The Morning Show embraces drama the Cory way: with full force, no shame, no restraint. “The Parent Trap” is one of those episodes where noise gives way to silence, and the focus shifts to what truly drives these seemingly unshakable people — family, or what’s left of it.

Cory may not be the “hero” of the story, but it’s impossible not to feel for him. He’s lost his job, been humiliated, betrayed, discarded, chewed up by Hollywood, used by Bradley (his passion and obsession), and now he’s lost the only woman who ever truly knew him: his mother.

There are no headline-chasing plots this week, and very few corporate games — just people confronting the worst parts of what they inherited. Jennifer Aniston and Billy Crudup dominate the episode, and you can feel the weight both characters carry on their shoulders. Awards are practically written into their future.

Alex Levy and the father who never loved her

Everything begins with the aftermath of Claire Conway’s arrest, turned over to the FBI by Bradley, easily the most difficult and hypocritical character to like. To avoid being arrested herself, Bradley gives up her source to the government. For Alex, it’s more than a fireable offense — it’s a moral one.

Their confrontation is brutal. Bradley insists the story matters more than the network Alex is trying to save and, right after the scandal, asks for permission to travel to Belarus to interview the whistleblower Claire had been protecting. Alex’s firm “no” comes as much from outrage as exhaustion — her personal life is already unraveling.

Before she can catch her breath, another scandal hits. Her father, Martin, is arrested drunk for urinating on a statue of Paul Revere. The humiliation spreads online just as Alex is about to seal an exclusive interview with President Biden.

She tries to contain the damage, brings him home, but he disappears. Hours later, she sees him live on Bro Hartman’s podcast — the ex she wants to forget — ranting about “cancel culture” and turning his own daughter into a public target. Even after Alex storms the studio to stop him, the fallout is immediate: the White House cancels the interview, and Alex loses everything she had spent weeks negotiating.

The confrontation that follows is the kind The Morning Show does best. Martin, arrogant and oblivious, unloads decades of resentment, accusing his daughter of causing his wife’s departure. In one of the most painful moments of the season, he admits he never wanted to be a father, saying he was “stuck with a child I never wanted in the first place.” Alex breaks, sobbing:

“Do you know how badly I wanted to be someone you could love?”

Jennifer Aniston is extraordinary, and Jeremy Irons, as Martin, matches her perfectly. Alex collapses — not over a scandal, but over the truth. Her success, perfectionism, and control have always been attempts to earn a love that never existed. And when her father leaves, the silence he leaves behind sounds like a lifetime of trying to be “good enough.”

Cory Ellison and the love that hurts too

While Alex faces rejection, Cory endures an even greater loss. His mother, Martha (played with monumental delicacy by Lindsay Duncan), calls to tell him she won’t go through with assisted suicide in Switzerland. Before he can feel relief, she adds:

“I got the pill. I’ve arranged everything. I’m going to die today. I love you.”

Cory rushes to her house, desperate, trying to bargain with death. It’s the only time we’ve ever seen the charming, calculating executive utterly powerless. He pleads, promises trips, tries to change the outcome — but there’s no move left to play.

Sitting beside him, she calms him:

“From the moment I had you, that love went straight to my bones. You were, you are, the best thing I ever did.”

She asks to see the wig he picked for the movie he’s producing. He steps out to get it, and in that brief moment, she takes the pill. When he returns, he’s mid-speech about the script before realizing she’s gone. Silence swallows the scene.

Billy Crudup told Decider he had to fight the impulse to let everything go:

“It was harder to hold it back than to reach it. Cory has never had a cathartic moment, and suddenly, it was all there, stored up.”

The image of Cory sitting beside his mother’s body, falling asleep with his head on her shoulder, is quietly devastating — no music, no theatrics, just truth.

Soon after, Cory tries to outrun himself. He plunges into a cocaine-fueled night with Celine Dumont, rambling about the Columbia House CD club — as if clinging to a time when parents were still immortal. Vulnerable Cory is rare, and this fragile connection with Celine may still grow. But something tells me we’ll soon see an even more ruthless version of him — if that’s even possible.

Families and their mirrors

Celine, Alex, and Cory are all trapped in different prisons.
Celine tries to free herself from her family while keeping the Dumont empire intact. Alex learns her father’s love was an illusion. Cory realizes his mother’s love was so powerful it consumed him.

Celine’s brother arrives from Paris to reprimand her and deliver their father’s message: she must leave Miles and come home immediately. But Celine is too close to getting everything she wants — control of UBN as both CEO and board chair — to back down now.

In a Succession-style moment spoken in French, the heirs fight for their thrones. Celine uses Bro Hartman as a visual aid: she asks him to praise France’s efforts to clean the Seine before the Olympics — a failed project her brother happens to lead. “If Bro tells his hundreds of millions of followers that the water is clean, then the water is clean.”

Three stories about how emotional inheritance shapes who we are, and how even the most powerful adults remain wounded children.

“You can be fifty, and your parents can still screw you up.”

That line, so simple and cruel, is the essence of this episode — and perhaps of the entire season.

Bradley, gone… for now

After all that, Alex reconsiders what she said to Bradley and decides to authorize her trip to Belarus. But when she tries to reach her, there’s no answer. Concerned, she goes to Bradley’s apartment and finds Chip, equally alarmed. He tells her Bradley left alone, and they lost contact right after she crossed the border.

“You know what they do to journalists there,” he says.

Neither Alex nor Cory is catching a break this season.
Next week we’ll learn how Bradley survived — because of course she will — and she’ll surely come back with another explosive story.

The question is: who will be left to pick up the pieces?