The Morning Show Review: La Amara Vita (Season 2 Episode 7)

The Morning Show Season 2 Episode 7, “La Amara Vita” offers up the Mitch Kessler-focused episode that exactly zero people were waiting for, sending Alex Levy haring off to Italy for a paper-thin reason so that we could all experience another uncomfortable series of scenes between her and her former Morning Show hosting partner. 

The episode features them reviewing basically all the greatest hits of their relationship — while they’re Alex even confesses at one point she thought she was pregnant with Mitch’s child — from how close they’ve always been to the toxic ways they treated each other. There’s rage, and a lot of wine, and a slow-motion slow dance around the living room.

There’s even cuddling before Mitch asks Alex to perform some unpaid emotional labor and teach him about the reasons why all the horrible things he did were bad. (Such as more frequently targeting Black women and other women of color.) 

In theory, Alex abandons her debate moderating job and disappears in order to charter a flight to Italy and yell at Mitch for not telling Maggie Brenner they hadn’t slept together when he was asked about it for her new book.

This is all very beneath a woman who is even a fraction as smart and savvy as Alex has been portrayed to be — there’s no way that she doesn’t know what all this looks like, or how little such a statement would actually be worth. (At this point, who would believe him anyway) 

Truly, some of the choices The Morning Show is making this season are just so bizarre. The show seems desperate for its viewers to still see Mitch as a sympathetic figure, to question whether what he did was “really” that bad, to cheer for him and his lady friend when they finally hook up with each other. 

My question is — why? What part of this character is actually supposed to be sympathetic? Are we supposed to feel bad, or somehow complicit when he decides to just “let” his cargo over a cliff? Moved that his last thoughts were of Alex? Sorry that we didn’t try harder to understand the complicated position he found himself in?

I suspect that MItch’s apparent suicide is supposed to feel shocking, and maybe on some level, it does. The show — this episode — has fought so hard for a reason to keep this character around that killing him off in this way seems a bit like it has to b some kind of mistake.

And yet, this sort of “inactive” suicide, where he just lets the accident happen to him, presumably because he sees himself as a bad person who deserves the death that’s literally speeding toward him, lets the character off the hook in a way that is strangely infuriating.

If Mitch is dead, he doesn’t have to do the work. He doesn’t have to recognize his own flaws or wrestle with his bad choices. He doesn’t ‘have to make amends to those he harmed, or attempt to actually become the better person he insists he wants to become. It feels like a narrative cop-out, one that will doubtless keep Alex’s story firmly focused on Mitch, when every other character has gotten to move on. 

This would all be terrible enough even if these events weren’t taking place in the early days of a raging pandemic, in a country that was one of the disease’s first and most deadly hot spots, where we all already know how bad it’s going to get. 

Watching Alex brush off the fact that Mitch and his lady friend had been exposed, then engage in a ton of close contact with him feels like the moment in the horror movie where someone decides to run upstairs to hide in the attic full of antique knives rather than head out the front door to freedom. 

She’s coming home with COVID, right?

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• Thanks to Google Translate, I now know that “La Amara Vita” means “the bitter life,” which I guess makes a certain kind of sense now that I’ve seen this episode?
• Truly the idea that Alex would somehow manage to vanish, sneak into a country in the middle of a country during a global health crisis, visit someone in quarantine who is also a public figure, and then leave again without being recognized or reported on is ridiculous on its face.
• But despite how awful the whole Alex and Mitch relationship monster is, Aniston and Carrell are both great performers throughout this hour.
• I really missed Bradley this week. (Plus, I feel like I can count on one hand the number of scenes Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Anniston have actually shared this season.)

What did you think of this episode of The Morning Show? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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