The Morning Show Season 4 Episode 3 Review: Tipping Point

The Morning Show Season 4 Episode 3, “Tipping Point,” contains an event three seasons and some change in the making, and which will undoubtedly alter much of the show’s story for seasons to come. 

Whether that will be in a good way or a bad one remains to be seen. And the same can probably be said for how viewers will likely feel about what went down here. 

Yes, I’m talking about Cory and Bradley, who finally — again after literal years of sexual tension, flirtation, and will they/won’t they vibes — finally cross the last line left between them, and hook up. It’s a plot twist many The Morning Show fans have likely been expecting, heck, rooting for, since the series’s first season, and yet it somehow feels as ahocking as any of the show’s wildest developments. 

(Basically, I’m not sure I ever really thought that the show would go there, and now that it has, I’m not sure how to feel about it.)

After all, Cory’s often categorically awful. He’s lied and manipulated and bullied and cheated his way throughout the show’s previous three seasons, and it’s not like Bradley’s been spared from many of his worst actions.

Yet, it’s apparent that she’s also one of the only people Cory not only seems to genuinely like, but views through a lens that isn’t about business. For a man who otherwise seems to see people in terms of what they can do for him, that feels like a big deal. (Plus, you know, he straight up told her he loved her at one point.) 

Bradley’s feelings about Cory have always been more complicated. (Not to mention easier to read as platonic.) 

But the pair haven’t seen each other in two years, and a lot of stuff has happened in that interim. Bradley quit live on air. Cory lost in job in the UBA-NBN merger. She turned herself in to the FBI. He left for California. She went to West Virginia. Life happened.

Given that he’s busy blackmailing his way back into UBN, Cory wants to know if Bradley told the feds about his attempt to help her cover up her whole January 6th situation. He also wants to give her a heads-up that they might be working in the same place again, and the inevitable rumors about the status of their relationship will probably start back up again. 

Bradley seems relatively nonplussed by all of this, probably because her overall performance at TMS has been so horrible since she came back that even Mia can’t defend it, so what does she care? She is insistent that she didn’t and would never turn on Cory, and it’s Bradley who is the first to cross the line into something sexual/romantic. 

Cory, for his part, basically exists in a constant state of yearning around Bradley anyway, so you already know he’s into it. 

There’s an argument to be made that the two years that have passed in the world of the show have given both characters some space to reflect on who they are and what they want.

Maybe their answers to those questions are both each other. Perhaps absence has really made the heart(s) grow fonder. Maybe Bradley really did think she’d never see Cory again and is now seizing her moment. 

It’s not super clear. Which is a shame — it would have been nice to have gotten a little more build-up to a moment that’s this big for these characters and the world of the show at large. 

But Bradley and Cory aren’t the only folks doing some hardcore yearning during this episode. Considering how many people (cough cough, me cough) were very into Alex’s relationship with billionaire Paul Marks, it’s a pleasure to report that Jon Hamm is back in his episode. 

And not just back but looking great, seemingly self-improved to some extent, and still down so bad for Alex, even though he’s somehow managed to find another woman who is also clearly out of his league to date. 

The pair run into each other at an event at which Alex is told she must grovel to an advertiser caught up in the whole climate protest story from last week. Paul steps in to mediate and helps his ex save face, because he’s so obviously still into her, and this all leads to Alex having a small breakdown about how she’s upset that, two years later, Paul has managed to find someone to date before she did. 

Readers, I am confident that nothing about that sob sesh was about Paul finding a partner first, but finding a partner at all who wasn’t Alex. It’s so incredibly obvious that these two are still crazy about each other, and if The Morning Show doesn’t do something about this, I’m going to go insane. 

(Look, you don’t have onscreen chemistry like this and waste. it.) 

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• I still fully expect this show will have Alex eventually hook up with the horrible podcast bro, and seeing her with Paul again this week and being reminded of their excellent potential just makes that prospect about five times worse. 
• Karen Pittman deserves so many accolades for her performance as Mia in this episode (and on this show in general, where it has been a largely thankless task). And this may be a controversial opinion, but they should actually let the character walk away. Part of the reason The Morning Show has become so unwieldy is its refusal to cut down on any sort of cast bloat, and I just don’t know how you find a reason to bring Mia back into the fold at UBN after Stella strung her along for two years and then professionally stabbed her in the back.
• Celine is so this season’s Big Bad, somehow. Nothing about this character is trustworthy in any direction. 
• Is there some reason that, if Miles is so bonkers over Stella, he doesn’t just…I don’t know, leave his wife to be with her? 

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New episodes of The Morning Show premiere Wednesdays on Apple TV+

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