Second season
Starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Whiterspoon, the Apple TV + series returns with a second season set in the pandemic
In 2019, ‘The Morning Show’ was the calling card of Apple TV +, the video-on-demand service with which the Cupertino company entered the complex world of streaming platforms. Unlike the almighty Netflix, with thousands of contents at a single click, Apple broke into the sector betting on containment, with few productions but very well chosen and, without a doubt, ‘The Morning Show’ was the brightest of all.
The series narrates the fall from grace of a morning television space, in the style of ‘The Ana Rosa Program’ or ‘Public Mirror’, when one of its two star presenters, Mitch Kessler, is accused of a series of inappropriate sexual behaviors. To try to make amends for the situation, the network fires the journalist and also secretly prepares to fire Alex Levy, who has been his television partner for more than fifteen years; until Bradley Jackson, a young reporter from the provinces, bursts onto the scene.
There is no doubt that the allegations of abuse and harassment that several actresses filed against former producer Harvey Weinstein and the outrage surrounding the case that sparked the #MeToo movement were the starting point of this intricate story that addresses aspects such as dynamics of power that are established in the work environment, competitiveness in the television industry and the management of huge egos. ‘The Morning Show’ dissected all these questions and, most importantly, it did so without falling into Manichaeism, with courage and facing risks, to try to show that we are all participants in the failures that the system reveals.
The most surprising thing is that the accusations that brought down the former American producer and that raised this wave of indignation had taken place only two years before, in October 2017. In just twenty-four months, Jay Carson, creator of fiction, not only digested and he assimilated everything that happened, but managed to transfer it to fiction in a sublime way.
He was right by choosing the faces that carry the weight of fiction. Steve Carell, who played Michael Scott in the American version of ‘The Office’, plays Mitch, the disgraced star. The shadows that surround the character do not prevent the viewer from empathizing with him at times. But it is that Carson is determined to take us to that gray scene.
Steve Carell and Valeria Golino, in a still from the series.
She is also seen in the role of Alex, played by another comedy actress, Jennifer Aniston, possibly in one of the roles of her life. Mitch’s partner, a mature woman with a genius and a lot to say, has always been in his shadow. Did you know what was going on behind the scenes? The third in contention is Bradley. In her skin, and in what way, she puts Reese Whiterspoon who in recent years has proven to be one of the best actresses of her generation.
Just as brilliant, by the way, is the way fiction describes what it’s like to work on a morning show like this. The races through the corridors, the last minute songs, the direct ones, the stabs in the back … Everything is there.
The covid, in the background?
The new season began a few weeks ago – today the platform is uploading the fifth chapter – and it did so with breathtaking images of empty New York to make way for a sign: “Three months before.” Indeed, the action of the first chapters takes place shortly before the pandemic changed everything. Alex left the network and is dedicating himself to writing his memoirs, while Bradley continues on the show. Mitch, for his part, has gone to Italy for a season – it’s not a coincidence. Its plot, at least in these first bars of the new batch of episodes, is the least interesting and the most accessory -sobra-, while the history of what happens in the chain continues to line at an excellent level.
But it’s in the way ‘The Morning Show’ is tackling the pandemic that the new story wins out. He does it with small winks, which play with the knowledge that the viewer now has of what happened, but that the bulk of the media did not know how to see: that ticker from China that nobody paid attention to, news about the confinement of populations Whole in China who ended up going to the end of the news, reporters displaced there who do not even go live … Carson hits the nail on the head again.
The second season of ‘The Morning Show’ is available on Apple TV +.
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