Maybe Don't Lie to the FBI... Again - The Morning Show s04e07

Halfway through this week’s tedious installment of The Morning Show, my partner asked out loud “what is the point of this show?”

It’s a good observation. For all its flaws, season one was in conversation with #MeToo and the antepenultimate episode waded into the toxic culture/behavior that #MeToo was trying to expose and hold accountable. The second season’s slapdash focus on the impending COVID-19 pandemic didn’t really have specific insights to the virus or the strange apocalyptic feel of our world in shutdown, but it certainly tried to capture the moment. Last season tried to correct that lack of thematics with a big season-long statement about tech oligarchs.

Currently, The Morning Show is extremely muddy. Bradley Jackson Ace Reporter is investigating a conspiracy that UBA has actively covered up a river poisoning, but it’s all rather abstract. Without tangible advancements, every development is a small piece of information flitting in and out of the narrative. Beyond episode one’s Ring camera(?) footage of all the birds falling out of the sky there’s no hook to hold onto. It’s a lot of “and here’s this person who knows this thing” or “the paperwork goes back to Cory” or “Chip is calling Bradley from his car again”.

Meanwhile the Mia/Chris team-up is slowly boiling into… something. The Iranian defector story keeps threatening to pay off and still might. And Alex finally consumates this season-long flirtation with shock jock podcaster Bro Hartman. Because Alex needs to fuck the season’s hunky new recurring guest star/male obstacle.

But none of that is about anything. This series is currently a bunch of lite drama in desperate search of a theme. The big central question of this episode comes from Claire’s reappearance, Bradley’s lingering compromised journalistic ethics and how they conflict with the FBI having her over a barrel because she covered up Hal’s role in Jan 6, and the the way Claire makes everything she’s working on way more legally, personally, professionally, and ethically complicated.

If it sounds like this should be at least engaging, well… my guess is you don’t watch The Morning Show.

The scope creep that left Yanko and Claire behind

Nestor Carbonell has a pretty thankless job. His character, Yanko, started the series as the eponymous show’s meteorologist (so… Al Roker) but quickly revealed that he was having an illicit affair with production assistant Claire. This fed into the season’s overall themes of workplace intimacy and romance, and a lot of the drama for him in that first season was trying to maneuver around the HR crackdown in the aftermath of revelations about Mitch Kessler’s indiscretions1.

Because of this extremely limited sliver of relevance, keeping Carbonell on the show has proven a challenge. At this point he’s regularly in the chair next to Reese Witherspoon or whatever, but whenever he’s there, it’s not clear what the host hierarchy for The Morning Show is. He just fills in maybe? Really, who are the hosts of the show at this point? Is this big network broadcast morning show really only shooting out of this tiny ass studio with one standing set? And also who are the hosts? Because it really seems like they would have been completely fucked had they not pulled Bradley Jackson, Ace Reporter out of FBI timeout in West Virginia.

But outside of this episode, the show has sidelined Yanko from the main storylines. He’s the character who comes in and says the comment about the groundhog being his spirit animal and then has to deal with the fallout of the populace labeling him racist. As the show has grown more and more about the company of UBA itself and less and less about the show itself, there’s just no place for a character like him.

The only reason he’s relevant now is because they wanted to bring Claire back into the picture. And even then, the show tries to center his emotional distress in an episode that (in the end) is about Bradley Jackson Ace Reporter. Yanko having anxiety and stress about his impending engagement is fine, but there’s not really any sort of care or interest put into his relationship and who Ariana is. The show tries, but she’s been in it for two scenes this season. Not enough. Emotionally, this episode is more or less about Yanko trying to reconcile his old lingering feelings for Claire & the excitement of their torrid affair with the prospect of settling down with a woman he loves. To his credit, he manages to avoid Claire’s aggressive advances, and the final act feels like he’s come to a good place of being able to interview her on the air about this big news story without their relationship influencing him. This objective equilibrium lets his past inform his actions without defining him.

And… Yeah. The arc is present.

But the show hasn’t done the work to justify it. Claire is a character who’s been missing for two seasons. Carbonell might be playing the anguish of this old relationship, but it’s a vague complication. Claire last appeared on the show in a guest star spot in the penultimate episode of season two (nestled between “Mitch just died” and “COVID is finally here everybody panic”). Before that, she was as a main character on season one. That’s a huge ask for a normal show where new seasons drop every year. But The Morning Show comes out every two years. The last time Claire was on the show in any meaningful way was before the pandemic (ours, not theirs).

As the series has allowed narrative creep to define it, it’s become far, far less about the silly nonsense of the eponymous show and more and more focused on bigger themes about journalism and the complex world of running the media arm of a mega-corporation. Even Bradley Jackson’s return to The Morning Show desk is just a pretext for her to investigate a larger conspiracy of corporate malfeasance.

There’s no room for Yanko in that. Nor would there be for any of the stories the show did in season one.

She’s the boss

Of course, because the show shifted Alex Levy into a managerial role this has both kept her character relevant and also enabled that aforementioned scope creep. But while she might be spending a lot of time trying to navigate UBN through this rocky transition, an inordinate amount of her storyline this season has revolved around this weird flirtation with podcaster Bro Hartman.

She fucks him. Obviously. The show has been threatening this all season. Maybe this will be nothing in the long run. But… yo. Alex is an executive at the company Bro works for. She’s telling him how to run his show (though he might not listen to her). And now she’s fucking him? This power imbalance that comes from managment and subordinates engaging in sexual/romantic relationships is exactly the sort of nonsense that the show spent the entire first season exploring and lambasting. And here’s Alex engaging in it because… well… I guess she’s horny and he’s not quite the dudebro douchebag she read him for prior to this season.

It’s possible the show is getting ready for some big rug pull and the point of this whole affair is that Alex is no better than Mitch when it comes to going after what she wants. But Alex isn’t toxic like Mitch was. She’s just unprofessional like everyone else on this series. If the writers want to go after Alex for unprofessionalism, maybe it should start with the four seasons worth of bullshit from all of these characters because of how deeply unserious they all are. If the show goes after Alex for this, they’re gonna have to pull a lot of planks out of a lot of eyes.

Low expectations there.

Ethics in broadcast journalism

But the final moments of the episode makes it clear that the big drama they want to explore is Bradley Jackson Ace Reporter and her compromised ethics.

In the end, Bradley does the right thing and turns Claire in. It’s deeply self-serving. For starters, Claire’s revelations on live national television will completely tank Bradley’s own investigation into UBA’s coverup of the Wolf River whatever.

But… that’s not the real problem is it.

The problem is that Bradley lied to the FBI.

Again.

I have tremendous sympathy for Bradley being in a tough spot. Her actions last season in covering up Hal’s role in January 6 effectively benched her from society and ended her career. The FBI is monitoring her and they have her by the balls. She has to basically be a state’s witness and if she steps even a bit out of line whatever plea deal she made with them is dones-ville.

Given that Bradley Jackson Ace Reporter is… well… an Ace Reporter, her own investigation at UBA is extremely precarious. As a journalist, getting to the truth often means protecting sources and methods in collecting information. Because the FBI is breathing down her neck, she has to obscure her actions from the government lest they break down the door and interfere with whatever she’s trying to do.

Only here’s the problem… Bradley Jackson did this herself. Yeah. It sucks that Hal was at the Capitol. But she did doctor the footage and she did lie to the FBI and withhold evidence in one of the largest criminal investigations in American history. These actions have consequences and the consequence is that Bradley Jackson Ace Reporter now owes the government big time.

And god dammit she lies to the FBI anyway.

Sure, Yanko puts her in an awful situation. Hiding Claire in his apartment and putting Bradley in the same room with her is immediately a bad idea and Bradley needed to walk out of that situation immediately even though she was looking for Claire up until that moment. And even though Bradley’s FBI handler is using gross law enforcement tactics to paint Claire with the “domestic terrorist” brush, that kinda doesn’t matter considering that Bradley just fucking lied to his face and he called her on it.

Like… seriously? She lied to the FBI? Again? Mother fucker it’s fucking insane that Bradley Jackson Ace Reporter doesn’t know better at this point.

Nothing is funnier to me than the scene where Yanko pulls her into his dressing room to reveal Claire and they let her know about the plan to put her on the air for five minutes. Bradley fucking loses it, exclaiming “I lied for you. I straight up fucking lied to a federal agent.” At which point… that’s the whole pretext for her actions gone. It’s one thing to say that in the earlier scene Bradley was protecting her source, but admitting to Claire that she “fucking lied to a federal agent” is exhibit A in just how fucked Bradley basically is here. She knows that that’s a felony. She knew it was a big deal last season. She sure as fuck knows it well now that she’s on the other side of it.

She did it anyway.

And… yeah. She’ll probably avoid trouble because she does turn on Claire. But this was beyond reckless from a woman who has had insanely poor judgment this entire series. Claire might have been her assistant. They might have been close. But Claire fucked off for five years and came back in serious legal trouble. By in lying to the FBI about Claire leaving the country Bradley Jackson Ace Reporter made a calculated risk to go to jail for her.

But what is the kicker here? Why does Bradley blow all this up?

It’s not because Bradley sees Claire in the dressing room. It’s two things:

1. Claire going on the air is absolutely going to fuck Bradley. As the host of the show, she won’t be able to pretend like she didn’t know Claire was there. And the handler warned her that if they found out Bradley knew and didn’t tell them, she was probably going to federal prison.
2. More importantly, the first thing Bradley throws in Claire’s face is that she won’t be able to report on the Wolf River conspiracy that’s driven her this whole season. While turning Claire in is self-serving because it keeps her out of jail, it’s even more self-serving because it means she doesn’t get to do her next big journalistic opus.

The show does a half-decent job conveying this and points out that both basically have equal weight. There’s a read on this that’s “here’s what Bradley would do to report on this serious story and do some proper journalism”… but also… isn’t lying to the FBI enough? Like… straight up that should be enough to justify it.

And we know this is the case because the episode’s final beat is Yanko telling Bradley to fuck off forever. He refuses to sit at the desk with her ever again. This investigation is not just costing Bradley her sanity, it’s also costing her friends and allies.

But you know what, Bradley? Just don’t lie to the fucking FBI. And you certainly shouldn’t lie to them a second time after fucking around and finding out. What the fuck is wrong with you? You should know better.

But that’s not the lane in which The Morning Show operates.

Stray Observations

• No Cory this episode, which is a bummer. Would love to know what he would think about her lying to the FBI again, especially when his role in that first incident resulted in him losing his job.

• It’s crazy that Stella’s departure is going to be a footnote on this show. There’s some ripples out of that, but the series really did build around her so that her departure would basically affect them at all.

• All this, and the episode doesn’t work on a scene-by-scene level. One of the people I watch with pointed out that every scene is intensely undramatic, with no one really actively wanting anything or performing acts that push the central dramatic tension forward. Bradley and the FBI agent should be a barnburner, but the only reason it’s dramatic at all is because the premise is itself dramatic. Otherwise, it (just like every other scene) is tedious exchanges without anything even simmering.

• That simmer includes the Alex/Bro relationship. Which is perfunctory and not based on anything other than these two being hot. At least Aniston and Hamm had electric chemistry last season.

• Dredging up the story about Alito flying the upside down American flag was a jump scare. That was a seriously fucked up story when it happened and thank god the show resurfaced that unbelievable dogshit.

• Also led to the incredible line “They should start a Real Housewives of the Supreme Court.”

• Chip doing karaoke to “You don’t owe me” and singing it directly to Alex is the sort of petty bullshit that should be beneath most characters’ dignity. But this is The Morning Show and the only thing that made it better was a whole bunch of people coming in to sing it with him (even if they didn’t appreciate the larger context).

• I seriously don’t remember why Chip is so pissed at Alex.

• Only on The Morning Show: “We’re dumping the housewares segment and we’re giving her five minutes then we cut to commercial and go to the Pat Sajack segment.”

• There were so many laugh out loud moments but nothing was funnier than cutting from the FBI carting Claire away in handcuffs and then cutting right back to Pat Sajack’s big ass face because he’s retiring from Wheel.

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