‘The Morning Show’ Season 3 Finale Is a Rare Miss From Aniston and Witherspoon

At the end of its first two seasons, The Morning Show went out with a bang. Why, then, is the Season 3 finale so boring? The Season 1 and Season 2 finales—which, respectively, saw Bradley (Reese Witherspoon) and Alex (Jennifer Aniston) taking UBA prez Fred (Tom Irwin) down, then the dawn of the pandemic in New York City—left me slack-jawed, thanks to bonkers cliffhangers leading into the next season. After a lot of shake-ups in Season 3, one would think the same logic would apply here. Sadly, The Morning Show finales have gone The Godfather route—the third installment is by far the worst.

We open with some foreshadowing on Bradley’s storyline. As a child, Bradley turned her father in for hitting a pedestrian with his car. Why, then, is she so incapable of turning in her brother Hal (Joe Tippett) after he punched a police officer at the Jan. 6 insurrection? Flash forward to present day (which, in the TMS Universe, is the back half of 2022; we later get an RRR reference), where Bradley is facing a reckoning after evil billionaire Paul Marks (Jon Hamm) forced her to pick between quitting UBA’s evening news team or turning herself in to the FBI.

Bradley is AWOL after quitting UBA. Stella (Greta Lee) and Mia (Karen Pittman) can’t get a hold of her. Cory (Billy Crudup) tries her front door, but Bradley tells him to leave: “Paul knows,” is all she can say. “He fucking knows.” Alex has been sending dozens of texts to Bradley with no response. Paul, now Alex’s full-time lover, tries to convince Alex that Bradley had to go. She was a liability to the future of UBA. Alex is wary about this logic, but she’s still team Paul, at this point.

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