The Morning Show – Apple+ Season 1 Episode 5 Recap and Review

The Leak

The plot thickens with the latest episode of The Morning Show as it becomes more and more evident that many people turned a blind eye when it came to Mitch’s indecent behaviour. The drama remains quite intriguing and enjoyable to watch too as we see the story slowly unfolding and the different characters dealing with the scandal.

Episode 5 of The Morning Show picks up where we left off from before. Off screen, Alex berates Bradley about her behaviour and Chip warns her not to alienate people while she works, as he believes she has potential. Things aren’t about to calm down in the studio though as Mitch shocks everyone by turning up. He delivers a speech telling everyone how sad he is that the show is struggling and about missing his colleagues. Not getting any answers from those in attendance, he goes on to explain how important they are to him and leaves. Just as he’s about to get in the lift though, Bradley intercepts him and asks him who else knew.

The next morning, Bradley arrives at the studio for her interview with Maggie Brenner who Mia warned her about. She starts questioning her about the changes she brought to the show but Bradley remains cool and unbiased during these difficult questions. Meanwhile, The New York Times come forward asking for quotes from the channel as they had more women coming forward about Mitch. Unable to stop them from running the article, Fred starts to panic and vents his frustration to Cory. Later on, we see Chip meeting with Robbie from the Times to ask him more about the story he is about to run.

At the same time, Alex hosts a charity auction and hopes to smooth things out with Maggie Brenner. As the party gets underway, Audra from YDA approaches Daniel and tells him he’s too talented to wait around and suggests he talk to her. Alex finally finds Maggie and attempts to make her believe she helped Bradley with the interview. Seeing through her lies, Maggie tells her that she’s not planning to write a feminism piece about her.

After a tense singing session with Corey, a stressed-out Alex tells Jason she needs to see Mitch while Fred calls the New York Times ready to give them a quote. Meanwhile, Bradley heads out to celebrate Claire’s birthday with the rest of her colleagues. The conversation soon heats up between the women though as they talk about Mitch and the fact that many people were aware of his behaviour. This proves too much for Mia who’s deeply affected by the issue and ends up leaving the bar early.

Mitch picks up Alex and they discuss Bradley, where he tells her to be patient and thinks she won’t last. After joking around, Mitch stops the car and suggests that they should get together as they’re now both single. She laughs it off at first but after hugging and leaning in for a kiss, her phone beeps as the article from the Times drops.

Everyone reads it and while it relays the testimonies of the other women, the article also states that no further cover-up climate was reported. Going through the article, Mitch finds details of his recent emotional visit to the station was also leaked to the paper. This causes him to immediately phone Fred and confront him, warning him that if he’s going down, Fred will go down with him too.

After receiving a difficult call from her estranged father, Bradley decides to go back to the bar and sleeps with the bartender. She then heads back to the hotel where Cory helps her get back to her room which closes the episode.

The Morning Show continues this week with the same tone and pace as previous episodes as the scandal slowly unravels and affects the different characters. This is really cleverly done too as we witness the contrast between how they all dealt with it, especially our three main protagonists, Alex, Bradley and Mitch.

The excellent performance from the cast remain the focus of the show here, which is greatly helped by the realistic dialogue and individual character arcs. There’s certainly a lot of controversy behind Mitch’s scandal here, especially when it’s revealed that most people were aware of his behaviour. It’s also worth mentioning one particular scene too, which included a one-shot movement from the camera, shifting from Fred to Alex as she storms from room to room, looking through each of the windows. These little stylistic nods are a welcome addition here and really help the show stand out. Quite what will happen next though remains to be seen.