1x05 No One's Gonna Harm You, Not While I'm Around

Fives episodes in and I can see why the show took a critical bashing from its first three episodes. The writing feels very shouting-to-the-cheap-seats, often to the point of forced speechifying, which is grating early on without the later twisty fun melodrama of the new Morning Show status quo to counter it. So far Aniston emerges fully unscathed, Witherspoon is uneven but still fun, but Carell is deadly. The cheap seats writing combined with his bellowing delivery make his scenes sometimes actively painful, and I'll not be surprised if anyone gets a concentrated dose of it in the first episode then bails. Episode 4 is the best so far (out of 5) because apart from that great interview scene at the end, he's not in it. Returns with a vengeance in Episode 5 though, because his "You're going down, motherfuckaaaa" at the end is so embarrassing.

Aniston is great, but my MVP so far might actually be Billy Crudup, who's doing something magic with his role. He barely has any heavy, emotional acting moment yet but still exudes dangerous charisma out in waves, a far cry from his (also stellar) warm supporting turn in Where'd You Go, Bernadette the same year. He actually almost makes "And Woke Twitter will never forgive us" work, bless him.