The Morning Show: Season 4, Episode 3, Mia's Moment

Is anyone watching season four of The Morning Show? I hope it doesn’t get buried in the fourth season, “I don’t need to bother with this series anymore, it’s going on too long.”

Spoiler alerts if you haven’t seen the third episode.

It’s easy not to notice Mia. She’s got a profound role, and has through all the seasons, but she’s never standing at the front of the line. Why, you ask? Because she’s trying so hard to get to the ceiling, and because she has nothing else in her life other than work, so she is wherever things are happening. She’s the face where we see the pain and the hope and the fear.

Remember when everybody was scapegoating her because of Mitch? And truth, just because she was a strong, smart woman, doesn’t mean she wasn’t also abused by Mitch Kessler. But instead, she was the scapegoat until her meltdown when she told everybody to take a hike, which is probably the only time we have seen her truly choose herself over everyone else since the series started.

Well today, the lesson for women showed up when Mia got screwed by everyone who she thought was her inner circle. Alex. Stella. Bradley.

Alex couldn’t set aside her own enormous feelings to show up at the board meeting to make sure Mia got head of news, which is certainly a job she has earned and deserved. Alex?

And, Bradley is on the scent of a bone and she can’t be bothered to do her work, let alone support Mia on the most important judgment day.

And her friend? Or, who she thought was her friend Stella? Stella is giving into blackmail and not only making Mia her sacrificial lamb, but in addition to that, when Mia says exactly what has happened to her by her friend and they clearly they’re not friends, Stella doubles down and tells her she wasn’t the right person for the job.

Karen Pittman, who plays Mia, and has never been nominated for an Emmy for the role though she deserves one, said: “Mia and Stella know that this is just another excuse for not letting a woman of color up to the top spot, and Stella is going to be the one to block her. I think that that is the most painful realization coming out of it, is that Stella has fallen into the place where a lot of women fall into. Once they get to the top spot, they start trying to align themselves with the patriarchy in some way, and they have become prey to fear and worry and all of the traps that women fall into when they get to a certain spot. I think it’s about integrity. I think it’s about standing your ground. I think that Mia sees that Stella is unable to hold her ground. She can’t do it…I think that this was the path that they made back when Paul Marks was taking over the company, and said, ‘Stella, I want you to be the CEO.’ This is the pact they made. She says, ‘I’m going to make you head of news,’ and two years later, we get to this episode, and Mia is more than capable, more than ready to do it, and who is standing in the way but Stella. There is no good reason in this case.”

One of the reasons The Morning Show is so very profound for marking the way women are handled in business is because there are so many powerful, strong, independent women involved in it. Reese Witherspoon knows the story. She speaks of it often. Jennifer Aniston? I’m not sure she has stood up to power, or I haven’t seen it, but I’ve seen her so many times nodding yes emphatically to other women’s articulation of what it’s like to try to climb the ladder of power to have a voice in what they call their career.

I have Five Simple Lessons from this plot line.

• Mia gave endlessly without reciprocity.

• She focused so hard on the goal she missed the nuances.

• She waited instead of walking.

• She lacked an external ally.

• She underestimated her own worth.

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I think the season might be as good as season one, which I thought was one of the best series launches for women on the screen in history. This season also gives us context both politically and culturally for us to take a step outside of our own country’s demise to see it a bit more clearly. To understand power. To understand greed. To understand what happens in the billionaire stratosphere when perspective is lost and catastrophic damage can be done without anyone realizing it.

It’s hard to go back to season one if you haven’t started there. I think it’s worth it. With the exception of season two, I think this series could be an entire class in women in business at a time when the business environment is moving at the speed of lightning toward territory never uncovered before.

I can’t wait to see where it’s going next.