The Affair (Season 1)

[ledfloyd]

Wow.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I have this recorded and am really looking forward to watching it, hopefully tonight. The reactions on here and elsewhere have my already high expectations reaching incredible levels.

[slqrick]

Pretty good. Pretty, pretty good.

[EyesWideOpen]

This looks great but I don't want to watch the pilot and then have to wait a year to watch the rest.

[Mara]

This is peripheral to the pilot (which was amazing.)

The oldest daughter on the show is played by Julia Goldani Telles, who I became really struck with when she was in Bunheads a couple of years back. She started off really shaky as an actor but improved dramatically over the course of the one season and was really focus-pulling and emotive by the end. I knew I had posted how compelling she was, and I found this post from 2012:


I'm still watching Bunheads... alone... which is okay, because I'm not sure any of you would enjoy it. But I feel the need to post this sequence, because it occurred to me during this scene that this kid is going to be a star someday. You heard it here first.

...

She's still working on that "acting" thing, but I think she's about sixteen. She has time to figure it out.

The link I posted in there is broken, but it was this sequence:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTO10Xgl0eM

[Mara]

Most of the reviews and talking pieces I'm reading about this show assume that there's going to be a binary he/she narration, but I personally would be surprised if we don't have episodes from multiple characters' points of view.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I believe the he/she binary approach was revealed by the creators prior to air. At least, I think that's what I read, unless the author of the interview was also making an assumption within the interview.

[number8]

I just got the first four episodes. Will watch tonight and report if there is?

[Mara]

I just got the first four episodes. Will watch tonight and report if there is?

Would you? I mean, spoiler it in case anyone doesn't want to know, but I'm quite curious.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Yeah, I'm okay with knowing as well. Thanks, 8.

[EyesWideOpen]

This looks great but I don't want to watch the pilot and then have to wait a year to watch the rest.

Good news. I just bought access to someone's Showtime Anytime account for $15 for the year so I'll be watching this tonight!

[number8]

Answer: It's half hour Noah, half hour Alison for all of them.

The fourth episode does something very stylistically interesting by having the POV switch happen in the middle of a scene, so the two characters all of a sudden change personalities during a continuous scene.

[quido8_5]

This left me cold. The first episode wasn't anything to write home about. The structural originality isn't taken advantage of in ways that are particularly artful. This first episode is at its best when the conflicts are subtle loved the differences in Alison's appearance in the respective stories , though they'll need to work the criminal plot line pretty hard in order to justify some of the more glaring factual inconsistencies e.g., who saved the child's life and who is the smoker. Those are the two that I rolled my eyes at particularly hard . Especially given all the narrative experimentation happening right now, I felt like this was one of the more forced and unfruitful storytelling exercises of the year. More technically, the pseudo-artistic B-roll was silly and they're not doing themselves any favors with the obtuse ambiguity (I semi-expected there to be subtitles indicating when we should make a detective's note).



Still, there's a ton of potential here and I'll be anticipating future episodes. The acting is uniformly strong, with the two leads appropriately stealing the show. The commentary about social and marital mores holds much promise, as long as they can tone down the Drama and stick more to subtle, visual hints that give the audience some credit.

[Mara]

My most interesting take away from this episode is that what we're seeing is not reflective of what Noah and Alison are telling the police officer. They are telling the officer some things, but what we see play out is instead their memory of what happened (since these two things contradict each other.)

I feel like they're setting up that Cole is the dead man, but I'm doubting that's true since it seems early to give that away.

[number8]

Yeah, it's an interesting contrast to True Detective, which has the element of unreliable narrator, but the flashbacks are meant to be flashbacks, as in they're 100% accurate. I like that you start to see some logic in the differences as you go on, too.

[Benny Profane]

Show was going great until the cocaine dealing. We'll see where it goes.

[number8]

Show was going great until the cocaine dealing. We'll see where it goes.

Yeah kinda came out of nowhere in that episode without any hint towards it at all. I mean, I guess the set-up is established to be a crime story so it's not too out of the periphery?

[EyesWideOpen]

I just now watched the last episode and I hadn't read the spoiler you posted until after so I was expecting some huge thing to happen this episode. But the drugs thing was something that I figured was going on (or at least something shady) from the first time we see her make that trip at the beginning of the season.

[Mara]

Yeah, I figured out the drug running pretty early on, but I can't say I find it particularly compelling.

[Mara]

Also (and I am only up to last week's episode) this is, like, the least discreet affair of all time. They are terrible at affairing.

[EyesWideOpen]

Also (and I am only up to last week's episode) this is, like, the least discreet affair of all time. They are terrible at affairing.

This is something me and my wife discuss every episode. You at least look out the window to see if your spouse is gone before hopping out of bed and picking a dress to wear for your affair date.

[number8]

I thought it was hilarious when he put his friend in a cab and then ran up the stairs to make out in three seconds flat.

[EyesWideOpen]

I thought it was hilarious when he put his friend in a cab and then ran up the stairs to make out in three seconds flat.

Then he breaks up with her on his doorstep with his wife and family home. What if his wife would have came to the door and wondered why this woman who is always around is crying?

But on a separate note this last episode was probably my favorite of the series so far. The stuff wrapped up in this episode was what I thought the rest of the season would be about so I have no clue where it's going from here (except obviously someone dies).

[Benny Profane]

(except obviously someone dies).

Didn't we already find out it's the temperamental Lockheart brother who dies?

[Mara]

I wasn't aware of how lethargic the series had started to feel until this last episode shook everything up. Very cool. Great use of Tierney and Jackson, too, who have been wasted so far.

[Mara]

I'm not sure how I feel about this show as a whole.

But Maura Tierney is killing it. Cuttie nom from me for sure.

[EyesWideOpen]

Even though they continue to be some of the worst people at having an affair and keeping it a secret (I'm not a woman but how do you leave your bra and not notice?) I'm still loving this show.

[Melville]

I'm a fan. The believable emotions at its core help anchor it when it feels like it might go adrift in ostentatiously literary writing. The Leftovers had a few great episodes, but the depiction of grief in this is so much better, and it's one of my favorite aspects of the series. It feels raw and palpable. I also much prefer this series' nuanced treatment of man's-reaction-to-feeling-emasculated to Breaking Bad's.

[Mara]

Side note: I have always found secondary drowning terrifying, and this show hasn't helped.

[Benny Profane]

This last episode gets an A+. Some seriously great writing and acting and direction.

[number8]

I don't think the series has successfully justified being 10 episodes. It probably would be even stronger pared down to 6. Still, the craft of it is just terrific. Incredibly believable decisions, the mystery is genuinely intriguing. It may end up being really obvious, but that just adds to the believability of the whole thing. I've stopped caring about Wilson's spotty accent, because she's just too good at everything else. I'm pretty damn anxious to see the finale.

[number8]

Just watched the finale.

The following doesn't actually spoil anything that happens in the episode but just in case you don't want to know anything about the it: I knew the show got a second season, but I didn't know they're going to continue with the same mystery. It's disappointing to see them choose not to wrap up the story and end it like that. This really isn't the type of story you prolong.

The two timelines continue to be an intriguing device, though. You can really see the root of the differences by positioning them with each character's defensiveness.

[Melville]

Disappointing ending. There's no reason this story should have continued into a second season. It would have been much better if they'd ditched the murder-mystery aspect and tightened the plotting (by eliminating the drug subplot and reducing the number of "they're together, now they're not together" cycles, for example). The mystery always felt like a digression from the interesting character work. Even when it was more a "who has ended up with whom/who's the father of Alison's second kid?" guessing game rather than a "what's this murder all about?" one, it felt gimmicky and contrived, and it distracted from the real drama. Most of the storyline in this episode felt like a very melodramatic way of prolonging the mystery. Since Alison and Noah end up together anyway, the dramatic moment at the train station, the montage of his bachelor lifestyle, and her yoga retreat feel unnecessary. Why not just have them get together in the previous episode in a less histrionic way?

[Mara]

I personally don't think the show lived up to its promise. It started as a thoughtful character study and ended up gimmicky, sudsy, and repetitious. I will probably not be checking in with the second season. It's not horrible, but I'm not sure it's worth my time.