It should be noted that I started this review for The Morning Show, Season 2 Episode 7, “La Amara Vita”, in the middle of the episode, whereas I’d usually start at the end. This is because I do not care about this episode.
I wish the episode was fewer than 51 minutes. I wish the episode didn’t exist, to begin with.
It’s genuinely stupid to have us expect Alex to need some kind of reassurance, some kind of rekindling, or comforting from Mitch when she was the one who chose to fully expose him last season.
To make it seem like she needs closure is ridiculous. We spent almost all of the first season allowing Alex to digest and accept this information.
Now, she misses him? Now, she just has to go see him? Dance to dated music and curl up with him on a hardwood floor?
It’s covered up by her needing a statement from him saying they didn’t sleep together. Sure, Alex, why not make it obvious you contacted him by asking for a statement.
But more is revealed as the episode churns on, as we go through scene after scene of Mitch feeling bad for himself, of Mitch trying to be the nice guy, of Mitch, Mitch, Mitch.
I tried to fast forward so many times only to realize the entire episode is set in Italy.
The obsession the writers have this season with giving Mitch a redemption arc, making him seem human and like just a man who was hurt, is overdone. I’m sick of it, and I know other people are too.
He’s not a bad person and he feels so bad and, well, he doesn’t think he disproportionately targeted Black women in his harassment, so did he really?
The audience is forced to hear Alex utter the sentence “this is what being canceled looks like?” and this question is what seals the deal on a second season that will not achieve nearly as much success as the first season.
Coming into the episode, you’re expecting big things with Mimi Leder directing. Except all we get, aside from picturesque shots of an Italian villa, is a sad man trying to get someone he slept with to forgive him for sexual harassment.
Even the reveal of Alex thinking she was pregnant after she slept with Mitch wasn’t interesting, because it’s wrapped in the blind spot Alex still has for him, and it makes caring for her at that moment nearly impossible.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe I’m part of the “woke mob” who wants to cancel Mitch Kessler. But isn’t that what the first season was all about?
Bringing down the men who reap from the systematic damage they cause?
The Morning Show spent all of season one exploring Bradley and Alex’s relationship, easing them into each other, making them more comfortable around each other.
In season two, Alex and Bradley have interacted approximately three times.
The show has lost the point of why they began, and it’s getting harder and harder to root for the show itself.
What is the point of “La Amara Vita”? Show that Mitch isn’t a bad guy? That he wants to learn? He sure yells that at Alex.
Here’s the thing that people, especially Black women have been trying to say for the last, I don’t know, century?
It is not a woman’s job to teach a man how to not sexually harass them. It is not a Black woman’s job to teach a man how to not commit misogynoir.
If Mitch wanted to learn, to grow, to be better, he wouldn’t have run off to Italy to escape what he’s done. He’d have faced it, learned from it then and there, and actively tried to better himself.
Instead, all he’s done is mope around until he found a woman who felt bad for him, tell her things I have almost no doubt she’ll expose, and try to make himself seem like the victim.
And now, he will be.
Mitch imagines Alex in the last moments before his crash despite having an ex-wife and two children, because how would we fully redeem him if he didn’t truly love one of our characters?
What did you think of “La Amara Vita”? What are your thoughts on Mitch wanting to learn to be better? Did Alex make a mistake in going to see Mitch? Let me know in the comments below!
