked up with Marks? “The story is whatever you decide it is—you and Paul Marks,” she tells a blindsided and flabbergasted Alex, who is very quick to voice her anger with Chip after the disastrous interview. (Honestly, what did Alex think would happen if she tried to pull the interview with Marks and sweep this clear conflict of interest under the rug? Does she even hear herself?)

In her office, Alex and Chip proceed to take cheap shots at each other about Mitch and Isabella before she finally does the unthinkable: She fires Chip! This is the executive producer whose hopeless devotion to her resulted in the creation of Alex Unfiltered in the first place. And need I remind you, once again, that this man also faked having COVID to spend time with a very sick Alex during the early days of the pandemic? I’m not sure if I’m more upset or relieved for Chip that he was finally cut loose from Alex’s admittedly toxic orbit, but part of me thinks he won’t be gone for very long.

In other news, Bradley’s lies have begun to unravel—all while she begins investigating Marks at the behest of Stella, who feels guilty about not listening to her former best friend Kate’s concerns about the billionaire’s business practices at Hyperion. Bradley admits that she is worried about what might happen if she pushes another woman to talk about her trauma (and even brings up what happened to Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Hannah, who is honored by her colleagues at the end of the hour, in the first season), but Stella says that Bradley is not afraid to take down powerful men and asks her to call Kate. Kate reluctantly agrees to meet with Bradley at the theater at City Tech in Brooklyn and tell her everything she knows about Hyperion, but she is ultimately a no-show. We know that Marks and Amanda are aware of Kate’s whereabouts by the end of the hour, but is it possible that they already silenced her?

After finding the Geraldine Ferraro pin from Cory’s mother on Bradley’s jacket, Laura begins to grow increasingly suspicious of the nature of Bradley and Cory’s relationship. At the suggestion of her YDA co-anchor Audra (hey, Mindy Kaling!), who insists that it is kind of strange to be spending the day with the mother of someone you were not sleeping with, Laura decides to do a deep dive on a website that compiled all the data that were leaked in the UBA hack. Laura initially begins looking for evidence that Bradley slept with Cory, but she begins to piece together clues that form a much more off-putting image: Laura discovers that Hal is a staunch Trump supporter and that Bradley, with Cory’s knowledge, lied to the FBI about capturing incriminating footage of her brother at the Capitol. Given that this seems like a pretty well-known website, I find it hard to believe that someone else hadn’t already snooped through these messages and come to the conclusion that something was clearly going on between Bradley and Cory, but this search seems like a semi-conceivable way for Laura to draw her own conclusions about why Bradley has been acting so strange for the last year. And if their fight at the Montana ranch was any indication, all hell is about to break loose for Bradley and Laura.

After completely ignoring the fact that Mia’s war photographer ex-boyfriend was M.I.A. in last week’s episode, the writers finally decided to give us an update about what happened to André, who not only made it safely out of Ukraine but is also back in New York City. Following an appearance on YDA, André is greeted in the lobby by an irate Mia, who yells at him for not telling her about his whereabouts and calls him “a middle-aged adrenaline junkie who would rather jump between wars than commit to a zip code.” (Damn! That’s a good line.) Later that evening, André walks into Mia’s office and apologizes for not calling and for how he reacted to the reveal of her feelings for Mitch. When André declares that he misses her and may want to give their relationship another shot, Mia says, “I always give myself to people like you—men who say the right things and then they pull away when you need them. I can’t do it anymore.” The pull she feels toward André, however, is undeniable, and they end up making out in her office. Good for Mia! She deserves to be happy for once.

But in the biggest reveal of the episode, Paul Marks’ plans for UBA have become crystal clear: He is planning to buy the media conglomerate and then strip it for parts. When Alex reveals to him that she is thinking about leaving UBA, Marks raises the idea of building their own company, centered around news, on their own terms. “You have been wanting to run things for a long time. Maybe you start right now,” he says. By the end of the hour, Amanda wants to know the real value of UBA’s assets, because Marks is planning a fire sale with the help of none other than Fred Freaking Micklen. That man is like a bad rash that won’t go away!

Stray observations

• We learn before Cory and Paul’s tense Forbes photoshoot that Hyperion just had a disastrous engine test, and they won’t make the next launch at the current rate. Bradley and Paul’s secrets will inevitably collide with each other, but it’s just a question of when, not if, that will happen.
• Of all the main characters on TMS, Yanko feels like the most underused this season. Every single character seems to have their own personal and/or professional storyline, but Yanko just waltzes in and out of Chris’ life as if he doesn’t talk to any of his other co-workers anymore. What do you mean Yanko tried to adopt a kid? What else don’t we know about his personal life? Give the people what they want and give Yanko more screen time!
• Alex calling Chip, Doug, and Cory the three wise men who essentially make her life a living hell made me laugh, but there’s no denying that she wouldn’t be in this position without the three of them.
• Audra says Cory “is oddly compelling in a Patrick Bateman in a vinyl raincoat kind of way,” and now I can’t get that visual out of my head.