Since my male ego is so small, a fact I'm tremendously proud about, I readily admit that my wife was right. Laurel kept saying, we should start watching The Morning Show, and I kept responding, but the reviews I've read haven't been very positive.
Well, we've been firing up Apple TV+ almost every night since taking our first plunge into The Morning Show, and now we're both enthralled by this compelling drama.
Rotten Tomatoes has it right. Critics aren't wild about the series. But viewers love it.
Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon are indeed great in their roles. So are the supporting actors. Plus, the writing is excellent, with compelling scenes that are truly can't-look-away television.
What I like most about The Morning Show is the moral ambiguity.
Just as in the larger real life drama featuring each of us, there's no clear-cut heroes and villains. At first it seems like there could be, since the co-host of The Morning Show is guilty of sexual misconduct that causes him to be fired, leaving Aniston to deal with a replacement played by Witherspoon.
However, as later episodes demonstrate, every main character, and some of the minor ones, are a blend of positive and negative qualities.
Or perhaps better put, their good and bad qualities shade into each other in such a complex fashion, it's impossible to see these people as anything other than decidedly human beings who are doing their best, even though sometimes they're accused of being the worst.
Watching The Morning Show thus has been therapeutic for me. I've become a bit less critical of my own shortcomings, and hopefully this will transfer over to how I see other people who fail to live up to my expectations.
Life is tough.
It's tough for the high-paid, good-looking, well-known people who put on The Morning Show, a mix of news and entertainment, and it's tough for almost everybody else also. I love how Aniston and Witherspoon peel away the facade of their TV personas, revealing the realities that lie beneath their on-camera selves.
Jumping into the world of present-day politics, this goes a long way toward explaining why I dislike Donald Trump so much. He rarely, if ever, displays vulnerability, admits he was wrong, or acknowledges uncertainty about what to do. So when Aniston's character does all of those things, it's marvelously refreshing.
Yes, we had to fork out $5 a month to upgrade from Apple TV to Apple TV+. But that money has bought us a lot of viewing pleasure. Here's the official trailer, though it doesn't capture how good The Morning Show really is.
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