“The Morning Show” has returns for its fourth season, diving into a world of power plays, deepfakes and shifting loyalties. Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon lead a star-studded cast through newsroom chaos, corporate intrigue and personal betrayals. Los Angeles (tca/dpa) – After (nearly) four exhausting seasons of “The Morning Show” and countless acts of scandal, betrayal, workplace disaster, criminal activity, questionable journalism and uniformly excellent hair, here is the primary reason that I love this show: the lighting in everyone’s apartment. I mean, yes, I love the cast, and the way nearly every character is not-so-secretly evil, and the irresistible depiction of a chirpy morning talk show as a hellish pit of dysfunction, but seriously … that light. Every apartment on the show, whether it’s Alex Levy’s palatial skybox or Cory Ellison’s vaguely sinister hotel lair or Stella Bak’s arty downtown hideaway, is so dimly and dramatically lit you wonder if they’re about to develop photographs there, or demonstrate a blue light device, or perform an avant-garde opera. Why do all of these very attractive people live in the dark? Are they worried about art conservation? And why does it make me want to turn all my lights down? “Morning Show,” you are a puzzlement, but I can’t stop watching you. So, how to summarize this very uneven yet entirely addictive show, which premiered in 2019 on Apple TV and concludes its fourth season Nov. 19? Well, at its center is a network news program called, not surprisingly, “The Morning Show,” which is a hybrid of “Good Morning America”/”Today”/“CBS Mornings,” and most of the characters work on the show or for its network. Alex (Jennifer Aniston) is the show’s popular co-host whose longtime on-air partner Mitch (Steve Carell) gets fired for sexual misconduct back in Season 1. Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) is the inexperienced Southern firebrand brought on to replace Mitch. Cory (Billy Crudup) is the network’s CEO (well, he is when the show begins; things change); Stella (Greta Lee) is president of the news division; Mia (Karen Pittman) is an ambitious producer. Other characters hopped on board in later seasons, yet seemed like they were always meant to be there: Jon Hamm as a sleek, ever-smiling tech gazillionaire; Marion Cotillard as the network’s absurdly glamorous new board president; Nicole Beharie as an Olympic athlete-turned-broadcast journalist; Jeremy Irons as Alex’s bombastic nightmare of a father. As the Mitch/#MeToo subplot might indicate, “The Morning Show,” created by Jay Carson, keeps closely tuned to current events. Much of the first season was taken up with Mitch’s angry refusal to acknowledge his own wrongdoing (and a master class from Carell, turning his trademark likability inside-out). Subsequent seasons have touched on, among other topics, the COVID-19 pandemic (Alex livestreamed her own illness), the Jan. 6 fallout (Bradley’s conservative brother was among the protesters), broadcast media’s move to subscription services, and the rise of artificial intelligence, the latter of which proved the downfall of Lee’s wickedly smart Stella. Some of these struck a chord; some were a poor fit. Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s heartbreaking work in the first season, as a staffer dealing with her own victimization from Mitch, felt like it belonged in a more artistically ambitious show. Because here’s the thing: “The Morning Show,” for all its torn-from-headlines ambitions, is just a big messy soap, and it’s at its most fun when it embraces that reality. It’sfunto watch Aniston really leaning in to Alex’s contradictions: how America’s morning-news sweetheart is at heart a stressed-out narcissist and control freak who has a hilarious way of shrieking “This is not happening!” when something happens that she doesn’t like. (Much of the pleasure is that you sense that Aniston is having a blast playing this character.) It’sfunto watch Aniston and Witherspoon and their dueling perfect hair as frenemies, or Aniston and Hamm’s playful, sexy chemistry in Season 3, or Aniston’s sassy screwball banter in the current season with a new dude podcaster character whose name, I kid you not, is Bro Hartman (Boyd Holbrook). You getting the idea that Aniston is the reason to watch this show? She is, no doubt, but Crudup’s oily Cory is an equal pleasure, Witherspoon slyly holds her own despite the series’ writers not knowing what to do with Bradley, Pittman’s Mia seems poised for a terrific showdown in the next episode or two, and I’m still waiting for Cotillard, who’s purring her way through her lines like she’s a cat with a bowl of cream, to get a killer moment. I’m writing this before seeing the final two episodes of Season 4, but I’m delighted that Season 5 hasalready been announced . It’ll be a mess, but a beautifully lit one. The following information is not intended for publication tca dpa coh
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