Corey Ellison’s determined efforts to prevent the looming disaster is reaching a crucial juncture, and The Morning Show has brilliantly portrayed every significant moment.
Warning: Spoilers
Billy Crudup plays Corey Ellison so well. He’s the character we love to hate. He’s so calculated but so much fun to watch. And this season, he’s been even better. That walk he did earlier in the season with the music was great, but his panic-stricken look walking around UBA hallways with jazz playing in the background was perfect. You felt everything falling apart, and Corey couldn’t do anything despite working so hard to stop the company from falling apart.
His monologue to Alex Levy (Jennifer Anniston) was also incredible. It wasn’t the same as his other monologues in The Morning Show, because he had just snapped and was barely holding it together. But he wasn’t wrong. And while I love Alex’s answer standing up for herself, for once, I’m all on Corey’s side. I love how the writers are making us feel bad for Corey despite how selfish and calculated he can be. He did try his best to save the company. And now Alex and Paul Marks (Jon Hamm) are throwing it all away.
But does Alex really believe that she can take all the employees with her? Start-ups are not that big. And while she can take Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) (though I don’t think she would work with or for Paul), she can’t take everyone with her. And that’s if she even gets her own network. The women on this show are shown as strong and powerful, but Paul may be getting the upper hand here to get what he wants.
With each The Morning Show episode, my distrust for Paul Marks grows. Bradley did do a bad thing, but she has a blind spot when it comes to her brother. It doesn’t make Paul right to blackmail her to keep his secret safe and to bury her own. He’s shown his true hand with this. He didn’t have Amanda (Tig Notaro) do his dirty work this time. He went right to the source. And it proves that he’s hiding something. Once Bradley recovers from the shock and quitting UBA, she’s likely to continue to find the truth about Hyperion. But they are running out of time, so they may not even have enough time to save UBA.
Also, how does Paul Marks know about Hal Jackson (Joe Tippett), and Laura Peterson (Julianna Margulies) knowing about it? Is he spying on them? Since Laura discovered it, Amanda could have, too, but that doesn’t explain how he knew Laura knew about it and didn’t report it. If anyone had any hope that Paul was just the charismatic man he was introduced as in the first episode, this episode destroyed any of that hope. He’s a ruthless man who will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. And, in this case, get his rockets working.
And, of course, he exposed Corey Ellison for outing Bradley and Laura. I knew this would come out, but The Morning Show did such a great job of pulling it out when you were least expecting it since so much else was going on.
There were so many big moments in this episode. From getting to see the fight between Laura and Bradley to Corey finding out about his company being sold for parts to Bradley quitting to Corey’s assistant telling him that security was coming up to escort Corey Ellison out of the building. Talk about an explosive episode. What is the season finale going to be like?
This episode didn’t necessarily have twists, though. We knew what Paul Marks was doing, and it’s not a surprise that he would blackmail Bradley, but as I said, his finding out about it is a mystery. But it was really well done how everything came together, even if it was expected.
With so many questions left, the final will surely bring lots of twists.
Catch up on The Morning Show before the season three finale next week!
