The Affair

Episode six was fun, sexy, and provided several surprises, including the return of a few characters who I thought were out of the picture. I'm loving the way Helen's guilt is beginning to eat away at her entire life, it's really starting to consume her and it looks like someone's on to her already...the scene with Helen and her sister-in-law (Jennifer Esposito) was brilliant. It was nice to get some backstory on Noah, even if it wasn't the backstory I was looking for and I have to confess the final moment of the show totally confused me. It was nice to see Noah and his son reconnect too...this show continues to fascinate and Maura Tierney is just glorious as Helen.

Gideon, I happened to catch the credits and cast at the end of that episode. There was a listing for "Young Noah," and I am pretty sure that we got a glimpse of young Noah in the pond/lake. Whether present-day Noah is now hallucinating or dissociating in some way is the question, right?

__________________
Linda's Author Website
Linda's Amazon Author page

I kind of suspected that's who it was, so how does that explain the way Noah was acting in the water in Helen's version of what happened?

OK, episode 7 was disturbing on several levels...I know each half of every episode is supposed to be from the characters' different points of view, but the events presented in this episode were totally separate from each other...there were things that happened in Noah's version that didn't happen in Helen's...the stop at the Gunther's gun shop was only in Noah's version, I don't understand that. I'm sorry that Helen taking care of Noah has destroyed her relationship with Vic because Vic was awesome. I'm not happy that the writers are turning Noah into an addict, doesn't he have enough issues going on right now? And Helen using vicadin to get Noah into her bed? Seriously? I'm also over this prison guard played by Brendon Fraser...there's more going on here than just jealousy and it's time to fill us in on what's going on there and let it go.

Bear in mind that, in Helen's version, she wouldn't KNOW about his stop at the gun shop, so we don't see that in her version. It's a bit of a point-of-view trick. What bothers me about the differences is that basic things are really different. Remember the episode with the birthday cake? The cake was completely different. The clothing Alison wore was completely different. That's what I can't understand... and they seem to do more of it now than they did in that original season.

Anyway, I still have to watch last night's episode so I merely skimmed your post in case there were spoilers.

How would Helen not know about the stop at the gun shop in her version? She was driving the car in both versions.

Sorry... I thought you were talking about the brief glimpse of the gun shop we saw in episode 6. (I hadn't watched episode 7 yet when I posted earlier today -- just finished it a few minutes ago.)

I'd like to hear or read something by the writers or director about why they make all the changes they do between different characters' timelines. Why the small, insignificant changes? In this episode, in Helen's version at the beginning, Noah's sitting in the passenger seat of her car just in his wet clothes, no bandage on his neck. In the Noah version, he's sitting there with a warm blanket around his shoulders, neck properly bandaged.

Are we supposed to be gleaning information from these differences? I could theorize, but I'm just unsure why there are SO many differences.

After watching episode 8, one thing became perfectly clear...Helen has never stopped loving Noah and always will and Cole has never stopped Alison and always will. The scene between Helen and Alison in the bar was brilliant. It was kind of convenient the way Louisa all of a sudden started becoming nice just in time for Cole to dump her.

All I can say about episode 9 is that the first half was brilliant and the second half was a hot mess. Maura Tierney deserves an Emmy for her work on this episode alone...as for the second half, I do have a theory that might tie this mess together, but I have a feeling it won't be confirmed until the season finale next week.

OK, was anyone else as disappointed with the season finale as I was? Boring and uneventful...a lot of stuff that I expected to be addressed in the season finale was not, specifically the whole storyline with the prison guard (Brendan Fraser). A season finale is supposed to contain a cliffhanger, that one explosive event that makes the viewer scream and be on pins and needles until the new season starts...no such reveal in this episode...just possibly the worst season finale I have ever seen in the history of time, and I've seen a lot of season finales in my day.

They addressed the prison guard thing already: It never happened. Noah was having some paranoid hallucinations and actually stabbed himself. That became clear when he went to the guard's house, only to find out he was a reasonable man who loved his wife and even had a special-needs child.

Having said that, though, I totally agree that this didn't feel like a season finale at all. An entire episode in Paris with Juliette and her family? Frankly, she has seemed like a plot device and not a deep character we've needed to care about. And now he's left Paris and is back home. I suppose the ending with the cab driver asking him where he wants to go is supposed to be the cliffhanger, since he doesn't answer. Where does Noah go from here? He has two ex-wives and a probably-ex-girlfriend. Which one will he go see? Not the first ex-wife, since he was leaving her house at the end of the episode (unless they start next season with him getting back out of the cab).

But suddenly his relationships with his two older kids are healed, almost as if my magic? Yeah, I'm not buying it. Whitney might forgive him for a while because he helped her at a vulnerable time and said some "wise" things, but she has a much longer history of not trusting him than trusting him. If this were real life, she'd bounce back to her usual snarky self. We'll see.

I kept thinking the whole episode was in Paris because, well, if you're going to haul a whole crew to Paris, you might as well milk it for an entire episode. And that's a bad reason.

OK, you're not going to believe this, but this was one of my two theories.

I do believe it! I was wondering for a while if he was hallucinating the guard being that bad -- certainly I felt that the guard wasn't the one who stabbed him, that seemed too obvious -- but hadn't thought it through to the full conclusion they showed us once he went all the way to the guard's house.

It was just frustrating that this season finale had him casually telling Juliette that she made him feel okay again after he was in a bad place. How convenient that he just snaps out of it because of a woman. Seemed a trite, neat way to tie up that huge loose end. There would have been ongoing repercussions to his hallucinations, including having to tell the police that nobody committed a crime against him (so they don't keep searching for a culprit).

So you agree that the season finale was a real disappointment?

Heck, yeah, I agree!

Frankly, not only was it a bad season finale, it was mostly a bad episode. I learned virtually nothing and the story really didn't even move forward at any level. The warm-fuzzies with him and Whitney seemed forced. Same with him and Martin at the end. Trite. Too easy. Bleh.

I have to say I totally agree with you. Watched 4 episodes of season 1 and found it a snore fest. It could be that I just did not like the two main characters - I found them both to be selfish, awful people.

Watched the season 4 premiere a few days ago and still find this show oddly riveting though major characters did not appear at all in the premiere. And why are they turning the character of Helen (Maura Tierney) into this raving bitch? During season 1, this character evoked MAD sympathy but those days are over I guess. I'll keep watching.

Same here. Hated the show. I, maybe, watched 2 episodes.

__________________
I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

The best thing about ep 2 was the work by Joshua Jackson as Cole...it's so much fun watching Jackson play a character with a real edge. It's fun watching him continue to fight his obsession with Allison.

Ep 3 was very good...can't believe they're killing off Dr. Vic I love him. Maura Tierney was nothing short of brilliant as Helen...can we just give this actress an Emmy already?