I was a fan of the series in season one, which I found smart, funny and often poignant. Season two, however, was uneven, until the last episode which seemed incredibly disorganized but also self-indulgent, to the point that I doubt I will watch season three, if there is one.
One of the strengths of the show was the way it used cognitive dissonance for great effect, the fact that characters who were self-centered seemed to believe that they were the good guys, when, in fact, they were not, as their self-centeredness led to destructive behavior. The series used this to greatest effect at the end of season one: you likely know that the season centered largely on Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) and accusations that he had sexually harassed women staffers on the morning show where he was anchor for fifteen years. We are not exactly clear on exactly what he did for much of the season; he seems to believe that he is the victim: he lost his job, unjustly. As the season goes along, however, it becomes clear that he did, indeed, take advantage of women who were his subordinates on the show, primarily an assistant booker, Hannah (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), with whom he had sex. Episode 8 (Lonely at the Top) makes it unmistakable that, although Hannah never tells Mitch directly to stop as he begins to undress her and then has sex with her, she does not want it to happen, something that we learn directly in episode nine: she did not stop him because she did not feel she could say no to someone like Kessler. Nonetheless, Kessler has no clue about this and goes to ask Hannah to act as a source in an interview he hopes will clear his name: he is utterly incapable of seeing the harm he caused her, harm that eventually leads her to kill herself. It's that blindness that makes the character of Mitch so compelling -- that cognitive dissonance.
In fact, in season two, Mitch remains the most compelling character, as he attempts to find his way back to actually being a good person, as he comes to grips with the ways that he has failed others, and himself -- something he ultimately fails to do, as he, too, kills himself by allowing his car to plummet off the road in Italy, where he had gone as a refuge from the fallout for his behavior.
Contrasted with this, however, we have the season finale: much of the second season centers on the beginning of the COVID pandemic (and I admit that the series does a good job, at first, of showing us our collective native about the disease in its early days), culminating with the morning show's other long-time anchor (and Mitch's long-time partner and "work wife), Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) contracting the disease. In a miscalculation, the network decides to launch its new streaming app with an hour of a clearly suffering Alex talking about her illness, which she does primarily by whining about what a victim she is, as her own star has fallen, due at first to a tell-all book about the show, which discloses that Alex had an affair with Mitch, and was perhaps complicit in his inappropriate behavior, and then when the information gets out that Alex had gone to Italy (a hotbed of COVID infection in its early days) to beg Mitch for a false statement he and Alex had never slept together, therefore exposing all of her co-workers to the virus. But she is a wealthy woman whining in a penthouse that looks down over the city of New York, and she is culpable for all of her sins. In the first season, the series would have made clear it saw the irony of this -- that, yes, Alex would whine about this, but the series would indicate that the writers understood the absurdity of her whining. Here, it seems clear that the show wants us to feel sorry for Alex, to see her as the victim she says she is. She is disgusting, as she berates the audience for all she has suffered -- and the show is disgusting for trying to move us to pity her.
Season three? No thank you.
One of the strengths of the show was the way it used cognitive dissonance for great effect, the fact that characters who were self-centered seemed to believe that they were the good guys, when, in fact, they were not, as their self-centeredness led to destructive behavior. The series used this to greatest effect at the end of season one: you likely know that the season centered largely on Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) and accusations that he had sexually harassed women staffers on the morning show where he was anchor for fifteen years. We are not exactly clear on exactly what he did for much of the season; he seems to believe that he is the victim: he lost his job, unjustly. As the season goes along, however, it becomes clear that he did, indeed, take advantage of women who were his subordinates on the show, primarily an assistant booker, Hannah (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), with whom he had sex. Episode 8 (Lonely at the Top) makes it unmistakable that, although Hannah never tells Mitch directly to stop as he begins to undress her and then has sex with her, she does not want it to happen, something that we learn directly in episode nine: she did not stop him because she did not feel she could say no to someone like Kessler. Nonetheless, Kessler has no clue about this and goes to ask Hannah to act as a source in an interview he hopes will clear his name: he is utterly incapable of seeing the harm he caused her, harm that eventually leads her to kill herself. It's that blindness that makes the character of Mitch so compelling -- that cognitive dissonance.
In fact, in season two, Mitch remains the most compelling character, as he attempts to find his way back to actually being a good person, as he comes to grips with the ways that he has failed others, and himself -- something he ultimately fails to do, as he, too, kills himself by allowing his car to plummet off the road in Italy, where he had gone as a refuge from the fallout for his behavior.
Contrasted with this, however, we have the season finale: much of the second season centers on the beginning of the COVID pandemic (and I admit that the series does a good job, at first, of showing us our collective native about the disease in its early days), culminating with the morning show's other long-time anchor (and Mitch's long-time partner and "work wife), Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) contracting the disease. In a miscalculation, the network decides to launch its new streaming app with an hour of a clearly suffering Alex talking about her illness, which she does primarily by whining about what a victim she is, as her own star has fallen, due at first to a tell-all book about the show, which discloses that Alex had an affair with Mitch, and was perhaps complicit in his inappropriate behavior, and then when the information gets out that Alex had gone to Italy (a hotbed of COVID infection in its early days) to beg Mitch for a false statement he and Alex had never slept together, therefore exposing all of her co-workers to the virus. But she is a wealthy woman whining in a penthouse that looks down over the city of New York, and she is culpable for all of her sins. In the first season, the series would have made clear it saw the irony of this -- that, yes, Alex would whine about this, but the series would indicate that the writers understood the absurdity of her whining. Here, it seems clear that the show wants us to feel sorry for Alex, to see her as the victim she says she is. She is disgusting, as she berates the audience for all she has suffered -- and the show is disgusting for trying to move us to pity her.
Season three? No thank you.
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