<i>The Morning Show</i> Season 4, Episode 2 Recap: AI Crash Out

Spoilers below.

And just like that, Bradley is back at UBN. Personally, I’m still reeling from last week’s bonkers episode, but I’m happily signing up for more chaos—we could all use some escapist television right now. Enter “The Revolution Will Be Televised,” a play on the iconic 1971 Black Liberation poem and song by Gil Scott-Heron. (We’ll see how the episode lives up to the title.)

Over at UBN headquarters, everyone seems happy enough for Bradley to be back home at The Morning Show, but she’s a little distracted. Acting more than a little shifty, she thinks her anonymous source might be nearby, her eyes darting from person to person (we later find out her mystery texter isn’t even in the building).

After a quick awkward huddle with her co-host Yanko (Nestor Carbonell), they both join Christina on set. June Diane Raphael makes a little cameo on the control room monitors as the anchor to TMS competitor Eagle News, to which Mia offers, “suck it Eagle.” Hopes are high for Bradley’s return, but she stumbles over her explanation of the January 6 mess, leading to cringe all around. I guess she’s not quite warmed up to the camera yet.

At an ambush in Stella’s office, with Celine and John from legal, Alex is asked if she colluded with the Iranians to arrange the interview and facilitate a defection. What is this, Homeland?! Their evidence is CCTV footage of Alex having a pre-interview conversation with Roya that didn’t happen, according to her. And here we go…after last week’s episode, I suspected TMS would have a lot more to say about AI. Obviously, we saw what really happened between Alex and Roya, so there’s not much ambiguity for the viewer, but Alex is rightfully concerned. Celine says it’s a matter of national security. Hopefully Alex has good lawyers.

To try and wrap her head around the accusations, she analyzes over the footage and second-guesses herself for hours. A few crash-outs later, Cory comes over with sushi and a bottle of sake to cement their new allyship. Cory is trying to tell her about the chaos in his life, but Alex is still so caught up in her AI deepfake she can’t focus on their conversation. So the question is: Who is doing this to Alex? She thinks it could be one of the many laid off UBN employees, coming back for revenge.

The next day, Alex is still spinning out about the AI video with Mia, who tries to reassure her. After being denied an appearance on the news to tell her story, Alex decides to take her destiny in her own hands and pitches herself for Bro’s podcast—only a half episode after she rebuked his endless flirting on an elevator. “I’m embarrassed to share the planet with you, let alone a streaming service,” she said in that scene. She sees the podcast as her golden ticket out of this predicament. Unfortunately, he gives her the idea to look up other deepfakes of herself—“Alex Levy double penetration porn” is the first result. She watches a video involving whips. I know I shouldn’t laugh but how is this the first time she’s discovering this! And again, where is her legal team in all of this?

Meanwhile, Chip is back. He left the corporate grind and got half his soul back, he says. Relatable. He laughs over outdated jokes about Brooklyn with Bradley at dinner. They get down to business to discuss gaiawarrior96, hoping Chip will help break the Wolf River story that got killed. Chip is less than enthusiastic, and he’s right: The tip isn’t that remarkable? And now that he’s a thriving documentarian, why return to UBN for this kind of story? Despite his initial uncertainty, he later finds a piece of evidence: A 2019 meeting about Wolf River at UBA, involving ex-President of UBA Fred Micklen (Tom Irwin) and Bethanne Hines, the former head of news before Cory took over. Fred had instructed Chip to kill the story after the Environmental Protection Agency cleared the chemical company. The plot thickens! Chip’s journalist instincts are tingling like Bradley’s, so he’s in.

“The Revolution Will Be Televised” picks up the pace in the back half of the episode when a street protest upends a few of our characters’ plans. Protesters for climate action (the ones who threw paint on the Mona Lisa, apparently) flood the streets of Manhattan in response to a climate summit. Alex gets stuck in traffic while trying to make it to a restaurant to ambush a member of the Reynolds family, who own 20 percent of UBN, to secure her employment (hey, does that mean Holland Taylor might come back to the show?). She’s accompanied by a young journalist who’s writing a profile on her father.

Eventually giving up on the car ride and making her way into the crowd, Alex and her new journalist friend decide to hop onto Instagram Live to report about the protest in the moment (sure, why not!). Before getting more than a few sentences in, a protester drenches her with black paint just for being part of the media, pictures of which leaked a few months ago during production. She perseveres at the center of the action, hearing protesters out about how the climate summit is a front for big oil and filming police attacking them. She doesn’t end up making it to the podcast recording, tear gas and all, but they at least give her the “Bro-mo Award” of the week for her bravery. How Bradley-coded of her! This character has really come so far since the first season.

Christina, who is overbooked doing Olympic interviews while rushing to get to her daughter’s recital, runs through clogged traffic with a bouquet of sunflowers to try and make it on time (welcome back, Kelly Bensimon!). Unfortunately, she didn’t bring her ID, so she’s denied entry. There’s nobody security could call?! How strict is this school? She’s on the news every morning!

The montage is all beautifully executed at least, hats off again to television directing legend Mimi Leder. Later, an understandably upset Christina vents to Mia about how much she has to balance, and her minimum requirement to be home on time to read to her kid. In a harsh response, Mia doesn’t empathize, saying she has a show to deliver regardless of what’s going on in Christina’s family life. Ouch. Mia has no time for nonsense this week, she’s trying to run a show, okay?

In the weaker storyline of the episode, Cory begs Stella for movie funding. His pitch is impassioned as always: “The audience wants to be numbed from the hellscape that is America 2024.” Stella puts up a strong front, saying everything is fine at UBN—prompting Cory to leverage his relationship with Alex to poke holes. There goes the confidentiality of that relationship! Stella doesn’t take this kindly, and it’s like watching her kick a horse when it’s down: She tells him he’s played out, and everyone knows it.

Over a post-coitus cigarette, Miles offers to get Cory off Stella’s back, saying he knows where the bodies are. I’m surprised Stella—who seems perfectly capable of handling things herself—allows it. Miles ends up inviting Cory to, I don’t know, threaten him I guess? But he didn’t clean up his art studio/apartment beforehand and his slutty cigarettes are still out. Cory clocks Stella’s lighter, and quickly puts together that she’s sleeping with Miles. Cory now has the ammunition he needs: He leverages his knowledge of the affair with Stella to ask for an overall deal at UBN. It was just the golden ticket Cory needed. “He is risen,” he says. A little soapy, but sure.

Otherwise, we do get a few juicy reveals to punctuate this episode: The Iranians were behind Alex’s deepfake, to her relief. Bradley recognizes the logo on the shirt of one of the protesters Alex interviews, matching a video from gaiawarrior96. Chip thinks the anonymous source might be Claire Conway (Bel Powley) due to the text’s English spelling, Bradley’s ex-assistant who served coffee at the meeting in 2019. The motivation here is that Claire may still hold antagonistic feelings for UBA after the death of talent booker Hannah Shoenfeld (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and her earlier lawsuit. This feels like a possible red herring, or at least the beginning of a broader conspiracy, but I would be delighted to see Powley back on this show again. She didn’t make it to their scheduled meeting, so our investigative duo suspect she may have been arrested at the protest. Looks like we’ll be taking a trip to jail next week.