Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 13, 2023
This week’s had several plot turns, some interesting, some not, and some downright annoying. The most annoying among them was the Hal storyline. Bradley’s brother, Hal, paid her a visit with his wife and kid in tow. He’s happy. He loves his family. They love him, so obviously, he’s going to sabotage it. Hal has decided that, though he doesn’t appear to be in danger of being arrested for his involvement in the January 6th attacks on the Capitol (because Bradley deleted her footage of him), he wants to turn himself in.
Why? Because he wants his wife and kids to respect him. Because he doesn’t want them growing up thinking he’s a coward, never mind that his kid would grow up without a father if Hal were in jail. Remember that they have no idea he was involved in the January 6th attacks. Nevertheless, he’s willing to take his sister Bradley down with him because as soon as he turns himself in, Bradley believes she’ll be questioned and arrested for obstruction of justice. Bradley pleads with him not to ruin both of their lives, as well as the lives of his family, but Hal insists on turning himself in.
However, he changes his mind when Laura — a virtual stranger — shows up and asks Hal to support her relationship with Bradley. Laura had feared that her judgment of Bradley’s family was keeping the two apart, so she asked for Hal’s blessing, and that’s all it took for Hal to decide against turning himself in. It wasn’t to save his family, avoid prison, or avoid causing untold damage to Bradley’s career. It was so that Bradley and Laura could give their relationship an honest try. Later in the episode, they do: The two get back together, at least until Laura finds out that Hal was involved in January 6th and that Bradley covered it up.
Meanwhile, the episode opens in the studio where Paul Marks (Jon Hamm) is taking questions from the staff after we learn that he is going through with the purchase of UBN. Alex presses him hard on a few questions, and later, she asks him for an interview. He agrees, and after a series of increasingly tense questions, Alex goes for the jugular, surfacing some intel about Marks that she gained from Chip via Stella. Alex asks Paul Marks how he feels about making his fortune from an idea he stole from a Stanford intern who was depressed and suicidal in the years after. Paul fields the question sincerely and earnestly, revealing that, though it may have looked improper, he paid for the invention and that the Stanford intern agreed to the terms and agreed to an NDA. He also sincerely apologized and said that he and the Stanford intern needed to have a conversation.
All in all, it was an unexpected twist. The bombshell about Paul was that he’s an asshole billionaire, not a sex pest. That was unpredictable. What happened next, however, was the opposite: The interview was so challenging that, afterward, Alex and Paul had sex. We all knew it was coming basically from the moment that Paul was introduced to the show.
Meanwhile, Chip asked his long-time girlfriend to marry him, and she said no. Why? Because she could sense that Chip was still hung up on Alex Levey. This again? This is a workable storyline if there is a chance that Alex and Chip will ever end up together. There is not, so it just makes him look pathetic. Didn’t he already lose one fiance because of Alex? Are they just repeating the same storyline? It’d be like Ross and Rachel all over again if Ross were Gunther.
Finally, most of us probably pieced together by the end of the episode that Stella was the Stanford intern. What was more surprising was that Paul told Stella that his interest in buying UBN was her professional talent and that once the sale went through, he would fire Cory and replace him with Stella.
And this is precisely why we know the deal will fall through. The fact that the agreement is still pending was the first clue — Chekhov’s unsigned contract — but the other is any notion that Cory might be fired and, therefore, Billy Crudup might be jettisoned from The Morning Show. It’s not going to happen.
The deal will fall through. There are four episodes left this season. Will it fall through on a cliffhanger at the end of the season, or will it fall through in the next couple of episodes, allowing Cory some time to save UBN before the end of the season? Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that Holland Taylor’s Cybil character will play a role in protecting the network?
