‘The Morning Show’ Season 2 Finale: Jennifer Aniston Catches COVID!

It finally happened. After teasing the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in its Season 2 premiere, The Morning Show‘s characters collided head first with the Coronavirus. Stella Bok (Greta Lee) sported a mask in the office and Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) erected a plexiglass wall around his desk. Daniel Henderson (Desean Terry) quit his job to drive cross country to be with his elderly relative. And Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) stupidly busted into a COVID ward in search of her brother. But no one was as affected as “she who went to Italy during its initial COVID spike,” Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston). The Morning Show Season 2 finale “Fever” gave Jennifer Aniston a rough case of COVID-19 as well as a hero moment? It was a fittingly insane ending for one of the most delirious dramas streaming on Apple TV+…
Apple TV+’s The Morning Show prides itself on tackling the hot topics of the day before they grow stale. That means the first season took on the fallout of #MeToo in the news room as it was still happening and Season 2 was shot literally during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Morning Show Season 2 might have premiered in mid-2021, but its opening sequence of an all-too-empty Manhattan in March 2020 signaled to the audience that we were about to watch characters like Bradley Jackson and Alex Levy fret over personal issues while the biggest news story in decades loomed in the near future. We’ve seen Daniel report from Wuhan and Alex travel to locked down Italy, but this was the episode when a main character finally got COVID. And what do you know? It was the person who totally ignored the dangers of traveling to a global pandemic epicenter!
So yeah, Alex gets COVID. But what totally wild — and totally in line with The Morning Show‘s ethos — is that she’s not shot convalescing peacefully in bed. No, we watch Jennifer Aniston live out the horror of COVID-19. The chills, the sweats, the difficulty breathing, the isolation, the delirium, and the steam showers. Not only that, but Alex’s long-time producer and bestie Chip Black (Mark Duplass) convinces her to livestream her experience with COVID for UBA’s new streaming service.

However that’s not the craziest part of this whole situation! Chip gains entry into Alex’s penthouse apartment by reassuring her that he also tested positive for COVID-19. He just doesn’t have symptoms yet. Later, though, we learn that Chip’s COVID test came back negative. He straight up lied about having COVID to make a livestream come together!!! And he put his life in jeopardy by willingly going into a lion’s den of virus! What the heck was Chip thinking?

“I think that Chip will do anything for Alex, if we’ve seen that pattern in Season 1, I think you can see that those are the tracks that lead him to a lot of the decisions he makes in Season 2,” Mark Duplass told Decider during an interview before The Morning Show Season 2 premiere. “I think what’s so great about Chip and Alex is that as horrific as they are to each other, and they do and say some really terrible things to each other in season two, ultimately there is a deep love there, Chip in particular is fun to watch because he doesn’t know how to love. He’s only been a creative producer for the show the last 20 years; that’s all he does. So he doesn’t know how to be intimate. He doesn’t know how to express himself. Usually that love comes in the form of self sacrifice. That’s how expresses his love, and he hasn’t figured out how to be a whole person on his two feet in a relationship yet because he’s never been asked to do that.”

Alex’s COVID-centric livestream humanized the character at a time when her persona was being accosted at all angles. The special let her shine a light on a breaking news issue while showing off her acumen as a TV journalist. In short, it was a redemption for the Jennifer Aniston character.
So yeah, The Morning Show once again redeemed one of its most morally ambiguous characters. This time by giving her COVID. Stay crazy, Morning Show. Stay crazy.

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