Summary
The Morning Show thrives in the chaos of the newsroom during a crisis, but Season 4’s more insidious storylines effectively thread through “Love the Questions”.
“Love the Questions” is one of those episodes of The Morning Show that has too much going on. Not too too much, not too much to possibly keep up with, but objectively too much, like just enough that a lot of it feels underserved and fleeting. Season 4 hasn’t been like this yet. The first few instalments have largely focused on shuffling the key pieces into play, teasing out old and new relationships, and letting the core dynamics fester. Episode 4 makes the decision to thread these ongoing storylines through a real-time newsroom emergency, and pushing them into the margins lessens the potential impact of one or two big moments.
The tradeoff, though, is that the live newsroom drama is really good, and gets a lot of familiar faces into the same room at the same time. There’s a better-than-average chance that everything plays slightly more dramatically in the wake of this episode, with more personal subplots having been consolidated into coherent arcs. But it means buckling in for an hour that’s almost off-puttingly frantic, and not just in the intentional ways.
Some of it definitely is intentional, though. UBN and The Morning Show, in particular, are in complete disarray following Mia’s sudden departure, which makes it even less convenient than usual that a breaking news story grips the nation. A passenger plane travelling from JFK to LAX suffers an in-flight emergency that could be a technical failure or terrorism; either way, it needs to be reported on as it evolves. But with a skeleton crew in the newsroom, Yanko planning to propose to Ariana on-air, and Alex and Bradley dealing with their own personal issues, it’s a less-than-ideal set of circumstances.
Alex’s problems once again involve her father. Following her reluctant interview with Justice, her publication is running a salacious story that he plagiarized ideas for his first book from a young doctoral student he was mentoring at the time. Martin blames Alex for this, even though he asked her to do the interview in the first place, and he also expects her to solve it. Justice is playing hardball, though, and will only change the accusatory portion of the feature if Alex gets her a scoop from inside UBN.
Bradley, meanwhile, is still looking for the Wolf River depositions, which seem to be missing. While trying to keep Cory off her for five minutes, she tells Chip that they need to track down the lawyer who handled the depositions. Chip does so, which only yields more bad news — his name was Kenneth Stockton, and he’s dead, having committed suicide after being relentlessly smeared by Eagle News. Bradley needs to track down whoever leaked the info about Stockton to the conservative network, but Ashley will only release it if Bradley gives her something in return. Luckily, depending on your perspective, Alex interrupts Bradley and Chip while they’re conspiring, so she has to be roped into the investigation. While she’s berating Bradley on the teacup, Yanko also overhears Claire Conway’s name.
This is where the flight emergency really takes over The Morning Show Season 4, Episode 4. All this stuff is very good. As well as getting Alex and Bradley back on the same page through Bradley’s earpiece and some subtle signals, it also creates an effectively chaotic approximation of how difficult and tenuous reporting the news can be. A supposed expert claims on-air that the footage is doctored; relevant talking heads have to be vetted and interviewed on the fly; the plane’s emergency landing is broadcast live. The whole thing’s full of detail, the innate drama embellished by everyone’s personal issues hovering over them as they try to adapt to the situation.
Nestor Carbonell in The Morning Show Season 4 | Image via Apple TV+
In the wake of this, Yanko’s proposal — which he still wanted to do after a potential air disaster, like a psycho — gets derailed. Ariana had figured it out anyway, but Yanko delays it so he can “do it properly”, which means try and get back in touch with Claire now he knows she’s in town. Alex, meanwhile, gives Bradley two weeks to find something verifiable on the chemical company story, which means giving Ashley at Eagle News what she wants. Bradley gives her a file on Extinction Revolt, which she claims UBN is deliberately burying, in exchange for the information she needs, and Alex tells her dad that she won’t be risking her career for the sake of his reputation. He doesn’t take it well, naturally.
But let’s talk about Cory, who floats through “Love the Questions” like a ghoul before eventually turning everything completely on its head in multiple ways. Initially, he tries to pitch his big plans for the network to Celine, but she has a scheme of her own. She wants to be CEO, and she’s willing to give Cory $200 million if he’ll help her do it by revealing what he’s leveraging Stella with. If he shares, Celine can oust Stella and give herself a clear run to the top, and Cory gets his movie funded. It’s a win-win, but Cory is reluctant to sell Stella down the river, at least initially.
After running into Chip, though, he changes his mind and returns to drop the bombshell that Stella and Miles are having an affair. Marion Cotillard is brilliant in these few seconds, the pain of the revelation creeping into her face and then being bitten back, escaping again once Cory has departed in a stream of tears. Not exactly a win-win after all.
But this isn’t the only thing Cory is involved in. Ashley’s document proves that the smears were orchestrated by Cory’s fixer, Earl, presumably at his instruction. It was Cory who had been brought in to kill the story, so he’s at the heart of the scandal — and just as Bradley was getting used to being intimate with him again.
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