The Morning Show Season 3 Episode 9 Review: Update Your Priors

The Morning Show Season 3 Episode 9, “Update Your Priors” is the most bonkers and absolute best installment of this run of episodes to date, an hour that sees multiple big reveals and major emotional confrontations, all with the future of UBA on the line. 

As a mysterious unknown LLC begins buying up shares of UBA ahead of the board vote on the Paul Marks deal, Bradley’s digging furiously into the unhappy employees at Hyperion and the safety warnings that may have gone unheeded there. Alex, for her part, is stuck in the middle — torn between her career at UBA and a future she might forge outside of it should Paul go ahead with his plan to sell off pieces of the company once he acquires it.

On some level, I wish I believed The Morning Show had the guts to follow this storyline through to what is honestly its most likely conclusion: the end of UBA. Not only is it absolutely the kind of thing that would happen in real life. (Look at Twitter, if you don’t believe me.) But everything about this company from its office culture to its multiple criminal cover-ups has been toxic and awful virtually since the show started and one-off monologues about the importance of legacy media have done very little to convince me that this particular network deserves to survive in its current form. 

Heck, I’d be really interested to see what sort of company Alex might build if given the power she’s wanted for so long, what sort of stories she might want to tell if she had the chance to. Part of this is because I’m an unrepentant Alex and Paul shipper, but I do think the two of them actually make good partners. He certainly respects her talent and opinion more than Cory ever has, and at least he bothers to actually tell her she’s good at her job once in a while. 

The most satisfying moment of this whole episode had to be when Alex finally told Cory about himself, because no matter what you think of her decision to essentially side with Paul here, she’s also really not wrong.  The only person Cory has ever given a crap about at UBA is Bradley, and this deal is as much about his own ego as it is about protecting the future of the company and none of his self-righteous monologing, as Alex puts it, makes that any less true. 

For some reason, ever since the big Season 1 finale moment where Bradley and Alex joined hands to change everything at UBA, The Morning Show has really struggled with how to depict their relationship. Or even whether to depict it at all. For most of Seasons 2 and 3, the two women have largely been siloed in separate storylines and their paths crossed very infrequently.

This is a lot to say that while it’s a relief to finally get to see Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston share a meaty scene together this season, Bradley’s weirdly lecturing tone about Alex’s love life is… kind of a lot. I mean, we haven’t even seen y’all have a cup of coffee in how long, and suddenly it’s point-blank questions about how well Alex knows the guy she’s dating. 

Sure, Bradley’s trying to justify the fact that her investigative reporting may well scuttle a $40 billion dollar media deal, and she’s genuinely got her teeth into the safety violations and the exploited workers of it and all, but it’s also clear that she wants there to be a story here, and she’s so obvious about it that it (unsurprisingly) immediately puts Alex’s back up.

Maybe this would have all felt slightly less manipulative if Bradley and Alex had really spent any time together this season at all, or if the show had somehow set this conversation up in any way that wasn’t so clearly just about trying to put them on opposite sides of this particular war. I’d really have loved it if their scene together had been a little more substantial — especially because I think Alex actually is genuinely interested in Bradley coming with her to whatever new venture she’s planning. She still wants to make a difference just as much as the younger woman does, she’s just going about it in a different way than dramatically quitting on-air.

But Bradley has way bigger problems than Alex, or even the future of UBA itself, to worry about right now. Her girlfriend found out that she’s committed a few minor felonies and is now wrestling with whether or not she needs to turn what she knows into a story. Laura, correctly, is not only wondering what it means that Bradley kept this from her, but what could happen to her if anyone finds out she knew about these literal crimes and didn’t turn her in. 

Mercifully, Laura doesn’t wait very long to confront Bradley about what she’s learned. Witherspoon and Julianna Marguiles are tremendous during this entire sequence, as Bradley tearfully admits the truth, insisting that she’s honestly really sorry and somehow going to make everything all right again. This is patently false, since as recently as three episodes ago Bradley was bending over backward to talk her brother out of coming clean! Bradley had zero intention of anyone ever finding out the truth about what she did, and Laura clearly recognizes her protests for the blatant lies they are. 

To be fair, their fight — and apparent break-up — is heartbreaking to watch. (The line about growing old together! My heart!) Laura seems genuinely devastated, not just by what she’s learned, but the fact that Bradley lied about everything for so long. Yet, she somehow still cares about Bradley enough not to report the story that would ruin her life. But her anger doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere any time soon, and it’s not clear what, if any, future the two could possibly have after this. 

Honestly, how does any of this get wrapped up satisfactorily with just one episode to go? We’ll find out next week. 

Stray Thoughts and Observations:

• Well, I guess Paul’s jerk rich guy persona had to fully come out at some point this season, and here we are. But one of my favorite things about The Morning Show is that everyone’s so legitimately awful in their own way that no one really has the moral high ground over anyone else. Yeah, blackmailing Bradley to stop her from investigating his company’s various issues isn’t great, but she’s actively committed multiple felonies to prevent Hal from facing any consequences for his participation in the January 6 riots — something the show still wants to pretend he somehow accidentally got involved in — which means she’s not exactly got a lot of room to throw stones here. 
• That said, Bradley’s decision to quit on-air was not at all what I expected. 
• Further to the “everyone on this show is pretty terrible” point, Cory getting publicly called out for behaving inappropriately with Bradley is also something that’s…well, kind of deserved? Accusing him of grooming her is probably going too far, but he’s never had any kind of real professional boundaries with her (and that’s how we ended up in this whole withholding evidence from the FBI situation in the first place!)
• Cory’s reaction to his magazine cover with Paul Marks was so incredibly on-brand for him, a truly incomparable mix of cringe and general offputting-ness that I can’t even describe coherently. 

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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