How Consent is Explored in Sexual Assault Flashback in 'The Morning Show'

In Lonely at the Top (which released on Apple TV+ Friday), The Morning Show flashed back to Mitch's 50th birthday a milestone that he celebrated with his staff to extravagant proportions pre the #MeToo movement. In the jump to the past, many no-longer-accepted behaviors now standout:

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Hindustan Times

The Morning Show starring Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carell and Reese Witherspoon recently saw its final chunk of episodes coming in which also meant the revelation of the whole sexual assault saga that Carrell's character of Mitch was accused of since the first episode. 

In "Lonely at the Top" (which released on Apple TV+ Friday), The Morning Show flashed back to Mitch's 50th birthday — a milestone that he celebrated with his staff to extravagant proportions pre the #MeToo movement. In the jump to the past, many no-longer-accepted behaviors now standout: Mitch had just ended an affair with his producer Mia (Karen Pittman); he showers the newsroom with sexual innuendo aimed at female coworkers; and an over-the-top surprise celebration sees Martin Short's character (who, in the future is an accused rapist) leading a song-and-dance number with a troupe of scantily clad female dancers for Mitch and the entire staff's amusement. And yet almost no one bats an eye at any of it.

"This was an instinct to want to show what Mitch's life was like at its peak of success when he was head of the fraternity called The Morning Show," showrunner Kerry Ehrin tells The Hollywood Reporter of the flashback episode for The Morning Show, which is also the name of the fictional news show within the show. "Everyone really looked up to him. It was patriarchy and he was like the Alpha man. The episode also shows the fun side for Mitch and how other people were joining in on it and accepting it — that’s the way that it was."

The dance number in particular, Ehrin says, "is to show how really carelessly we throw sex around." Viewers, now aware of everything that has transpired since Mitch's 50th, will feel the dark underbelly of the performance, which was slowed down to focus on Mitch's reaction to the office celebration. "Sex has often been part of parties and celebrations, where this titillating sexuality is considered a fun thing."

The end of the episode makes clear that Mitch and Hannah have differing views on the night. Mitch returns to the newsroom just as the real story of Harvey Weinstein is breaking, precipitating the start of the #MeToo era. Upon hearing that the Hollywood mogul has been accused of sexual misconduct, Mitch comments, "Wow, what a creep." Aniston's character, co-host Alex Levy, agrees, "What a pig."

Mitch's ignorance when reacting to the Weinstein story drives home a point that Ehrin has been making since The Morning Show premiered. In a bid to not alienate the male audience from identifying with Mitch, she did not want to reveal him as a "monster" from the get-go. "I wanted men to watch the show and recognize themselves. And if you see a guy who is just a monster you’re like, 'Oh, I’m not that guy,'" she had said after the three-episode premiere. Now, about the Weinstein scene, she says, "Steve played his character so brilliantly because he really does capture all the layers of compartmentalization that Mitch is capable of that is kind of borderline sociopath."

"This episode, to me, is about showing that someone like Mitch can call his actions inadvertent or say they were consensual, but there’s also a part of him that is choosing to not actually see the person he’s with, because it’s not convenient to what he wants," says Ehrin of the power Mitch held at the time over someone like Hannah. "Does he really think she’s totally OK right now and she’s just crying? Or is he just moving quickly past that and telling himself, 'Oh, this is why she’s here.'"

She adds, "And it really was to look at the behavior of men. And to break that down and to show that there is a complex human being that you’re dealing with because, for most of time, I don’t think that most men viewed sexual conquests that way."

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