“The Morning Show” begins with a wake-up call. Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell), the Matt Lauer-ish co-host of a “Today” show-ish program, answers the phone at 3 a.m. to learn that he has been fired over allegations of sexual misconduct. When his co-host, Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston), reports to a chaotic pre-dawn set, her producer, Chip (Mark Duplass), says something sycophantic about how much America needs her, and she snaps. “Don’t drag America into this,” she says. “This affects me.”

Mitch’s disgraceful exit has bumped Alex into reputational limbo. For 15 years, they had awakened the nation with their special blend of not-quiiiiiite-sexual chemistry, and then, she tells Chip, “My on-air partner, my TV husband, is a sexual predator now?” Her implied question is: What does that make me? Two mysteries hang over the rest of the season: What exactly did Mitch do? And what did Alex know?

Sexual harassment has long been a part of the anchorwoman’s pop-culture origin story. Occasionally we even see it play out on television, as we did last month, when a race runner assaulted a local television reporter on the air, and she glared after him for less than a second before resuming her coverage. Mostly we see it in movies, romanticized in “Up Close and Personal” and skewered in “Anchorman,” both loosely inspired by the pioneering TV presenter Jessica Savitch. As our anchorwoman navigates the newsroom, she must brush off innuendo and swat away gropes in order to prove that she can cut it in an anchorman’s world. When she makes it to prime time, we know the credits are about to roll.

But lately we’ve caught a second look at this figure. “The Morning Show” (which is loosely inspired by Lauer’s fall at NBC) and the film “Bombshell” (which re-enacts Roger Ailes’s ouster from Fox News) train an eye on the veteran newswoman who has already fought her battles and secured her time slot. The dynamics of her workplace have not been totally reversed, but they have been scrambled. What does she do with her power? How does she maintain her position? What harassment does she endure, witness, abide?