Season 1 of AppleTV+’s The Morning Show ended abruptly with Jennifer Aniston’s veteran anchor Alex Levy and Reese Witherspoon’s newbie firebrand Bradley Jackson seemingly on the same page. The duo had teamed up to expose the network execs who fostered a culture of abuse on their show. But as the latest trailer for Season 2, which premieres September 17, indicates, Alex and Bradley seem to have gone their separate ways at some point between then and now.
As Billy Crudup’s oddball head of news operations Cory Ellison says, “The game is changing.” Alex is busy chopping wood in snowy seclusion, while Bradley, who is blonde now, has taken the top spot on TMS alongside newcomer Hasan Minhaj’s Eric Nomani. But ratings are down, according to Greta Lee’s Stella Bak, another new character. And so, Cory is on a mission to get Alex back on the show — and reunite her with Bradley in the process. Which, obviously is happening.
Interestingly, the new season appears to take place at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with Alex casually handing off coverage of the developing situation to Bradley over dinner. But, of course, the real drama on The Morning Show is all about the fictional drama on the fictional Morning Show. Marcia Gay Harden is back as reporter Maggie Brener, who is set to publish a bombshell book about the behind-the-scenes scandals that rocked the network last season. Meanwhile, Julianna Margulies joins the cast as a prime time news anchor at TMS network UBA who seems like she might be interested in tempting Bradley away from her fluffy morning gig. And, yes, Steve Carrell is still around as serial sexual harasser and rapist Mitch Kessler.
The highly anticipated first season of this glossy, star-studded drama turned out to be an oddly compelling mess. AppleTV+ may have been aiming for prestige TV status, but ended up with a soapy train wreck — that viewers couldn’t look away from. Whether the new season will be an improvement or not hardly even seems to matter at this point. We’re all here for the spectacle!
