The Morning Show Season 3 Episode 8 Review: DNF

The fallout from the revelation that Alex and Paul are together, romantically speaking, drives the bulk of The Morning Show Season 3 Episode 8, “DNF.” Still, Alex is hardly the only person facing both personal and professional crises this week. 

Season 3 to date has featured a surprisingly mature and generally mellow Alex — she’s been trying to earn herself a place in the room where it happens, helped wrangle the whole Cybil Reynolds debacle, and her streaming, magazine-style interview show is UBA+’s biggest hit. She was probably overdue for a meltdown or two is what I’m saying, and boy does this episode deliver.

And, to be fair, it’s sort of warranted. Everyone seems to have an opinion on her relationship with Paul, what it means, how she should handle it, and how her interview with him should be presented on air. This is all probably par for the course when it comes to dating a billionaire, but it seems fairly awful to experience. Zero people ask her how she is or if she’s happy. Instead, it’s all Mitch Kessler jokes and comments about how she’s banging the boss. 

On the plus side, I now have definitive proof that I am still capable of being shocked by the behavior of the douchey men on this show. Cory and Chip’s fairly disgusting conversation about Alex and Paul’s interview and how everyone’s only going to be thinking of how the pair probably had sex afterward was so incredibly inappropriate, not for the least of which reason that they’d never in the world discuss a man’s personal life in this way. I mean, Chip was dating his boss’s assistant until about five minutes ago!

Sure, Paul is an uber-rich weirdo and probably not a great person, while Alex has a terrible track record when it comes to men generally (not to mention in her professional sphere), but the aggressiveness of all the judgment is really off-putting. Particularly when I’d still put money on the idea that Cory slept with Bradley at some point. 

Alex doesn’t handle things super well either. She’s desperate not to talk about Paul and her personal life, so much so that she’s willing to push her much-ballyhooed interview with him a week in order to have a guest on to discuss the SCOTUS leak and the impending fall of Roe v. Wade. But the guest Chip finds for her is pretty eager to talk about things that go well beyond what Alex has decided women’s rights should mean. Instead, her guest wants to talk about minority rule and unchecked power, which brings us right back to the topic Alex so definitively did not want to discuss: Billionaires.

Which, to be fair, is a topic worth talking about, no matter how much Alex wants to talk about women’s rights. Billionaires like Paul are buying legacy media companies and gaining a tremendous amount of influence over what’s even classified as news in the first place. And, as Chip rightly points out, plenty of viewers are probably concerned about this very issue — not to mention the fact that Alex herself was worried about Paul’s influence on journalists like two weeks ago! — but she’s not ready to hear it. Instead, she blows up about how he left her hanging with a replacement guest he didn’t thoroughly vet or support her through. She’s right about that, for what it’s worth, but firing Chip is probably overkill. 

Though, really — this is the moment he chooses to tell Alex he didn’t have COVID when he came to stay with her last season? Say less, Chip. 

Alex heads home for a heart-to-heart with Paul about her crappy week. He’s also had a time of it, complete with awkward photoshoots with Cory, too much drinking, and some sort of Hyperion-related disaster that means his next scheduled summer space launch is looking pretty unlikely. They cuddle and bond about it and when she wonders whether UBA is really worth her time and talent, Paul suggests maybe the answer is starting over.

He floats the idea of selling the company for parts rather than investing in it, a move that would give him a cash influx for his space projects and allow Alex to build a new, lean news-focused organization from UBA’s ashes. He offers her the chance to take charge on her own terms, and this show has given us so little real insight into Paul’s character that it’s impossible to know whether he’s scheming for his own benefit or genuinely trying to help. In all fairness, it could go either way. 

I truly don’t think I’m meant to find these two as adorable as I do and yet here I am. Honestly, I might be rooting for Alex Levy’s villain era. It’d certainly make for a fun Season 4.

But, Paul Marks probably won’t be around for Season 4 if Bradley Jackson has anything to say about it. Tipped off by Stella, she’s trying to contact her friend Kate Danton, who was recently fired by Marks amidst some shady circumstances. Determined to find the truth, Bradley doggedly keeps working to set up a meeting but despite following a bunch of clues to supposed clandestine meetings in car parks and theater lobbies, she’s not made any progress yet.  She probably wants to hurry up with that, though, because it looks like her own big secret is about to come out. 

Though things seem pretty lovely between her and Bradley at the moment, Laura’s having some problems understanding why on earth her girlfriend went off to spend an entire day with Cory Ellison and his mother for no discernable reason. (I mean, welcome to the party, girl.) Worried, weirdly jealous, or some combination of both, Laura starts digging through the emails and texts released in the UBA hack to try and find out if anything salacious ever happened between her current girlfriend and her ex-boss. 

That is…not what she discovers, however. In a truly impressive bit of wild conjecture and rapid mathematics, Laura manages to compare some emails and texts and figure out almost everything about Hal’s involvement in January 6, Bradley’s editing of the footage she took to protect him, the FBI subpoena, and Cory’s involvement in the whole thing. But what will she do with this info? Could Laura turn Bradley in? And could that bring all of UBA down with her, regardless of what secrets Paul Marks is hiding? 

Stray Thoughts and Observations:

• There was a lot less Roe v. Wade fallout in this episode than I’d expected. Chris’s “abort the court” social post causes a stir that leads to her getting paint thrown on her and anti-abortion activists are graffitiing St. Patrick’s Cathedral. But that’s…kind of it?
• Truly, we need a Yanko bottle episode I have no idea who this character is. He’s trying to adopt? What?
• Fine, the surprise TMS team after-hours meet-up to toast Hannah Shoenfeld on the anniversary of her death got me. I’m always amazed when this show manages to remember anything like this.
• “You’ve been smiling a lot. It unnerves me.” Truly no one delivers a killer deadpan line like Tig Notaro.
• All I’m saying is that Paul Marks literally looking down on Cory Ellison while calling him a small man is reason enough for me to want this character to stick around UBA forever.
• Pretty sure I hate every aspect of this storyline about Mia and her maybe-dead-in-Ukraine-oh-wait-just-a-big-jerk boyfriend. What is the point of any of this? 

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

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New episodes of The Morning Show stream Wednesdays on Apple TV+.

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