The Morning Show Season 3 Episode 5 Review: Love Island
The Morning Show Season 3 Episode 5, “Love Island,” marks the halfway point of the season, which means it’s the perfect time for a flashback hour that makes us all relive a bunch of traumatic events from the first year of the pandemic! Anything in the name of drama, right?
Granted, at least this means the show is finally getting around to filling us in on the kind of big character development moments — Bradley and Laura’s breakup! The existence of Mia’s random boyfriend Andre!
Bradley taking over the evening news chair! — that likely would have added some useful context earlier in the season. But, hey, at least we get to watch Bradley get sucked into January 6th! (I wish I was kidding.)
Despite the fact that The Morning Show is really a very expensive soap opera — and honestly works so much better that way!! — the show still goes through these bizarre phases where it wants to do nothing more than cosplay as a Very Serious Drama that Wrestles with Real Life Issues, even though it is absolutely not the kind of show that is equipped to tell those kinds of stories in a nuanced (or often even coherent) way.
Such is the case with “Love Island,” which takes us back to the hellscape of March 2020 before barrelling straight through a seemingly endless repeat of awful events, from PPE shortages and enforced social distancing to George Floyd’s murder and the resulting protests all the way through to the January 6th insurrection. (Because, of course, Bradley was there.)
I’m not sure who asked for this speed run through the major tragedies of the year, but it was not me.
To be fair, there are some excellent small moments, as we see Bradley doing her own hair and makeup before anchoring TMS on the day the 2020 Olympics are canceled. We watch Cory and his realtor try to navigate the awkward “how to handle masks” question. Hand sanitizer is everywhere.
Everyone’s uncertain about what to do, and where to stand, and quarantining, and when it’s okay to see loved ones. It’s surprisingly realistic, but it’s also a complete tonal clash with virtually everything else about this season so far.
Most of this nightmarish rewind is to fill us in with what’s been going on with Bradley this season. And, it’s…kind of a lot. But it’s nice to see Reese Witherspoon finally get some really meaty material to work with after being largely absent the past few weeks.
Turns out Bradley fled to Montana to quarantine with Laura, who was her sort of secret girlfriend at the time. I’m not sure why either of them thought they were going to get to hang on to that “secret” moniker, given that she essentially moved several time zones to isolate with her in a remote Montana cabin where they broadcast a television show together every day.
It’s very sweet when Bradley finally refers to Laura as “Babe” on-air though and the pair seem happy enough.
Until they don’t.
Bradley struggles with the isolation of their day-to-day lives and resents Laura’s implication that her family is uneducated because they still go shopping and attend crowded events like church unmasked.
Things get worse when Bradley’s mother dies of COVID-19, and though the two had a difficult relationship, she’s still devastated and feels guilty she didn’t go home to Kentucky as soon as her brother Hal informed her their mother was ill.
Laura bears the brunt of her anger and grief and the fights between the two grow harsher and more personal.
Bradley insinuates Laura’s happy her mother died; Laura counters that Bradley knew her mother was awful and told everyone so frequently. Bradley’s ultimately so visibly miserable that it’s starting to bring TMS ratings down, so Stella has her shipped off on assignment to cover the election.
In Washington, D.C. Which is, of course, how she ends up in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
From a 50,000-foot view, the way The Morning Show blends real and fictional footage to create an on-the-ground perspective of the riot is impressive.
It’s also incredibly horrifying, and I could have gone forever without seeing it, and the fallout from the show’s take on this event is so incredibly over the top that it’s not even really clear how the show navigates the rest of the season.
While filming the riot incognito, Bradley not only discovers her brother Hal is among the insurrectionists — the show is cagily silent on the views of his “buddies” he came to DC with, and seems weirdly willing to let his insistence that he was just using them as an excuse to see his sister stand unchallenged — but also captures footage of him beating up a Capitol police officer.
Of course, she can’t bring herself to turn him in, choosing to cover for him and delete the footage of him committing a crime. That Bradley pretty much turns around and leverages the rest of her January 6 coverage to land the evening news anchor job she always wanted is just the icing of ick on top of all of it.
Oh, and that’s before there’s an FBI subpoena and she has to tell Cory the truth about everything in order to ask him to help her get out of it, which of course he does because he’s maybe in love with her or just likes having blackmail material, who even knows at this point.
Where does Bradley, as a character, go from here? After all, the show has always positioned her as this sort of crusading justice warrior who believes in the power of journalism to change lives and find the truth. Who even is she now?
Stray Thoughts and Observations:
- After all that, I still can’t tell whether or not we’re supposed to think Cory and Bradley slept together. It’s driving me nuts! There’s certainly an awkwardness between them before Bradley heads to Montana that hints that they might have. But the show just…keeps refusing to say what happened!
- Speaking of Cory, was his entire subplot this episode just about him stalking Paul Marks? Really?
- Mia’s hot boyfriend is 100% going to die in Ukraine, there’s no way they built up to that big fight and lack of farewell for any other reason.
- Someone needs to say it: Laura is extremely bad at charades
What did you think of this episode of The Morning Show? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Lacy Baugher
Lacy is a pop culture enthusiast and television critic who loves period dramas, epic fantasy, space adventures, and the female characters everyone says you're supposed to hate. Ninth Doctor enthusiast, Aziraphale girlie, and cat lady, she's a member of the Television Critics Association and Rotten Tomatoes-approved. Find her at LacyMB on all platforms.