The Affair

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The Adventure Starts Here!
Agreed on all fronts. I have no idea why I am compelled to keep watching this show, but I am. It's gotta be the acting and the casting. Tierney is marvelous to watch. Such a complex character. I like that they are still using the dual-perspectives stuff, although a little less so than initially in the first season.



Just finished ep 4 which took a minute to get going but there were rewards for my patience. Louisa is a manipulative bitch and I wish Cole would find the mason jar where she's keeping his balls...cannot believe she actually made him leave his own home because she feels insecure. And typically with shows like this, a seemingly fantastic character is introduced and then yanked away with the rest of his backstory...so Ben is 7 months sober, married, and lying to Allison about it...this initially got me kind of pissed off but then I remembered the name of the show I'm watching.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Ha! Exactly. Frankly, I was relieved it's only that Ben's married and not that he killed her while they were on that boat. She's a fool for having gotten onto a boat with a guy she hardly knows. That's how you end up on the evening news.

Alison cannot catch a break with men. Period.

As for Cole... WTF? Seriously? Frankly, that "plot twist" of him visiting his mom and her conveniently mentioning Cole's dad going on a walkabout was pulled out of think air in order for Cole to have this next thing to go do. That walkabout thing should have been mentioned, like, a season or more ago for it NOT to feel like a deus ex machina for Cole here. Sure, it'll be interesting, but it feels completely shoehorned into the plot to me.

So, I wonder why Alison is now missing (beginning of episode). They didn't get around to coming back to that this week, did they? And I suppose Cole's not on his walkabout if he's searching for Alison with Noah and Anton.



Just finished ep 5...it's bad enough they're killing Dr. Vik do they have to make him a douchebag too? The Cole part was weird but it confirmed something I said last season...no matter what happens with these people, Helen has never stopped loving Noah and Cole has never stopped loving Allison. Amy Irving was superb.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Eh, I mostly thought his parents were the douchebags. He's just making the mistake of kowtowing to them. The car and the girl next door? That was inevitable, I think, for a guy in his position and with his history. I guess we'll find out if it's just a blip on the radar, though.



Yeah, his mother is definitely a bitch. Anyway episode 6 was a mixed bag...am I the only one who am feeling no chemistry between Dominic West and Sanaa Lathan? I liked the way Allison found out Ben was married, that was really well done and that final scene with Helen was brilliant.



The Adventure Starts Here!
I'm a little surprised that Helen was so kind to Alison. I don't find that very realistic -- and that Noah would have brought her there. Was there nowhere else? Not his place because of... the principal? Anyway, aside from the fact that those circumstances were ridiculous, it was a well done scene, yes.

Still wondering how/when we're going to find out why Alison is missing.



The Adventure Starts Here!
How many episodes are left in the season? I'm guessing they're going to steer back around to that and perhaps end the season with some sort of half-cliff-hanger about it. My guess, anyway...



Ep 7 was definitely a mixed bag...Helen's story was very odd and I just didn't buy her actually having sex with the flower child. Noah's half was a big improvement, though I'm not feeling any chemistry between Dominic West and Sanaa Lathan. I do like the actor playing Anton.



The Adventure Starts Here!
And we are starting to get a glimpse of the Alison-is-missing story. As for Helen and flower-child... well, they'd been smoking something, and I think she was feeling particularly powerful and in charge when all these hip, cool young women suddenly felt she had wisdom to share (which I'm sure she did NOT expect when she first got there). I saw all of her actions -- going to the moon circle and borrowing Vic's car to do it -- as a reaction to his disease AND his calling her to say he was working late. She just kinda had a "Screw everything!" moment/evening, which I bet it fairly common when dealing with something as serious as a stage 4 cancer. It was her way of lashing out at something over which she has no control... by taking control where she could find it.

My two cents.

As for Noah's half, I'm getting really tired of the dynamic of him being seen as butting into Anton's family. Showing us that once was okay and probably fairly accurate/common, but it's been twice now and I have a feeling it'll happen a third time and will come to a head in some way that will lay down the gauntlet.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Oh dear. Are you behind, Gideon58? Radio silence from over there.

Last night's episode was … revealing.

WARNING: spoilers below
But now it has me thinking: All these seasons of this show, and all those half-hour segments with a character's name in front, as if it's from their perspective... Because of how *different* the two half hours were last night, and how revealing, I'm now wondering if every episode was like this. In other words, in previous episodes, was the first half that character's perspective, and the second half the "truth"? Because clearly last night's first half was Ben's version of events/Ben's "story," if you will. But that second half showed us the truth, based on what we already knew from the previous episode.


Perhaps this has always been the gist of the two halves, and the differences have just been far more subtle before now. What do you think?



The Adventure Starts Here!
Sooo… is next week's episode a season finale or a series finale? Doesn't it seem as if the whole show should be ending now? And yet, I think Showtime is just listing it as a season finale.

I can't envision how another season after this one wouldn't be a stretch. What with the things that have happened in the past two episodes, anyway. Feels like the whole show is tying up loose ends...

Thoughts?



The Adventure Starts Here!
Yes, this was the season finale. There is one more season left. And Alison was killed off because the actress wanted out:

"There has been press on why Wilson is leaving the show with one season left. Treem said Wilson wanted to leave and they found a way to accommodate her. Wilson has been more circumspect. They wouldn’t let go of such a talented actress for any other reason, but there is some rationale to Showtime’s assertion there was no place left to go with Alison."

From this poorly proofread article: https://deadline.com/2018/08/the-aff...ey-1202448249/



Just finished watching the somewhat confusing but still effective season 5 premiere...this episode required complete attention because not only was there a time jump of at least a couple of years between last season and this one, but the producers decide to go all Tarantino on us and tell us what happened in that time out of sequence. The whole meeting between Noah and the director who wants to turn his book into a movie was very strange. The videotape of Dr. Vik at his wake I didn't see coming at all, though I was a little disappointed that the writers didn't think it was important for us to hear what he had to say to Helen. The interracial couple in the middle of the episode totally threw me, but I think, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, was supposed to be Cole and Allison's daughter, Joanie, all grown up (beautifully played by Oscar winner Anna Pacquin), but why the writers felt it was necessary to add another huge leap in time to the story was a total mystery to me. And a big bouquet to the amazing Maura Tierney, whose didn't make a false move as Helen dealt with Dr. Vik's death and the birth of his child. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if she tries to get custody of that child.