The Morning Show Reveals What Bradley And Cory Have Been Hiding All Season — And It's A Doozy
When you think about it, the big revelation on this week's The Morning Show makes perfect sense. Of COURSE Hal was dumb enough to get so caught up in anti-Biden sentiment that he stormed the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And, because he's Hal, of COURSE he got caught beating up a law-enforcement officer. If there's a bad choice to be made, Hal's your guy!
Wednesday's hour of the Apple TV+ drama is a flashback that answers a lot of questions about what happened between the events of the Season 2 finale and the Season 3 premiere, and Bradley's actions were top of mind when TVLine spoke with executive producer Mimi Leder.
"What she does is, she keeps the secret," Leder said, referring to Bradley's actions, which we'll get into in a moment. "She deletes the video, and Cory is aware of it, so he's an accomplice. She threatens to completely dismantle everything she has built, everything she believes in." Reese Witherspoon's character, Leder adds, "came in as this naive truth-teller, and now she's a serious journalist on the evening news. And she's, as a journalist, hiding the truth — and as a human."
The aim, the EP continues, was to create a storyline "that really very easily melded into real life, the big lie, the state of the truth, what we see everyday on television regarding the truth."
Read on for the highlights of "Love Island."
THE AFTERMATH OF THAT NIGHT | Not long after we establish that we're back in 2020, we finally get an update on what happened after Cory made his ill-timed, long-winded declaration of love to Bradley. Long story short: She friend-zoned him.. to the degree that you can friend-zone YOUR BOSS. Hal is doing better, and Bradley's planning to head out to Montana to be in a COVID bubble (of lurve) with Laura at her home there. He's crushed. "You know none of this has to do with what happened between you and I with Hal," she says. "That was a crazy night, and we were a little bit out of our minds, weren't we?" He picks up on the fact that she is trying mightily to make things normal between them, and he goes along with it. Kinda. "Yeah, right. Right. Were we?" he asks. I was," she says. C'mon dude, read the room! Couple of things: 1) The vibe is uncomfortably awkward. 2) Is a TV set, full of microphones and such, really the best place for this conversation? 3) I wonder: What's the absolute weirdest way Cory could end this interaction? "Hope you see a moose," he says. Yep, there it is.
In Montana, Laura has cameras set up in her home: She and Bradley will anchor the morning broadcast from her living room. They know people will speculate about their relationship, given that they're choosing to live together, but neither seems super bothered by that. What does bother Bradley is when Laura makes some cracks implying that Hal and Bradley's mother are too dumb to understand how dangerous COVID is. "That's my family," Bradley says, not angry but not pleased as she points out that Laura needs to understand that they're a fundamental part of Bradley's life. A chastened Laura apologizes.
By that summer, both women realize that they're very happy with each other. So during a Morning Show broadcast, they come out as an official couple when Bradley calls Laura "babe."
MIA'S LITTLE SOMETHING-SOMETHING | Back in New York, Cory's search for a house in the Hamptons nets him a casual girlfriend (his realtor, Salma) and her high-level connections (she's the one who suggests he introduce himself to Paul Marks, who has a house nearby). At work, Cory and Stella argue about running the Italian woman's documentary on Mitch — he's for it, she's against — but it eventually streams on UBA+.
Also in the Big Apple, we watch as Mia and Andre, aka the combat photographer we met earlier this season, have a sexy, cuddly, happy little time in their pandemic bubble. They seem to be building a real relationship, but things get rough when the Mitch documentary becomes public. She tells Andre for the first time that she and Mitch were together ("I was in love with him. I thought he was in love with me") and they argue about why she's still at the network. He storms out and hits multiple bars to blow off steam; when he comes home drunk, and having potentially exposed himself to COVID, she angrily dons a mask and then packs her bag so she can sleep at work. She's still there, and things are still NOT great between them, days later when he calls to tell her that the Associated Press offered him an assignment in Afghanistan, and he's going.
LAURA AND BRADLEY BREAK UP | The episode spans several months, so it's summer 2020 when Hal calls Bradley in Montana to let her know that their mother succumbed to COVID. In the grief-filled weeks that follow, Bradley (understandably) is a wreck. And when Laura suggests that she talk to a therapist, Bradley uses the opportunity to lash out, accusing Laura of being an elitist snob who hated her mom even though she never met her. "You can't just dump all your stuff on me," Laura yells back. "Your mother was a piece of s–t! You're the first person to tell everyone about it!" OOF. It's not a surprise, then, when Bradley packs her things and heads to Washington, D.C., where she'll report on the election certification just after the new year.
HAL STRIKES AGAIN | That brings us to the main event: What Is Bradley and Cory's Big Secret? The season premiere alerted us to her harrowing experience in the United States Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021; we watch in real time as Bradley gets separated from her crew yet continues filming the insurrection on her phone. At one point, she captures a fight between a Capitol police officer and a masked assailant. When the violent idiot's mask is pulled off, she realizes with horror that it's Hal. Hal is the violent idiot.
At her hotel afterward, she's livid: She has photographic evidence of his committing a felony! He starts crying, saying that his girlfriend — who has no idea where he is or what he's doing — is pregnant. So Bradley makes him surrender his phone, gives him some cash and tells him to take a bus home. "You were never here," she says gravely. Then she deletes footage of Hal from all of her devices and turns in the recording to Stella, who thinks its incredible and is poised to give Bradley whatever she wants. "I want evening news," she says flatly.
It's only a matter of time before the FBI subpoenas Bradley and UBA for the footage, which leads her to confess what she did and why she did it. "This jeopardizes the entire network," Cory says, seething as she tearfully tries to defend herself. "Hal is the only person I have left," she says. And we all know that Cory CANNOT be angry at Bradley for more than two nanoseconds, so he says he'll have the network's lawyers give the FBI any footage that aired, but nothing more. She nearly collapses in relief as she thanks him, but he icily tells her to leave. "And I don't want to hear another f–king word about this, ever," he says in parting.
Was Cory and Bradley's secret what you thought it would be? What did you think of the episode overall? Let us know in the comments!