'The Morning Show' Episode 4: Could Mitch Kessler's accusers be 'pushing someone else's agenda'?
This article contains spoilers for episode 4: 'That Woman'.
In the fourth episode of 'The Morning Show', Reese Witherspoon's Bradley Jackson takes the show within the show by storm as her candid banter puts her at the center of a massive controversy on Twitter and also lands her in the bad books of most of her bosses. While at it, Bradley also makes one of the most offbeat observations about the man she replaced on the show—Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell): Are the allegations against Mitch really just about pushing a single individual's agenda?
Mitch was fired after a former employee at the network, Ashley Brown, came forward with accusations of sexual misconduct against him.
After Bradley is hired by the network to take Mitch's spot on the eponymous show, she is handed a segment where she'll be interviewing Ashley about her claims.
While preparing for the segment with Mia—the woman who has been guiding her so far at her new job—Bradley remarks how Ashley's claims are solely aimed against Mitch, and blatantly steer away from holding the network accountable in any form, almost as if "she was pushing someone's agenda."
Mia jumps in right away to steer Bradley away from any digression, pointing out how Ashley's truth would help countless other women who have been silenced by men in power, in retrospect.
But even though Mia is able to convince Bradley that Ashley's claims are not an expression of someone else's agenda, it is interesting how, during the network's internal investigation of the case, Mia turns out to be one of the employees who had had an intimate relationship with Mitch in the past.
In Mia's testimony to the investigator, she reveals that Mitch and she were having an affair that ended a long time ago.
Mia talks about how great it felt to have Mitch's attention at a time when she felt lonely most of the time. The affair made her feel good and helped her in certain ways until his marital problems were all Mitch could talk about.
When asked about why she filed the complaint to the HR to get Mitch fired, Mia admits it was because she couldn't take Mitch commentating on the #MeToo movement on live television any longer—perhaps implying that Mitch's advances towards her and several other female employees weren't entire consensual, and probably somewhat coercive.
Mia also reveals that she and Mitch had stopped sleeping with each other long before the election, and it sounds like Mitch had moved on to some other woman in the workplace.
Mia's testimony shows that it was her resentment towards Mitch that propelled her towards getting him fired. And it makes it more believable that Ashley was actually pushing someone else's agenda.
Ashley also eventually goes on to reveal in her interview that she and Mitch did have sexual encounters that took place in his dressing room—thereby tying the workplace into her allegations.
All of this happened because Bradley went off script and asked Ashley to tell her whole truth. This enraged Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) enough to make her directly ask Bradley what the hell she was thinking.
Bradley retorts by asking Alex just as fiercely if she knew what was going on in Mitch's dressing room. Alex eventually ends up looking like a part of the whole fire-Mitch-without-shaming-the-company agenda.
'The Morning Show' airs on Fridays only on Apple TV.