The Affair -- new show on Showtime

I'm not sure how I feel about Noah still wanting to get with Alison after all the time that has now passed and the counseling sessions, etc. If he's still pining for Alison and is unhappy in his marriage, he should just get a divorce.

Also, the writers are being rather obvious and hamfisted in trying to keep the romance going by having Helen's father reminiscing about some old flame from his youth that he hasn't stopped thinking about to this day. And now we have hints of kids' issues, like bulimia, etc - it's all becoming a little unwieldy...

 

Well, that all seems realistic to me. Divorce is not something Noah might want with finally a successful book and kids in private schools and his wife's money and family footing so much; there's reasons why he's wishing Helen would put up with more. And it's building up to a tipping point, which will happen soon, only two more episodes. And it's still not clear what the motive for Scottie's demise is. . . I'm going with it and liking it more as it develops.

 

Nice to see McNulty & Rawls have a scene together again. I bet they got a kick out of it. (That's a "The Wire" reference for anyone that doesn't get it.) BTW, my wife thinks Ruth Wilson isn't very attractive. I just smile & nod. Uh huh.

 

I agree with your wife.

 

I just rewatched Luther Season One. Ruth Wilson, oooh la la. I hope she's in the next Luther project. (How could she not be?)

 

I've been watching Luther myself lately,totally agree about Ruth Wilson
According to Netflix there are only 14 Eps. Were there more produced after that?

 

No there are 17 episodes..and Ruth Wilson wasnt in season 2. At some point I read there were plans for a spinoff of her character Alice..

 

Yes, and she returned for Season 3, with a bang. Elsewhere it was mentioned that there are I think two or three more episodes to be filmed in the near future.

 

Every time I see them together in this show, all I can think of is their first scene together in the first episode of "The Wire" - where he gives him the finger through the entire conversation.

 

I recall the scene where Rawls is holding up both middle fingers saying "these are for you McNulty"

 

Boy...after tonight's episode...

Up to now, I've been on the fence whether I find Noah a mixture of a somewhat empathetic character and a narcissistic dolt. After tonight, it's clear he's just a narcissistic dolt.

I have a bit more empathy for Allison, though what she does at the very end of the episode is pretty cold.

 

At first I was wondering why use an English actress in this series, though I've been an admirer of Ms Wilson's work for some time. But tonight's episode especially shows Ruth Wilson was an excellent choice, she's a great actress.

And now at least we see a "possible motive" for the murder. Surprised me a bit for a moment.

 

I totally agree. Noah's character is now totally irredeemable.

Also agree. Ruth Wilson totally knocked it out of the park in that scene with her doctor - powerful stuff!

Couple of things. It seemed a bit silly for the daughter to dispose of her pregnancy test in the kitchen trash. Wouldn't she want to hide it better? I guess you could argue that she wanted it to be found as it was later said that she seemed 'relieved' to be talking about it, but why would the daughter then already have made an appointment for an abortion? She could have just had it and no one would be the wiser.

The other thing is to do with the dual POV narratives. This device seems to be making less and less sense because the POVs aren't related to retelling a story to the detective anymore. The detective has been used less and less over time, so why are different POVs still relevant?

 

Interesting final episode. Will be a long wait!

 

I remember Noah asking the girl at the hotel or b&b if there was someone local who worked on cars, but I can't remember what it was that was wrong with his car or why he would want to cover that up. That was long before he knew about Scotty knocking up his daughter, right? Or is that unrelated to what he didn't want the tow truck driver to reveal to the police?

 

so:

did noah and alison have a baby together? didn't she say something about her "being asleep"before they sat on the couch together?

why do they think noah killed scotty, as far as we know he stayed at the house with alison and his wife left with whitney.

 

As I remember/see it the death occurred at a different time, I remember the detective saying that Scottie was on the way to a party. . .

 

Interesting final epsiosde.

First up, what I didn't like. The Noah-sleeps-with-everyone to It's My Life montage at the top of the episode was cheap and flashy and not in keeping with any other part of the series. A waste of celluloid in a series that hasn't done much of that.

In terms of the plot: The Noah and Allison versions was DRASTICALLY different this time, when they got to the ranch. Not surprisingly, Noah comes off much better in his version. In Allison's version, he comes off as the same sh-t he was in the previous episode, choosing to abandon his family (again) once Allison walked into the room. Literally.

As for the tow truck guy. I have ALWAYS thought that something rang totally false about that scene where Noah's car breaks down, the guy from the Lobster Roll hangs out with him and soon after he gets back home, Lobster Roll Guy comes waltzing in to visit his new best friend. That entire sequence did not parse correctly in my mind (I think I noted that somewhere in this thread). Now it seems there may well be more to that scene/time than we previously knew.

I wasn't quite sure what was going on with the $20k extortion and how that got recorded. I guess tow guy already working for the detective when that happened? The detective had him on some sort of tax count and traded that for having the tow guy record the bribe?

It seems, in the final scene, that Noah and Allison have a kid. "He's asleep". Although that could be a friend or an animal or anything else. The fact we didn't see what was asleep allows the writers to be pulling some misdirection here.

 

Good thoughts and I totally agree about the Noah sleeps with everyone opening - although the young teacher was super easy on the eyes.

 

BTW, did anyone notice that the guy who was sitting next to Noah in the Rubber Room was the actor who played Elvin in The Cosby Show

 

I kept thinking to myself, that guy looks familiar, but I just couldn't place him. Cheers!

 

About the POV narrative. I think this device is becoming increasingly unwieldy to the point of becoming a distraction. It's use has completely morphed from early on in the season where it was used in a criminal investigation and we could glean subtle differences in recollection from each of the main characters to try and figure out the objective truth of the case.

But now we have the characters doing things mostly independently of each other with only brief overlap, and so playing one POV against the other isn't very relevant. And worse still, when there is overlap, the POVs tend to be radically divergent, which leads to quite a bit of head scratching as to what actually happened.

I've read that the writer is interested in exploring the nature of memory. Memory isn't a tape recording that can be played back perfectly. Memory is subjective, it's selectively reconstructed or lost due to emotional and other states of mind. All this is true and interesting scientifically, but I'm not so sure that at the moment it's a net positive in the storytelling.

 

Yeah, I recognized him immediately. The Cosby Show was family hour when I grew up, so I remember all those characters. Malcolm Jamal-Warner has been in the last few American Horror Story episodes.

 

Jamal-Warner's also been in Rookie Blue

 

And Sons of Anarchy.