The Morning Show Season 4, Episode 3 Recap: Everyone Has an Agenda

Spoilers below.

If there’s one person at The Morning Show I would trust to actually get the job done, it’s Mia. We open the season’s third episode with the hard-working news producer stomping away at her treadmill, practicing her interview responses for the Head of News position out loud, and heading to work to whip a very sleepy and distracted Bradley—who’s struggling to get through her Sara Bareilles interview—into shape.

Anxious about her interview while trying to hold the show together, Alex gives her a vote of support—she’s the ideal candidate for the promotion. But sadly, TMS does not have the best track record of rewarding its hardest-working staff (poor Chip), so I didn’t have a great feeling about this from the get-go. Mia’s entire mission is to do her job well; she’s pretty much the only one at that company without a hidden agenda. After that drowsy broadcast, Mia levels with Bradley: Get it together—her promotion is on the line! Mia has been the queen of tough love this season after similarly leveling with Christina last week. Why can’t anyone just do their job?

Mia walks in confident as hell for her interview, despite Alex not making it (she’s stuck at the climate summit; more on that in a bit). During the meeting, Celine tells Mia she wants chaos that will bring higher ratings and a more engaged viewership. Something about more circus and less bread, whatever that means. Even though Mia is clearly competent and ethical, she doesn’t have the sexy vision Celine wants for the network. Mia claps back: Journalists are more at risk of violence than ever before. The war zone is in their backyards: The top three stories on the UBN website say as much. “The truth is incendiary and it’s under attack,” she says. She ate that! But will it be enough?

In the post-interview deliberation, Stella is all in for Mia—she’s doing 80 percent of the job already, and she’s the most qualified. Celine, on the other hand, thinks Mia might not be able to make the “hard choices” when it comes to AI (not this!). In the end, Celine strongly suggests bringing Ben in as Head of News for a fresh perspective. Hiring is Stella’s prerogative, but there’s something unspoken happening between them here (the affair strikes again). If Stella folds to Celine, she might hold on to her secret and job a bit longer.

In the end, Stella offers Mia a raise but breaks the news that Ben was the successful applicant—although we didn’t see him interview, nor is he even in this episode (neither is Christina, for that matter). Mia is rightfully surprised and upset. Ben is unqualified and does not have relationships with the staff. He’s never even produced hard news. It’s a profound failure on The Morning Show’s part to put Mia in this position, but I have to say, it is a juicy turn for Pittman, who delivers another strong performance. She quits on the spot, and after lying through her teeth about Ben’s qualifications, Stella cries. Something tells me this isn’t the end of Mia’s time at TMS, though. I’m looking forward to seeing Ben flop next week.

On Bradley’s end, she couldn’t care less about Sara Bareilles or what day of the week it is—she’s investigating a case! Right after her broadcast, she tracks down Claire with Chip (welcome back, Bel Powley). Finally, gaiawarrior96 is unveiled—it was Claire after all. Despite her reticence to work with Chip, who she holds partially responsible for killing the Wolf River story, she agrees to share what she knows. The “eco-warrior,” as Chip calls her, has been moving around to different hotels to avoid the feds, although the extent of her climate activism is somewhat unclear. Forget Homeland, this is now How to Blow Up a Pipeline! Their meeting is productive, although Chip thinks Claire is trying to rope Bradley in as another way to get revenge against UBN for Hannah’s death. We find out Claire herself received an anonymous tip about the story, and before she slips out of the hotel room, she texts Bradley a list of payouts. Ex-head of news Bethanne Hines comes up again, having allegedly received a $2 million payout when the Wolf River story was killed.

Later, we finally get to meet Bethanne (Kathe Mazur). She tells Chip she signed an NDA and can’t reveal why she left the network. She acts like she’s blowing him off, but discreetly shows him a text pointing him toward the UBA archives from 2018 for the Wolf River depositions. Wait…Are you telling me these journalists didn’t think to check their own archives? Anyway, clearly Bethanne assumes someone is watching or listening in some way, so this might be a bigger conspiracy than we realize.

Meanwhile, at UBN HQ, Alex is getting scolded again. Turns out, fossil fuels have been a major ad sponsor of UBN for years, and they’re threatening to pull their ad money after Alex’s coverage of the climate protest. Alex makes a great point that perhaps they shouldn’t be advertising on a news network if the news gets them upset. She agrees to make a public apology to “asshole billionaire” Zeke Pemberton (Richard Burgi) to smooth things over. After all, she’s an executive now, not just a journalist.

She bypasses the ongoing protest (“a red carpet where everyone wants you to die,” she calls it), and guess who shows up mid-apology to Zeke? Paul Marks (Jon Hamm) is back. She is a little awe-struck (relatable, Hamm looks great), perhaps realizing her feelings for him haven’t disappeared since last season. The best line of this episode might be what she shares with the climate summit’s keynote speaker, Ava Carillo (Stephanie Sigman)—who happens to be an old acquaintance—in the bathroom while trying to catch her breath: “I don’t understand why we need oil when we can just power the world with billionaire big dick energy.”

Paul offers to facilitate an apology between Zeke and Alex. If Alex runs a story tying the protestors to a gas rig explosion in Mexico from a few years ago, all will be forgiven. She calls it a propaganda smear campaign, but agrees to run it upon verification. Paul’s motivation is rooted in trying to get a deal with Zeke himself, so this would be a win for him. Oh, and turns out, Alex’s bathroom friend Ava is Paul’s new girlfriend—of course! In a very dramatic hallway conversation, Alex admits she isn’t thrilled about his new fling and that she still mourns the relationship. She accuses him of always having selfish motivations when it comes to their relationship. By the end, he does send her a piece of evidence without any strings, but gosh, it’s been two years, time for a new man, Alex!

On the affair front: Stella caves to blackmail and tells Celine she wants Cory back at UBN. She’d better hurry up, Cory’s movie is on the line! The affair itself is getting complicated, too. Miles seems to want to make things public, but Stella wants to protect her reputation. It’s hard to care too much about this relationship as a viewer, especially since Stella and Miles are somewhat underdeveloped characters, but we’ll see how it shakes out. Cory, supposedly on a mission to meet with every executive at UBN, meets up with Celine at an art gallery. Celine knows something is fishy, and Cory is basically ready to throw Stella under the bus to get his UBN deal. We don’t know that much about Celine yet, so it’s hard to tell if she’s willing to betray her coworker, but we did see how she’s already used this to her advantage to get Ben the Head of News promotion.

Cory’s last meeting on his list? Bradley. It’s been a while since they’ve been in the same room after their friendship dissolved last season, and things are amicable yet awkward as they meet up at Cory’s rental apartment. They bond over the pitfalls of working at UBN. Bradley mentions the difficulty in maintaining relationships—I guess Laura (Julianna Margulies) is totally out of the picture. Cory vents about his life in L.A. and his failing movie production. They admit they don’t hate each other; she’s okay with his return to UBN. And finally…they hook up. Am I the only one who never really saw their dynamic as romantic? They’ve always had a powerful emotional connection, but I always thought the feelings were more on Cory’s end than Bradley’s. I perused a few Reddit threads and noticed some viewers do root for them as a couple, but admit that she had more chemistry with Laura. I suppose it was only inevitable for this to happen. At least they’re both single! I can’t handle more than one weaponized affair on this show.