Homeland and Boardwalk Empire returned to their fall spots, Boardwalk for the final time. And while still fun to watch, the shows are more plot driven than ever. That's great, and I don't miss an episode but from my perspective, it doesn't make for terribly interesting writing. It's why I find it fun to vomit 1,000 words on a largely wordless three minute sequence in Game of Thrones and why the often plot-less or minimally plotted Mad Men is so easy to talk and speculate about. Getting into the characters, their motivations, their points of view, their subtleties or passive aggressive actions or digs at other characters is what is fun to me. It's why Boardwalk's plot driven third season was its worst while the character heavy fourth season was its best. And to talk about Homeland and Boardwalk right now is to simply recap the days events.
Showtime kept running a commercial featuring Dominic West of Jimmy McNulty fame. As I was in the process of rewatching the whole series of The Wire (because that's how I spend my time) I figured I'd give this show I never heard of a shot.
Literary Devices
Immediately after watching "-30-", I watched the pilot from The Affair. If nothing else, I was pretty happy to see McNulty having a tet-e-tete with none other than Bill Rawls, only this time Rawls sipped an expensive wine on his estate overlooking the beach, passive aggressively taking digs at his son-in-law rather than bearing down on him as an angry acting police commissioner.
In a sentence, the show tells the story of an affair between a novelist/public school teacher (Noah) with a wife and kids, and a married waitress (Allison) whose child passed away. It was apparent from the ad flashbacks would play a part. I like flashbacks. I like non-linear storytelling in the right hands. Let's do this.
Halfway through the show, the show takes a twist on another literary device, point of view. The first rendezvous between Noah and Allison is chronicled from Noah's point of view...the journey he and his family takes to their summer home where he first encounters Allison waiting tables at the restaurant. But then it rewinds and tells us Allison's point of view for the same time period. The first two episodes have followed this format, as each part is told in past tense to an as yet unnamed man by the respective leads.
Already we have questions:
Who is the man they are speaking to?
It could be a cop. It could be a PI. It could be someone from an insurance company investigating a claim on as yet unspecified event that affected both Noah and Allision. He is a man of some kind of authority, but through two episodes he's not betrayed any conclusive evidence
Who was killed?
We find out in the second episode it's related to someone's death, a male. But we have no idea who that is yet.
Will the show stay with this format?
They could easily introduce other POV characters, though at this point there does not seem to be a need. They could also flip the order at some point and show Allison's story in Part 1, followed by Noah's.
Because we're seeing events as they were viewed and are being interpreted by each of the main characters, we are not necessarily seeing the unvarnished truth. Whether to soften their own actions, whether they incorrectly perceived an event, or whether they sincerely do not accurately remember how events occurred is foggy. Is one telling the truth? Is the other? Does it lie in the middle? Are both completely off base?
The unreliable narrator looms large in this story and is quite possibly my favorite device of all. True Detective schooled everyone on its use. While many will remember the unbroken six minute shot, I define the show as Rust and Marty's accounts to the cops completely diverges from what we see in the flashbacks.
Compare and Contrast
It would be easy to make a list of the differences in their accounts. But it's more interesting to look for the subtext in those differences and wonder why they are different.
For example, Noah runs into Allison at a farmer's market where she is selling jam. It is the first time they've met since the restaurant.
In Noah's account he buys one jar for $12 for his kid. In Allison's she sells him five jars for $8 each totaling $40. Noah admits he bought the jam. However, his motivation for buying it is to please his kid who wants to eat it. He remembers the price is high, $12. He probably does not remember the exact amount because that would be a strange thing to remember. Instead he remembers vaguely that it was high and $12 seems like a lot. In reality it probably ballooned a bit in his mind, focusing more on the ridiculousness of paying that much for jam at all. Throughout the transaction, Allison is standoffish and refuses his offer to keep the change from his $20 bill.
Allison remembers herself acting friendlier and recalls her jam sales partner commenting that Noah is showing a strong interest in one of them. She could have insert that in there to strengthen her argument that Noah is the initiator, or she could specifically remember her friend saying that. She remembers Noah buying multiple jars of jam, as if buying more jam would buy him more goodwill with Allison. As the vendor, she probably correctly remembers the price of each unit ($8), but we don't know if Noah sincerely is being more forward with her or if she is trying to downplay her own role or it is some third, fourth or fifth version in the multiverse where she sincerely believes her perception of the event but a third party would view it completely differently.
What they agree on is that Noah bought some jam and Allison was not actively engaging him, at least at that point.
Other details may seem relatively minor, like Noah's wife's dress color at the party, but are perhaps wrought with symbolism or tell us something about the POV character we haven't figured out yet.
Allison's child
We don't know yet how he died. If we've been given foreshadowing (or backshadowing?) some possibilities include
- drowning - Allison can't swim
- choking - Noah's son at the restaurant. In her version, she knows exactly what to do to dislodge the obstruction. Perhaps she learned after her son passed because that was how it happened.
- broken neck or asphyxiation - based on the pre-car trip events
The Affair
With two well acted, interesting and sympathetic characters, a realistic supporting cast, an element of mystery, told through fun and dexterously handled literary devices and obviously well thought out writing make this the show I'm looking forward to on Sundays.
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