I watched this Apple TV show last year, and while it’s not everything I’d have liked for it to be, it pokes at some interesting ideas about sexual harassment in the media, news vs. entertainment in morning shows, and the often-contradictory expectations placed on female journalists. It has a third season on the way, and despite its stumbles, I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.
One morning, as Alex Levy rises at her usual 3:00 a.m. to get ready and head to the studio to film her morning news show, her phone is blowing up with some bombshell news: her cohost, Mitch Kessler, has been fired after the network investigated multiple sexual harassment allegations against him. Alex, and the show, scramble to navigate the scandal, mindful of ratings and blowback even as many of the folks on the production are reeling themselves. Alex plows ahead uncertainly, determined to revive her own wobbly career. When she hits on a new cohost to share the desk, small-time reporter Bradley Jackson who’s just been involved in a viral local news moment, Alex quickly begins to doubt whether Bradley will help or hurt her image.
There’s a lot going on in this show. It’s Timely with a Capital T—in addition to (obviously) diving headlong into the Me Too/Time’s Up era, we see the show-within-the-show covering recent news topics such as the California wildfires and, in season 2, the beginnings of the pandemic. A flashback episode centers around the Las Vegas mass shooting. It also has a lot to say about the news, about morning shows in general, and what it’s like to be a woman working in these environments: that includes hosts, reporters, segment producers, guest bookers, interns, and more.
At times, it feels like the show has bitten off more than it can chew, broaching certain topics only at a surface level. In particular, it can feel pretty white feminist, often handling issues of race clumsily or ignoring important intersectional aspects. When it comes to the subject of sexual harassment, the show sometimes seems more invested in being “surprising” than giving the issue the sensitivity it calls for. It can take easy outs for cheap twists, and it can feel equivocating at times.
Those are a lot of dings against the series for me, but for all that, there’s still something I find compelling about it. Pretty much all the characters are messy and make some dumb, consequential mistakes. When it hits its groove, it can be really good. There are a lot of individual scenes that are just wonderfully done.
Much of the credit for that is in the hands of the talented cast, all of whom remain plugged into the twists and turns of the show. At the helm, we have Jennifer Aniston as Alex and Reese Witherspoon as Bradley. Both women have their own strengths and flaws, and they work at cross purposes at least as often as they work in solidarity. Their frenemy chemistry is sometimes combative, sometimes endearing, and always interesting. Meanwhile, casting Steve Carell as Mitch is one of the smartest moves the show has made. Mitch is very much set up as a Matt Lauer-esque figure, and since the show opens with the news that he’s been fired, we don’t see him onscreen before this reveal. Yet, the series still has to sell him as this beloved morning news figure, and by casting Carell, an actor known and loved by so many, our kneejerk reaction is to want to like him, which is an effective shorthand to create the visceral reaction of discovering that this popular in-universe celebrity is accused of being a sexual predator.
The cast is so stacked that I need another paragraph here. Billy Crudup plays Cory, the new Head of News at the network and one of the most interesting characters on the show. Throughout much of the first season, he constantly kept me wondering what “side” he was on. Even as we see instances of him helping Alex, Bradley, or other important characters, he still gives off major Chaos is a Ladder vibes that left me unsure whether we could trust him. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is excellent as Hannah, a booker with a complicated past (that’s a super generic description, but I don’t want to get into spoilers.) The show also features Mark Duplass, Nestor Carbonell (he’ll always be Richard from Lost to me,) and Tom Irwin, not to mention appearances from Jack Davenport, Julianna Margulies, Mindy Kaling, and Hasan Minhaj. Phew!
Warnings
Violence (including rape,) sexual content, language, drinking/smoking/drug use, and strong thematic elements.
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