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

What I’m Watching: The Affair (Penultimate Episode)

The Affair: Season 5, Episode 10 (C+)

We’re so close to the end here, yet for some reason we have to suffer through a 100-minute series finale. This second-to-last hour was far from satisfying, and my biggest gripe is with its format. Opening with Helen and Noah’s individual perspectives before moving to an unexplained share perspective made little sense, perhaps only to indicate that they actually had an honest conversation they were both able to hear and perceive the same way. Yet it’s just the latest convoluted iteration of a truly creative and effective device that helped to make this show’s first two season so vital and superb. Though Ruth Wilson is no longer a member of the cast, her presence in brief flashbacks reminded me of much better days of this show, which was strong despite the less appealing structuring aspect of the interrogations about the mysterious death that took a while to unravel. The prominence of the California fires felt eerily prescient given that they’ve once again resumed their destruction, something that couldn’t possibly have been predicted when this season was filmed. It’s not a very helpful setting for this drama though, and it just ends up as a forced reason for Noah and Helen to hike to safety and have an opportunity to hash out all of their issues before Helen managed to get bitten by a poisonous snake and survive without an issue. We know that Noah isn’t a great person and he certainly doesn’t respect women in any way that resembles what he believes, and the two of them talking for half an hour after being stubborn in the face of nature is not what I’m looking for after spending fifty hours with these characters. Let’s hope the finale is moderately better.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 5, Episode 9 (B)

On the plane, Whitney accused Audrey of using her father to represent everything that men have done wrong to women, and it’s interesting that this show is doing the opposite, using Noah to show what men are capable of and how even he (and Helen) can’t recognize what he’s done and how he operates in the world. The story couldn’t have possibly come out any worse for Noah, who, as usual, responded with nothing but anger and denial, unable to acknowledge his own role in hurting other people, even if he believes he’s become better since that time. Whitney confronting Andrea on the plane was an intense and direct move, one which showed how well Whitney can mirror her father’s demeaning tone in how she talks to people, before Audrey turned it all on her and opened her mind to the possibility that her father might in fact be completely guilty as charged. Helen seemed more furious at Sasha than anything, and that’s understandable given how he helped the dots get connected in a completely self-serving way to discredit Noah and earn sole writing accolades for a story that was never his in the first place. Helen should be able to see Sasha for how similar to Noah he is in some respects and to appreciate that at least Noah doesn’t believe that he’s entitled to everything the way that Sasha does. With just two episodes left, it still looks like no one will get a happy ending, and I’m curious if we’ll see the fates of anyone besides Joanie and Luisa.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 5, Episode 8 (B-)

With just three hours left in this show’s run, I’m continuing to doubt the point. Is it that, so many years after ruining his relationship with Helen, Noah is going to return to build a life with her again. It’s easy to feel sympathetic for Noah after watching the horrific Sasha act like a spoiled, bratty child who just wanted all the attention to be on him when it was Helen’s birthday. Recognizing Sierra’s mother when she showed up showed even more what kind of person he was, and Helen would be smart to be rid of him since he’s hardly what she needs at this point in her life. Noah showing up with the perfect gesture at the end of her perspective was the only saving grace, demonstrating how he was there for her in exactly the way that she needed without even knowing it. His life is imploding for many reasons, namely his promiscuous past and the fact that he responds to every allegation of wrongdoing by snapping that it couldn’t possibly have happened. We saw a few familiar faces from “The West Wing” in the form of Janel Moloney’s Ariel and Richard Schiff’s Jon, in addition to Tracie Thoms’ Joyce and Stephen Kunken’s Harry, and all seemed to agree that Noah was never doing the right thing when it came to dealing with what he had done. Confronting Eden was never going to work, and shrinking back into obscurity (or, as the show’s opening theme would suggest, sinking back into the ocean) would probably be his best bet since nothing good is likely to come in the near – or far – future.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 5, Episode 7 (C+)

There was a moment during this episode where I thought that all of this was for something – when Whitney asked her father about his affair with Allison and why he did it. Their visit back to Montauk was saddled with other unnecessary drama, like their unfortunate visit to shop for a wedding dress where they were made to feel like terrible people for not being able to afford the absurd price tags, enabling Whitney to have a therapeutic moment of rage directed towards one of the employees. Helen not being present for any of this and then Whitney trying on her wedding dress felt wrong in a lot of ways, and the run-in with Luisa suddenly got him thinking about Joanie, the daughter he hadn’t bothered to check in with for years until the day that she and her father happened to be moving to Vermont. That was the obvious moment to transition to half an episode devoted to the adult Joanie, who naturally would take the information she learned about Ben’s apparent role in her mother’s death and go full undercover to learn more about him. Tony Plana, best known for supporting roles on “Ugly Betty” and “The Punisher,” was a good fit to play the older Ben, who initially seemed innocent enough until he revealed that he knew she was Joanie. Confessing to having killed Allison seemed rather blunt and unrealistic, but things took a turn for the much less believable when Joanie did return to have the police arrest him, only to have him concoct a crazy story about her being a patient of his. None of this needed to happen, and certainly not to demonstrate that Joanie’s response to being physically threatened would be to urge her assailant to hold her down even more forcefully. I’m not impressed.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 5, Episode 6 (B-)

After meeting Anna Paquin’s adult Joanie for just a few minutes at a time over the course of the last few episodes, now we get an entire hour focused on her, without a single other perspective to perceive the situation differently. It certainly seems like she’s self-destructive enough on her own without anyone having to judge her, and while it does make some sense given what’s happened in her life, it’s not all that inviting to watch. Joanie isn’t a particularly nice person, treating EJ horribly before finally starting to spend time with him and then having sex with him, assuring him that he wasn’t actually good in bed even though he claimed to be. I also realized that I erred a few weeks ago in noting that Noah would be dead in the future since Cole was actually her father, but she did mention Noah, who I can’t imagine survived long enough without someone trying to kill him but may well still be alive in this future. Joanie looking into the idea of her mother having been killed by Ben seems like an unnecessary avenue, one that isn’t going to tell us any more about the characters like Noah and Helen we do still know in the past since Noah’s obsessions have shifted entirely from his second wife back to his first. Seeing an older Luisa wasn’t overly informative, and I continue to question why this future exploration was needed or helpful in any way to this show’s overall arc.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 5, Episode 5 (B-)

It shouldn’t surprise me that yet another person is being given a perspective, one who I honestly care nothing about, even after watching her life play out from her point of view for half an hour. I do think that there’s a longer piece to be written about this show and how it’s evolved over the years, aiming to look at the many people affected by one indiscretion through an increasingly widened lens that’s narrowed thanks to each person being the one to experience the story. at the moment, I’m finding that hard to remember, since there were few truly worthwhile moments in this particular episode. What stuck with me most was how Sierra felt unsympathetic even in her own portrait of events, asking Helen for help and getting a rather unforgiving reality check from the woman whose husband she slept with before he died. Helen, naturally, saw that as a lazier, less desperate plea from someone who just didn’t want to be bothered. We also got to learn how Sierra was affected by the relationship she had with her own mother, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, whose voice I recognized from her initial phone call and who played a character someone in between her roles on “Atypical” and in “The Hateful Eight,” leaning more towards the latter. Sierra crashing the car with her baby in it was a miserable ending to that focus, while Helen being made to feel like a horrible person by Vic’s mom for moving on wasn’t much better. It’s also clear that, while Noah is a toxic option who just won’t go away, Sasha isn’t much better, expressing such anger at his stepdaughter that seemed to visibly shake Helen. We didn’t get our expected five minutes of Joanie in the future this time, and right now no one seems headed for a happy ending.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 5, Episode 4 (C+)

This show is beginning to go off the rails again, and I’m not seeing any semblance of coherence anytime soon. The different perspectives were valuable because they portrayed the same events from conflicting viewpoints, but now it seems that they’re just designed to showcase separate storylines. I’m not sure we’ll ever hear from Janelle, and now we get to see the world’s brattiest character, Whitney, who inherited only the worst characteristics from her father, as she has the chance to offer her take on the world because, you guessed it, she’s having an affair. Little about her world is interesting, and the fact that Jonathan Cake’s Furkat is obsessed with her and her horrible boss, played by Perrey Reeves from “Entourage,” only notices her when she sees how that connection should be useful, were far from saving graces. Furkat begging for forgiveness was cringe-worthy, and somehow Whitney is still going to marry her future husband who can’t share his artwork with her. I’d much rather be learning more about Joanie, who again only got five minutes at the end of the hour, which merely confirmed something that is hardly a shock: Noah is dead in the future. He’s not doing too well in the present, furious at his representatives because they’re foregoing protecting his interests in favor of Sasha’s, and the worst possible thing he could do is partner with Margaret to help her execute the absurd plan of planting sex toys in Sasha’s bedroom to cause a rift between him and Helen.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 5, Episode 3 (B-)

Though this season is decidedly better than the third one that truly took it off course, I’m failing to see where it’s all headed and why it’s still interesting. We know by now that Noah is now a good person, and he deserves hearing about all the bad choices he’s made and what they led to every once in a while. It’s also evident that the way he perceives reality is skewed, and when he sees himself as being arrogant and impatient, that can’t be a good sign. Getting jealous about Helen and Sasha was typically unbecoming, and the notion that Sasha is trying to get closer to him by sleeping with Helen is so incredibly self-centered. In slight defense of him, Sasha doesn’t comprehend just how personal and biographical Noah’s book is, and that asking him to change the ending is the reason most authors don’t want their writings adapted into movies. Janelle getting back together with Carl and running for school board sends her off on her own little tangent, and I’m not sure how much more she’ll be featured so soon after getting her own perspective. Helen had a formidable moment of triumph when she told her mother that she wasn’t moving back east and then Sasha walked out and casually requested some coffee. I’m at a loss regarding Joanie’s relevance, since she just got five minutes at the end of the episode to demonstrate some truly self-destructive tendencies. She needs more screen time since little snippets throughout the season just won’t cut it.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 5, Episode 2 (B)

I’m always happy when a very worthwhile character gets a perspective of their own on this show, and it’s nice to see a returning to competing narratives, when we see the same events portrayed from two different points of view. I like Sanaa Lathan a lot, particularly after her Emmy-worthy work in a memorable episode of “The Twilight Zone” from this past year, and it’s good to see her spotlighted as Janelle gets to experience her own life, not merely as an extension of Noah’s world. It was interesting to see that, as far as she saw it, Helen asked her to go deal with the valet rather than her kindly offering, and Noah barely even registered the insult of Helen’s father mistaking her for a waitress in a $1000 dress instead of apologizing for him. Being demoted to co-principal so that Joel could be the public face of the school was a huge slap in the face, and going to her ex-husband to have him look at the contract was an intriguing move, one that suggests that she’s the one having this affair this time. Russell Hornsby is another formidable player, and I’m glad that he’ll be part of this season even if it doesn’t spell good things for Noah. I neglected to identify Claes Bang, a worthwhile part of the less overall worthwhile film “The Square,” an Oscar nominee two years ago for Best Foreign Film, as the actor portraying Sasha, the actor portraying Noah in the film-within-a-series that we’re starting to see made. Playing basketball with Helen after being wowed by her was unexpectedly intimate, but he managed to wreck that by throwing a basketball at her face, a puzzling idea. I still don’t know what to make of Joanie’s role in this season, struggling to secretly flush her sentient toilet and then seemingly breaking in when she volunteered to go to Montauk to visit her father. I don’t imagine clarity is coming anytime soon.

What I’m Watching: The Affair (Season Premiere)

The Affair: Season 5, Episode 1 (B)

There’s something about going into a show for its final season that offers a renewed sense of hope about its quality. This is also a rare case where a previously planned last hurrah isn’t shortened or postponed to some undesirable burnoff slot, with ten episodes just like most of the seasons that came before it. I really didn’t like the third season and the direction it took after being much more into the first two seasons, and the fourth offered a modest recovery with a renewed focus on Alison before Ruth Wilson departed the series. Now, this final run is taking a strange approach, which appears to follow characters in completely different time periods. There’s already been a departure from the format that so intrigued me at the beginning, which was the presentation of two perspectives of the exact same events. In this case, we saw Vic’s funeral before we saw his death, and understood just how Noah and Helen felt in those moments. When Noah was first seen talking to the director, it seemed like his life was being coopted, but then he demonstrated just how poorly he does paying attention to the woman who’s supposed to be most important in his life. Janelle was happy to be there for Helen but wasn’t eager to stay for Noah, who messed up in a big way by not bothering to correct his confused former father-in-law when he mistook her for the help. Noah’s presence felt inappropriate right after Vic died, even if he was there to make sure Sierra could introduce him to his child. Meeting Anna Paquin’s adult Joanie was interesting, but I have no idea what this season is going to be like since the characters we know are likely not around anymore in her time or at the very least will certainly look different. I’m on board since I’ve watched the whole thing, watching hopefully and optimistically for now.

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

The Affair: Season 4, Episode 10 (B+)

As far as I can remember, this is the first time that we’ve seen three separate perspectives in just one (extended) hour, each taking place almost entirely separately in stark contrast to the conflicting views of the same event we saw last week. It’s strange in a sense that things have spun out so much, though it’s understandable given that new people are brought into the web every time an affair begins. I’d love to see Janel Moloney take on a more substantial role than just as a would-be flame from Noah’s past, and Anton skewering Noah in front of the class because he thought it’s what they wanted from him was hardly believable given what we’ve seen of him thus far. What’s going on in Noah’s life feels almost irrelevant, especially compared to the intensity of what’s happening with Cole and Helen. Luisa has it together in a very impressive way considering that she’s seeing more and more that her husband was in love with his ex-wife in a way that he’s never been with her, and at least she will get her citizenship and to be a mother to Joanie even if Cole is never going to recover. Vic saw the light a bit too late, and Helen having Sierra go in to tell him that he’s going to leave something behind was actually kind and selfless. The fact that her having slept with Sierra also was a punchline indicates how absurd some of the drama on this show has gotten, but I think everything is coming back to a better place now. I’m more than happy not to see Whitney again since she’s gotten even more unbearable, and I’m still curious to see what the focus of the show’s fifth and final season will be when it returns. I’m willing to stick it out through the end.

Season grade: B
Season MVP: Ruth Wilson as Alison

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 4, Episode 9 (B)

I have mixed feelings about this episode, which casts things more into doubt than they’ve ever been on this show. I liked how, as far back as the first-ever episode, there were differing portrayals of the same situation, with the perception of Noah’s initial meeting with Allison always standing out in my mind. What this episode did that no other has done before is to show the same event twice from the same character’s perspective, with two remarkably different outcomes and the knowledge that this is the last we’ll ever see from Allison. I read one recap from Vox as soon as I finished the episode to try to make sense of it, and I think part of the idea is that we’re not supposed to know what really happened. Everything else we’ve seen of Ben suggests that it was the first account, since even Noah doesn’t have an idyllic perception of himself when we see things from his point of view. It’s possible that their romantic and wonderful interaction did happen, but, playing it over in her head, Allison imagined it the other way, causing her to doubt her own purpose and sanity, finding it hard to believe that she had finally met someone who could be right for her. I don’t think that Ben has become an important enough part of the show to be central in the fifth season that will proceed without Allison, and she’s likelier to be remembered and present weighing on the consciences of her ex-husbands. Her final line, “I didn’t seduce you, but even if I did, I’m allowed to change my mind,” is a haunting goodbye, one that will memorialize the way that her life hasn’t gone anywhere near the way she’s wanted it to. Ruth Wilson has been uniquely terrific on this show, and though she asked to leave the series, I think she’s been a tremendous and crucial part of it being what it’s been, and was always a cut above the material when it went through some rough points.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 4, Episode 8 (B)

Well, I didn’t see that coming. Killing off one of this show’s two leads in the middle of an episode is a bold move, one that makes considerably more sense with the information that Ruth Wilson wanted to leave the show. A few weeks ago, this show was renewed for a fifth and final season, so it doesn’t appear that there would have been all that much more for her to stick around and experience, but I suppose there comes a time for everyone to move on. Having her death confirmed by Noah is made all the more powerful by the fact that we’re still going to have the chance to see her again, with one of the final two episodes of the season sure to feature her descent into despair. I wasn’t ready for the irreversibility and seriousness of that moment after an episode featuring comedy about Cole and Noah being mistaken for a gay couple and Anton getting himself into trouble before taking the best shower of his life. I do applaud the way that things came together and Cole ended up in Milwaukee with flowers and then could so easily drive to O’Hare to pick Noah and Anton up when they happened to get stuck there. While Cole is devastated, I can only imagine how Luisa will feel knowing that she’s still alive but was his second choice, and I’m curious to see what role both of them will play in the final season without Alison as a connection anymore.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 4, Episode 7 (B)

It’s definitely true that out of all the characters on this show, Helen is pretty much the most interesting. Maura Tierney is also the only performer to earn any Emmy attention during the show’s run, and she often gets the best material. I did feel for the first ten or fifteen minutes of this episode, as I have for some of this season thus far, that she was just around to be angry about everything and judgmental towards everyone. Fortunately, that changed as the episode went on and she got to gawk at Sierra’s complete lack of self-awareness, talking about Helen’s perfect life and revealing rather unsubtly that she had slept with a married man whose wife she really liked. Arriving into hippie territory took a more dramatic turn when Helen became the guru after she started talking about having had four kids and demonstrating that she had more life experience than anyone else in the room. Sleeping with Sierra was almost a footnote, since her experience in the sensory deprivation tank, one which was sure to go poorly, sent her rushing home and into Vic’s arms, hardly the ending I would have expected. Noah also found himself in a parental role after a terrible driving session with Trevor, helping to set Anton on the right path and away from enlistment by offering to take him to see the school he wanted to attend. With just three episodes left in this season, it makes sense that we’re getting to the point where the season-long mystery, albeit the one that’s been most in the background as compared with previous plot points, is becoming current, as Cole showed up in Chicago to drive Noah and Anton around in frantic search of the missing Alison.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 4, Episode 6 (B+)

It was only a matter of time before Noah and Janelle got caught together by Anton, but having his father, played by Russell Hornsby from “Fences,” show up made things much worse. It wasn’t even his role in Janelle’s romantic life that was problematic to him but rather the interest he was expressing in Anton’s, since apparently going to Princeton and succeeding would be an affront to his legacy, which may explain why he sabotaged his efforts to get into the school in the first place. While what’s happening in Janelle’s home may be more severe than what’s going on at the school, where Noah once again tried to swoop in and take charge of the situation, things in Noah’s house really aren’t that great either, with Trevor exploding with rage at his father’s sudden interest in being in his life. Alison was having such a good streak before everything imploded, starting with the sudden introduction of her father, played by Tim Matheson, who needed something from her and, according to Athena, was hardly the saint he portrayed himself to be. We didn’t see Ben tell Alison that he was married, but obviously that went poorly, and her flight, in which she somehow got ziptied and then arrested for resisting an unwelcome advance from her seatmate, was certainly hellish. Having the panic attack in the car with Noah led to a very enlightening conversation with Helen, in which I was shocked to hear Alison ask why men see her the way they do, even though her original infidelity was with none other than Helen’s husband.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 4, Episode 5 (B+)

I knew that we were headed for this, and while I had thought it would be especially cool to have an episode that was split between Vik and Luisa’s perspectives for the first time, having Vik’s take followed by Cole’s made a lot more sense because the paths they took were quite similar. We’ve only ever really seen Vik as portrayed through Helen’s eyes, doing his best to support her and be understanding when she was far too accommodating to the nightmare ex who actually went to jail for her, and who then wanted Helen to have a baby by herself when he wasn’t going to seek treatment for his pancreatic cancer. But digging into his past and the fact that he’s done so much for others and nothing for him almost justified his impulse purchase of a fancy car (I have to imagine that the credit card he dropped was really fancy since I’ve found that in real life it’s not so easy to buy a car with a credit card) and his inevitable sleeping with Sierra, who wanted to fuel what seemed like a midlife crisis before realizing just how close to the end of his life he actually was. Cole’s self-exploration wasn’t a very pleasant journey, and the woman his father loved played by Amy Irving didn’t appear to be helping when she encouraged him to be distracted by Delphine. She wasn’t ever really the one taking his attention, and realizing that he doesn’t feel the way about Luisa that he does about Alison is important. It’s going to blow up in his face with both of them, since Luisa is going to be furious about the time she invested in the relationship and Alison may not feel the same way about him, especially since the way in which he’ll try to get rid of Ben probably won’t go well.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 4, Episode 4 (B+)

An episode like this did manage to offer two perspectives, but by not featuring the same scene experienced in two different ways, it’s actually possible to tell even more of a story as the two ex-spouses’ lives intersect rather than overlap. The opening scene with Cole, Noah, and Anton in the car confirms that this season’s big future-set mystery is the disappearance of Alison, who seems to be in the best shape we’ve seen her as she’s getting to know Ben. What this show has always been great at is portraying the allure of watching something happen to others, as Alison found herself transfixed by the demonstration of the power of the method being discussed at the conference. When Ben tried it with her, it didn’t work as well, but she did manage to create a bond with him and experience a serene day in a setting that used to terrify her. I wasn’t sure why it was that Bram was continually featured, but his presence was most helpful in uniting the plotlines, with Cole hearing and being impressed by Ben as a potential sponsor only to discover that he was proudly cheating on his wife. That eventual revelation – and the fact that Cole hasn’t spoken up – may well destroy Alison. Cole’s swift rejection of Luisa’s question about moving to Ecuador was problematic, and her equally quick acceptance of his suggestion of a walkabout to find himself – and hopefully her in the process too – means that she’s willing to give it a chance. And maybe him being gone really will create the paternal hardship needed to secure Luisa citizenship, since Cole asking Alison to relinquish her rights would indeed have hurt her in an irreversible way.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 4, Episode 3 (B+)

This was nothing if not a very watchable hour of television, with some intriguing developments that are mostly lamentable and predictable but dramatic nonetheless. Noah making a case for his troubled star student got complicated when he found out that he was the principal’s son and that Janelle had failed him when she really didn’t need to. Inciting a walkout based on the lack of diversity of writers he was teaching in his own class was a very self-centered action, and he quickly saw that it had disastrous implications, with police showing up within minutes hardly eager to put up with what they deemed a threat. Getting interviewed on television and quoted as the principal was an enormous blow to Janelle’s already almost nonexistent ego, and of course they were going to make out and start a relationship that will only further drive a wedge between her and her teachers when they found out that he’s only taking her side, from their perspective, because they’re sleeping together. Helen’s time didn’t go all that much better, with Vic completely in denial about his very serious cancer diagnosis. She wasn’t pleased at all with Trevor’s comment that he got his science acumen from Vic, but obviously that’s what Vic is holding onto most, the notion of extending his legacy in some way. It’s hard to imagine Helen wanting to have a baby right now, but I think she needs to hold on to whatever is left in her marriage to stay anchored.

What I’m Watching: The Affair

The Affair: Season 4, Episode 2 (B)

Though Maura Tierney does give a compelling performance as Helen, I find that the storylines involving Alison and Cole do tend to be more interesting these days. There’s recently been a trend for these threads to be completely separate, with the former couples interacting on a regular, usually volatile basis, but the two who had the affair that provides this show’s title rarely seeing each other. Starting with Cole’s perspective after beginning the first installment of the season with Helen’s also shows this series’ investment in the characters it highlighted more later, just as crucial, if not more so, to the story as the two leads, and inarguably much more likeable. Alison and Cole continuing to work together in business doesn’t seem like a great idea, and though we got both perspectives on how her appearing at their meeting very late happened, they’re clearly not close to over each other. Luisa, who I’m hoping will soon get her own opportunities, maybe along with Vic if he’s still alive, to have her perspective shown, got particularly angry at Cole for the way that he behaved and obsessed over the woman who’s no longer supposed to be the most important person in his life. She had the two best lines of the hour: “You’re clearly not leaving me today, Alison is busy” and “You can’t shoot someone just because they drew on your face.” His casual response to her getting pulled over by a cop demonstrated how different a world he lives in. Showing up to help fix her car was reminiscent of Noah’s act of heroism in the pilot, and as she starts fueling her attraction to a new person, it’s interesting to see that things haven’t changed all that much, there are just new people filling the same old roles.