The Morning Show Season 3 Episode 6 Review: The Stanford Student
Love is in the air on The Morning Show Season 3 Episode 6, “The Stanford Student,” as the show uses two ostensibly timely and relevant storylines to do little more than get its leads laid.
This isn’t a complaint necessarily — both Alex and Paul and Laura and Bradley are compelling pairings and I ship ’em! Their dynamics are intriguing and I want to see more of where these relationships go. But it’s…well, let’s just say it’s peak The Morning Show to use the forward motion of those romances to essentially derail two fairly significant larger plots.
We spent most of last week’s episode watching flashbacks of Bradley wrestling with her decision to delete the cell phone footage showing her brother Hal at the January 6th riots beating up a Capitol Police officer. (Hal, in a blatant lie the show has just decided to present as truth for some reason, claims he didn’t mean to commit several felonies and only came to D.C. with some “friends” in order to see his sister. Sure, dude! Sounds legit.)
The fact that Hal has decided he now needs to confess his J6 involvement to the FBI is…just another wild swerve in a storyline that’s been fairly nonsensical from the start. Maybe if we’d seen Hal — as Bradley’s random prison interviewee did — express some remorse or even basic self-awareness about how he got involved in the riots in the first place, what his sister’s decision to cover for him cost her, or how his decision to blow up her lie might affect her then this plot might have been compelling.
Instead, the whole thing gets weirdly swept under the rug by Laura, of all people, who shows up at Bradley’s apartment to apologize to Hal for judging him and encouraging his sister to cut herself off from him. (Points for Bradley for being kind of right re: Laura’s opinions about her family and a gold star to Laura for realizing she was wrong to feel the way she did. Is this…what growth looks like on this show??) She also wants to encourage Hal to be more receptive of Bradley’s decision to date women and support their relationship because she wants to make Bradley happy.
From Laura’s perspective, this whole thing is so sweet, and demonstrates a remarkable level of genuineness and maturity we haven’t gotten the chance to see much this season. But as a resolution to the Hal plot — it seems to be the reason he decides to take his family and head home without confessing to anything even J6-adjacent — it…doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Is this him trying to let his sister be happy? Or his way of supporting Bradley and Laura? How??
Speaking of sweeping uncomfortable truths under the rug, The Morning Show finally reveals Stella’s whole deal with billionaire Paul Marks, only to basically wipe it all away with an “I’m sorry you feel that way” style apology and the promise of a better job. In the wake of her successfully reinteresting him in the prospect of buying UBA, Alex wants an exclusive interview with Paul about it all, insisting that both the company board and the public at large deserve to hear his perspective on the larger cultural role of media and what he hopes to achieve by acquiring the company.
Paul says yes to all this because he’s down bad for Alex, even though he traditionally is one of those rich dudes that “doesn’t do interviews” because reasons. And, in a fantastic twist, Alex actually does great. (Truthfully, I was so afraid this was a set-up to make her look weak or overly smitten or something but not our girl!) She doesn’t pull any punches in terms of her questioning, refuses to be rattled by a comment that makes it sound as though they have an undisclosed personal relationship, and actually manages to get him to answer real questions about his past.
She also confronts him about the mysterious “Stanford Student” of the episode’s title, a former participant in a Marks start-up accelerator who claims the billionaire stole student ideas and profited from them, using the power of NDAs and expensive lawyers to make sure no one ever did anything about his apparent/possible intellectual theft. The show doesn’t seem to want to come down too hard on whether or not Paul really did steal Stella’s idea, certainly not beyond giving him a chance to protest his innocence and feel momentarily bad about the depression and suicidal thoughts the whole thing basically left her with.
Instead, the show basically uses the interview as little more than a set-up for Alex and Paul to finally kiss — and then sleep together — and honestly, they’re incredibly charming together and I’m into this pairing, but I can’t help but think this is kind of a waste of the big secret they’ve been hinting Stella had all season long.
Are we meant to assume Paul’s offer to give Stella Cory’s job is an apology of some type? Is he truly sorry for hurting her? Did he really get rich off of stealing (or at least co-opting) other people’s ideas? Like Hal’s weirdly nebulous J6 situation, it doesn’t seem clear that the show is really all that interested in the answers.
Stray Thoughts and Observations:
- I feel like I should just save a bullet point for this every week but being on The Morning Show or playing a billionaire or flirting with Jennifer Aniston just really agrees with Jon Hamm, because he looks so good. Hashtag I am allowed to be shallow.
- Further shallowness: Paul Marks has an extremely adorable dog!
- Clearly, this subplot about Bradley drinking too much is probably going somewhere dark and uncomfortable, but Drunk!Bradley really does make for amazing television.
- Is this show ever going to tell us what really went down between Bradley and Cory?
- I love that Isabella immediately clocks that something’s going on between Paul and Alex.
- The one scene between Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston in this episode just made me wish there were more scenes between Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston. I really dislike how far apart their storylines have spread from one another.
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.