The Morning Show’s Latest Scandal Targets Chris, Endangers the Deal — Read Episode 3 Recap
UBA undergoes a racial reckoning in this week’s The Morning Show, which makes it all the more frustrating when we get to the end of the hour and realize that Cory Ellison — a White Guy Hall of Famer if ever there were one — is the episode’s big winner. And worse? An aggrieved Black woman, who arrives at the center of the controversy through no fault of her own, has to shoulder a large portion of the work to make things right.
Well, right-ish.
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Sigh. At least the network’s systematically racist pay structure is exposed, and Chris looks like an absolute boss as she deftly navigates a situation she never should have been thrown into in the first place. But still, ugh. Read on for the highlights of “White Noise.”
AN UGLY TRUTH MADE PUBLIC | It’s been a few weeks since the leak, and Cory’s had his henchman, Earl, combing through emails and such for dirt that can help his cause. Earl finds something that has Cory smiling and phoning Paul to tell him that he’s sure the deal will go through, and soon enough, we find out what that something is: Cybil referenced Aunt Jemima in an email about Christina’s hiring. Eagle News, thanks to Earl’s leak, gleefully reports the racial dig.
Christina is, understandably, very upset to learn that her future employers were discussing her that way. (The conversation had to do with Christina’s having been on cereal boxes as an Olympic athlete, to which Cybil wrote: “Aunt Jemima was on cereal boxes, too, and no one’s buying her anymore.”) Cory calls the new anchor to his office, asks her to keep the matter in-house, hints at a bonus and a higher status at the network, then dismisses her, saying, “I just wanted you to know how valued you are.” She regards him evenly. “I think I’m learning how much,” she replies. Then she cries in the elevator on her way back downstairs.
Meanwhile, Cybil calls a meeting with Alex and basically asks Alex to be her advocate and ally. Alex refuses, which infuriates the older woman; she says she stood up for Alex when everyone wanted her gone because “I know what it’s like when a bunch of men decide a woman’s sell-by date.” Then she adds: “If I go down for this, do you think whoever replaces me is going to care about you or what you want?” Which is good and all, but Alex (correctly) calls Cybil out for playing the sisterhood card when it suits her, then is unsympathetic when Cybil says she won’t be cancelled over the controversy. “It happens to the best of us,” Alex quips.
Still, Cybill’s suggestion that Alex interview her on Alex Unfiltered is something that she brings to Cory, Chip and Stella. “This has to be addressed, and we’re the only ones that can do it,” Alex reasons. Cory is wildly against the idea. Everyone else is open. He grudgingly says OK, but also reserves the right to kill the episode if he sees fit.
A BIGGER PROBLEM | All of the hacked information has been posted on a website, through which TMS produce Laila digs and finds a pattern: The network lowballs salaries of employees of color. She’s even angrier that no one cared about it until it happened to Christina, who’s already well-off and famous. So Mia and Stella call an all-hands meeting “to talk about what The Morning Show can do to make things right.” As you might imagine, it goes pear-shaped in a heartbeat.
Yanko soon takes over the discussion, saying that race is a fiction and is being weaponized for no reason. He talks over Mia. He tries to pull Alex into the conversation. (“It’s the wokeness, that’s what’s not helping, Alex.”) It is TERRIBLE. Christina walks out, and Mia follows her, telling her not to doubt her worth. “I never doubted my worth. I just didn’t know other people did,” Christina says. Then she asks Mia why she still doesn’t have a producer assigned to her like the other talent do, and Mia doesn’t have a good answer.
At home that evening, Chris and her husband, Marcus, are discussing whether to sue the network when Alex arrives, unannounced, with an idea. And soon after, Christina announces to Mia and Stella that she should be the one to interview Cybil — on The Morning Show. Cory instantly is against it (“Nobody is tuning into The Morning Show version of Obama’s Beer Summit,” he grouses), but Stella muses about what people will think about someone (cough HIM cough) who leaks an email and “casually weaponizes 400 years of racism to close a deal with a billionaire.” Guess what? The interview is on!
THE INTERVIEW | Cybil is nearly shaking as she walks onto the set that morning. Marcus hypes up Chris in her dressing room, then she puts in earbuds and listens to The Lox’s “Money, Power & Respect” as she walks down the hallway to the studio. She smiles at Cybil but says nothing before the segment begins, and once the cameras are rolling, Cybil immediately apologizes. She talks a big game about how there’ll be more transparency at the network, moving forward. On that note, Chris asks, “Was I hired for a permanent anchor position because I am Black?” Cybil says no, but she doesn’t have an answer when Chris follows up with: “I don’t understand why you used a racialized image when discussing me. Is that how you see me? Is that how you see us?”
Cybil, well and fully freaked out by this point, eventually cops to the fact that “I was careless, and there wasn’t any excuse” — both for the Aunt Jemima comment and for the pay differential at her company. But then she blurts out that “anyone who sits in that chair has to be grateful.” LADY, STOP TALKING. She word-vomits a little more about how she wants the network to move on from a climate where racial divisions are exploited, but has no response when Christina points out that’s every climate. “But yes, we’ll move on from institutional racism right after this break,” the anchor says, closing the interview.
THE AFTERMATH | Cybil is ashen; she knows she blew it. Cory, watching in his office, is gleeful to see his biggest opponent eat a faceful of dirt. (The board eventually holds a vote of no confidence in Cybil, so she’s gone.) And Laila is happy when, immediately after the segment, Mia promotes her to be Chris’ producer.
Cory skips down to SoHo to tell Paul in person that the path has been smoothed, but the tech guru points out that UBA is no longer safe as a legacy brand, and therefore he no longer wants to buy it. “I have options,” he says, as Cory’s face falls faster than his controvery-plagued network’s ad prices, “but UBA? No longer one of ‘em.” And yes, this is a blow for Cory, but does ANYONE think he’s going to stay down for long? Especially now that Cybil is out of the picture?
Hey, maybe it’s for the best. Earlier in the episode, Stella lets Mia know that she and Paul used to work together (hence that photo in Episode 2), and she’s not a fan. “We have a history, and it’s not a good one,” she says, adding that he didn’t do anything, per se (“he’s too smart”) but that he’s “ruthless” and to be avoided at all costs. Hmm…
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Sound off in the comments!
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