Apple TV+‘s flagship drama The Morning Show returns today for its third season with more swagger and more star power than ever before. The first two episodes of The Morning Show Season 3 feature a space ship launch, a company-wide cyber attack, and the introduction of a slippery tech billionaire played by Jon Hamm. To say that Jon Hamm easily fits in alongside The Morning Show‘s Jennifer Aniston and Billy Crudup is an understatement. As Paul Marks, Jon Hamm weaponizes his trademark blend of charm and swarm to disarm Aniston’s tetchy Alex Levy and to wage war with Crudup’s scheming Corey Ellison. Hamm has stolen the show in many a film and TV show since his run on Mad Men, but The Morning Show is his first project to remind you why Don Draper was such a compelling anti-hero in the first place. Jon Hamm has a unique talent for making moral ambiguity look good.
The Morning Show is a flashy soap opera about the scandals plaguing fictional network UBA’s own morning news show, cleverly named “The Morning Show.” Because the show is loosely inspired by Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV, Brian Stelter’s exposé of the real life drama at Good Morning America, The Today Show, and CBS This Morning, The Morning Show has made it its mission to dramatize the real life news stories upending the morning news industry. Case in point: The Morning Show Season 1 confronted the Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose sex abuse scandals by revealing that Steve Carell’s avuncular host Mitch Kessler was a rapist. Season 2 ends with Alex Levy buoying the fledging streaming service UBA+ by livestreaming her battle with COVID-19. So what modern morass is The Morning Show Season 3 wading into? Cocky tech billionaires buying legacy media companies for kicks.
Enter Jon Hamm’s Paul Marks. We learn in the first episode of The Morning Show Season 3, “The Kármán Line” that Corey Ellison has been attempting to broker a deal for Marks to buy UVA. To sweeten the pot, Corey has arranged to broadcast the first manned trip of Marks’ new space shuttle live on The Morning Show. Alex Levy, who we learn is now super popular thanks to her brush with COVID, will be along for the ride. It’s a publicity push to simultaneously engender public trust in Marks’ gamble on space travel and to boost UVA’s ratings.
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What makes Paul Marks interesting is that instead of being an obvious caricature of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, he’s a Jon Hamm character. He’s simultaneously seductively confident and dangerously aloof. He goes from negging Alex Levy behind her back to smoothly flirting with her to her face. His mind is constantly on his money, not mundane matters like life or death. When Corey calls him about UBA’s cyberattack, he blandly reduces the crisis to a simple haggling exercise. He constantly rolls into scenes with the coolest right hand man ever, Tig Notaro. Finally, you get the sense from the way Greta Lee’s Stella Bak goes out of her way to warn Corey about him that he’s not an average CEO. He’s not going to fold as easily as the countless suits Corey’s conquered before. (He might even out crazy the crazy Corey!)
All of this is to say that while it would be easy to consider Paul Marks a villain on paper, he’s far more than that on screen. Jon Hamm imbues him with an electric spark that makes him pop like a glowing neon sign in every scene. The way he manages the nerves and vanity of Alex or breaks down Corey’s chess moves into nervous bluster is incredible to watch. Hamm is able to not only keep up with The Morning Show‘s two most lauded performers, but pull new shades out their respective performances.
Jon Hamm truly hasn’t been this fun to watch on screen since the glory days of Mad Men and it’s because, once more, he’s imbuing a morally grey character with a colorful spectrum of emotional nuance. After only two episodes, I, for one, am rooting for Paul and Alex to embark on a romance as much as I’m hoping Paul and Corey destroy each other. Jon Hamm is a spectacular addition to The Morning Show Season 3 and the Apple TV+ show is giving the actor his best material in ages.
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