Just when our tailspin of despair was about to reach rock bottom, The Morning Show arrives to save us.
With both The Gilded Age and And Just Like That having just wrapped their seasons, life feels empty: Where is the chaotic mess of a TV show obsessed over by the Very Online to give my life purpose? To give it meaning?
We’ve lit the bat signal for soapy nonsense and Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Marion Cotillard’s fierce lil’ bob have answered the call. A new trailer was just released for The Morning Show Season 4. There is so much intense walking, intense staring, intense threatening, intense new wigs…we are so back.
The Morning Show is my favorite kind of series: It takes itself incredibly seriously, all the while delivering material that often borders on just-plain goofy. But then it’s performed so ferociously by this cast of A-class actors—Jon Hamm, Billy Crudup, Greta Lee, Karen Pittman, Nicole Beharie, and Mark Duplass, in addition to the aforementioned trio—that the pendulum swings back to it being…maybe…good???
Storylines are ripped from the headlines in the most ludicrous of ways, with a ballsiness that you can’t help but admire. Past seasons have tackled the Matt Lauer sex scandal, COVID, the insurrection, and Elon Musk—even sending celebrities to space before Katy Perry and Gayle King made it cool. (Well, in this case “cool” is just being used as a turn of phrase.)
This season, well, based on that trailer I have no idea what in the hell is going on. There’s lots of talk about the need for “change,” lots of talk about that is apparently delusional, lots of talk about backstabbing and blackmail, and at least one FBI raid.
According to press materials, the action picks up two years after the events of the Season 3 finale. The merger between UBA and NBN is complete, and is ruining lives and careers. (Timely!) Trying to report the news and the truth in a polarized America rife with conspiracy theories and deepfakes complicates the broadcasters’ jobs as much as their in-fighting and constant scheming does.
In addition to Cotillard, new cast members this season include Jeremy Irons, William Jackson Harper, Boyd Holbrook, and Aaron Pierre.
The trailer ends with a banger example of classic Morning Show dialogue: “You can’t clean a house if you’re about to blow it up.”
Detonation happens when Season 4 starts streaming Sept. 17.
