Getting on a Plane to Naples - The Morning Show s04e06: "If Then"

It feels like Greta Lee has always been in The Morning Show.

She hasn’t of course. There was no real room for her in season one, and when Cory became the CEO of UBA in season two, the show needed someone for him to play off of. Their solution was Stella Bak, head of UBA’s news division. Billy Crudup and Greta Lee had tremendous chemistry, and she was an excellent foil for his over the top energy.

If there’s an issue with this series, it’s that the show vacillates wildly from scene to scene and episode to episode. Everyone is making a different show. Some (like Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon) think of it as very serious prestige TV while Billy Crudup recognizes it as schlock that takes itself way too seriously. He sees the comedy in the madness and plays to it. He chews the scenery and bathes in the river of ham.

But Greta Lee has always treated the show as a primetime soap opera, concerned as it is with the interpersonal drama and business intrigue. It’s always been mad compelling, though a lot of that is probably down to Lee’s captivating screen presence. Her arrival was like a bolt of lighting, the sort of actress who comes on this show, plays opposite all these huge names, holds her own, and make sit look easy. She makes the audience sit up and pay attention. Who the hell is this?

Looking at her credits, though, that’s unfair. Lee has been getting work pretty regularly since 2012, bouncing around lots of guest and recurring roles before landing a main role on Russian Doll in 2019. What we’re seeing now is the culmination of more than a decade of hard work, proving she could be who she’s become. The Morning Show was a huge get for her, and Past Lives exploded her into the stratosphere. This year alone she’s in both Tron: Ares and the new Kathryn Bigelow movie. She’s got an incredible career in front of her

But… spoilers: that career will not include any more episodes of The Morning Show.

Succumbing to an unprofessional work environment

Because characters drive story, midseason departures rarely fit a season’s overall narrative. With enough advance warning, writers can come up with satisfactory conclusions. Often, this means killing the character off (like Mr. Eko in LOST or Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation) in ways that are abrupt, shocking, and attempting for some hasty pathos. But there are other times where a death isn’t appropriate. Riley’s departure on Buffy feels strange because it feels like the show suddenly realized that the character had run his course. Likewise Greg leaving Crazy Ex-Girlfriend in season two happened because Santino Fontana wanted off the show, and the show had to burn story for the first few episodes of the season to give one of the main characters an adequate sendoff.

Given Greta Lee’s ascendant career, it makes sense that she wanted to move on from playing Stella. But The Morning Show doesn’t really do deaths. The few times they have felt exploitative at best and laughable at worst. So the show in this season found itself in the unenviable position of writing Stella off in a way that made sense for the character and without it affecting the rest of the season.

Man did they not disappoint.

For starters, paying off the first episode’s threat of A.I. is the sort of “bet you guys didn’t know this was a Chekov’s gun didja?” that this show does, despite the name “Chekov” emblazoned in bright red glitter along the length of the barrel. And… yes. Stella’s actions in this episode are exactly the sort of behavior that would result in a CEO resigning immediately. “She would be immediately fired,” I said as the nightmare scene played out as we all knew it would.

But god if the show just can’t turn off the crazy.

Some of the post-episode discussions have points out that Stella was very active in the tech space1, and the allure of A.I. would be exactly the sort of thing that would capture her imagination. But come on now. Plugging an untested-in-live-setting demo into the HDMI port of a movie theater projector screen (and the actual program name literally is “AI-STELLA-BAK_demo_v0.041-beta” in a folder labeled “A.I. Demos”) is an inane choice. It’s also a bad idea to use demos that have proven themselves unstable even in real time (which someone mentioned earlier). It’s also a horrible idea to use a live demo of yourself that Stella’s been pouring all her secrets into. A.I. literally only knows what users have trained it on. And Stella trained it by treating it as her therapist in a private chat where she called herself racist and talked openly about DEI and selling out Mia and also how she fucked Celine’s husband.

All of that is wild.

But she did this in a theater FULL of reporters who were there to talk about new technology. And she did this without previously testing the software in a live environment. And then she opened it to an unvetted question from a literal reporter. And then when it started to go off the reservation, she didn’t turn it off and instead just panic-let the thing……….. keep talking. To the point where Celine literally had to close the laptop and walk offstage when it was clear that Stella’s career was over.

I can’t even be mad at it. This sort of complete nonsense is why I watch this batty show. To write off Stella it does a full on character assassination by way of making her as unprofessional as literally everybody else around her. This shit might be lunacy, but it’s also so on brand. Like… bitch you should resign. But also so should Alex Levy and Bradley Jackson and on and on and on…

Why this voiceover failed…

For this exit to matter and for it to be clear that this really is the end for one of this show’s characters, the show has to do something more than just burn through the plot. This allows them to utilize Apple TV’s weekly release schedule to try something experimental within this episode. With all luck, it will grab the audience’s attention and make it clear (and memorable) that something big is going to happen.

The answer? Make it a noir, I guess?

From the episode’s first seconds, Greta Lee’s voiceover comes in to help illustrate and explain her mindset going into what turns out to be her ending. It’s arresting… at first. And then it feels like the baffling choice it is. It could have worked, but the show has to slash and burn narrative real estate to get Stella gone, which means she gets the episode’s A-story and a lion’s share of the runtime.

But even a narrative monopoly doesn’t mean she’s the exclusive focus even as the point is to get one final chance to explore Stella and her mindset. Because the show has to keep moving other plotlines along we have to suffer through whatever the fuck is going on with Brodie and Alex. The ongoing conspiracy about this coverup at UBA means that Cory has to look at a bunch of screens and also talk to his mom2. It also means Bradley Jackson, Ace Reporter has to stare at screens too and then send a whatsapp message.

That’s why the voiceover feels even more egregious than it probably should. Having it flit in and out of the narrative means it feels weird when it’s happening and doubly so when it returns from its absence.

Not only that, but to have the justification for this narration be this is the letter she wrote to Mia following her resignation? It’s such a weird choice. On the one hand it helps mend the bridge that came from Stella choosing Corey over Mia. But also? The show decides that Stella’s affair with Miles is the more defining aspect of her character. Because she wants to take a jaunt to Naples! Nevermind the professional relationship that’s been building loosely since Stella’s introduction and has become a defining incident of Mia’s arc this season? I mean… I get that Stella patching things with Mia leaves the door open for some return down the line. But the show is making this so final. Girl’s going to Naples. Greta Lee wants out.

Even more than the batshit “Stella resigns because she put too much faith in AI-STELLA-BAK_demo_v0.041-beta and then showed off that demo in an untested environment before a theater full of reporters”, this genre-tonal decision is far more indicative of the larger systemic problems at the very heart of the show. Stories can have insane and far-fetched plots. What they can’t do is have narratives this slapdashedly miscalculated.

Tl;dr - the start-stop manner of this voiceover fails in the same way that Judi Dench’s fourth-wall breaking in Cats does.

Burning narrative

In television, the episodic format lends a pace and cadence to the way the plot moves and the rhythms of its reveals. This is noticeable when shows approach some big finale, where it’s clear they’re spinning wheels a few episodes away from the end in an effort to most effectively time their final runway approach.

But when they have to pull the trigger on something it’s like getting a shot of adrenaline because the show isn’t supposed to work like this. It happened in Twin Peaks when the show accelerated the reveal of Laura Palmer’s murderer. Turns out, it was really easy to get to the solution, the writers just had to put the right clues in front of the investigators. By the same token, Doyle’s death early in the first season of Angel feels like the show blowing through character guardrails in the name of earning his premature catharsis.

For Stella, that’s what happens here. She probably wouldn’t have lost her job if she hadn’t put AI-STELLA-BAK_demo_v0.041-beta in front of everyone. But the second she blitzes out of the room to grab her computer because they’re going to be on stage in two minutes, there is a sense of unease that maybe she’s done something that’s gone too far. And then, of course, it’s like watching a nightmare unfold.

Or… her nightmare anyway. Greta Lee is probably sleeping just fine tonight. She now has the rest of her career to look forward to. Whereas we… just have a new episode of The Morning Show next week.

Stray observations…

• Looks like I’m reviewing the rest of the season like this. Not complaining.
• More of a centralized Celine role for the rest of the season is an exciting development given she’s about as compelling a character as this show can create. While a lot of that is down to Marion Cotillard, her scene with Miles was weirdly compelling. She conveys a woman who is very much in love and fully forgiving of his indiscretion because she understands his human weakness and also recognizes that Stella winning Miles is a Pyrrhic victory. And also Miles is really hot. So that helps.
• It feels like there’s a moment in the AI-STELLA-BAK_demo_v0.041-beta meltdown where the show flits into Stella voiceover for a minute, but it’s so fast that it’s muddy and drowned out. Not sure if that was the point, but given this show there’s probably some “this A.I. version of herself talking about how poorly she’s treated TMS’s token black reporter is drowning out her ability to have rational thought” excuse.
• Greta Lee’s absence from the previous two episodes is unfortunate. My guess is they got her contracted for four episodes but didn’t think her departure worked in so early. But that means that her coming back for this big leaving sequence feels like the show’s already left her behind somehow. Like this is some weird epilogue for a story that only ends here.
• AI-STELLA-BAK_demo_v0.041-beta word vomitting out news of episode one’s Iranian defection is hilarious. Made all the better by the reporter yelling “What defection! And does the IOC know?”
• Top comment from the peanut gallery, though: “Are you talking about Celine’s husband??”
• No context best line of the episode: “Straight outta Salem!”
• Only on The Morning Show: Alex Levy has moved into a high-powered executive position but you better believe that she’s going to sit back down at the TMS anchor desk to report out the news that Stella has resigned. That’s definitely not below her pay grade.

Next week: Looks like Claire’s coming back. Yep. I totally remember all the things about her and all the major role she had in season one and then I guess a little bit in season two but now she’s going to throw off Yanko or some nonsense? Did they hook up? I truly don’t remember. Guess we’ll find out.