Friday, November 8, 2019

What I’m Watching: The Affair (Series Finale)


The Affair: Season 5, Episode 11

Well, this journey is finally done. I actually found this episode to be mostly decent, though it didn’t necessitate an entire season of half-perspectives that felt entirely tangential to the main story, whatever that still was. Ruth Wilson’s decision to leave the show probably should have ended it since her absence was truly felt, and only in this final hour did it seem worthwhile to have her felt rather than seen. I’m not sure what the significance of the names without a numbered part was supposed to be, and I’d assume there wasn’t any since that device has been without purpose for a while now. It was strange to have the episode open with Noah choreographing a flash mob dance, but I guess the point was that Noah was doing so much for this wedding only to sit all by himself in a motel room reading a book while everyone else was dancing. He even bonded with Colin, a fairly worthless character who didn’t contribute much, and Whitney was far from kind to everyone on her wedding day until she convinced her siblings to help her stage an escape with the help of a conveniently lucid Bruce. We’ve barely seen any of them except for Whitney, so their sudden relevance was weird, but at least the whole Solloway family got some sort of happy ending. I was surprised that Noah and Joanie didn’t recognize each other when they met since it seemed from her previous conversations with EJ that she was well aware of who he was, and I’m glad they got their therapeutic moment later which also helped to repair Alison’s reputation in her daughter’s mind. The reveal that EJ was Eddy was something I didn’t see coming, and helps to explain how he fit in there, similarly to Sierra, attached but without a true defined role. I still feel that this final season was probably unnecessary, and I’d point any interested viewers to the first two seasons of this show and recommend that they stop there to preserve an entirely positive perspective.

Series finale: B
Series grade: B
Season MVP: Maura Tierney as Helen
Season grade: B-
Series MVP: Maura Tierney as Helen
Best Season: Season 1
Best Episode: Episode 107

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