Summary
The Morning Show brings several of its Season 4 subplots to a head in “Person of Interest”, and a couple of lines are crossed that it’s going to be very difficult to walk back from.
Remember how badly the very mention of Claire Conway’s name rattled Yanko earlier in The Morning Show Season 4? Well, imagine how badly he’s thrown when she turns up at his apartment door in Episode 7, “Person of Interest”. She’s the person of interest, by the way, not just to Yanko but also to the FBI, who are pressuring Bradley to find her in exchange for them having kept her out of prison. That’s a recipe for disaster if I’ve ever heard one, and this is a show that thrives in disaster.
Not that there hasn’t been plenty of disaster recently. The very public rogue AI scandal that led to Stella’s departure from UBN has had various knock-on effects, including considerable reputational damage that it’s up to Alex and Bro, of all people, to try and keep a lid on. Kabir, Chip’s dogged journalist friend, has his sights set on Alex, and Chip, now pretty serious about boundaries, refuses to call him off. He even reiterates the point via karaoke at an ill-advised staff pizza party that Ben throws to try and stop everyone hating him for being Celine’s lapdog.
He is very much Celine’s lapdog, though, which is why it’s him Mia strongarms with scandalous documents acquired as a parting gift from Stella, trying to secure big-time deals for Chris and herself. Chris was absent in the previous episode after stealing the show with a killer monologue, but she’s back in this one, albeit uncomfortable about profiting on the back of her stillborn child. Luckily, Alex has something meaningful for her to do — secure Roya Nazeri asylum. The Iranian fencer hasn’t been seen since Alex facilitated her defection in the premiere, and Alex is having so much mud slung at her that she can’t conduct the follow-up interview. Chris is the perfect candidate.
But the bulk of The Morning Show Season 4, Episode 7 revolves around the predicament that Yanko and Bradley find themselves in on account of Claire. Noah Bain, the head of Extinction Revolt, has been arrested, primarily on the back of an oil platform fire that killed two people the previous year, and the Feds have raided the group’s HQ and seized all of their materials. This is a problem for Claire, since she has been putting her family’s dirty money to use funding their activities, and she’s looking at a hefty prison sentence if the FBI catches up with her.
This means that, for the time being, Yanko is shacking up with his ex, who is a Federal fugitive, and the person he turns to for help is Bradley, since she just so happens to ask if he’s seen her lately. Yanko has no idea that Bradley has been communicating with Claire through that encrypted messaging app, or that she’s integral to breaking the Wolf River story, or that the FBI is leaning on Bradley to find her. When he invites Bradley to his place to talk with Claire, he thinks he’s doing a good thing, but he’s making the situation worse. Bradley needs Claire to surrender herself to the FBI, but she also needs her to reveal what she knows about the chemical company scandal, and Yanko just wants her to flee to a non-extradition country.
And maybe that’s not all Yanko wants. He can hardly seem to decide. He clearly has a lot of unresolved feelings for Claire that are making him reconsider his relationship with Ariana, and it does seem for a moment like he might blow his entire life up. Instead, he doubles down on proposing to Ariana, but that doesn’t resolve the Claire issue. Bradley lies to the Feds on her behalf, claiming she has left the country, but when she turns up to present TMS the next day, Claire is in Yanko’s dressing room. She’s going to go on air with documents proving that Extinction Revolt didn’t start the oil platform fire, but Bradley can’t let her do that, since it’ll get them both arrested and kill the Wolf River story. So, she does the only thing she can do — she calls the Feds.
To be fair, Bradley does try something else first. She calls Alex, who is travelling with Roya to see Senator King, hoping to secure her asylum on the back of the successful interview with Chris. Alex doesn’t pick up, though, which is unsurprising since she has had a fairly busy episode herself. Kabir’s Times article turns out to have been nothing to worry about because Bro hijacked the story and turned it into a biography about his troubled, abusive childhood. Alex is grateful for this, since it kept her feet from the flames, so she decides to thank him by… inviting him over to her place for a drink. We all know what that means, and even if we didn’t, Jennifer Aniston’s expressions when she’s asking Bro out would clue us in.
Given how much chemistry Alex and Bro have, their sleeping together was inevitable. But, ironically, it seems to have made their relationship worse, since Alex ejects him from the premises almost immediately afterwards, in a way that’s not entirely hostile but that he definitely sees through. As if she didn’t have enough to worry, she now might have ostracised the one person at UBN who did seem to be genuinely on her side. And what about the eerie look that the driver gives her when she mentions asylum to Roya? Something tells me that Alex probably has some more problems to look forward to.
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