It’s hard to open a newspaper or listen to a podcast—Jewish or mainstream—and not hear about Jewish representation these days. Battles about Jewface,* David Baddiel on every platform talking about Jews Don’t Count (now in paperback!), Whoopi Goldberg on whether or not Jews are considered white…
Still, I’m slightly surprised Apple TV+s The Morning Show, which was just renewed for its third series, escaped the hot Jewish takes, given it’s a splashy production rife with nasty Jewish (Jew-ish?) characters (not played, and I DON’T CARE, by Jewish actors).
The show is studded with stars: Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carrell, Shari Belafonte. They shine. It’s got feminist street cred: the main storyline is about an attempt to topple a powerful empire that is built on misogyny. It’s got lush fantasies and decadent eye candy: floor-through, glass-walled apartments and offices overlooking the city that never sleeps; the mining town girl that’s gone rags-to-riches; a villa on the sapphire waters of Lake Como. But — be warned — it’s also dull, heavy-handed, confused, and too desperate to be ‘timely’ (if the show were a person, my kids would surely call them a ‘tryhard’).
As for the Jewishness, it’s a bit fuzzy. So first, let’s go back: remember Rachel Green? (Come on, we allremember Rachel Green—she was the one on a break from Ross). Aniston in that role was the definitive ambiguous Jew on turn-of-the-21st-century television. On the one hand, she presented as a stereotypical Jewish American Princess from Long Island, who sported a nose-job nose (batmitzah present?) and was engaged to an orthodontist, Barry can-you-get-more-Jewish Farber. On the other, unlike Ross and Monica, the overtly Jewish characters of Friends, Aniston’s Rachel always maintained an is-she-or-isn’t-she-a-member-of-the-tribe status.
Well, Aniston has returned to the on-screen grey space of Jewish representation. Like Rachel, Alex does not explicitly identify as Jewish; is not seen engaging in any Jewish ritual; spouts no Yiddishisms; and has no, for all I could tell, mezuzahs gracing her dreamy New York City apartment’s doorframes. Sure, when she gets a $25M contract with a studio, her agent, Doug, says, ‘Mazel tov’ (apparently Doug is blessed with the most Jewish lines of the series. He also says of Alex, ‘It’s unorthodox to have taken [vacation] so early but it’s kosher’).
But for most of the series, that’s about it — apart from her name. It’s Alex Levy. Yes, Levy. As in one of the twelve tribes of Israel, with special rites and obligations, like Cohanim. And to be clear, it’s not her husband’s surname, which she’s adopted as her own; he’s Professor Craig. ‘Alex Levy’ is almost as Jewish as…say… Hershel Fink, the name of the manipulative Silicon Valley billionaire in the Royal Court’s production of Rare Earth Mettle. And we all know how that went down. And if you don’t: not well! Neither did the Royal Court’s tweeted apology, in which they attributed their name choice to an error, saying ‘the character is not Jewish and there is no reference to being Jewish in the play.’ As David Baddiel put it, ‘Apparently @royalcourt claimed they didn’t realise “Hershel Fink” was a Jewish name. Hmm. Somehow it just sounded so right for a world conquering billionaire.’
Now, similar to Hershel Fink, Alex Levy is not the most likeable of figures. She’s ruthless, self-centred, conveniently and destructively forgetful, and often cruel. Even less likeable is her disgraced morning show co-anchor, Mitch Kessler – whose name also sounds Jewish (and though his wife reads as rather patrician, in one of the more awkward moments of the show, she comes to the studio and rather gratuitously introduces herself by her birth name— 'Paige Jacobs, you know me as Kessler’ — as if to drive home that here too is another, by the way totally unlikeable, Jewish character). Despite being personable, self-deprecating, a sympathetic listener, and a great storyteller, Mitch mostly retains the role of villain. We are all but told to see his positive traits as in the service of evil.
The original narrative arc of the series (before it pivots—how Covid!—to be about Covid) begins with Mitch’s unceremonious departure from The Morning Show after The New York Timespublished a #MeToo exposé on him. Apparently, he had a habit of sleeping with his colleagues, not recognizing the way he was exploiting the power dynamic or the consequences for the women who were junior to him (‘He’s a sexual predator!’ ‘But the relationships were all consensual!’ Cut to Harvey Weinstein, an unambiguous Jew—and rapist—on a television screen in the background. So much for nuance).
The series — which manages to equate sexual predation, reference to a ‘spirit animal,’ the failure to live up to feminist ideals, and any lingering feeling for someone who’s been cancelled—demonstrates a need for cancel culture (it ultimately forces Mitch to repent) and a plea against it, echoing Shakespeare’s Portia, who famously insisted, ‘The quality of mercy is not strained.’
But The Merchant of Venice is most clearly channelled by Alex, who at the series’ close—cancelled, sick with Covid, virtually broken—echoes ‘The Jew’ of the play. Shylock (villain, victim, the Bard’s Jewface?) appeals to his audience with the now famous words: ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jews hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?’
So too does Alex appeal to her audience, speaking to a camera on a streaming service (all very meta—the scene is, of course, being captured by a camera for a streaming service…). ‘Did I bring this scrutiny on myself by being in the public eye?’ she asks the people, who have alternately lionized and cancelled her. ‘Remember I was a kid just like anyone else, I took my first steps like anyone else, had my first love, my first heartbreak…’
And perhaps this is the takeaway message: Jews on television, or in theatre, literature, film, can be good, bad, foolish, religious, brilliant, secular, industrious, slovenly, whatever. They can be working class, middle class, even be manipulative billionaires. In the end of the day, more representation, and more variety of representation, remind the world that while Jews might have their own sets of experiences, culture, and history, like Alex says, most of them are, in most ways, just like anyone else.
