It's Morning In America
There are headlines that chase me away, although most of these have to do with sports I don’t follow or things I feel comfortable knowing about already.
And I don’t read articles that talk about the upcoming “streaming wars,” about how our watching habits are about to be invaded and altered by technology and the free market. I’m more than happy to see this happening.
More choices means easier ones, for me. I spend less than 10 hours a week on watching, movies and TV. Sometimes a lot less. During football season, a little more, although I’m not nearly as fanatic as I was (and the team I follow, with one of the best records in the NFL currently, either has to get a lot better quickly or they’ll fade just as quickly, so I tend to watch with one eye only).
War is peace, then. I’ve had a Netflix subscription for 20 years and I assume they’ll still be my go-to for a lot of this. Amazon Prime is a no-brainer for us, and I have HBO. I dip into the others a little (currently I have a Hulu subscription, we’ll see), but none of these new ones are particularly attractive. It’s not a financial consideration, although I can see the risk of nickel-and-diming ourselves. Mostly it’s lack of interest. I don’t watch enough.
Lately I’ve found myself drawn to limited series, ones I can binge over a few hours on a weekend and that sound interesting. I watched and they were.
And I paid attention to Apple TV+, the new streaming option from Cupertino. They have plenty of dollars to toss at this, should they wish, and plenty of time to tweak. The only remotely interesting offering at the moment is their big, splashy series, The Morning Show, with Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell.
What started out originally was based on a book about morning television, and I gather was intended to be a star-studded glimpse at the wacky world of pre-dawn awakenings and backstage hijinks.
And then Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer happened, and it seemed that maybe hijinks would be inappropriate. The storyline was changed to #MeToo and a lightly fictionalized account of The Today Show, with Carell standing in for Lauer.
The first three episodes of The Morning Show were dropped yesterday. This is something I’d always be drawn to, having some affection for behind-the-scenes scenarios. This is Aaron Sorkin territory, and I’ve always been a Sorkin fan, grimacing and snorting at some of his habits but generally enjoying the fun.
There’s nothing else remotely attractive about Apple TV+, at least not now. I barely paid attention, but there was some attention. I like the actors involved (including Mark Duplass and Billy Crudup). Again, I have an affinity for the subject matter, even though I haven’t seen a morning show in years.
So I grabbed a free trial of Apple TV+ and dove into The Morning Show. So you wouldn’t have to, maybe. Mostly because I caught a bad cold from my wife, and I was trying to cut it off at the pass by not moving (or breathing, although that was hard).
So I dove.
...
First, the video player was wonky. It would freeze up every 15 minutes, by the clock. Nothing I did made a difference; I had to reload three times an hour, refresh the page, scrub up to where it left off (it always started over from the beginning), and re-engage closed captions (always on these days). Annoying. Not a deal breaker, but technical trouble from Apple always makes me shake my head. I don’t get it. And EXPLAIN ITUNES.
Otherwise, The Morning Show is made of money, obviously. The production values are exceptional – it feels like something, say, ABC would produce in primetime, except with the F-word. I can’t think of another streaming show that looks quite this expensive.
Again, Apple has a quarter of a trillion dollars in their savings account. They can be splashy here with chump change.
The actors, I thought, were all good, especially the supporting cast with the unknown names. As far as the stars, this is Aniston’s show so far (although Crudup’s character, the head of the news division for this fictional network, was the most compelling and I suspect this is mostly the actor, who is terrific).
(Billy Crudup and Jennifer Aniston)
The plot is understandable and explained all over the place. The show begins with the news that Carell’s character, Mitch Kessler, has been fired for inappropriate sexual behavior. It’s worth noting that, in contrast to Lauer’s alleged behavior, this seems to be entirely adulterous and not assault, although it involves people who worked on the show in subordinate positions, and the point about the imbalance of power is clearly made.
But Kessler’s situation is murkier than others, and while he comes off as arrogant, privileged and completely unaware, there’s the suggestion that times changed on him. He came up in an era when extracurricular sex with production assistants was considered a perk of powerful men, and he’s baffled as to how he was caught and canceled by consensual adultery. It’s a subtle and effective way to make us stop and think about an unlikeable character.
And he’s unlikeable, but then they all are. I was struck by this immediately, what I saw as bravery to show flaws from the get-go. Aniston’s Alex Levy is a giant stress ball from the beginning, her 15-year career as half of America’s favorite couple – America’s mom and dad – destroyed in an early-morning moment. She’s never happy in the first three episodes, only coping when she’s not screaming or drinking or sobbing. We have plenty of sympathy but we see it all.
Witherspoon, too, doesn’t come off as charming. She plays a local West Virginia reporter, an itinerant journalist who gets fired a lot for being feisty and fighting with everyone. It’s not a flattering look, and when she loses it at a protest she’s covering, gets in the face of a thug, it becomes a national viral sensation.
I’ll give them this – The Morning Show surprised me, several times. Some of the reviews suggested that this was just an All About Eve rehash, the young, exciting woman coming in to threaten the older, established star.
It’s not. First, Reese Witherspoon isn’t that much younger, or even young (she’s 43; Aniston is 50). Second, her character (Bradley Jackson; note that both women have conventionally masculine names, for whatever reason) isn’t all that excited about the chance to be on this national show, which doesn’t appeal to her particular journalistic philosophy (which is vague and unapproachable, for me; something about truth, or something).
It falls somewhere between fluff and prestige television, at least from these first three episodes. It’s aggressively topical, and when the drama peaked and it was time for the Big Speech about Patriarchy and Ultimate Power, it actually worked for me.
The whole thing worked, in fact. I can see where it might strike someone as dull and predictable; this really is a taste thing, a subject matter you might have to already have an interest in. As I said, I seem to.
Aniston was wonderful. I found Witherspoon kind of shaky, but with promise. Carell physically resembles Matt Lauer, and they’ve sprinkled enough details around to make the allusions a little too close for me. In some of his more hysterical moments, too, he’s uncomfortably reminiscent of his Michael Scott character from The Office, although that’s on me, not him. He works with what he has, and mostly it works.
Billy Crudup was my favorite; he’s a very good actor, and his character suggests a sleaze when he doesn’t actually ever do anything sleazy. It’s intriguing, and I’m curious about how this plays out.
I’m curious about it all, in fact. Not so curious about the future of Apple TV+, or Peacock, or HBO Max or any of the others (there are others). Like other shows, I can imagine buying episodes of The Morning Show every week, for $2-3 a pop. I’m not sure spending $5 a month on the whole thing is a bad idea, at least until I catch another few episodes. This isn’t a hard decision, but I haven’t made it yet.
But if Apple’s intention was to grab people like me by releasing the first three episodes and making us interested, and I’m sure it was, it worked. Your results may vary, etc.
