"I don't know who I am!"
Angst in the morning
I suppose I should write about The Morning Show. I ignored it until a few weeks ago. After seeing a commercial for it that interested me, now I’ve binged through two seasons, which is enough. To be fair, the acting, including from those I did not expect to be any good, like Reese Witherspoon, is pretty good. Jennifer Aniston has become seriously annoying, her numerous emotional breakdowns repetitive and boring. The line in the title seems to be exclaimed by each of the main characters, at one point or another.
What could be more tedious than super-rich, ultra-privileged people with zero evident intellectual capacity whining about their professional misfortunes? The show was interesting for a while because of the power struggles among elites. Also clever is how a devious executive, well-played by Billy Crudup, is able to judo scandals affecting his stars to his own benefit and to that of the network. But the power struggles have gotten old.
It is curious that the name Donald Trump rarely comes up, and never in any particularly critical context, even though the stories otherwise stick closely to contemporaneous events.
The content of The Morning Show resembles its real counterparts, and that content is What’s Wrong With America. It is all fluff, even when it deals with serious subjects, which is only periodically. There is no hint of this in the series, which on the contrary has its stars declaim a dedication to bringing vital Truths to the masses.
The pretense is that the trivia segments on cooking, washing your hands, and the weather are filler, but it’s really all filler. Our media is either devoted to distributing utter falsehoods about important matters, or just dulling our senses with utter pablum. The one episode wherein the Morning Show anchors spill all the beans on their own employers is unconvincing.
One important exception to all this is the show’s substantive treatment of the #MeToo problem. It’s really the only excuse for the entire production. True, it confines its attention to the upper-upper crust of society (though the victims are mostly not from the elite), but it’s still something. Another compelling part is the problems the Witherspoon character has with her bipolar, drug-abusing brother. (I’ve been there.)
In general, I’m running out of watchable TV, resorting to the multitude of British detective shows and some classic, ancient movies I’ve never seen. I was watching one, it might have been “Farewell, My Lovely,” and I was tickled to see the figure of Mike Mazurki appear. You’d have to be pretty old to remember the name.
I’m always game for a “noir” film. You can get some on Kanopy, a free and commercial-free cable TV stream connected to public libraries. (Also TCM—Turner Classic Movies) I recently got my first library card since the 1960s, to get free Elmore Leonard ebooks. Leonard’s books have been adapted for movies 23 times, including three of my favorite movies: Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, and Be Cool. I saw Killshot last night, also pretty good, with Diane Lane, Mickey Rourke, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Gordon-Levitt is surprisingly good.