Photo: Apple TV+/Copyrighted
I knew The Morning Show didn’t cast Nicole Beharie for nothing. Sure, Chris Hunter, the Olympic track-and-field gold medalist turned broadcast star, had a few standout moments when she joined the cast last year — her #AbortTheCourt, her on-air showdown with Cybil Reynolds — but someone with Beharie’s level of talent still felt underused. This is not the case in season four. “Amari” is a showcase episode for Beharie, and she rises to the occasion at every turn. Of course, this means Beharie’s character is forced into the hot seat when a rumor about her doping to win her medals gains traction on social media, and she must save her reputation and career. How does she go about doing this? By coming clean. Something quite novel for the people in this series!
Not that Chris immediately tells the truth. When she first learns of the steroid story, she’s quick to shut it down. When her husband Marcus talks about dealing with the rumor, she corrects him — it’s not a rumor, it’s a lie. And when she learns that the person who started all of this was actually one of her old teammates, Tunde Johnston (Ashley Romans), Chris wants to shut her down, too. She goes about doing so in the absolute worst way: Drunk after date night, she secretly gets her phone and leaves a belligerent, expletive-laden voicemail for Tunde. It starts off with “I don’t know who the fuck you’re playing with,” takes a turn into “I’m gonna drag your ass,” and hits the traditional “do you know who I am?” before she mercifully hangs up. To no one’s surprise, the moment Tunde releases this voicemail, it goes viral. When Alex comes to berate Bro Hartman for airing it on his podcast and going after one of UBN’s own, he reminds her that not only is he so popular can he basically do what he wants — “my ad revenue pays for your salary, right?” — but if America’s gold medal sweetheart is embroiled in a major scandal it’s newsworthy and she knows it. She has no response for that. Well, I mean, she drops a lot of F-bombs, but otherwise, no real response.
While Alex and Ben attempt to soften the blow this scandal could impart on UBN’s upcoming Olympic coverage (remember, they recently made Chris the face of that coverage), and perhaps to some extent protect Chris’s career, Chris finds a surprising ally: Mia Jordan. Oh, you thought Mia was pissed off before when she lost the Head of News job that was supposedly in the bag? You should see her after she is all but guaranteed a nice, new gig at Defy Entertainment until the CEO has a chat with Alex, who makes it clear that UBN will do whatever it takes to get Mia back. She even promises to host the CEO’s charity ball the next year if she doesn’t hire Mia. Mia does the only thing you can do when you have so much rage inside you might explode: Gets drunk and eats good food with her friend, calls up her hot ex-boyfriend Andre to remind him what he’s missing by way of showing him how good she is at pool, and then when he tells her that she should stop playing by UBN’s rules, she gets a great haircut, and returns to the halls of UBN to make some big moves.
That first big move? Mia finds Chris to tell her that no one at UBN will have her back the way Mia will. Instead of handling Chris, Mia asks her something no one else has: What do you want to do? Chris wants to clear her name. Mia agrees and advises her not to play it safe. If you play it safe, you’re out of the game. Mia would know. Instead, if Chris faces this whole thing head-on, people will respect her for it. Mia thinks Chris should go on Bro Hartman’s show. That’s definitely a risky next move, and it could easily be a disastrous one.
It certainly feels more and more like a terrible idea when Chris runs into the other guest who will be joining her on Bro’s show, Tunde herself. She tries to get her former teammate to hash this out in private before taking their problems to the manosphere, but Tunde isn’t budging. It turns out she started spreading these rumors after she learned Chris turned down that opportunity to do some of her pre-Olympics coverage at her old high school. Tunde works there now, and they’re trying to raise money for a new track. When Chris couldn’t be bothered to help them out, Tunde couldn’t stand it any longer. That brush-off on top of Chris somehow edging her out of the Olympic team so that Tunde wound up as an alternate was too much not to go nuclear. She will not go speak in private; she’s ready to air this out live. She tells Chris it’s time to cut the Oprah act.
What’s really hilarious about this entire thing is that apparently not one person did any prep for this interview. I don’t expect Brodie to really dig into his guests ahead of time, but Mia? Mia on her comeback tour didn’t at least try to get more info out of Tunde or press Chris a little more before sending her shot at television redemption on the air? Instead, not one single person was ready for the turn this interview quickly takes. At first, it seems like Chris made a career-ending decision to come on this show. Tunde has a lot to say to back up her accusations, and then, in a real shock, she has physical evidence — a prescription for steroids written out to Chris. When Chris gets a look at it, she knows what she has to do: she has to own up to it. But the true story is not what anyone expects.
Chris opens up about getting pregnant after winning at the London games and promptly losing all of her endorsements because no one believed she’d be able to win in Rio after having a baby. She and Marcus lost everything. And then, five months into the pregnancy, after going into premature labor, they lost their son, Amari, too. Chris talks about being broken in every possible way a person can be. She talks about getting back on the track and having to tape her abs together to even get out of bed. She was so slow. So she sought out steroids to help her in the lead-up to Rio. When she admits that the drugs made her sick, but she liked it because she “deserved to be punished,” it’s devastating. She threw herself into training in order to forget the loss of her son and eventually needed the drugs after Nationals. She won in Rio but was so disgusted with herself that she decided to walk away and start a new career. Beharie is incredible in this scene as she tries to hold back sobs but continually fails to do so, revealing she is still very much that broken person. Bro, who apparently has some actual empathy, cuts to a commercial to give everyone a breather, but the emotions don’t stop there. After the interview, Chris finds her husband in her dressing room, he, too, in tears, and she quietly goes to comfort him, too. Wonders never cease: This bonkers-ass show made me weep.
The official verdict is still out on how this interview will be received, but almost immediately, things are looking up for Chris (I mean, aside from the deep, debilitating grief she carries for her dead son). And that means things are looking up for Mia. Alex tracks her down while still in the building to ream her out of pulling the Bro interview stunt, but Mia is so over Alex Levy’s bullshit. She calls her out on fucking up her job prospects and pushes back with Alex, who tries to play it off like she was doing Mia a favor. So many people have informed Alex that she’s almost evil levels of selfish, you’d think she’d take that feedback to heart. But no. If Alex Levy’s going to do one thing, it’s refuse to have any self-awareness. Mia will be back at UBN to discuss Chris’s future there, but as far as her own, she’s done with this place. And friends, that’s the power of a perfect haircut.
Chris Hunter is not the only one forced to come clean about a tricky truth. Oh, Bradley. I’ve yet to determine if the famed Bradley Jackson is actually a good journalist or not, but I think we can safely say she is a terrible private investigator. Now that she and Chip have learned that it was Cory, at the time the newly minted head of UBA News, who executed the Wolf River cover-up, Bradley needs some answers from her almost-boyfriend. While on their first date, she pretends to be into his movie enough that he’ll show her pictures from production. (I’m still laughing that their comments about Big Sur were “See those rocks?” and “Look at the beach.” Have they ever seen a coastline before?) She then invents a reason to get rid of him while she still has his phone. She searches his email for anything related to Kenneth Stockton and bingo, she finds a correspondence with Earl that includes photos of Stockton exchanging documents with a redheaded woman. Unfortunately, Bradley forgets a little thing called search history. When she arrives at Cory’s apartment for their second date, he calls her out. Oh, he is so mad. Actually, more than mad, the guy is heartbroken.
Usually when Cory is backed into a corner or feels attacked, he can still dish out one of his long-winded monologues, but here he actually screams at Bradley. She used him. She toyed with his feelings. And worst of all, she pretended to be interested in his movie. She explains what she’s investigating, and Cory admits that yes, he ended that story, but only because he had just started in that job, Fred asked him to, and when he looked into it, the EPA had cleared the chemical plant of any wrongdoing. It was a nonstory. He seems genuinely surprised when Bradley informs him that the lawyer he had Earl and Eagle News smear killed himself. And then he goes apoplectic when he realizes that this means Bradley believes he’s the kind of guy who would be part of something like that.
She certainly doesn’t help matters when she replies that Cory’s always been that kind of guy, that he’s always gone after anyone who attempts to go after him. She tries to add that she really does have feelings for him, but he cuts her off. “Stop trying to sound like a human being because what you sound like is a fucking liar.” There’s almost no coming back from that. Then there is really no coming back from what Cory says next, “I spent a long time getting over you. This time’s gonna be a whole lot easier.” And as far as Cory Ellison lines go, that one cuts deep.
• Bradley’s obviously going to have to deal with some fallout with Cory, but she may have even bigger problems to attend to first: When she gets home after their disastrous second date, her handler from the Fed is there, and he has some things he’d like to discuss with her.
• Oh, now the New York Times has picked up the story about Martin Levy plagiarizing his first book. When Alex hears this, she completely ignores it. You know Jeremy Irons will be back and he will be seething!
• Jennifer Aniston gets some meaty dramatic work to do in this series, but I love it when her comedic skills get some airtime. Her facial reactions in that scene when Bradley tells her she slept with Cory are award-worthy. She’s a queen of comedy for a reason, people.
• When Bradley tells Alex she slept with Cory because he feels safe, her response is a confused, “Like an open-elevator-shaft kind of safe?”
• Bro Hartman revealing he has a human heart after all during the Chris Hunter interview is yet more evidence that he and Alex will be hooking up by season’s end. And when she finds him afterward to first yell at him and then begrudgingly tell him that it was a really good interview? Well, that seals the deal right there.
• I will be thinking about this Cory-Bradley exchange for a long time: “I’ve been thinking a lot about Jonathan Groff.” “Yeah, I do that too.”
VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows!
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice