The Affair - MIdseason

The structure to The Affair is praiseworthy, not because of its novelty, but because the show uses the structure only to enhance the story, rather than allow the structure to dominate at the cost of the story.  We’ve seen flexibility so far in the order of the POVs, showing Alison’s both before and after Noah’s, as well as showing both concurrent and successive events.  The POV still is the dominate trait, but the details around it change to suit the story.

Not only that but in one episode, the POVs told successive stories rather than concurrent ones.  In the scenes that conflict, we are to see not merely that there is a difference but to understand and interpret what those differences mean.  If there’s no purpose to understanding a divergence then the writers use that other half hour to tell the story in another way that benefits the plot.

The issue with the slightly cracked door has been answered and the Lockharts are outed as drug dealers.  Noah’s anger and disappointment no doubt fuel from his bubble being burst about what Allison is.  His disenchantment with her is similar to how he’s rethinking his life with his wife when he has to sit around and eat shit all summer from her parents.

Is it possible that Oscar is the smartest guy in the room?  Being able to suss out Noah and Allison is one thing, but to play the Batman gambit to ultimately get his bowling alley permit and have a blackmail card in his back pocket is impressive.  

With the drugs and the high level of conflict within the Lockhart family, it’s possible that Scotty’s death has absolutely nothing to do with the affair and everything to do with the drug operation going pear shaped. 

The sense of entitlement that pervades the Lockharts is possibly the worst thing about them. 

Mama Lockhart is Lotso.  She pretends to not get in the middle of things, but in fact she is taking a position as a result of not taking a position.

The Affair - Episode Three

Noah
Noah is very much hitting the same beats he hit in the previous episodes.  And it does feel like about half of Noah's and Allison's interactions involve one of them pulling the other into a more secluded spot.  However, while we did not learn much more about Noah, we did see the world of the island expand as well as seeing more about Allison's personal life.

Noah seems primarily motivated by the road not take more than discontent with his own life.  While staying with his in laws for several months may not be ideal, it may be the catalyst that wakes up these feelings of wrestlessness rather than his wreslessness being the status quo.  Wondering what the other Noahs are doing in different corners of the multiverse seems to be on his mind, and it keeps being brought to the front of his mind by interactions with Allison.  Those interactions seem to be catalyzed by friction laden events between Noah and his family or in laws.

One technique we see often in Mad Men is that a character, Don or Peggy perhaps, will encounters something unsettingling or that angers them.  Another character then walks into their path, unaware that they are primed for explosion and then get the full brunt of their ire.  For example, Don is already upset when Pete walks into his office seeking counsel about trying to land American Airlines, following the death of his own father (on an American Flight).  After Pete is scolded by Don he turns then to Duck to try and land the client as Duck cuts into Don's alliances.  When Mad Men uses this technique it is some of the strongest plotting you'll see on the series. 

So Noah falls into this loop where his wrestlesness both informs his attempts to find Allison and stems from his interactions with her.

Noah reminds me of something Jimmy on You're the Worst said.  He blames his break up with Gretchen on his desire to seek misery and discontent, an inability to accept good news, which stems from him trying desperately to live the life of a writer...one of despair and agony and pain and alcoholism.   Struggling to put together a second novel, Noah seems intent on playing the role of a writer in order to inform his writing (and use writer-ly phrases like "the death of the American pastoral")

The Island
The Island World is expanding.  Local politics are front and center and there's a long standing feud between Oscar's and Cole's families, with families supporting one or the other.  It appears as business owners whose families go back generations on the island they need not introduce themselves to people, as they are known and the lines are already drawn.  Oscar tries to draw support, half jokingly, from Allison knowing if Cole's own wife sided with Oscar it'd go a long way.  It also means he must know in advance Cole's going to have a mini tantrum about a bowling alley.

The thing about Cole's tantrum is that it is disguised.  He camouflages his desire to not only have toys himself but to keep others from enjoying their own toys as merely a desire to maintain what is true and decent about their home.  He wraps himself in nostalgia and sympathy like so many politicians wrap themselves in the flag.  He blames the locals problems and the loss of their way of life on some intangible and ill defined specter represented by Oscar's bowling alley. There's a clear progress and "tradition" divide, given words by Cole's indifference to NASA in a separate rant. 

Worst of all, Cole invokes his dead son. He does this not once but twice.  The visceral appeal for sympathy works and the townspeople respond in a way the council sees the writing on the wall and delays Oscars development for "further study" which is probably a euphemism for "suck an egg, Oscar."

Cole's diatribe is probably the first and best thing to define Cole's character, especially in concert with his get-off-my-lawn screed about their neighbor's house's height.  While the rest of his appearances are layered in ambiguity and painted in gray, this, coming from Allison's POV, makes no bones about what Cole is doing.

Allison
She reprimands Cole for his dead baby and nostalgia tirade.  Using Gabriel as a means to an end is unacceptable.  We see that everything Allison does is in response to grief*.  She starts her day the happiest we've seen her but the longer it goes on the worse things get for her.  Not only does she resent the way Cole brings up Gabriel, but she probably also resents his ability to talk about Gabriel on his own terms while she is still reacting to everyone on the island constantly putting it in her face.  It's draining.

* And this is so much more expertly done than the grief porn we saw on the show that shall not be named

Allison has a bandage on her person again and I wonder if we're supposed to be thinking of the wounds she still sports from having lost her son.  This one is even bigger. 

What we know, what we don't

• The interrogator is called "detective" so we'll assume cop.  
• Allison's a nurse.  Maybe I was wrong about Gabriel dying from an accident rather than a sickness.  Or maybe she simply can't help but replace Gabriel's face with that of any helpless child she encounters.
• We don't know who died, but I think we're supposed to think it's Cole which makes me think it's 'not Cole'.  It's not Oscar either.  I hope this doesn't get dragged out.  
• There are some envelopes of money being passed around.  
• Couple this with the weird need to close the door at the taxi dispatch...there's something below the surface here and I think it involves Cole's family at a high level. The Montauk Illuminati.  Or at least like the Commodore of Atlantic City

Rashomon
In each of Noah's and Allison's accounts, the other person appears to be the driver in the affair.  The other person appears more confident and self assured.  In Allison's account, Noah is worldly and cultured and confident.  In Noah's, Allison is sultry and seductive and her skirts are like two inches shorter. 

Kurosawa

• Seems odd Allison would live on an island and not know how to swim, no?
• Noah's in laws have a trump card on the fact that he and Helen have accepted their money in the past.  Probably following a long disagreement between the two that Helen ultimately won. 
• And so Noah gets to sit there and hear his mother in law talk about him as though he's not there
• And Rawls gets to keep being a dick to McNulty, but this time McNulty doesn't have a body to dump on him via tidal charts

The Affair

Sunday Plot Driver
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

1. drowning - Allison can't swim
2. 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.
3. broken neck or asphyxiation - based on the pre-car trip events

We also know that Allison lost her son in a public way.  She's recognized by Noah's mother in law as someone from the newspaper, related to the boys death.  That seems to point toward an accident, rather than a sickness.  Not only that but Allison is constantly reminded of her son by well-intentioned but grief inducing acquaintances.  All anyone seems to want to talk to her about is her dead son.   Allison has not been able to accept her son's death in the way her husband has.  Perhaps Coles grief is more manageable because he doesn't have everyone in his face about it constantly.

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.