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Post by sissa on Nov 24, 2016 22:37:18 GMT 10
‘The Affair’ Season 3 Premiere: Tough Times for NoahThe Affair By MIKE HALE NOV. 20, 2016 Photo :Irene Jacob and Dominic West in “The Affair.” Credit Phil Caruso/Showtime Season 3, Episode 1 Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the mishegas that never ends! “The Affair” embarked on its third season Sunday night on Showtime, and I’m looking forward to sharing another 10 weeks (down from last season’s 12) of the show’s special brand of crazy with our loyal cadre of commenters and kibitzers. Let’s get right to it. The most notable thing about the season premiere? It was kind of like watching a normal TV show. The story was told from a single point of view, Noah’s, something that (as always, correct me if I’m wrong) I don’t remember happening before. It was also a linear narrative, not counting some conventional flashbacks to the three years Noah had just spent in prison. No mind games, no time games, at least as far as we could tell. The second most notable thing? It was a festival of schadenfreude for the Noah haters among us, a portrait of isolation, estrangement and pain. Having done his stretch after falsely confessing to the hit-and-run killing of Scotty Lockhart, Noah was alone, scraping a living by teaching writing at a university in New Jersey. The episode began with the funeral of the father he hated. He was friendly but distant with his ex-wife, Helen, who against all rules of logic and common sense seemed willing to take him back, and his wife, Alison (if so she remained), was nowhere to be seen. He was trapped in his lie about Scotty. In what looked like a major Season 3 plot strand, he was haunted by a prison memory that was only hinted at but appeared to involve a guard whom Noah kept spotting, first at the funeral and later around campus. Noah grabbed at his own shoulder, feeling a real or phantom pain. A student called “Descent,” his best-selling (pre-prison) novel, “a training manual” for how to be a jerk. (Harsher language used.) Train whistles kept spooking him, reminding him of childhood trauma and killing his buzz when he was about to have sex with a seductive faculty member (a new character, played by the French actress Irene Jacob). That’s a lot of comeuppance. I’m happy to report, though, that Noah remained essentially unchanged — quiet and perhaps a bit chastened, but still self-absorbed and self-pitying and largely oblivious to the feelings of others. (It was interesting, in this regard, that the episode was a “Noah” chapter in the narrative — so this was as flattering a point of view as we were going to get.) The opening funeral sequence set much of this scene, as we saw how the gulf that had existed between Noah and his father was now reflected in the estrangement between Noah and his oldest son, Martin. Noah’s new superfluity in the scheme of things, as well as his general cluelessness, was symbolized when he managed to miss out on serving as a pallbearer, replaced by Martin. At the grave, he stood apart from and behind the group, nervously scanning the cemetery for his prison-guard bête noire. An elderly guest at the reception told him that his “antics” (a wonderful word choice) had caused his father’s death. That finally drew some emotion from Noah — his typical quick-flaring anger. Back at school, Noah found a cheap student apartment to sublet — he’d been bunking at his sister’s, but her husband flipped out when the couple learned that Noah was inheriting the family home — and responded absent-mindedly and cruelly to a student’s writing. The general malaise got so bad that he took refuge in the university chapel and fell asleep in a pew. But then things started to look up, and as always with Noah, it was the siren call of sex. (Well, sometimes it’s the siren call of literary fame, but that’s in abeyance at the moment.) He was woken by the voice of Juliette, the professor, who wore a short, tight red skirt and talked about the duality of Merlin in “Le Morte d’Arthur” in terms that surely resonated with his own view of himself: “an archetype for the war between conscious mind and self-destructive subconscious desire.” It doesn’t get much more on-the-nose than that! Juliette was just what Noah’s ego had ordered — she told him that he was the only interesting person in New Jersey and that she loved “Descent.” She stuck up for him and his book when her female students (at a dinner party) tore into him as a patriarchal jerk. Based on what we know about Noah, you had to wonder, as the dinner party progressed, whether he’d end up with the age-appropriate professor or the angry young student, Audrey. Eventually it was the professor who led him upstairs, flattered him and kissed him — and talked about his bad-boy appeal, in case we were wondering what she found so irresistible. Then the train horn blew and the train’s lights flashed in his eyes and he ran out of the house, because at this point in the story nothing nice can happen for Noah. The episode ended in a flurry of revelation and what was presumably morbid fantasy. Back at Noah’s gross new apartment, we saw a manuscript, titled “The Autobiography of Jack Hunter,” that belied Noah’s claims that he wasn’t working on anything. And we watched as he tried to call Alison — the first nod to her existence, 54 minutes into the 58-minute episode. Then, as he started in on the epic pile of dirty dishes that the previous tenant had left in the sink, he heard noises and sensed someone walking up behind him. He grabbed at his shoulder, and this time there was blood flowing from what looked like a shiv wound in his neck. So what happened at that prison in Peekskill, N.Y., and why is a guard following him around a town in New Jersey? As always, your speculation, evaluation and embroidery is called for in the comments. www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/arts/television/the-affair-season-3-episode-1-recap.html?_r=0
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Post by sissa on Nov 24, 2016 22:40:07 GMT 10
‘The Affair’ Season 3 Spoilers: Episode 2 Synopsis Released; Noah Demands To See His Children BY MINYVONNE BURKE @minyvonneb ON 11/21/16 AT 11:39 AM CLOSE The Affair | 'Where Are The Kids?' Official Clip | Season 3 Episode 2 It looks like episode 2 of Showtime’s “The Affair” will be bringing back multiple perspectives, like the show has done in past seasons. The Season 3 premiere showed only Noah Solloway’s point-of-view, but based on a few sneak-peek videos released, fans will get to see Helen Solloway, Alison Lockhart and possibly Cole Lockhart’s narratives. According to a synopsis for episode 2, via TV Guide, Helen (Maura Tierney) is left “devastated” after her ex-husband Noah (Dominic West) makes a “stern request.” The synopsis also teases: “Various pressures cause Helen and Vik (Omar Metwally) to reexamine their relationship; and Alison’s (Ruth Wilson) worst fears are realized when she returns to Montauk following a crisis.” In one sneak peek (seen above), Helen is visiting Noah in prison and giving him updates on their four children. Noah has a bruised face and swollen eye, and he seems irritated with his ex. As she’s talking, he interrupts to ask why the kids aren’t visiting him in prison. “I need to see my kids, Helen,” he says. “Look around you, look at all these kids. Over there and over there. A lot of them come twice a week. They drive for hours, the mothers get them here. It’s not that difficult.” Helen says she understands but tells Noah that the kids hate going to the prison. In another sneak peek (below), Alison returns to Montauk and stops by the post office. She chats with Linda at the front desk, and then tells her that she’s there to get her mail. Alison doesn’t think she’ll have a lot of mail, but Linda walks back with two stacks of letters. It turns out Noah has been writing to Alison while he’s been locked away. Alison quickly looks through the stack of envelopes and leaves the post office in a hurry. www.ibtimes.com/affair-season-3-spoilers-episode-2-synopsis-released-noah-demands-see-his-children-2449238
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Post by sissa on Nov 29, 2016 8:06:49 GMT 10
-Helen, our master of illusion has a friend now - I liked her co-worker (who, like everybody else in this show, is no stranger to lies). -Vikram is Vic´s name. OMG the guy is hot. -Helen, forget Noah he was a shit husband. -I wonder when Helen will find out that Alison is the real killer (because that´s my version: even if Helen were looking I don´t think she would be able to not hit Scott when Alison threw him on the road. And the person Noah was traying to save was Alison). Funny and related to this episode:Maura Tierney Reveals She Broke The Bed During A Sex Scene On 'The Affair'September 18, 2016 4:44 PM PDT "The Affair" star Maura Tierney joins Access Hollywood's Natalie Morales and Kit Hoover on the Emmys red carpet, and admits she broke a bed while rehearsing a sex scene for the acclaimed Showtime series. Read more at www.accesshollywood.com/videos/maura-tierney-reveals-she-broke-the-bed-during-a-sex-scene-on-the-affair/#zD9PKz3Xbbs10up4.99REVIEWSTRUTH TELLING Love and Lies Never Die in ‘The Affair’: Season 3 Episode 2 Recap For The Affair’s Helen and Alison, despite new relationships and traumas, all roads lead back to Noah Solloway, in jail for a crime they both committed.TIM TEEMAN -11.28.16 2:00 AM ET The good news is that Dr. Vik Ullah (Omar Metwally) is back in The Affair, and Vik’s return—he is no longer Dr. Ullah—was heralded by him naked in bed, bucking away enthusiastically with Helen (Maura Tierney), a hot doc on the verge of orgasm. Lucky Helen, sigh. But still, for Helen and for Alison (Ruth Wilson), whose viewpoint took up the second half of Sunday night’s episode, all roads lead back to Noah Solloway (Dominic West), first Helen’s husband and then—after “the affair”—Alison’s. Then Alison pushed Scotty Lockhart (Colin Donnell) into the path of a car driven by Helen. Noah took the rap for it, and began a three-year stretch in jail for the crime. But who did he take the rap for? Helen? Alison? Both women? Different reasons? General guilt for all the selfish, shitty things he did? This episode took place a year before his release, which we saw unfold last week, when—despite her overtures—he rejected Helen, and started cavorting with a French academic, while haunted by what we imagine to be a sadistic prison guard. Neither Helen nor Alison seem rooted in their worlds, and both comport themselves with resolutely sourpuss expressions (a rare smile is a burst of sun appearing from behind clouds). Vik is renting the basement of Helen’s place, and was popping upstairs for sex when he felt like it. What sounded like a great, fun arrangement was now irksome for Helen, especially as he texted away to mysterious strangers. Her expression spoke volumes: If this was merely casual, what could her expectation of their relationship be? Her children are bustling, unreadable balls of chaos; she looks exhausted, angry, and puzzled—all underpinned by guilt. Vik himself is totally over the Noah’s ark (geddit) he has incidentally bought into, mulling that it feels like Helen has 11 children. The oldest is a withdrawn screw-up, the middle son is trying desperately to marshal order, and it seems only Stacey, the youngest, has miraculously kept any sweetness to her: Helen begs her not to become a teenager. Armed with a sweet picture of Stacey’s (which Noah leaves on the table), Helen went to see her ex-husband, who was being patrolled by that menacing prison guard who may or may not be responsible for the cheek-gash and eye injury he sported this week, and an unseen wrist injury the last time Helen was there—and which freaked the kids out so much they didn’t want to come to jail to see him. Noah told Helen he didn’t want to see her; he only wanted to see her if it meant seeing their kids. He sacrificed himself for her in court, so she believes he must love her; and she wondered aloud had it really been for their children he had done so, meaning that she wouldn’t go to jail. He left the question hanging, she left her own thoughts hanging: She had so wanted him to say he had done it for her. Helen’s new career is rooted in lying too; she’s a real-estate broker, more than willing to lie that her partner is not all she seems. She’s suffering huge personal tragedy, but still appears—just as the apartment she wants to encourage a couple to remodel for staging—sleek and shiny. It’s a lie, encouraged by her colleague. For Helen, a lie based on appearances; a lie that emphasizes personal subterfuge and dissemblance is all too real. The lie, and the construction of the lie, is all too easy to craft. More upset awaited Helen as she visited daughter Whitney (Julia Goldani Telles) and her older boyfriend Furkat (there was a lot of joking about that name). Furkat (Jonathan Cake), a ridiculously languid Brit in a show already packed with Brits playing Americans, sailed perilously close to the stereotype of exactly the kind of awful hipster photographer that would indeed live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in an apartment decked out entirely of his work—photographs of women’s breasts and vaginas. Helen is in no mood for his pretension (she says “Furkat” in the nearest American proximity to “fur cat”), his more than vague creepiness, or her daughter totally giving herself over to him as an assistant at the expense of her own education. Surely she wants more than to delightedly inform guests she is serving “Patagonian toothfish with caramelized shallots and kumquats.” Whitney, Affair fans will be delighted to know, lives down to her most extreme brattiness by spitting out at Vik one of the best lines of the episode. “You’d have to bring your own waterboard to f**k them up more than my dad did,” she says of him becoming a parental figure to her siblings. Helen remains racked by guilt that she was driving the car, not Noah. She invites Whitney to hate her, not him, but cannot tell her why. Later, after another argument about trust and what their relationship is about, Vik does indeed move some shirts into Helen’s closet. And brings his cactus too. They promise not to lie to one another, and so clearly believe themselves to be in another TV show entirely. Elsewhere, Alison’s train journey returned her to a very familiar platform: Montauk, site of many a dramatic Affair entrance and farewell. She looked miserable (so no surprises there—Alison’s face is set in a permanent silent scream), and in disguise. She watched her daughter Joanie play from afar, and be picked up from school by her ex-husband Cole (Joshua Jackson), her father, who has made a go of local restaurant, the Lobster Roll. So many ghosts: This restaurant was the locale where “the affair” between Noah and Alison had taken seed, when Noah, Helen, and the kids had visited… It turned out that Alison had signed over custody of Joanie when she went a little mad after believing—following a fever—Joanie would die, just as her son Gabriel did at the same age. Cole and Luisa (Catalina Sandino Moreno) say she abdicated her responsibility as a mother and now cannot have Joanie back, and the only friendly face available to her is Oscar’s (Darren Goldstein). Oscar! The creep who has outcrept all creeps on the show has been reborn as a kindly pub sage. “All you need is a good lawyer,” he advised Alison, adding he is terrified of both her and Cole. The only other comfort for Alison is a cache of letters Noah has sent Alison from prison, which she picks up from the local post office. And then Cole brings Joanie round for an hour-long visit. And Alison runs to her, one of those brief smiles fluttering—but still a character who is more acted upon than active; still a character bounced around by plot and circumstance, and seemingly without any agency of her own. She’s an adult defined by a fractured, child-like neediness. She disappears for six months because she felt like she had to. We should sympathize with that, but instead feel the validity of Luisa’s fury at her selfishness. Still unknown is what happened to Noah and Alison’s relationship; what happened in jail; and whether Helen and Vik make it through the next few years, with his little cactus proudly installed on the bedside table. That’s not a euphemism, but in a battle of spikiness between the cactus and Helen, I do not fancy that cactus’s chances. www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/27/love-and-lies-never-die-in-the-affair-season-3-episode-2-recap.html'The Affair' Full of swerves, but missing its original spark Full of swerves, but missing its original sparkBy Hank Stuever UPDATED: 11/27/2016 04:28:17 PM EST One small problem with the very best TV shows is that they have to keep going forward. That's what TV shows do -- unlike, say, great films that remain forever fixed at the place and time and mood in which you left them, protected from tampering instincts or an obligation to push on. To stay on the air (and in the air, buzz-wise), a good TV drama has to keep paving new twists and turns on a road that eventually leads to a satisfying destination. This can also be the same dangerous road on which wheels have a way of flying off. All of which is my way of saying that the first few heavily burdened episodes of the third season of Showtime's sharply satisfying drama The Affair leave me a bit ambivalent about the idea of always moving forward. (Stop reading here if seasons 1 and 2 are still lingering on your to-watch list; this review will discuss the story so far, with a taste of what's to come.) Last season, I was busy admiring The Affair's complicated structure and philosophical approach to the nature of truth, in which four (or more) characters experience notably different versions of the same emotional cataclysms. My enchantment left me ill-prepared for one of the show's least satisfying swerves, in which an objective and omniscient point-of-view stepped in and resolved a mystery: On trial for murder, the self-absorbed Noah Solloway (Dominic West) shocked the courtroom by confessing that he drove the vehicle that killed slime bucket Scotty Lockhart (Colin Donnell), ex-brother-in-law of Noah's new wife, Alison Lockhart (Ruth Wilson). Rather abruptly, a show that firmly believes that no two people can see something the same way made one mutual secret quite plain to viewers: Noah was not driving the car that night; his ex-wife, Helen (Maura Tierney), was driving, but Noah took the blame for it and was sentenced to prison. Season 3 takes a considerable leap forward in time -- a year or two at least -- and starts with an entire hour devoted to the perspective of Noah, the least show's least-reliable viewpoint. Freshly paroled, Noah is teaching creative writing at a New Jersey college while nobly struggling with everything he has lost, including his relationship with Alison, his marriage to Helen, the respect of his children and the fleeting success of his semi-autobiographical novel that bared too much. (Everything Noah does is tinged with conspicuous nobility and literary manliness; he's an author caught up in his own world.) To top it off, he's being harassed by a menacing guard (Brendan Fraser) who has taken a grudge beyond the prison walls. Although The Affair remains one of the most interesting and well-written dramas around, West's portrayal of Noah has outworn some of its welcome; he's far more interesting when his libido takes precedence over his angst. As the story continues to sprawl, The Affair loses sight of its main draw -- a torrid extramarital affair between Noah and Alison, the singularly bad decision from which so many more bad decisions have flowed. Alison has moved on; by episode 2 we see that her primary goal is to return to Long Island and win partial custody of Joanie, the daughter that Noah believed was his child and who is now living with Alison's ex-husband, Cole Lockhart (Joshua Jackson), the child's true father. Typing this up feels like I've been reassigned to telenovela recaps. It's better to simply note that The Affair succeeds by becoming a tangled mess -- but that mess has considerably less appeal this time. The only way through, of course, depends on Tierney's unerring performance as Helen, Noah's ex, whose first-world suffering is an exquisite balance of permanent guilt and self-interest. Jackson, too, as Cole, often comes to the rescue with an alternate story line, although he is seldom seen in the episodes made available for review. I don't suppose there's any way we can get Helen and Cole together, and reignite The Affair in a properly heated fashion?www.lowellsun.com/lifestyles/ci_30608432/affair‘The Affair’ Season 3 Spoilers: Helen And Alison’s Narratives Introduced In Episode 2 [RECAP]BY MINYVONNE BURKE @minyvonneb ON 11/27/16 AT 11:00 PM Episode 2 of Showtime’s “The Affair” introduced two new perspectives for this season: Helen Solloway and Alison Bailey. The Season 3 premiere focused on Noah as he dealt with life after prison, but Sunday’s episode was a flashback to a year ago and showed how Helen and Alison were dealing with Noah being locked away. Helen’s Narrative: The episode kicks off with Helen’s (Maura Tierney) point-of-view. She’s still with Vik (Omar Metwally). It’s revealed that he’s living in her basement, and Whitney (Julia Goldani Telles) is no longer living at home. Before Vik heads to work, she reminds him that they’re meeting with Whitney later that night for dinner. Helen seems to be doing pretty well while Noah (Dominic West) is serving time behind bars. She’s in a happy romance and is successful at her job. However, things between Helen and Noah are still tense, and things only get worse for them when she decides to visit him in prison. Helen is worried about Noah and wants to help him change prisons because he has a swollen eye and a gash on his face. When Helen asks what happened, he lies and says that he slipped in the lunch line. Helen isn’t buying it, but Noah tells her to be quiet and drop it when the security guard Gunther (Brendan Fraser) approaches. As the guard walks by Noah, he hits him in the back. Noah tells Helen that he doesn’t want her help and asks why the kids aren’t visiting him in prison. Helen tells her ex-husband that they’re in school and starts giving him updates on how they’re doing. As she’s telling Noah about her plans to meet Whitney’s boyfriend that night, Noah interrupts and says he needs to see his kids. Noah points out that there are other kids visiting at the prison, and Helen tells him that their kids don’t want to come because they don’t like seeing him bruised and beat up. Noah is getting angry and tells Helen that he doesn’t want her to visit him anymore since she’s not bringing the kids with him. “That’s what I want, Helen. I want you to leave me alone. Is that too much to ask? Haven’t I done enough?” he asks. Noah gets up to leave and Helen quickly hands him a drawing their daughter Stacey (Leya Catlett) did. Noah looks at it, drops it on the table and walks away. After Helen’s disastrous prison visit, she gets a text message from Vik saying that he enjoyed their lunch together and hopes they catch up again soon. Clearly, Vik sent the text to the wrong person since Helen has been at the prison all afternoon and made him a sandwich for lunch before he left for work earlier in the morning. Later, Helen and Vik go to Whitney’s to meet her boyfriend Furkat (Jonathan Cake). Helen seems a bit annoyed, and also doesn’t seem onboard with Whitney’s new romance or living situation. There are photographs of half-naked women hanging on the walls and Whitney reveals that Furkat took the pictures. When Vik asks if he could buy one of the photos, Helen asks her daughter if it’s her in the images. She laughs and says no telling her mom that one day she might model for Furkat. Helen asks if Whitey is still in college, and Whitney says she’s working for Furkat as his assistant. Furkat thinks he can teach Whitney more about art than she can learn in class. When the conversation switches to Noah and the accident that killed Scotty Lockhart (Colin Donnell), Helen gets upset and fakes a headache. She tells Vik she’s ready to leave. Before going after Helen, Vik buys one of Fukrat’s paintings. Back at Helen’s house, she confronts Vik about the text message, and he explains that he met up with a friend’s daughter who is trying to get a residency at the hospital he works at. Vik says there is nothing going on between them, but Helen is still mad and tells him that their “relationship” isn’t working for her anymore. She doesn’t like him living downstairs and them living their own separate lives. Vik walks away, goes down to his basement apartment and brings his things up to Helen’s room. Vik wants Helen to stop lying to him and to stop going to the prison to see Noah. Alison’s Narrative: The second part of episode 2 begins with Alison on a train. She’s headed to Montauk where she has her own apartment. Alison is seen decorating one of the bedrooms for a child, presumably her daughter Joanie, but she doesn’t have a child with her. After fixing up the room, Alison heads over to a playground, where she’s seen watching a little girl. Alison is hiding between cars and clearly doesn’t want anyone to see her. Cole (Joshua Jackson) calls the little girl, Joanie, over to him and they get into a car and leave. Alison calls someone panicking telling the person on the other end of the line that she couldn’t do it and didn’t approach Cole. The person reminds Alison that she’s Joanie’s mother. Alison makes her way to the Lockhart’s Lobster Roll and asks Cole if she can talk to him. Cole doesn’t seem happy to see her, and tells her they should talk in the back. Apparently, Alison has been gone for six months and left Cole and his wife Luisa (Catalina Sandino Moreno) in charge of taking care of Joanie. Alison explains that she left because she was sick but she’s better now. Alison wants to see Joanie but Cole tells her no. He eventually agrees to let her see their daughter and tells her to come by their house later that evening. When Alison gets to Cole’s home, Luisa is there and tells her that Joanie isn’t there. Luisa says that she knows Cole agreed to let Alison see Joanie, but she doesn’t think that’s a good idea. They tell her that Joanie cried for months when Alison left, and they don’t want to traumatize her again. Alison begs to see Joanie telling them that she bought her a purple dress because that’s her favorite color. Luisa tells Alison that Joanie’s favorite color is yellow, but she’ll give the dress to her. Alison says no and leaves. After she leaves Cole’s home, Alison runs into Oscar (Darren Goldstein) who tells her that his wife is pregnant. Oscar wants to celebrate and takes her to the local bar. Oscar wants to know where Alison has been for the past few months, and she tells him that she left and checked herself into an institution. Alison says that when Joanie was four she got really sick with a cold and because Joanie was the same age her son Gabriel was when he died, she started seeing “flashes of things that could happen” to Joanie. Meet The New Characters On ‘The Affair’ Season 3 Alison said one night Joanie was so sick that she panicked and dropped the little girl off at Cole’s. She told him that she would be back in a few days, but she left for six months. Alison also reveals that she signed over her rights to Cole and Luisa, but she wants to be able to see her child. Oscar tells Alison that she needs a good lawyer. The episode ends with Alison painting Joanie’s room yellow, and Cole showing up at her door with the little girl. Cole tells Alison that she has an hour to visit with Joanie. www.ibtimes.com/affair-season-3-spoilers-helen-alisons-narratives-introduced-episode-2-recap-2451338
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Post by sissa on Jan 4, 2017 6:24:16 GMT 10
'The Affair' season 3 episode 6 spoilers: Martin rejects Noah's attempt at reconciliationJilianne Arbonida |Friday, December 30 2016 Martin (Jake Siciliano) wants nothing to do with his father in the upcoming episode of "The Affair." The first episode of the Showtime series for January will see Noah's (Dominic West) attempt to reconnect with his son. According to the synopsis (via TV Guide), the disgraced author think it is time to win back his child's trust after all these years. When Noah was imprisoned, none of his children came to visit him. Helen (Maura Tierney) tried to cover up for them, but he knew his children did not want to see him. They all believed Noah was a killer and he deserved what he got. When he was granted freedom, Noah had no time to think about his family. All he wanted was to see how Alison (Ruth Wilson) was doing. However, the recent events in his life made him realize that it is time to set his pride aside and woo his children, especially Martin. It was actually Helen who came up with the idea to make Noah come to Martin's school. There was supposed to be a meeting for parents to go to. Noah is eager to come, but something must have happened that prevented him from attending the event. In the promo, Martin is angrily telling his mom that she should have never invited his father. The teen believes that they are better off without him. Helen cannot seem to catch a break in her life with all the hurdles that come her way. Her boyfriend, Vic (Omar Metwally), will have a brilliant idea so he can share her burden. In the teaser, he asks her to marry him. Helen looks very surprised with the sudden proposal. That night, she has dinner with her parents. Both Bruce (John Doman) and Margaret (Kathleen Chalfant) agree that any man is better than her first husband. "The Affair" season 3 will return on Sunday, Jan. 1, 2017 at 10 p.m. EST on Showtime www.ecumenicalnews.com/article/the-affair-season-3-episode-6-spoilers-martin-rejects-noahs-attempt-at-reconciliation/57322.htm‘The Affair’ Review: Noah Turns Into a MadmanKen Tucker December 19, 2016 As of this past Sunday, we are halfway through the third season of The Affair, and the affairs of the main characters are in disarray, as is the series itself. Remember when this show started and it adhered to a pretty strict, he-remembers/she-remembers structure in telling the stories of its four main characters: Noah (Dominic West), Helen (Maura Tierney), Alison (Ruth Wilson), and Cole (Joshua Jackson)? Well, that framework was dismantled a while ago — or, rather, I should say, you still have scenes introduced as “Part 1: Alison” or “Part 2: Noah,” but the show plays fast and loose with the content of those scenes. One result is a slackening of the pace of the series. On Sunday’s episode, for example, “Part 1: Alison” recalled a larky tryst with Noah on Block Island, but in “Part 2: Noah,” there were a few overlapping memory-contrasts of scenes similar to Alison’s point of view, but we also got a fair amount of Noah’s recovered memories of prison abuse featuring Brendan Fraser’s hulking, growling guard Gunther. One of those memories, in fact, ended with Noah recalling himself as a snarling, rage-filled, popeyed beast throwing himself at the cell bars in an attempt to get at Gunther after the guard had done something I’ll only refer to as obscenely naughty to a photograph of Alison. That’s not the only kind of mad Noah got in this episode. He insisted that Alison spend the day with him on Block Island as a condition for his signing their divorce papers. And that free-spirited novelist — fresh out of three years in prison and an even more recent neck stabbing — decides to break into the property of some rich guy with a hot tub, take off all his clothes, give a Tarzan yell, and hop in, guzzling the guy’s wine and encouraging Alison to do the same. These arty types — they never learn — always prone to fits of crazy madman antics. about their previous encounter. Honestly, it’s tough watching a full hour of Noah’s high jinks (and, inevitably, his emotion-crash low-jinks) plus all those close-ups of Alison’s down-turned-mouth worried looks. Especially when Maura Tierney’s Helen — always a bracing figure who frequently provides backbone to an episode — is not featured at all. The Affair used to operate well by having a narrative framework you could rely upon even when the unreliable narrators were busy remembering things differently. Now, things just seem to happen willy-nilly, almost at random, although I’m sure someone in the Affair writers’ room would throw a pencil at me for saying so. Nevertheless, since we have reached the seasonal halfway point, with the next new episode on Jan. 1, the dawn of the new year, I hope the remaining five episodes are pulled together more tightly. And no more naked-butt shots of Noah howling at the sun god, please. The Affair airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on Showtime. www.yahoo.com/tv/the-affair-s3-ep5-review-showtime-141555757.htmlMaura Tierney on The Affair, Game of Thrones, and Her Unusual Bathroom CollectionThe Golden Globe–winning actress talks about the books she’s reading, the shows she’s watching, and her next casting wish TEXT BY JENNIFER FERNANDEZ Posted December 5, 2016 Photo: Maarten de Boer/Getty Images On Showtime’s hit series The Affair, now in its third season, Maura Tierney plays fan-favorite Helen Solloway, a card-carrying member of the silver spoon society, whose life gets turned upside down when her husband (Dominic West) leaves her for another woman (Ruth Wilson). “Fundamentally, I think she’s a pretty decent person,” says Tierney, who hints at her character’s motivation given last season’s shocking finale. “The whole season is about examining how she’s coping with her guilt—or not coping with it. Helen is driven to extreme behavior to make everything okay again, which, ultimately, she can’t.” Thankfully, the Boston-born actress's real life isn’t quite so complicated. AD caught up with her after shooting wrapped last week for a sneak peek into her low-key life off camera. Do you prefer the city or the country? Well, I grew up in Boston and went to NYU. I mean, I love the beach, but I would call myself a city person. I would not call myself woodsy. What is your house like? I live in a brownstone, but it’s very nontraditional. And I think that what I discovered is that it was a rooming house and built in the 1850s. So the façade of it looks very traditional, but the inside of my home is a lot more modern. Are you an interior design connoisseur? It’s funny because my designer, Michael Angelo Stuno, is here right now helping me. No, I’m not into it. I get very overwhelmed with decision-making. I think I gravitate toward a midcentury aesthetic. Years ago, when you could go to flea markets that were actual flea markets in the city, before everything changed, and it was easier to get more antique-type things, that was my aesthetic. I mean, I grew up going to flea markets and yard sales with my dad. Do you have a favorite piece or piece of art?I’m not religious at all, but in my bathroom I have a collection of acquired things: I have a rosary from the Vatican and another rosary from Medjugorje; I have this scapular that we all wore when I went to Burning Man a few years ago; I have a Ganesh; I have a puppet from a voodoo shop in New Orleans. I feel like there’s this tiny religious aspect to my bathroom, although I’m not a practicing anything. How has your home style evolved over the years? Is it very different from your childhood or first home? I would say it’s much more modern in terms of design. My first home in the city was this apartment on Mott Street where the tub was in the kitchen. It was this tenement apartment that was one of my favorite places I ever lived in. And my childhood home was filled with antiques—my parents like that. And I had dolls and lots of things, and my bedroom was purple. My bedroom now is much more—my designer calls it ‘pilgrim-y.’ It’s very sparse. There’s a lot less clutter. Given the spare aesthetic, do you keep anything interesting on your bedside table? Oh, yes, there’s a pile of books. I just finished a short novel by Doris Lessing, called The Fifth Child. And I have a book by Maria Semple and a book by Colson Whitehead and a book by Marina Abramović, so those are all on my list. I kind of need to finish one book first, but I put them on my nightstand because I must read them. I can’t keep buying books and not reading them. So you’re clearly a book reader. Are there any television shows that you’re binge-watching? Not so much. I have in the past, but right now I’m watching mostly in real time. I’m watching Atlanta—I love that show. I’m watching Westworld. I’m very excited for Homeland to come back. Those are my top three right now. Are there any shows that you’re just blown away by, production-wise? I’m not sure that I’d want to inhabit this world, but watching Game of Thrones is just sweeping. The cinematography is quite stunning on that show—it’s so epic. But that’s the show, right? Are there any shows that you maybe wish you were on? I would like to be able to be in a comedy again. No one has hired me for a comedy since ER—once, The Office did. I don’t know, I guess people have stopped thinking of me as funny. They forget that the first four years I was on TV I was on a sitcom. But Helen is quite funny sometimes. www.architecturaldigest.com/story/maura-tierney-on-the-affair-game-of-thrones-and-her-unusual-bathroom-collectionRemote Controlled: ‘The Affair’ : Boss Sarah Treem on What’s Ahead for Season 3, the Paris FinaleDebra Birnbaum Executive Editor, TV@debrabirnbaum VARIETY DECEMBER 30, 2016 | 09:00AM PT Welcome to Remote Controlled, Variety’s podcast series featuring the best and brightest in television, both in front of and behind the camera. This week’s episode features Variety executive editor of TV Debra Birnbaum in conversation with Sarah Treem, co-creator and executive producer of Showtime’s “The Affair,” now in its third season. She reveals what’s in store for the rest of the season, as well as the upcoming finale, which is shooting in Paris. When she pitched the idea of heading to France to Showtime, “I don’t know if they thought I was serious for a while,” she says with a laugh. “But I think a lot of it comes down to money at the end of the day, and weirdly enough, it turned out to be cheaper to shoot in Paris.” And, she adds, with a tease, “There’s something about being in Paris that feels right for this season’s story.” Treem discusses how the show has evolved from the first season, when it explored the impact of Noah (Dominic West) and Allison’s (Ruth Wilson) affair on their marriages, their families, and their lives. “The initial affair was a pebble that drops into a still pond, and then the ripples go out and out and out. So the show isn’t about the act of dropping the pebble into the pond, it’s about the ripples and how far they go,” she says. So the third season allows them to explore more of those ripples — particularly how the characters’ pasts impact their future. One question on their mind in the writers’ room, she says, is “What happened to get them to the place to where they could have the affair in the first place?” That’s especially relevant for Noah this season, who went to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. “What is it about this guy that would do something like that?” she says. “There’s something very self-destructive in him.” And, she adds, perhaps “there is a self-destructive impulse in all of us to some extent.” This season’s central mystery of who stabbed Noah will get resolved, she promises. The series has evolved beyond its initial shifting memory structure to focus on differing perspective, she says. “I’m still really interested in this idea of POV,” she says. “I think that’s really what the show is about. Two people in a relationship are never on the same page.” She reveals that an upcoming episode will show a scene from Helen (Maura Tierney) and then Allison’s perspective. “Everyone is trapped in the prism of their own perspective all the time,” she says. This season also features two new additions to the cast: She calls casting Brendan Fraser “a moment of casting genius.” “We wanted someone who was going to be able to match [West] and control him,” she says, adding that much of his performance is ad-libbed. “It’s always good in the third season to bring in some new energy, and his energy is great.” She decided to bring in Juliette (Irene Jacob) as a love interest for Noah to explore the character from the point-of-view of someone who doesn’t judge him. “The question is, who is Noah with Juliette, and could he possibly be a different person than he is with the other women in his life?,” she says. Treem offers some teases of what’s to come in the rest of the season for the core cast. “Helen feels guilty about what happened: She has this idea if she gets Noah back, she can erase what happened,” she says, adding, “It’s always fun to watch Maura f— up. … I think audiences are going to be somewhat shocked by her performance.” As for Allison, “She’s always going to be a fragile character,” says Treem. “But she ends up with a strong sense of self in the final episodes that none of the characters have.” Treem says she hopes she gets the chance to do a fourth and final season: “I see a fourth season that will bring all the characters back together in a way that would feel really satisfying and surprising and end a journey.” variety.com/2016/tv/news/remote-controlled-the-affair-sarah-treem-season-3-finale-1201947786/
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Post by sissa on Jan 4, 2017 6:49:52 GMT 10
The Affair Recap: She Knew Me Better Than Anyone ElseCOURTNEY E. SMITH 2 JANUARY 2017, 01:01 In the future when we contemplate just when it was that The Affair jumped the shark, we will point to this episode. Which is a shame, because the episode that preceded itmight have been one of the best in the series so far. It’s not apparent just how far into the land of psychological metaphor we’ll be going when the episode begins with Helen (Maura Tierney) out to dinner with her parents and Dr. Vic (Omar Metwally). Her parents announce they’re getting back together after a horrible and contentious separation in which he cheated. What we’re seeing as her father explains that her mother just “knows me better than anyone else” are the wheels turning in Helen’s head — how can she get Noah (Dominic West) to get back together with her? She obviously won’t be happy until that happens and she’s doing everything she can to push Vic out of her life and keep Noah in, as exemplified by the parent/teacher conference with their son Martin (Jake Siciliano) in the next scene. He’s been skipping school, for no reason he admits, and Helen invokes Noah repeatedly and then gets into an argument with Martin about his father after. It’s one more incidence in which she comes very close to telling the truth about what happened the night of the accident. Surely she can’t keep this secret much longer, she's constantly about to burst with it. Her search for Noah, who was supposed to attend the conference, takes her to his sister Nina’s (Jennifer Esposito) house. Nina finally asks the question we all want to know of Helen: Why does he still matter so much to you? After Helen gives a bullshit excuse about the kids, Nina says it’s time for them all, her and the kids, to let him go. Then comes the big bombshell, the reason this sister character exists. She explains that Noah was using Helen to get away from his own family and that Helen was too much of a narcissist and control-freak to notice. She points out that even Helen doesn’t know what the big fallout between Noah and his father was about — making it obvious that Helen doesn’t really know Noah. Then Nina makes it known that she doesn't think Noah killed Scotty Lockhart (Colin Donnell). It’s a a ham-fisted way to move the plot ahead, but this show’s writers love to do that exactly that. The hits keep on coming for Helen. She then goes to visit Max (Josh Stamberg) who was Noah’s best friend with whom she hooked up (and nearly married) after they split up. Max is getting married to an editor at Vogue which shocks Helen, despite the fact that she’s moved on as well, and he accidentally rubs it in her face that they looked at the spot where Helen and Noah got married as a wedding venue. To make up for all her hurt feelings she f**ks him, just like a control-freak narcissist would do. Then she has a postcoital cry and asks if Noah was f**ked up before she met him, when Max knew him in college. When she point-blank asks if Noah was using her, he tells her that he’s sure Noah loved her but he was also aware of who she was (a rich girl with a father who was a famous writer) and she blows. This is all followed by a fight with Dr. Vic that’s easy to anticipate (for everyone but Dr. Vic), given all that came before it. This has been the longest 26 minutes of my life. Time moves very slowly when you’re watching someone realise their life is a lie. Despite, or perhaps because of, having reality shoved in her face by everyone, Helen goes to find Noah. Ostensibly she goes to talk to him about Martin, who went to Pennsylvania for an unscheduled visit with his dad the day before, but really she went to find Noah and let out all of her feelings. She arrives to find a bathroom full of blood and Noah in the river, screaming at nothing like a madman. Cut to Noah’s POV. He returns Juliette’s (Irène Jacob) crashed car and they find that they’re sexually incompatible at present (because what is this show if someone isn't trying to f**k Noah?). He peaces out for his parents’ house on what appears to be the Amish side of Pennsylvania on the world’s most pensive bus ride. Noah is back in the life he wanted so badly to get out of as a child, but this time he’s popping prescription pain pills and has a stalker. When Martin shows up, it’s not to see Noah after all. He had no idea Noah would be there, he was just looking for a place to hide out. Noah finds the letter he wrote for his mother the night she committed suicide just as Martin informs his dad that he hates school and wants to join the Army to be “like Grandpa.” It’s a mind f**k of a moment for Noah. That evening, there is dinner at an old friend’s house and high school yearbook photos. The only thing missing is someone to tell us where that crazy prison guard Gunther (Brendan Frasier) fits in to the past, which the writers throw in like a scrap for dogs who are hiding under the table during dinner. Thanks for that nod to the plot point that no one cares about, and this reveal (when it finally comes) had better be worth it. The bloody bandages were from Noah’s neck, we learn, when he tried to clean his wound while he was woozy from mixing beer and pain pills. He comes clean to Martin about helping his mother die, but we still don’t know what exactly happened between Noah and his father. It feels like the writers are labouring the point on that one. The next morning Noah wakes up to find Martin gone. There have been at least three prominent photos of Noah as a teenager in the episode but if you thought those were so that you’d know how much he and Martin look alike, the last scene is here to prove you wrong. Noah walks to the river and sees a young man with a hoodie wading in. He assumes it’s Martin and runs in after to stop him. When he catches up to the boy, he sees that it is himself. Yes, the writers of this show really executed a metaphor that idiotic. They really manifested the unconscious desires of a character into a conscious representation of himself. They really said screw it to symbolism and blew the whole thing up in order to force Noah to have some self-awareness. It seems like two different teams of people must have written Helen’s storyline, where she takes a journey to self-awareness by asking people outside of herself what they think, and Noah’s, where he goes full Carl Jung Man and His Symbols in a way that suggest years of therapy won’t undo this breakthrough. So here we are, on the other side of the shark. www.refinery29.uk/2017/01/134530/the-affair-season-3-episode-6-recap'The Affair' recap: Stuck in the pastEthan RennerFor The Baltimore Sun "The Affair" recap: Noah and Helen do some serious soul searching (though not together). Part One: Helen This week's episode of "The Affair" opens on Helen and Vic, enjoying a dinner with Helen's newly reconciled parents. The parents are meeting Helen's new man for the first time, and seem pleased with him. "And at your age, Helen," her mother says, adding, "anyone would be an improvement after your first husband." The woman is making sense. Helen doesn't take kindly to the jab at Noah, and mentions that he'll be attending a parent/teacher conference with her and Martin the next day, much to Vic's surprise. Helen and Vic walk home later, and Vic mentions how great it is that her parents are back together. "It's not great, it's pathetic," Helen says, reminding him that her father walked out on her mother with one of his students. At the conference the next day, Noah is a no-show, and in spite of Helen's insistence that he will be there, the teacher has to proceed with the discussion without him. The teacher informs Helen that Martin skips school often. Helen is outraged. The school official reminds Martin that this is his second senior year — and at 19, his last opportunity to graduate high school. Helen attempts to massage the situation by bringing up Noah, and how his actions have impacted Martin and their family. Martin isn't having any of that, though. "He shouldn't be in our lives anymore. He killed someone, Mom," Martin says. After the conference, Helen pays Nina a surprise visit. Helen tells her that she's doing a welfare check on Noah after he failed to appear for the conference. "Why's he still matter so much to you?" Nina asks her. Nina tells Helen that her brother is a mess, and always has been. "Noah was using you," she continues. She tells Helen that something happened between Noah and their father that made him treat Noah poorly, and that Helen should have thought about what that might be. Nina refuses to tell Helen what that event was, which leads Helen to curse Nina for not telling her. "My brother has been in pain for years, and you did not see it," she says. Helen goes to leave, but Nina stops her and asks a question. "Who was driving the car that killed Scott Lockhart?" she asks. "As far as I know, Noah was," Helen answers. "Kinda crazy, huh? No evidence to convict him. He stood up in that court and volunteered to go to prison," Nina says. "Where were you that night?" Helen mumbles her alibi and excuses herself, stopping at her car to collect her emotions. After leaving Nina's, Helen continues touring her past, and pays Max a visit. He pours her some wine and tells her that he's getting married and moving to the suburbs. "I guess I'm not the love of your life anymore," Helen says. She asks Max to kiss her, and after putting up token resistance, Max obliges, and they proceed to have sex. After their encounter, Helen asks Max whether there was truth to what Nina was saying, asking if Noah was broken when they met and whether he used Helen. Max agrees, and Helen doesn't like the answers she's getting, insisting that she knew Noah deeper than anyone ever has or will. Max says that he's made a mistake getting in the middle of all of this drama again. "You need to go," he says. "It's never about us. It's always about him. Please go." Helen leaves, and returns home, quite late. She finds Vic in their living room, reading one of her father's books. "I want to get to know him better," he explains. "Why would you want to do that?" she asks. Vic asks why she is so late getting home, and Helen lies to him, giving him an excuse about work. She's startled to learn that Martin isn't home yet and moves to grab her phone to call the police, but Vic stops her, looking to assure her that everything is fine. Helen lashes out and tells him that he doesn't know her or her kids, but Vic presents evidence to the contrary. "Tell me, Helen. How have I failed you?" he asks. Martin returns while they verbally spar, and curses Vic when he scolds him for not calling. "You're not my dad," he says. "He's right, you're not," Helen adds. While Vic excuses himself to step out for a drink, Helen confronts her son. Martin tells her that he spent the rest of the day with Noah at Noah's childhood lake house in Pennsylvania. She presses him for details, but Martin refuses to let her in. "I can't tell you. It's between me and him," he says. Vic returns and he and Helen go to bed, but Helen can't sleep. She grabs her keys and drives in the middle of the night to the lake house, arriving early the next morning. She enters the house, and finds it empty, except for a bloody scene at a bathroom sink. Concerned, she runs off outside, looking for Noah. She hears him screaming, and follows his voice to the lake, where she sees him in the middle of the body of water, seemingly struggling with someone. She calls out to him, and he turns to her, with a look of shock on his face. Part Two: Noah Noah arrives at Juliette's home with her smashed car on the back of a tow truck. "I bet you're wishing you'd never met me right now," he says. Juliette insists that she's just happy that he's OK, and offers to let him stay the night, considering his place is a crime scene. Juliette mentions that the police spoke to her about his stabbing again, and that they're very curious as to why she happened to be at his apartment right after he was stabbed. She says that she won't ask Noah any questions, because they don't owe each other any information. As she prepares her guest room for Noah, she comments on how uncomfortable the bed is, and says that Noah is welcome to sleep with her. Noah asks whether she's married, and she confirms that she is. He asks if she has an arrangement with him allowing her dalliances, and she tells Noah that her husband suffers from Alzheimer's. So I guess we saw her on a video call with her husband earlier this season, and not her father as I'd assumed. "Half the time he doesn't remember that he has a wife. Or he thinks I'm his first wife, whom he loved better," Juliette says. That's heartbreaking. She asks Noah to tie her up. "I've never done anything like that. I think I'd enjoy it," she says, and offers herself to him. Noah refuses, and Juliette says that she picked the wrong man to have a fling with. She tells him not to wake her if he leaves early the next day. Noah heads off to the lake house the next morning, passing a Gunther family business as he arrives in his small childhood hometown. He reaches the home and finds a photo of him as a child with his mother in the bedroom. He looks at the bed, where he likely cared for his dying mom, and hangs his head. Noah heads into town to pick up some trash bags and cleaning supplies, as he prepares to clean the house out to sell. He runs into an old school mate who invites him over for dinner while he's in town, and Noah reluctantly accepts the invitation. As he cleans out the home later, including a trash can filled with bloody paper towels, Noah startles when a car pulls up in the driveway. He grabs a baseball bat and goes to take a swing when the front door opens, only to find Martin there. Martin isn't pleased to see his father, and says that he goes to the house to be alone whenever he wants, at his grandfather's invitation. Martin informs Noah that he'll be staying the night, and Noah invites him along to his old friend's house with him for dinner. As they awkwardly sit together, waiting to depart for dinner, Noah comes across a box of old letters, including one of his college acceptance letters. Noah is shaken, while Martin tells his dad that he hates school and wants to join the army, to be like his grandfather. Later, they head off to dinner. Noah's old buddy and another of his classmates married, and they have a daughter who's roughly Martin's age and will join them for dinner. As they wait for the meal, another old high school buddy, Stevie, arrives. The old school friends tease Noah about his book, further cementing the awkward nature of the evening. Things escalate at dinner, as Stevie rips Noah for serving a prison sentence. "Turns out, he's trash like the rest of us," he says. Martin and the daughter head off to a party, and Noah takes ill, having mixed his painkillers with alcohol. He asks his old friends about Gunther, but they can't provide him with any information about him. Sick and paranoid, Noah stumbles back to the lake house. He peels the bandage off his neck wound, before passing out, due to the pain, and the mix of drugs and alcohol. Martin finds him later, and slaps him awake. Noah fumbles for his pill bottle, and Martin offers to help him, but Noah is not well. He throws the pills across the room, causing Martin to storm off. Noah retrieves the pills and swallows some, then storms after his son. He grabs a note from the stack of old letters, and throws it at Martin to read. "It's the note your grandma left the night she died," he says. It's written in Noah's handwriting, Martin notices. "Why?" he asks. "She was too sick to hold the pen, so I had to," Noah says. "I helped her die, Martin," Noah says. "I know I've let you down, severely. But I love you more than you can possibly imagine. ... I just wanted you to understand a little about me so that one day when I die, and you're clearing out my house, you won't be rehearsing conversations that you know you'll never have." Perhaps seeing his father in a more sympathetic light, and now knowing some of what he's been through, Martin throws his arm around his dad. Noah implores him to go to school, so that his mother can see him graduate. "Yeah, OK," Martin says, and the two embrace. Noah wakes up the next morning, and is pleased to see that Martin is gone. Content, he steps outside to take in the day. He walks to the water, and sees a hooded figure that resembles Martin walking into the center of the lake. Noah calls out to the figure, and when he doesn't get a response, charges into the water after it. The figure turns around, and Noah sees his teen-aged self staring back at him. Stop popping pills, Noah. Final Thoughts Noah's descent into addiction has been bubbling just beneath the surface all season, and now that he's seeing other visions, this certainly calls into question how much of Gunther's stalking is real. That isn't as big a reveal as the show would like it to be, as the bread crumbs have been there, and I've been upfront with my skepticism. Helen's plight is the far more interesting story thread to me, and it was nice to have Maura Tierney back on screen doing Maura Tierney things here. Vic needs Helen in the present, and Helen's kids need her in the present, but Helen can't leave her past behind her. At least not yet. I'd like to think that if any one of the four principal characters are capable of redemption, it would be Helen, but that remains to be seen. www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/tv-lust/bal-the-affair-recap-season-3-episode-6-20170102-story.htmlThe Affair Recap: Memory LaneBy Angelica Jade Bastién For three seasons, The Affair has deftly explored the way memory is shaped by emotion, not fact. In this week's episode, the show goes a step further by depicting how Helen and Noah utterly fail to reckon with their pasts. Written by Alena Smith, "306" is one of the season's most well-structured episodes. Each perspective feels like a reflection of the other. They keenly pivot around the same ideas, most notably the elusive comfort of home and the myriad ways we sand off the prickly edges of our pasts to create easier, rose-colored versions. This is especially profound in Helen's point of view from the episode's first half, as she's forced to face how deeply she misunderstands Noah and the early days of their relationship. Through a variety of telling scenes — like a double date with Helen, Vic, and Helen's parents, who are surprisingly back together — her misguided loyalty for Noah is in the spotlight. Despite all the reasons she's told to move on, she remains steadfastly by Noah's side even though he doesn't seem to give a damn about her. Of course, we can't discount the guilt she feels for Noah confessing to a crime he didn't commit when she was actually driving the car that hit Scotty. Who knows what would happen if Helen told the truth? Nevertheless, guilt isn't even the main reason Helen defends Noah after he misses the school conference and she's left alone to learn that Martin probably won't graduate. Guilt also doesn't explain why she still carries the last name Solloway and refers to Noah as her husband. Could it be that she's still in love with him? After he skips the conference, Helen spends a lot of time trying and failing to find Noah. In many ways, this disconnect feels like a metaphor for their entire relationship: She's always yearning for Noah and, at best, he treats her like an afterthought. But the man Helen remembers him being at the beginning of their relationship in college never quite existed. Although she likes to believe she knows Noah better than anyone else, the episode's best scene puts the truth into stark relief. She doesn't know him well at all. Helen heads to New Jersey, hoping to track Noah down at Nina's. He's not there, of course, but Noah's sister takes the opportunity to utterly lay into Helen. It's a speech she desperately needs to hear. Nina: "Why does he still matter so much to you?" Helen: "Because he is the father of my children and he's blowing his last chance of any semblance of a relationship with them." Helen's children are a convenient shield from closer scrutiny, but they don't want to associate with Noah and he's put in little effort to do so. His time in prison isn't the only problem. Even before then, he blew up their family over his affair with Alison. He was regularly callous to Helen. Does she remember that? Does she not see that he hasn't changed? Nina doesn't stop there. She calls out the class divides between them, noting how Helen looked at Noah as a "diamond in the rough" to polish and place in her life. As Nina sees it, Noah used Helen to run away from a rough family life in the wake of his mother's death, vaulting himself into an upper-class lifestyle he would otherwise never access. If that's not evidence that Helen has a remarkably myopic view on Noah, the next revelation is undeniable: She didn't know that he assisted in his mother's suicide. Even worse, she only saw what he was going through as grief, seemingly unable (or unwilling) to recognize how much of a wreck he was and remains. As Nina says, "I could never figure out if you were purposely ignoring who he actually was or you were so narcissistic that you weren't paying attention." Damn, Nina isn't holding back. It's a scene ripe with cutting one-liners and hard truths that Helen cast off as misplaced animosity. Of course, Nina is right. Helen has been dancing over an emotional fault line for more than two decades and didn't even know it. (Naturally, this is very different from Alison, who learned what really happened because Noah opened up to her. Alison sees him far more clearly than Helen does, which is why it was easier to extricate herself and get a divorce. That's also why Noah still wants her, but shows little interest in Helen.) So, why does Helen continue to chase Noah? The answer is found when she seeks out Max and pushes Vic away: She's chasing the joy she thought she had when she was younger, when life was easier and made sense. The decision to sleep with an engaged Max on a whim, despite her relationship with Vic, only makes Helen's privileged worldview and narcissism even more apparent. That Max doesn't comfort her and instead echoes the same thing Nina says makes the scenes between them even more excruciating. "Tell me how I've failed you?" Vic later asks. The thing is … he hasn't failed at all. In the four years they've known each other, Vic has proven himself to be a caring partner who navigated a rough dynamic better than most ever could. The only way Vic has failed is by not being Noah. Watching their argument play out, which ratchets up the tension in an already intense episode, it's clear the relationship won't last much longer. Noah is an unspoken specter, and Helen will always put her ghosts first. The first time we see Noah, he is returning Juliette's beloved red car after wrecking it. Why would any woman want to get close to a man with such a knack for destruction? When Noah balks at Juliette's sexual request to be tied up, replicating a moment from his book, her goodwill immediately disintegrates. With nowhere else to stay, Noah is forced to return to his sleepy Pennsylvania hometown, where he'll live in the home his father left for him. This quickly becomes a tangled trip down memory lane in which Noah is confronted with the pain of his past: assisting the suicide of the mother he deeply loves, trying to escape his lower-class upbringing, and Gunther's abuse. Even Martin shows up to make matters complex. Despite Martin's dim presence (an annoying reminder this show can't write teenagers well), "306" is a very strong and moving episode. The Affair has found its footing this season by mining the divide between how these characters see the world and what happens when they fail to acknowledge the truth of the situations they're mired in. In a surprising turn, one of the best aspects of the last few episodes is how the show has developed Noah's background. (That's something I never thought I'd say.) Learning about his past, seeing him tell Martin the truth about his mother, and the way old high-school friends like Grant (Tim Guinee) hold him in high regard for escaping his meager beginnings makes Noah an infinitely more interesting character. Dominic West plays the mix of sadness, self-destruction, and longing for comfort to perfection. This doesn't absolve Noah, but it adds complications that make any quick judgment more difficult to hold. The dinner at Grant's isn't as explosive as Helen's argument with Nina, but helps us see Noah in a new light. We learn more about his time in high school; we learn how people from his past view his life. The Affair touches on class divisions in a truly fascinating way here. Noah is seen as an anomaly — a minor celebrity, thanks to his book and torrid personal life. No matter how far he travels from his hometown, Noah can't escape himself. The previous episode showed Noah a bit manic in Alison's perspective, which encouraged my theory that Gunther is only a figment of his imagination. That theory hasn't been proven true yet, but it's clear Noah is unraveling. At the end of Helen's point of view, she tracks Noah down to Pennsylvania, finding him as he argues in the lake near his home with no one. In his mind, we find out he doesn't think he's alone; he sees his adolescent self standing in front of him. This is the clearest example of something The Affair holds true, time and time again: The pain we don't confront in the past can become awfully dangerous in the present. www.vulture.com/2017/01/affair-recap-season-3-episode-6.html‘The Affair’ Recap, Season 3, Episode 6: This Old HouseBy Sean T. Collins @theseantcollinsjan 3, 2017 at 11:50am Maybe this makes me a lousy viewer of a show that prides itself on presenting divergent perspectives on the same events, but I make it a point never to try and see The Affair through the eyes of people who don’t like The Affair. From where I’m standing, this show’s nuanced, empathetic, unsparing work on heavy-hitter topics like grief, decades-long relationships, self-injury, self-medication, divorce, the psychology of wealth and poverty, and of course love, lust, and infidelity are almost without peer. People who treat it like a soap or let their disgust for this or that character’s destructive or impulsive behavior color their take on the show as a whole can make like Noah Solloway and go jump in a lake. But after this week’s episode I feel like I’m a bit closer to understanding the naysayers. It’s not that I agree with them, mind you. Nor is it that this installment featured a few of the season’s clunkiest bits — Noah’s factory-worker townie acquaintance berating him like Jon Voight did to Ben Stiller in Zoolander, Noah’s hands shaking so badly his son has to open his pills just like Noah had to do for his mom!!!!!, etc. It’s more that, well, this show is doing an awful lot, isn’t it? To the above topics we can now officially add opioid addiction, hallucinations, attempted murder, covering up a murder, more cases of people sleeping with their exes than you can count, troubled teens, assisted suicide, attempted suicide, BDSM, Noah keeping key parts of his life hidden from everyone for decades (and more to the point, for two and a half seasons of The Affair), and on and on and on. If you feel like the show’s grasp on any of its core four characters or their central conflicts is shaky, I can’t imagine how you feel when it heads off on any of these tangents. The irony is that Noah’s now vastly more complicated backstory feels as though it were developed to answer complaints about the character. Without knowing how long ago showrunner Sarah Treem planned these plot elements this is all sheer speculation, but for viewers who wondered why Noah would destroy his seemingly happy family for a shot at spontaneity, or why he’d sacrifice himself and go to jail to protect Helen and Alison when it was quite possible all of them could have gotten away with it, or why his relationships with women seem both sincerely intense and self-sabotaging, or why he swung from the supremely self-possessed Helen to the deeply damaged Alison — well, Noah convincing himself he’s somehow culpable for killing his mother after being the only person left to take care of her and then failing to kill himself in turn threads the needle quite nicely. Is it all a bit radioactive-spider origin story for a behavior pattern that’s not really that difficult to contextualize? Perhaps. But then again anyone who’s been in therapy for long enough can attest to those “holy shit, it was because of what happened at my cousin’s confirmation when I was in fourth grade!!!!” moments. Giving Noah these dark secrets doesn’t take away his agency or explain away his good and bad qualities, nor do they singlehandedly those things possible. They’re simply the building blocks out of which he constructed the rest of his life. And in the meantime, it’s worth considering that much of what The Affair has going on is actually quite good, in all kinds of ways! Helen’s point of view continues to provide cringe-comedy gold, like when her reunited parents no sooner finish telling her how happy they are together than her dad chokes and her mom wallops him in the chest to dislodge the obstruction, or the smash cut from Helen and her ex-flame Max making passionate, reckless love in his near-empty apartment to the regretful aftermath. Meanwhile, on Noah’s side of the story, if you dig deeper than the big plot twists you’ll note a theme emerging: the way writing fiction shapes readers’ perception of you as a real person. Obviously this has played a prominent role in the show before, with various cops and townsfolk combing Noah’s book Descent for clues about both his affair and Scotty Lockhart’s death, and prison guard John Gunther taking offense both at that book and Noah’s subsequent manuscript. But in this episode there’s an example less directly tied to his big life-and-death struggles: Basically, everyone thinks he’s a sexual superfreak. Just seconds after telling Noah her husband has Alzheimer’s, following Noah’s return home from getting in a car accident, Juliet drops trou and asks Noah to tie her up — after all, he wrote about that in his book, didn’t he? As if he’s some kind of sexual on-demand service. Noah’s old friends back in Pennyslvania give him a hard time about this too, calling his book 50 Shades of Solloway. The work he presumably created to transcend his personal experience now defines it. Finally, the show just looks really good. Observe: The set dressing and design in Noah’s dad’s neglected old house in particular is so dead on you can practically feel the weight of the air. So, Affair skeptics, I see where you’re coming from. But I’ve got only one thing to do and that’s like The Affair and then sink back into the ocean. decider.com/2017/01/03/the-affair-recap-s3-ep6/'The Affair' recap: Solloways Just Can't Help ThemselvesSARA VILKOMERSON@VILKOMERSON POSTED ON JANUARY 1, 2017 AT 11:03PM GAVE IT Tonight’s episode poses a few big questions: How well can you ever really know someone? Can fathers and sons become reacquainted? Can husbands and wives? When is it okay to be your true self? What happens when a lifetime of pretending to be someone else catches up to you? We begin the hour from Helen’s perspective as she and Vic are having dinner with Bruce Butler, who’s as much of a blowhard as we all probably remember. He wants to introduce them to his new girlfriend: Margaret, Helen’s mother. (Ha!) The Butlers are pleased as punch about this; Vic is amused and so am I, but you know who isn’t? Helen. “At the end of the day, your mother just knows me better than anyone else ever will,” says Bruce. Start the ticking time-bomb at this exact moment. The Butlers seem to like Vic and sort of casually hate on Noah, which makes Helen even angrier. She explains Noah is showing up for Martin at a big school meeting the next day (news to Vic, clearly). After dinner, Helen is still fuming on the walk home. Vic is essentially like, “They’re crazy but that was fun.” He’s happy he finally met them, even half-seriously suggesting he and Helen have a double wedding with her reunited parents. Helen laughs in his face, so Vic pretends he’s joking, too. Uh-oh. Helen, please don’t ruin things with Vic! Unsurprisingly, Noah doesn’t show up to the aforementioned school meeting for his son. As it turns out, Martin’s been skipping a lot of class and is in danger of having to repeat his senior year — again. Helen is pissed but makes all the excuses: Martin’s illness, the divorce, the murder, etc. A silent and surly teenager, Martin isn’t exactly helping his cause. Helen, still enraged over Noah going AWOL, goes to see Noah’s sister, Nina. And you know who else has had it? Nina. She tells Helen off, delivering a pretty amazing yet devastating speech. The long and short of it? Nina thinks Noah used Helen as an escape from his horrific family life. Moreover, Helen doesn’t know Noah at all — for example, she doesn’t even know (as we do) the truth behind his mother’s death or just how screwed up it made him. (In fairness, Helen was 18 when she met Noah, an age not exactly known for bestowing people with great empathy.) Helen and Nina go a few rounds, but Nina clearly wins the fight, especially when she lands the knockout blow by correctly guessing who was reallydriving the night Scotty Lockhart died. Is Nina the smartest person on this show? Perhaps. Helen leaves immediately, almost barfing on the driveway on her way out. She’s clearly spiraling and ends up calling poor Max. Max! Who, thankfully, has been out of the Solloway orbit for some time now. He’s made good use of that time, too: He’s packing up his apartment for Brooklyn Heights and is engaged to a beautiful and smart Vogue editor. Helen is unfairly stung, saying something along the lines of “I guess I’m not the love of your life after all.” And THEN she aggressively seduces Max despite my screaming NOOOOO at the TV. Ugh. Afterward, Helen continues acting like a lunatic as she presses Max for how much he knew about Noah’s troubled childhood. Max, finally, loses it. “I can’t believe I fell for this sh-t again. It’s never about us, it’s always about him,” he says. Correct. Even so, Helen can’t stop herself from asking if Noah cheated on her in college, which results in Max (fairly) throwing her out. Go live your life, Max! Back at home, Dr. Vic is just minding his own business and reading her father’s book because he’s trying to establish a rapport with his girlfriend’s parents. Helen, on the other hand, is being straight-up awful and I hate it. She tells him he doesn’t know her and she doesn’t know him. She’s incredibly dismissive and monstrous, and the fact he doesn’t break up with her on the spot is some real TV fantasy. Instead, he gets right to the heart of the matter: “Tell me, Helen: How have I failed you?” Could Helen just be waiting for people to fail her? Martin is AWOL and when he finally shows up, he tells Vic to f-ck off (not nice!), after which Helen piles on with the whole “Yeah, you’re not his dad.” Finally, Vic says he needs a drink and takes off. (Call me, Doctor!) Helen goes to talk to Martin, who tells her he was at his grandfather’s lake house with Noah. Helen doesn’t like that one bit, immediately jumping in the car and arriving in Pennsylvania just after dawn. Noah’s not at the house, but there’s blood in the bathroom and she can hear Noah shouting Martin’s name. She finds him at the lake and when she calls for him, he turns around — looking straight-up like a wild animal. In the second part of the hour, we’re seeing things from Noah’s point of view as he returns to Juliette’s with her wrecked vehicle. Real cool, Solloway. He’s not quite as apologetic as I think he should be, especially since the police has continued to question Juliette about Noah’s stabbing. He also has no other place to stay, so he’s crashing (no pun intended) with the mysterious French professor. Things get awkward fast. As they make the bed and talk about how they don’t have real relationships, she’s like, hey, you can sleep with me. He inquires after her husband, and she tells him the truth about the Alzheimer’s and shares this heart-breaking confession: “Half the time he doesn’t remember he has a wife. Or he thinks I’m his first wife, whom he loved better.” Ouch. They start getting hot and heavy, but then Juliette opens her robe and tells Noah she wants him to tie her up. “You wrote about it in your book.” Noah looks vaguely tempted, so she drops the robe and turns around. Only then does he decline her offer, which is sort of a terrible thing to do to a woman who is literally standing naked before you. She’s not thrilled and stomps off. Merde! Noah realizes it’s best he leaves town, so grabs the keys to his father’s lake house and hops a bus to his hometown. He sees Gunther’s family gun shop, so that’s a nice trigger to start his descent into seeming madness. Inside the house, Noah surveys he the hospital bed and the mess his father left behind. He starts cleaning up, or rather, throwing everything away. He finds a tin of old letters and dog tags and medals. He heads to the hardware store and runs into an old classmate, a genial fella named Grant. They chat it up a bit about their kids and jobs, and this dude tells him he’s famous. But he also, very sweetly, invites Noah to dinner. Later, Martin scares the hell out of Noah by sneaking into the lake house. (Question: Do Martin and Helen both have cars? That seems kind of unnecessary for a New York City family). As it turns out, Martin’s dear old departed grandpa told him he could come to the house whenever he wanted. So, this is where he’s been spending time instead of going to school! He’s not excited about Noah’s presence, but Noah presses on and invites Martin to Grant’s house for dinner. Noah hands him the tin with his father’s things from Korea and spies an envelope addressed to “My Family” — along with his acceptance letter to Williams. While Noah gets emotional, Martin confides in his father about hating school and wanting to join the Army. He was clearly very close to Noah’s grandfather. Noah pops some more pills. (Uh, we get it, show.) Father and son arrive at Grant’s house. They’re friendly and even have a cute teenage daughter for Martin. Noah gets teased — in the way everyone is when they’re around people who knew them when — about how serious he was back in the day. Later, Grant says Martin is just like Noah (hmmm). Some doofus named Stevie arrives and he’s clearly got a bone to pick with Noah. He’s read Descent — as it turns out, they all have. (I do enjoy when they call it 50 Shades of S0lloway.) Things get worse when the high-school yearbook is passed around and Stevie ribs Noah about how he always thought he was better than everyone else. As Noah starts looking the worse for wear, the cute teenage daughter (Lila) invites Martin to a party, and he accepts. Noah takes the opportunity to ask Grant and Stevie if they remember Gunther, but they don’t. He eventually staggers home and tries to change the dressing on his neck — which explains the blood in the bathroom — and passes out right there. Martin finds him and slaps him awake; when Noah goes straight for the pills, Martin (Martin!) is like, dude, you are a hot mess. Noah does some confiding of his own, handing Martin his mother’s suicide letter and explaining his role in her death. (Martin officially knows the real Noah better than Helen does.) He says he knows he let Martin down in a big way, and though Martin might never forgive him, he loves him — more than he can imagine. He wants this to be clear so there won’t come a day when Martin is cleaning out Noah’s apartment and wishing he could talk to his dead father. For his part, Martin seems to be absorbing what Noah’s saying. Finally, Noah begs him to go back to school for Helen’s sake. They hug. In the morning, Noah wakes up and is happy/relieved not to see Martin, as he’s clearly gone back to New York and school — right? It’s when he steps out to the back that he sees a hooded figure walking out to the lake as if to drown himself. We know it’s not Martin, but Noah doesn’t. Noah dives out to save him, but when the hooded figure turns around, we see it’s just a young version of Noah himself staring back at him. Dun dun duuuun. ew.com/recap/the-affair-season-3-episode-6/2/
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Post by sissa on Jan 4, 2017 7:02:44 GMT 10
‘The Affair’ Season 3, Episode 6: Noah Goes HomeThe Affair By MIKE HALE JAN. 1, 2017 Season 3, Episode 6 Sunday brought us the first Helen-and-Noah episode of “The Affair” this season, and the pattern was familiar. Bad things happened in both chapters, but Helen’s half-hour was sharp and witty as well as rueful, with all of the episode’s best scenes — until the very end, when it overlapped with Noah’s point of view and was tainted by the uninteresting Gunther story line. Noah’s screen time was dour and blandly melancholic. It’s interesting in this regard to listen to this podcast interview with Sarah Treem, the series’s showrunner. She talks about how writers on the show’s staff focus on certain characters, and mentions that Anya Epstein (who has worked on “Homicide: Life on the Street,” “In Treatment” and the underrated “Commander in Chief”) supplies much of the voice of Helen. So while we rightly sing the praises of Maura Tierney’s performance in the role, we should also give some credit to Ms. Epstein. Helen had a very bad couple of days — lectured to, yelled at, disappointed. It started with a dinner to introduce Dr. Vic to her father (a welcome reappearance by John Doman) at which she discovered that her parents had reunited — which angered her, because of the way her father had behaved, but also tapped into her conflicted feelings about her own cheating former spouse. (It also embarrassed her, when her aging parents engaged in a long public display of affection.) And because her mother was there, we were treated to some passive-aggressive put-downs. “And at your age, Helen!” Tension was running at its usual height between Helen and Vic, who has yet to rise above a cliché of the contemporary nice guy: useful but not to be trusted. When he made a reference to getting married, she freaked out, and he backpedaled, saying it was a joke. But we could see it wasn’t just a joke. The next day Helen’s journey of discovery continued. At a tense meeting with Martin’s headmaster — at which Noah was a no-show — she learned that her 19-year-old son, already repeating his senior year, was skipping school regularly. Worried about Noah, who wasn’t answering his phone, she drove out to the suburbs and surprised his sister, Nina. It didn’t go as anticipated. When Helen, clinging to her own version of the Helen-Noah story, said that he hadn’t been messed up when they met, she touched Nina’s last nerve. Had she purposely ignored who Noah really was, his sister asked (heatedly), or was she so narcissistic she wasn’t paying attention? We know the answer — narcissistic! — but Helen’s just starting to catch on. Nina didn’t go the final mile and reveal the Big Secret — that Noah had helped his mother commit suicide, the ur-guilt in his life corresponding to Helen’s more recent killing of Scotty Lockhart — but she heavily hinted at it, and also said that Noah had used Helen and her money and connections to get out of rural Pennsylvania. All in all, a heavy scene for Helen, who walked out of the house and collapsed behind her car. Ms. Tierney and Jennifer Esposito nailed it. You’d think that would be enough comeuppance for Helen. But the next thing you know, she was calling up her one-time fling, Max, and going to his apartment, where she made her latest discovery: He was about to get married. With another happy relationship thrown in her face, she did the natural, narcissistic thing and initiated sex with Max (he resisted for about two or three seconds). Poor Vic, and poor Max, who had his self-hate on in the aftermath. Blissfully oblivious to others’ feelings as always, Helen started to quiz Max about the young Noah’s state of mind, and he confirmed that Noah was not in a good place freshman year. Helen was just clinging to a thread now: “Just because things went wrong doesn’t mean the whole story has to change,” she whined. She came home late, lied to Vic and almost called the police because Martin hadn’t come home (Vic stopped her). When Martin stomped in, he admitted that he’d driven to his paternal grandfather’s lake house and seen Noah there. Deciding to follow it through to the end, Helen drove to Pennsylvania and found Noah standing in the lake, yelling and fighting — with himself. Then we saw Noah’s own journey through the past, which was also soaked in bad vibes. It began with his returning the smashed Mini to Juliette, and then again declining to have sex with her — even though this time she got naked and asked him to tie her up, the way he described it in his novel. What writer could resist that kind of validation? Maybe Juliette finally got the message — she left the room and told Noah not to wake her. He obeyed, leaving for a train and bus ride to Pennsylvania during which he took off his wedding ring and saw the storefront of Gunther’s Hunting and Fishing (presumably the family business of his prison-guard tormentor). At the family house, he lingered in a room with a bed facing a television — probably the room where he gave his mother the fatal pills — then started aggressively cleaning up, throwing away whatever he could get his hands on. His solitary task was interrupted when a car pulled up. Thinking it was Gunther, he almost brained Martin with a baseball bat. Martin had come for some solitude himself, but they grudgingly accommodated each other, and Martin agreed to come along to dinner at the house of a high school friend who had recognized Noah in town. There, another, less friendly former acquaintance engaged in some small-town schadenfreude: Noah always thought he was better, the lout said, but it “turns out he’s trash just like the rest of us.” Noah was now in distress — double vision, the shakes — and back at his father’s house he took off his bloody bandage and poured antiseptic on what, in his vision at least, was a gaping wound, like torture, or penance. Martin was disgusted at his father’s helplessness, which spurred Noah to tell him the Big Secret, then tell him to go to school for Helen’s sake. It seemed like a cathartic moment for Noah. But the next morning, he was woken up by that recurring train whistle, which is somehow connected to his adolescent trauma. Walking down to the lake, he saw a male figure walking out as if to drown. Thinking it was Martin, he ran into the water. You might have been expecting it to be a Gunther apparition, after what we saw in Helen’s point of view. But when the figure turned around, it was a young man — presumably the young Noah. So Helen found him fighting with himself. A little on the nose. But that’s Noah. www.nytimes.com/2017/01/01/arts/television/the-affair-season-3-episode-6-recap.html?_r=0
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Post by sissa on Jan 8, 2017 1:45:15 GMT 10
Keeping It Together and Falling Apart: The Wardrobe of Control on ‘The Affair’By Emma Fraser • 01/04/17 9:00am Different perspectives on The Affair delivers versions of events that come from unreliable narrators and season1 dished out a long game of “Spot the Difference.” This could be anything from chunks of dialogue – big or small – to costuming/hair styles with subtle and extreme changes taking place to emphasize how our experiences of events can vary. In one version Helen’s party dress tells a story about her privileged background while in another it offers a sense her homeliness and the lack of spark between a married couple. While this side of The Affair hasn’t completely gone away as we saw a few episodes ago at a birthday party for Cole and Alison’s daughter, replaying the same events from the different point of views is no longer what pushes the narrative. Instead there are now five different POVs at play and characters like Helen and Cole have so much more agency than they previously did when it was only Alison and Noah’s versions of events at play. Costume continues to tell its own part of the story and for Helen there is a whole lot truth revealed in the pieces that put together this external appearance of being okay and the wealth she comes from. Last season in the fourth episode after Helen and Noah’s divorce proceedings got super messy Helen got drunk while listening to anthemic “Changed the Locks” by Lucinda Jones. Wearing a bra and Spanx singing into her glass of wine like it is a microphone made this an incredibly freeing moment for a character that tends to hold it all in emotionally whether it is good or bad. She just so happens to be wearing a garment specially designed to do that and Maura Tierney’s performance is incredibly refreshing in its lack of vanity. Helen is a sad and angry mess, but the solace found in singing and booze is incredibly relatable and control underwear isn’t just a punch line piece of clothing. Later in the same episode Helen gets high before having her hair done forgetting she is on kid picking up duty; when she does realize she rushes to collect them with foils in her hair and the inability to drive properly resulting in a DUI. All the tweaks that are meant to make us look or feel more put together in both these cases reveal vulnerability and Helen’s control freak exterior is broken. Cut to this season and she is still at war with herself and the Noah situation, but this time she is not the wronged woman and the guilt bubbling to the surface comes from her involvement in the crime Noah was imprisoned for. What looks like blind faith toward the man she was with for nearly 25 years is actually the knowledge that she was the one behind the wheel and self-destruction looms. Sex is obviously a big part of The Affair and so far this season there have been hook-ups between characters that used to be together – Cole and Alison, Alison and Noah – but are now either in relationships with other people or it is just far too messy to contemplate a reunion. Alison and Noah spent an intimate day and night together catching up, stripping to nothing while lounging in a hot tub of a stranger and then sleeping together once again. Souls were unburdened and it revealed why they were originally drawn together in the first place and this level of relationship insight is something Noah and his original wife lacked. Everything appeared fine on the outside; the house, kids, comfortable life and yet there was much deeper pain being ignored. Four years on from the end of her marriage and twenty five years after they first got married, which is a milestone Helen is all too aware of and Helen is now looking for someone to take her mind off the guilt that is eating her up inside. A visit to Noah’s sister, Nina intensifies everything she hates about herself or fears about her situation with Noah; her privilege, narcissism, why he was originally attracted to her, whether she ever really knew him and the matter of him going to prison for her. After receiving none of the reassurance she was hoping for here Helen’s next port of call is to ‘casually’ drop in on the person who has had a forever crush on her. The same person she started seeing after the Noah break up and this is meant to give her an instant confidence boost. But what happens when the guy who is your feel good f**k has also moved on? Well you seduce him and spread those guilty feelings around. Sex on The Affair like a lot of sex on cable TV involves a whole lot of nudity and one of the notable things about nudity on The Affair is that it is equal opportunities. In the season 2 premiere we got to see all of Max, but on this occasion as Max packs up his old bachelor life before getting married not a single item of clothing is shed during this instantly regrettable indiscretion. Once again the person Helen has gone to see doesn’t sugar coat their feelings and Max won’t further indulge Helen’s insecurities or guilt. This is all from Helen’s POV and like much of The Affair it is impossible to tell how much of this is imagined or what kind of emphasis there really was on certain words. All we know is that Helen is currently on a path to self-destruction as she pushes away the current guy in her life by claiming how little he knows about her life despite being together in one way or another for four years now. It also doesn’t help that her parents have reunited despite how terribly her father treated her mother and Helen seems to be itching to repeat her own mistakes with her ex; she believes her archetype is as a caregiver, but this is only the case if this means repressing the feelings that are actually there and ignoring them into submission. From the outside Helen has everything and she is still looking very much put together; her hair, expensive clothes and ankle booties all paint a picture of relaxed privilege and yet the messy version who got drunk in her underwear and arrested in hair foils is bubbling beneath the surface just waiting to break out. How long before Helen cracks and yet another truth comes out on The Affair? observer.com/2017/01/showtime-the-affair-tv-fashion-style/TV CRITIC’S CORNER - ‘The Affair’ is falteringBy Matthew Gilbert GLOBE STAFF JANUARY 05, 2017 Do you ever get mad at a TV show? I’m angry at “The Affair” right now, six episodes into the third season. As my second-grade teacher used to write in red pencil on bad homework assignments, “Grrrrr.” I’m disappointed, too, since season two hinted at melodramatic greatness, and it featured a nice flow of experimental point-of-view and time-jump techniques that gave it all an intriguing puzzle-like feel. The Showtime series has just gotten unnecessarily odd. For one thing, the addition of Irene Jacob as a new love interest for Noah seems to belong on a different drama. And, with all due respect to Jacob, who did memorable work with film director Krzysztof Kieslowski, her character, Juliette, is too much of an American cliché of French women. And then bringing in Brendan Fraser as an aggressive prison guard also seems to belong in another show. “Oz,” maybe? I understand that the ripples of the initial affair need to spread outward — but here? Can’t Noah be tormented by something or someone a little more native to the setting? The season doesn’t have the momentum that drove both of the first two seasons, but especially the second. The story line is fractured, but unappealingly, with pieces of plots here and there that don’t promise to add up to much. I’m still in it, of course, because I want to believe that the extraordinarily talented people behind the show, including co-creator Sarah Treem, are going to pull it out of the bag anyway. And also because any scene with Maura Tierney is dynamite — or, more interestingly, dynamite just about to explode. Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @matthewgilbert. www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2017/01/04/the-affair-faltering/0cUvCdWuwhwILQvt4iLDMP/story.html'The Affair' Season 3 Episode 7 Spoilers: Noah Causes Problems for Vic and HelenBY JILIANNE ARBONIDA , CHRISTIAN POST CONTRIBUTOR Jan 6, 2017 | 7:28 AM Noah (Dominic West) once again comes in-between Helen (Maura Tierney) and Vic (Omar Metwally) in the upcoming episode of "The Affair." Vic is disappointed with Helen in the upcoming episode of "The Affair." The promo for the next episode of the Showtime series reveals that the disgraced author is coming to live with his family again. Helen must have found him wading in the lake from last episode when he thought Martin (Jake Siciliano) was drowning. The truth is, Noah was having hallucinations because of the pills he kept on taking. Martin was actually safe in school at the time and was nowhere near the lake house. Noah's downward plunge has been worrying Helen for a while now. It looks like she will ask him to come home and stay with her and the kids for a while until he is doing better. Vic is definitely not happy with Helen's decision. In the teaser, they argue about it. Vic emphasizes that someone tried to kill her ex-husband before, but Helen tries to explain that Noah has nowhere else to go. Whitney (Julia Goldani Telles) also cannot believe that her father is once again living in their house. She tells Helen that it is a mistake to take him in after everything he has done to her and their family. However, Helen is stubborn and will not listen. Later on, she and Noah are shown kissing. It looks like Vic's suspicions about Noah causing a rift between him and Helen are spot-on. Last episode, Vic jokingly proposed to Helen, stating that they should have a double wedding with her parents now that Bruce (John Doman) and Margaret (Kathleen Chalfant) have reunited. The two couples even had dinner together. Helen's parents like Vic for her and continue to emphasize that any man is better than her first husband. When Vic mentioned marriage, Helen just laughed it off, thinking that he did not mean it. Viewers could see, though, that the doctor was really serious about it. Will Noah end up separating Helen and Vic? "The Affair" season 3 airs Sundays at 10 p.m. EST on Showtime. www.christianpost.com/news/the-affair-season-3-episode-7-spoilers-noah-causes-problems-for-vic-and-helen-172608/Sarah Treem Sees The Affair Season 4 as a Perfect FinaleJessica RapirBy Jessica Rapir4 days ago4 days ago The Affair show co-creator and executive producer Sarah Treem thinks one more season could be perfect to end the show. Treem discusses the future of the show during her appearance at Variety’s podcast Remote Controlled. She says she thinks The Affair Season 4 would be a perfect time to conclude the show. The Affair is currently on its third season. In 2015, TV Series Finale reports Treem said she only planned for three seasons but not discounting the possibility of a fourth one. So far, Showtime has yet to renew the show for its fourth season. The Affair big boss says she hopes to get a chance to do Season 4. “I see a fourth season that will bring all the characters back together in a way that would feel really satisfying and surprising and end a journey,” she tells Variety’s podcast show. What fans could expect in The Affairs Season 3? Treem also reveals what viewers could look forward this season. She teases that Season 3 finale might be happening in Paris. The showrunner reveals she had pitched to Showtime the idea of heading to France for the show’s finale. She says the network’s executives first thought she is not serious about it. “I don’t know if they thought I was serious for a while. But I think a lot of it comes down to money at the end of the day, and weirdly enough, it turned out to be cheaper to shoot in Paris,” she says while laughing. She further teases that there’s something about Paris that feels right for the story this season. Treem adds Allison (Ruth Wilson) will end up with a strong sense of self in the final episodes. The TV drama follows the life of two troubled married people and the effects of an extramarital affair in their life. Dominic West plays the role of Allison’s partner Noah. The cast also includes Maura Tierney, Joshua Jackson, Julia Goldani Telles, Jake Siciliano, and more. Showtime’s The Affair airs every Sunday at 10p ET/PT on Showtime. www.goshtv.net/sarah-treem-sees-affair-season-4-perfect-finale/2635
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Post by sissa on Jan 8, 2017 1:57:28 GMT 10
The Ghosts Are Very Real In ‘The Affair’: Review of S3 E6Noah made some peace with Alison in the last episode, and now he and his son Martin seem to have found a surer footing. But oh dear, who's that mysterious figure in the lake? TIM TEEMAN 01.02.17 2:00 AM ET If you had made a resolution for fresh starts for 2017, clean slates and all that, then The Affair was ready to throw you face-first back into the manure of the past. Amid the crud of secrets, ghosts, betrayal, and resentment is where the characters are happiest. And so it was in episode six of the third season, which picked up from Noah (Dominic West), possibly being run off the road by evil prison guard Gunther (Brendan Fraser)—or was it the ghost of Gunther. Anyway, the evil guard who made Noah's life hell in jail is still around, physically or corrosive memory. Whatever and whoever, Noah crashed sexy French academic Juliette's (Irène Jacob) little red runaround, and this after saying farewell to his ex-wife Alison (Ruth Wilson), just when they had been at their most honest and loving with one another--although she hadn't told him she'd just had sex with her ex Cole (Joshua Jackson) too. Noah had signed his and Alison's divorce papers. The mystery of who had stabbed him remained. This episode, written by Alena Smith, opened with Helen (Maura Tierney), Noah's ex, and her lover Vic (Omar Metwally), having dinner with her bombastic dad Bruce (John Doman). This would become an episode about parents and their children, and their strange, deep ties in particular. Helen still loves Noah, we know that. We also know she was driving the car that killed Scott Lockhart (Colin Donnell), and that Scott was pushed into the path of that car by Alison. Noah took the rap for both women, went to jail for three years, and neither woman knows that the other was partly responsible for what happened that night. Nobody does. Honestly, these people would somehow make a five-hour melodrama out of going to Duane Reade for deodorant. Bruce had a surprise. He had been dumped by his lover and returned to Helen's mother, Margaret (Kathleen Chalfant). Luckily enough, their divorce had not been finalized. They had a big old snog in front of Helen. Vic was enjoying what seemed to be a significant supper with Helen's parents, but Helen was finding it excruciating. Bruce wished casually someone had stabbed Noah years ago: it would have saved a lot of trouble. Helen defended Noah, which wasn't lost on Vic. Noah had been a bad father, said Bruce—which earned an ironic snort from this viewer's couch at least, and later Helen's scorn was clear in a tense walk home with Vic, where they seemed like two strangers—especially after a mistimed joke about a double wedding, featuring themselves and Helen's parents renewing their vows. The next day, Helen and Noah were due to meet Martin's (Jake Siciliano) headmaster. The teen is a big cloud of trouble waiting to happen, and he had been playing truant. And he believes his father killed Scotty. He doesn't care about anything. "My husband…” she began to say of Noah. "Ex-husband," said Martin. Helen's day from hell continued with a visit to Noah's sister, Nina (Jennifer Esposito). It didn't stay that civil for very long. Why, Nina demanded, did Noah continue to mean so much to Helen? Helen lied, and said it was about the kids. "Maybe it's best for all of you if you just let him go," Nina said, detecting obvious bullshit. Nina also told Helen she had been blind to Noah's true self—perhaps it was own narcissism or selfishness that obstructed her view. Noah was screwed up when he met Helen—his mother had just died. Did Helen imagine she was rescuing a vulnerable deer, Nina asked contemptuously. "Noah was using you. To get the f**k away from us," she added. Helen affected to know nothing of this, and seemed genuinely clueless: the whole half of her episode was realizing how little she knew about her own family life. The question is why: maybe she wanted to live in a constructed paradise, whose foundations were shaky from the get-go. Despite Helen demanding she do so, Nina would not reveal a particularly dark secret from Noah's past. "My brother has been in pain for years and you didn't see it." Helen, horrified at the drubbing she had received, left Nina's house pronto, but not before Nina directly asked if she had had anything to do with the accident that killed Scotty—and Helen lied she had been at home. If Nina was in The Affair more, it struck this viewer, there would be like two episodes max. She's got everyone figured out. Helen decided to make her day that much worse by going to see Max (Josh Stamberg). Noah's college buddy who Helen slept with last season. Now he was getting married to Danielle, a Vogue editor he met at the gym. Of course he was; that's who exactly he would end up with. "Between the two of us, I'm winning," Max said. "Between me and you?" Helen, asked, alarmed. "Me and her," Max said, meaning Danielle. Helen took this as both rejection and challenge, particularly when it turned out he had considered where Noah and Helen had married as a wedding venue. "I guess I'm not the love of your life any more," Helen said, repeating back what Max had once told her—and which he had now forgotten. She asked to be kissed; he said he couldn't. "Why not? I knew you first," she said, desperately. Amid Max's moving boxes—tellingly labeled, 'Handle With Care,' as the participants of this show usually only ever learn far too late, if at all—they had a partially-clothed f**k instead, which Helen looked like she was so not enjoying. Afterwards, she asked Max if he had noticed that Noah was screwed up when they were all at university. Sure, Max said, his mom had just died. Did Max think Noah had used her for her money, she continued. She had been with him for 25 years, she knew him better than anyone else did. She insisted this as a person might insist a claim on a piece of ancestral land. Helen is so desperate to claim Noah back, all she can invoke, realizing how little she may have known him, the privilege of the length of time that which they spent together. But she knows time has proved pretty meaningless when it comes to knowledge and loyalty. It's another futile throw of the dice for her. Max rightly told Helen to go: he can't believe he felt for this all over again. Even when it feels like it could be about them, it's about Noah and Helen. Back at home, Vic—why has Vic become so pliant and weak suddenly?—was reading Bruce's book to further establish a potential in-law rapport. Helen lied about her whereabouts, and asked if Martin had come home. He had not. Vic asked her not to be like Margaret and over-react. He said he sometimes felt like a stranger in this house. How had he failed Helen, he asked, when he had tried to be a good partner and parent? Martin's re-emergence abbreviated their argument. Vic told Martin they had been worried. "f**k off, you're not my dad," Martin said. "He's right, you're not," Helen seconded. Vic, angry at being so undermined, left to go get a drink, and with him, he took a resounding set of encouraging cheers from Affair viewers who would gladly buy him a round, and let him move in—no kids here Vic!—if he ever so wished. Martin told Helen he had been with Noah at Noah's father's lake house in Pennsylvania. Whatever had happened had been transformative: he seemed less at odds with his dad, and promised to go to school. We saw Helen next to Vic's gorgeous, slumbering hairy chest later, which she chose to leave (honestly, this should be a prosecutable crime) and go to see Noah, who she found in the lake, thrashing about in the water. Was he trying to drown someone? Was it Gunther? Part two of the episode, belonging to Noah, kind of answered it. First, he had to deliver the smashed-up car back to Juliette, who had herself had yet another visit from the police wondering why she had been on the scene to discover Noah had been stabbed. There was no 'arrangement' between her husband back in France and herself when it came to extra-marital sex, she told Noah. She revealed her husband had Alzheimer's: half the time he did not remember he had a wife, the other half he thought Juliette was his first wife "whom he loved better." Later, she asked Noah to to tie her up. Noah demurred—one guesses because of all the very real pain he had suffered in jail. And so their steamy romance fizzled. The next day Noah got on a bus to go to his dad's place, passing through a town which included a gun shop called Gunther's. Could it be connected to evil prison guard? Oh yes it could, implied the forbidding music. Noah's shoulder, painfully damaged since a disabling injury perpetrated by Gunther, was still playing up, and inside his childhood house the scene was a musty Glass Menagerie of rusty boxes, creaking doors, faded family portraits, empty birdcages, and memories. In preparation to sell it, Noah began a clear out, which included discovering some old medals and letters. At a hardware store, an assistant turned out to be Grant, an old school friend--unlike Gunther, an actually nice one. He knew of Noah's fame as a novelist and subsequent murderous notoriety, but—a first in The Affair—made no judgments, assumptions, and didn't want to bash Noah's face in. Grant had lost his job at the local coal plant, now worked at the store, and had a family: would Noah like to come to supper? Back at his dad's house, a hooded figure turned out not to be Gunther but Martin. He had come to the house to be alone, the last person he expected to see was his father. He couldn't stand him. But in Noah's old bedroom—still papered with Smiths and Husker Du posters, and Pittsburgh Steelers memorabilia—father and son worked towards a detente. Noah offered Martin the medals. His grandfather would have wanted Martin to have them, Noah said. As Noah came across his letter of admission to Williams College, Martin was saying he didn't want to go to university. He wanted to join the army. Martin noted his dad was in pain, and then it was off to the nice friend's for dinner where another figure loomed out of the dark. It was not Gunther, but a bonehead nonetheless, a schoolmate called Stevie, just as bitter and twisted up as Gunther about Noah's success, and now reveling in his misery. At the party, Grant's daughter Lila (who he wanted to do so much better than he had) and Martin shared an immediate cute connection: a rare moment of levity, as Noah registered it too. Noah lied about the stabbing injury, and said he'd had a mole removed. Stevie had got burnt in a factory explosion, but didn't want any of Noah's sympathy: "Don't pity me. At least I didn't get locked up." Noah was "trash," just like the rest of them. Amazingly, Noah didn't get angry, especially with Martin sitting there, listening to all this vitriol. Grant also defended Noah, who wanted to know—after Martin and Lila had headed off to a party—what they knew about Gunther. Nothing much, it turned out. At home Noah's neck wound got more livid and he collapsed, just as we were readying ourselves for Gunther to appear in the bathroom mirror. Can he not just get some medical attention and sort it out: the next wound is now officially a kind of silly storyline. Still, the viewer is now as scared of Gunther—real or imagined—as Noah is. Martin arrived home, and helped his father, asking reasonably, "What is wrong with you? Why are you such a f**king mess?" Elaborating on what he had told Alison in the last episode, Noah then confessed to his son that he had helped in the assisted suicide of his mother, Martin's grandmother. Her suicide note was in his handwriting as she was too sick to hold a pen. Martin asked Noah why he was telling him this. "Your grandfather and I didn't really talk about anything," Noah said, "and I know I have let you down. Severely. And you may never be able to forgive me. But I love you, more than you could possibly imagine. I just wanted you to understand a little about me." This was so, Noah said, that when Noah died Martin wouldn't be in his house, clearing stuff away, rehearsing conversations with Noah he knew he would never be able to have. Noah asked him to please go to school in the morning—for Helen, if for no other reason. Let her see him graduate, and then he could do whatever he wants. Father and son hugged, and now we understood why Martin was so emollient and at peace when he arrived home in part one. But of course, a happy ending is an anathema here. Noah went into the woods, and we were sure Gunther would somehow catch up with him. At the lake Noah saw a hooded figure wading into the water. Was it Martin, Gunther? Panicked, he waded out to confront the figure, who turned around to reveal himself to be... Noah's younger self, who we had seen a few minutes before in some pictures. Unless it was someone else entirely. At this point, even the most patient Affair viewer wouldn't mind some of Noah's pain medication. So, stand by for next week, when Noah tells Helen, who is there watching this splashy tableau, that he was in the water thrashing about with the ghost of his younger self. And again folks, the water: the ur-symbol of The Affair, where the past, present, pain, absolution, and the truth are hidden in the murky depths. www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/01/the-ghosts-are-very-real-in-the-affair-review-of-s3-e6.html
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Post by sissa on Jan 15, 2017 6:32:19 GMT 10
The Affair has landed another season Season three of TV's most addictive and schttteeammy show has yet to finish up, but already The Affair has been commissioned for a fourth. The news was announced at the TCA winter press tour yesterday by Showtime network president and CEO David Nevins. The third season of the award-winning show picked up last November three years after the events of the second season, where Noah (Dominic West) was released from prison following his shocking admission at the murder trial of Scott Lockhart. Alison also made a return after some time away to see her daughter Joanie, who was being raised by Cole (Joshua Jackson) and Luisa (Catalina Sandino Moreno). Meanwhile, Helen's (Maura Tierney) life appeared to be going great on the outside but underneath it all she's still struggling. In summary, there's still a load of intrigue and drama left in this show that we can't see them getting a chance to wrap up by the end of season three, so thankfully there's more on the way. Catch The Affair on Sky Atlantic on Mondays at 9pm. entertainment.ie/tv/news/The-Affair-has-landed-another-season/389229.htmThe Affair's Current Season Isn't Over Yet & It's Already Been RenewedAMELIA EDELMAN JANUARY 10, 2017, 2:50 PM It's always a bummer when a solid series with terrific acting and a substantial fan following just doesn't get the network love it deserves — and thus mysteriously leaves our screens far too soon. (We'll never let go, Freaks & Geeks and Good Girls Revolt.) So it's heartening when essentially the opposite occurs: Showtime's hit drama The Affair hasn't even reached its thrilling season 3 finale, and it's already been pre-renewed for season 4, as Deadline reports. If you've been following the series' love trapezoid (comprised of characters played by Ruth Wilson, Dominic West, Maura Tierney, and Joshua Jackson), you know it's currently pretty messy. Season 3's addition of a fifth side to that polygon, played by Irene Jacob, has added to the mire. Is it possible that season 4 will include even more players in the drama? Will we see some sort of resolution? Or has the series actually jumped the shark? Only time will tell, but at least the network, cast, and fans are on board to find out. Now if we could only get Showtime to buy Good Girls Revolt. www.refinery29.com/2017/01/135498/the-affair-season-4-renewedNo, Really, They’re Making Another Season of ‘The Affair’What else could possibly happen on this show? We have some ideas. Allison P. DavisFollow Staff Writer, The Ringer Great news for all you Noah Solloway stans (Who are you? Don’t be shy, I just want to help): The Affair has been renewed for a fourth season. That’s right, more adultery, more intrigue, more mystery, more grown-up Pacey Witter, more character arcs, more … convoluted plotlines? But how? What plots are left? What else could possibly happen on this show that hasn’t already happened three or four times? The Affair has been a three-season slog through the seventh circle of the yuppie inferno. It’s given us a bounty of great-to-good sex scenes, painful divorces, geriatric romance, arson, family feuds, drug deals, pregnancies, teen pregnancies, Crohn’s disease, college visits, near-incest, therapy, vow renewals, murder, attempted murder, and the resurrection of Brendan Fraser. And these characters have been through enough trauma for a psychology textbook: Helen is now a Vic-less shell of a human; Noah is addicted to destroying everyone’s lives and Vicodin; Alison and Cole are about to destroy each other’s lives again. Honestly, where can any of these people go after the events of Season 3 except for rehab, a small, crystal-filled adobe-style home in Santa Fe, or hell? Of course, as a fan of pulpy shows about intricately messed-up rich-people problems, I will watch. So here are my best guesses as to what the poor exhausted writers might do in Season 4: - There will be a time jump, but not one as drastic as the one from Season 2 to Season 3 — just long enough for Noah Solloway to finish his Chekhov’s book. (You can’t mention a Solloway book if you don’t intend to make it a best seller in a later season.) - Noah Solloway will continue on his path of destroying people with his penis. My bet: at least three people he’s already slept with — Helen, Alison, and maybe a pity f**k from Juliette — and two new people whose lives are going entirely too well. - Alison and Cole will continue their ill-fated affair, and someone will probably die or go to prison because of it. (I’m betting on Noah as a murder victim, but honestly it will probably be Oscar over some boring Lobster Roll dispute, because we haven’t heard about that in a blissfully long time.) At least we’ll see more of Josh Jackson’s butt. - Whitney will become Mrs. Furkat, and her wedding will be the scene of some sort of Noah-Cole showdown after Noah finds out that Alison is sleeping with her ex-husband. Or Noah will show up uninvited with New Sex Partner no. 2 in tow, and Helen’s father will object since he ruined Helen’s life and has no right to attend the wedding of Whitney and Furkat. What I’m saying is: Noah is going to get into a fight at a wedding. - Helen, who deserves so much better, will be in the throes of some sort of mental breakdown. She’ll be showing an apartment in Brooklyn, and Dr. Vic will walk in with his new girlfriend, and she’ll grab a baseball bat from the hall closet and just go to town on the subway tiles in the bathroom. Then she’ll head to a meditation retreat in Northern California for at least half the season, but most of her POV sections will be flashbacks of her former life in Brooklyn. When she gets out, Dr. Vic will have written her a letter for every day she was gone. (But seriously, just give me Dr. Vic back.) - Helen and Alison will be friends, and there will be a B-plot Buddy Comedy with the two of them. Maybe Alison will follow her to California, and they’ll start a business together — some sort of Women’s Only retreat in Big Sur, with matching linen sack dresses. Alison will lead yoga programs; Helen will guzzle white wine with clients and encourage them to yell their feelings. - Luisa will have five lines instead of 12. - There will be no less than four “readings” for Noah’s new book about a high school swimmer. The plot: A young man struggles with his own greatness (as a, uh, swimmer) and seeks solace in a roster of willing, emotionally supportive women, who he will in the end f**k over because he is in a monogamous relationship with his talent. But when he fails to make the Olympic trials he gets drunk, drives home, accidentally runs someone over, then goes to prison where he is stalked by a prison guard named “Gardner” because Noah Solloway can write about only one thing, and that thing is himself. Anyway, we’ll have to listen to several passages from the book and try not to die. - Helen and her children will go to family therapy. She will reconcile with Vic after confessing that she was the one driving the car. Martin will go to college in New York. None of them will ever speak to Noah Solloway again. Cole will do the same but with Alison. Alison will move to L.A. with Noah and help him adapt his book into a movie because they are both terrible and belong together, 3,000 miles away from New York or anybody they can ruin. … but more likely, aliens? theringer.com/some-predictions-for-season-4-of-the-affair-1d06b3058d8b#.lmk0vzqz5
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Post by sissa on Jan 15, 2017 7:24:26 GMT 10
Performer of the Week: black-ish's Anthony AndersonBy Team TVLine / January 14 2017, 7:37 AM PST THE PERFORMER | Anthony Anderson THE SHOW | black-ish THE EPISODE | “Lemons” (Jan. 11, 2017) ... HONORABLE MENTION | The Affair‘s Helen broke our hearts when she told Noah that he was “destroying himself and I need you to stop.” Her plea, chock full of irony, was delivered by a teary-eyed Maura Tierney, who gave her most emotionally raw performance to date. In that scene, Helen was incapable of seeing that she was just as self-destructive as Noah. And yet, Tierney, proving she’s in a league of her own, flawlessly captured the moment’s rich complexity and contradiction. ... tvline.com/2017/01/14/anthony-anderson-blackish-season-3-performance-election-episode/Vik Walks Out on The Affair Because He's Smarter Than We ArePhilip Michaels January 8th, 2017 Philip Michaels isn't a crackpot. He just thinks we should be happy for Vik after he takes his ball and goes home when it becomes clear that Helen will never ever quit Noah. I've made no secret in these The Affair posts of my love for Dr. Vik Ullah, Helen's upgrade in the partner department after Noah ran off with his true love, himself. I squeal with delight at Vik's deadpan reactions, I smile happily each time he's on the screen, I draft letters to Showtime demanding an aftershow for The Affair featuring nothing but Vik and maybe Furkat commenting wryly on that night's episode. So when Vik storms off in this episode -- presumably for good -- after receiving one too many doses of Helen's bullshit, you'd think I'd be devastated. And I am, if the single line of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" in my notes for this episode is any indication. But I also understand. Oh, there is the temptation to run after Vik Shane-style, begging him to return, or to pretend that he's just running out for cigarettes and that he'll be back any moment now. But honestly, isn't this best for Vik? He's been nothing but a gentleman to Helen and her brood of contemptible children -- a pissy, withholding gentleman, but a gentlemen nonetheless. And what has he gotten in return? Helen running back to Noah at every opportunity and fibbing about it whenever Vik presses her on the matter. As Vik points out in Helen's segment, she lies to him about Noah no less than three times in this episode, and while Vik may have his flaws -- and I will cut anyone who tries to enumerate them -- at least he's honest about things. There aren't many other top-billed characters on this show who can make that claim. "I really don't understand," Vik tells Helen, as a parting shot about her ongoing devotion to Noah. "I have tried, but I dont." That makes two of us, buddy. So Vik is gone, and we are the poorer for it. But at least in the world of The Affair-verse, Vik is in a better place, which can be simply defined as anywhere that is not in the immediate orbit of the Solloways. The question we should be asking ourselves in the aftermath of this episode is not "Why did Vik go?," but rather "Why are the rest of us still here?" Consider the Helen segment, which works only if you pretend that it's not part of an intense drama about the repercussions of infidelity, but rather a farcical 1970s sitcom. Here's Helen trying to keep her opioid-addicted ex-husband stashed in the basement and away from her children and current live-in boyfriend, while she fields a call from her ex's parole officer, deals with a surprise drop-in visit from her daughter and the daughter's fifty-year-old boyfriend, and handles her ex's demand for pills, any kind of sweet, delicious pills. All that's missing is Mr. and Mrs. Roper stopping by for a hilarious misunderstanding. Because how else to explain Helen's sudden descent into madness? Surely, she sees the same thing that every other character on this show has been telling her -- that Noah has an infected wound and is clearly in the grip of pill addiction -- so of course, this is the moment she decides that she needs a little more Noah in her life? Now's the time to hit the ol' reset button on that Noah relationship, as he stages his one-man version of Valley Of The Dolls? On a related note, this is the second consecutive episode where Helen has slept with someone who is not Vik. Her judgment has officially moved from "suspect" to "unreliable." Speaking of "unreliable," there's Noah's segment, which given the number of opioids he downs on a daily basis, should feature people with lizard heads and fantastic swirling colors. Disappointingly, we just get more flashbacks of him being menaced by John Gunther both back in prison and in the tripped-out corners of Noah's mind. We also get to see him react to being slugged by Furkat (glorious!) and reuniting in Helen's boudoir after she leaves a trail of Vicodin leading to her vagina (less glorious and kinda gross given the violent turn their coitus takes). So we limp toward the end of Season 3 with Noah and Helen back together again, albeit not very happily if the closing moments of this episode are anything to go by. Noah's got a serious addiction and now a hunting knife, which seems like a winning combination. And Alison's apparently now living on Mars, for all that we've seen of her recently. This is the post-Vik world we must now live in, and while it's a darker, scarier place, at least we can be happy for Vik, who no longer has to roll his eyes at the antics of these remarkable dullards. I am not a crackpot. previously.tv/the-affair/vik-walks-out-on-the-affair-because-hes-smarter-than-we-are/‘The Affair’ Season 3, Episode 7: There’s a Monster in the BasementThe Affair By MIKE HALE JAN. 8, 2017 Noah Solloway hit rock bottom in Sunday night’s episode of “The Affair.” Lower than losing his wife and children. Lower than going to prison and being brutalized. Lower than almost hitting on his daughter at a sleazy Hamptons hot-tub party. On Sunday night, Noah got his butt kicked by Furkat. It really doesn’t get any worse than that. The beatdown — or, from Noah’s perspective, the sucker punch — happened during a claustrophobic Helen-and-Noah episode that was an emotional workout but didn’t really advance the story, except for the possibly permanent departure of Dr. Vic. The phlegmatic doctor had finally had enough, packing his bag and walking out of Helen’s Cobble Hill chamber of horrors. He left because Helen had brought Noah back to Brooklyn, installed him in Vic’s old digs in the basement and showed no sign of moving him out. Just as Noah had blown up everyone’s lives by having an affair, Helen spent the day blowing up lives — hers, Vic’s, her children’s — by bringing Noah back, against all reason. The long day, seen in Helen’s and Noah’s overlapping perspectives, began in Pennsylvania, where Helen had discovered Noah fighting his (imaginary) demons in the previous episode. She drove him back to the city and put him to bed, using Nina’s failure to answer the phone as a reason for keeping him in the basement, hidden from his own children. The most noticeable thing during the opening Helen chapter was how she treated her ex-husband like a child — walking in on him in the shower, trying to dry him, reading his texts. (And this was from her point of view.) He was her errant boy, who just needed to be shown the right path. Eventually, at the end of the day, that path led back into her bed, where Helen and Noah had sex for the first time since — when? If you remember, let us know. In the meantime, the episode played out like a farce, or a horror thriller, with people gradually discovering there was a monster in the basement. First Helen brought Vic in on the secret, using him for medical advice, which consisted of telling Noah to stop taking Vicodin because he was already addicted. Then Whitney found out, when Noah encountered Furkat on the sidewalk and the conversation — including Furkat’s great line, “I’m her lover. And her boss. Her lover-boss” — ended in blows. Luckily for Helen, Noah kept falling asleep, so she could get back upstairs and put dinner on the table. There, we saw a tense but functioning family unit — Martin was silent, which was an improvement, and Trevor chattered about a school-musical version of “Jane Eyre,” which allowed for some amusing references to crazy people in the attic. (Though who’s crazier — the dad in the basement or the mom at the table?) Then there was a crashing noise, which Helen explained away as plumbers at work — at night? In Brooklyn? — and Vic was out of there. “Are you still in love with him?” the doctor asked, and she said no. Vic was bewildered, but then he doesn’t know the truth about Scotty Lockhart’s death and all the guilt Helen’s carrying around. No one was harmed during Vic’s departure except for the poor cactus, which ended up on the floor, just another victim. We saw a lot of the same events from Noah’s perspective, playing out basically the same way but with differences of shading. In Helen’s telling, Noah reacted in clichéd angry-addict fashion to Vic’s refusal to prescribe more Vicodin; in Noah’s account, he was humble (“Would you mind writing me a prescription?”) and it was Vic who was angry and threatening. Noah also gave himself a glimmer of self-awareness, asking Vic whether the painkillers could cause hallucinations. Noah’s story also included a stop at Gunther’s Hunting and Fishing in Pennsylvania, where at least the existence of Gunther appeared to be proved — Noah talked to the prison guard’s mother, played by Lois Smith (Grandma Stackhouse on “True Blood”) — and where Noah bought a knife, which didn’t seem like a good idea at all. We also got a couple of prison flashbacks, in which Gunther was more sadistic than we had seen him before, promising to haunt Noah after he left prison and giving him 90 more days in solitary. And finally there was a full-on hallucination (or so we assume) in which Gunther appeared in the basement. They “wrestled,” which explained the noise that led to Vic’s departure. The key scene was saved for last: Noah’s version of his and Helen’s final encounter of the day. Now she was no longer the strict mother but the temptress, in a sexy off-the-shoulder sweater, pushing booze and pills on him and saying: “Vic doesn’t belong here. You belong here.” She forgave him — for everything, apparently — and they kissed, though in Noah’s telling he was less willing than he had been in Helen’s chapter. But once they were in bed, things got rough (and graphic, even for this show). Helen kept saying, “I know you,” and that set Noah off. Who could plumb the complexities of Noah Solloway, after all? “You don’t know me,” he said, over and over, in rhythm with her “We’re O.K., we’re O.K.” In the aftermath, Helen rolled over and started to cry, and Noah stared at the ceiling, wondering — along with us — what was going on. Is Noah’s pain really all about his mother’s death? What happened in prison that we haven’t seen yet? Did Gunther’s abuse involve more than Noah’s shoulder? With just three episodes left in the season, it’s time for some answers. www.nytimes.com/2017/01/08/arts/television/the-affair-season-3-episode-7-recap.htmlDECLINE Sex, Lies, and Violence: Did Noah Just Rape Helen in ‘The Affair’?Noah’s torture at the hands of Gunther continues, as Helen does everything to win Noah back. But her damaged husband may damage her too. TIM TEEMAN - 01.09.17 2:00 AM ET Noah Solloway (Dominic West) is a mess, as everyone agrees, and tells him. As of tonight, he is a mess who possibly just sexually assaulted his ex-wife. Let the debate begin. The Affair’s battered, flawed lead male character is a crucible of crisis. He went to jail because he felt guilty for having an affair, and because he loved two women very differently, one—ex-wife Helen (Maura Tierney) as the mother of his children, and second wife Alison (Ruth Wilson) romantically. Alison is now his soon-to-be second ex-wife. Both women contributed to the death of Scott Lockhart (Colin Donnell)—Helen by running him over and Alison by pushing him in front of the car. Noah took the rap, and went to jail for three years, and has been stabbed in the neck by a mystery assailant. This might be Gunther (Brendan Fraser), a vicious, sadistic prison guard, who envied Noah for his glamorous life and who violently menaced him for his prison term, doing particular damage to his shoulder. The show has become a hive of complication: Noah still wants Alison, and reunited with her without realizing she’d had sex with her ex-husband Cole (Joshua Jackson). Then they left each other. Helen still wants Noah, and came across him splashing about in a pond last week next to his dead father’s house, Noah seeing the ghoul of his own teenage self in front of him. He’s off his head on Vicodin for the busted shoulder, which means he’s hallucinating and on edge, and Helen found him like this and ferried him back to Brooklyn. And from there, in Anya Epstein’s seventh episode of the third season, The Affair returned to type—and two very different interpretations of the same events. In Helen’s version, she is the plainly dressed, sad, and compromised caretaker of her ex-husband, trying to build bridges with Nina (Jennifer Esposito), Noah’s sister, by phone and trying to ameliorate the inevitable concerns of her hot new boyfriend Vic Ullah (Omar Metwally). Noah’s holed up in the basement, sick, and the meek accepter of her merciful tenderness. Helen is in her element, co-opting Noah’s phone, making good with his parole officer. It’s kind of like Misery, with nicer furnishings. Poor Noah must ask Helen to leave while he has a bath. Vic was irritated, naturally, to discover the ex was living downstairs, and with his attempted murderer still on the loose. Still, on Helen’s request, Vic—“Dr. Ooh-la-la,” Noah calls him, which earned a guffaw from this sofa—takes a look at him, though won’t agree to Noah’s request for lots more Vicodin, prescribing some antibiotics instead. “The man’s a mess,” he says to Helen, asking her to get him out of the house. He’d be better in a rehab facility. Noah says to Helen that Vic hates him, and she passes her drug-addicted ex-husband an Ambien as well as the antibiotics. He thinks his hears his children upstairs, but they are not there. Suddenly, daughter Whitney (Julia Goldani Telles) appears, needing a tent for an upstate camping trip with her awful boyfriend Furkat (Jonathan Cake), who is also her boss, a photographer, and prize dickwad. His name is ridiculous, he is a sleaze, and of course he has a daughter called Juniper. Whitney, for whom the word “troubled” was invented—alongside “brat”—can’t believe Helen has let Noah back into the house after all the hurt he has caused and heads off, only to find her dad being beaten up by Furkat outside. Noah is left again a mess. Afterward, Helen can’t work out why Noah didn’t fight back—unaware of the abuse he has suffered at the hands of Gunther. And even we don’t know the full scale of this, though Gunther’s malevolence has an implication of sexual violence to it. Was Noah raped? Whitney wonders why Helen hates herself so much, and why she—rather than Noah—is so crazy. And Helen’s love for Noah is crazy, as evidenced when she lies down next to him to sleep in the drugged captivity she has helped create. She finally has Noah back where she wants him. Their son Trevor’s (Jadon Sand) voice disturbs her. He’s in a musical production of Jane Eyre, and he is just talking about “the crazy lady in the attic” when a thud is heard. Helen says it’s plumbers, Vic knows it is still Noah, and—reasonably enough—tells Helen he’s out. It’s obvious to Vic that Helen still loves Noah, or in some fundamental way will never be able to jettison him from her life. She has no answer when he asks why Helen can’t let Noah go. And so Vic goes. (Finally, Vic and I can be together! Vic, the key’s under the mat!) Just then Noah appeared, and was sorry if Vic had left because of him. Helen took her glass of wine to her dim patio. She was crying. She told Noah she forgave him, that he had to stop punishing himself. He was puzzled as to why Helen should need to forgive him. (Oh Helen, you’re so wrong about Noah.) They kiss, and kiss more, and then head to bed, and mid-sexual flow stop. “What?” Helen asks. Noah obviously recalls the passage of events differently. For one, on that car trip back from his dad’s, he recalled stopping in at Gunther’s family hunting shop. Gunther’s mother is there, and reveals to Noah—who buys a brute-looking knife in a sheath—that “John” is her oldest child, married 16 years to a wife called Kayleigh, who is a hairdresser. He was always itching to get out of town, Gunther’s mother says. You can see why his envy and hatred burns so bright for Noah. Noah tells her to tell Gunther he sends his best, and accepts a gift of fresh beef jerky. Helen is worried about his shoulder. He just wants to sleep. At home he does hear family life above him, even if in Helen’s version the kids aren’t there. Noah also recalls Vic seeing him, but Vic is dressed in a crisp white shirt in Noah’s memory and much harsher. We learn Gunther’s abuse led Noah’s shoulder to be broken in three places, but as in Helen’s memory Vic won’t give him Vicodin. In his memory Vic checks his neck wound, and tells him a bad infection could lead to hallucinations, which might explain the ghosts of Gunther that Noah keeps seeing—if they are ghosts. Vic hisses at Noah to leave, and tells him he is not worried about his presence, comparing Noah’s ill, drug-addicted self to Vic’s healthy stability. Noah falls asleep, and dreams of Gunther again, visiting him in his solitary cell to torment and needle him. He is ensuring Noah isn’t eating properly or getting enough water. Gunther asks why he’s in the slammer. When Noah reveals he had an affair, Gunther sneers that he cannot understand why. Noah had everything. Now he is no better than Gunther. Noah sneers back that he’ll be out of here, while Gunther will stay in this awful place. That earns more physical punishment on Noah’s shoulder, and a vow by Gunther to make sure Noah won’t get out of jail. When Noah tries to stop the assault, Gunther claims he is assaulting him—more solitary time beckons. On waking (and Noah has no memory of Helen being next to him), Noah hears voices. Furkat is outside, and he too sneers at Noah about how pathetic he is, and the gross stories Whitney has told him. He punches Noah, who looks up to see Whitney dressed in a less dressy get-up than Helen recalled. When he wakes again, post-that beating, he hears Trevor talking above, while in the shadows of the room Gunther is there smoking. They fight, Noah asks what he wants. Noah again comes off worst, although when he rushes upstairs after Gunther has left Helen hasn’t seen him. Was Gunther really there? Did that happen, or was it the meds? The Helen Noah recalls is wearing a sexy dress, the patio is beautifully lit, and Helen is not at all sad about Vic’s departure. Helen encourages Noah, his perfumed, enabling gaoler, to take more Vicodin. Noah in a drugged state is even more hers. Helen tells Noah seductively that he’s done some bad things, but that she forgives him. Which Helen is the real Helen, hers or his? She tells him, her drugged, pliant ex-husband, that all will be OK. Sex begins. Where Helen’s memory ended on her asking “What?” as Noah hesitated mid-intercourse, in his memory he tells her, “You don’t know me.” “I do,” Helen says. “You don’t,” Noah says. “I do,” Helen says. As the sex gets more violent, Noah repeats that she doesn’t know him. If the sex began as consensual and initiated by Helen, it ends as disturbingly violent, and an assault on her. It was rough sex she did not want, or elicit. Its violence and consensual ambiguity might have reminded some fans of the time Noah had disturbingly violent sex with Alison against a tree, and there was debate online back then over whether it was rape or not. A similar debate may well happen again after tonight. It also reflected the theme of sexual assault on campus, played out around the dinner party debates of earlier in the season. Noah’s novel featured a fictional distillation of his assault on Alison, so he knows what his critics may think him capable of. Noah has also opined that sex is blurred, “a war between intellect and instinct.” The dual perspective of The Affair worked meaningfully tonight: Helen’s elided the assault completely, whereas Noah—unsparing on himself—recalled it all too graphically. That included his memory of Helen crying into the pillow at the end. If this was a sexual assault, was Noah—drugged, out of control, out of himself—recalling and re-enacting his own rape at the hands of Gunther? Or the violence that Gunther represents? That would be no excuse of course—and if you did see it as a sexual assault, then it means Noah has done the same to his two wives. Because Noah is such a mess all the time, and mess keeps unfolding around him all the time, the first assault on Alison wasn’t interrogated that much in the drama. How about this second time, and will Helen—who wants this man back in her life so desperately—see his violation of her as the most brutal and revealing manifestation of why a reunion right now would be a terrible idea? Whatever, The Affair just got even darker—if that were possible. www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/08/sex-lies-and-violence-did-noah-just-rape-helen-in-the-affair.html‘The Affair’ Recap, Season 3, Episode 7: Long Day’s Journey Into NightBy Sean T. Collins @theseantcollins Jan 12, 2017 at 2:40pm On this week’s episode of The Affair, disaster struck. It’s just not clear who, or how hard, it hit. Returning to the show’s old modus operandi of showing the same events from two overlapping but divergent perspectives, the hour is split between Helen and Noah, as we see what happens during the day following Helen’s rescue of her hallucinating ex-husband from the lake through both their eyes. There are certain crucial omissions — Helen’s POV skips Noah’s stop at the hunting shop run by sadistic prison guard John Gunther’s family, for example, though given the way Noah plays down the visit’s importance, it’s perfectly plausible that it wouldn’t strike her as memorable. But in the main, we’re seeing the same stuff, played out in different ways. Very different. In Helen’s half, she’s harried and frazzled and desperate to create a happy ending for Noah’s plight, constantly and unconvincingly telling people “I’ll make it work,” “We’ll be okay,” and so on. Noah looks like a half-drowned rat who was only saved because someone punched him out of the water; He’s so exhausted and out of it that he borders on incoherence. She’s torn to shreds by both Whitney and Vik, who can’t understand why she keeps letting Noah back in, and choose to leave her rather than stick around with him nearby. At the end of her segment, she embraces Noah like a life preserver, having sex with him in the bed Vik vacated just minutes earlier. Then he stops moving and stares at her, she asks him what’s going on, and we cut to Noah’s side of the story. Here, everyone seems much more together, just visually and physically. Helen’s hair is as smart and neat as her black turtleneck. Whitney and Furkat, who stop by to pick up camping supplies, are more LL Bean than artsy daytrippers. Noah’s t-shirt is plain and gray and new, instead of the tattered old Williams tee in Helen’s POV. Even Vik is dressier, though he’s even unfriendlier here than he is in Helen’s version of events. By the end of Noah’s segment it’s clear that what’s happening to him is further from “real” reality than mere discrepancies of perspective can account for. Did John Gunther really break into the house unseen and unheard with fully six people (Vik, Helen, Noah, and the kids) floating around? Did he use a lighter with a flame five inches tall to smoke Gauloises, the French cigarette brand favored by David Bowie? Did he get stabbed in the hand during the subsequent fight with Noah, then escape without a trace or a trail? Did Helen react to Vik’s departure and Noah’s panic with the cool self-possession of a seductress, offering a red wine and vicodin cocktail to her very obviously physically and mentally ill ex before telling him “Vik doesn’t belong here — you belong here” and bedding him down? Did she repeat “I know you, I know you, I know you” while they f**ked, like the world’s weirdest dirty talk? I think the odds are slim to none in every case. This goes beyond The Affair’s usual unreliable-narrator issue and into the realm of outright hallucination, as Noah himself notes to Vik early in his segment. Which makes the disastrous and traumatic end of Noah and Helen’s liaison even thornier to analyze. Driven into some kind of rage by Helen’s “I know you” mantra, Noah growls “you don’t f**k**g know me” and initiates what might euphemistically be described (perhaps by Noah himself, as he did earlier in the season when describing the outdoor encounter with Alison that found its way into his book) as “rough sex.” As the music crescendoes, it’s difficult to make out what Helen is saying in response—is it “know” or “no”? When it’s over, she rolls away from him, crying, shaking off his attempt to touch and comfort her. Her own perspective cuts off just as Noah stops in the middle of having sex with her, so we don’t see what happens next from her eyes, only Noah’s. Here, it looks like, and is, rape. But for all we know, it’s no more real than Gunther’s Gauloises or Helen doling out vicodin pills like a Pez dispenser. God help us, it’s Schrodinger’s assault. But there are glimpses of Noah’s agitation on Helen’s side of the episode, too, and not just the obvious — the auditory hallucinations, the fight with Furkat, the confusion about who exactly slammed the door when Vik leaves, etc. In Helen’s POV, Noah seems offended when Helen says she forgives him for what he’s done, in an attempt to stop him from pursuing further self-destructive behavior to punish himself for it all. “You forgive me?” he asks in response. She doesn’t pick up on the vibe and the matter is dropped, but there it is. Whatever may or may not have happened between them on the day chronicled in this episode, one thing is certain: Helen ran over Scotty Lockhart, and Noah went to prison to protect her from the consequences. This is the secret slowly destroying Helen’s life, estranging her from both Whitney and Vik when they try and fail to get a satisfactory explanation as to her continuing sense of attachment and obligation to this man they have every reason to distrust and despise. Noah shares this secret as well, and on top of it there’s the matter of John Gunther, who doled out a punishment so disproportionate to the crime that Noah can’t bring himself to discuss it with anyone close to him. Whitney mocks the idea that these two could ever form a happy family again; she doesn’t even know the half of it. The trauma they’ve worked together to bury is eating away at them from within. If what happened at the end of the episode actually happened, it may have just devoured them entirely. Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, the Observer, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island. decider.com/2017/01/12/the-affair-recap-s3-ep7/The Affair’s Helen and Noah unsurprisingly crawl back to each otherBy Gwen Ihnat@gwenemarie Jan 8, 2017 10:00 PM The Affair "307" Season 3 , Episode 7 Because The A.V. Club knows that TV shows keep going even if we’re not writing at length about them, we’re experimenting with discussion posts. For certain shows, one of our TV writers will publish some brief thoughts about the latest episode, and open the comments for readers to share theirs. The first few seasons of The Affair were so gripping, as they tackled relatable themes like temptation, desire, fame, and loyalty, against an attractive backdrop of attractive people and surroundings like Montauk. This season, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot, just seems like an entirely different show. Like Black Swan with novels and prison, a world where psychosis and reality are merging somehow, but none of us—not the protagonist, not the viewers—know how. It’s fairly engaging, even as we seem as stuck in the mud in episode seven as we were in episode one, with only three left that don’t offer much hope of clearing up the season. Unless it ends with Noah in some sort of rehab/mental health clinic. - In case you’re missing it (which I doubt), some anvil-ish references to the gothic Jane Eyre that could also apply to this show: “It’s almost like she switches genres. First you think it’s a romance, but then it turns into a thriller.” Also, Helen stashes her husband in the basement like Rochester hid his mad wife in the attic. - The show’s gift of dual perspectives remains effective in scenes like the one where Vic examines Noah. In Noah’s viewpoint, he’s just a poor ex-con with a broken shoulder who can’t get through the day without 10 Vicodin. In Vic’s, Noah’s an ungrateful, rude junkie out for more pills. Both of these perspectives, undoubtedly, have elements of truth in them. - Helen changes as well, from a put-upon, running around wife and mother who’s just trying to fix everything, to an out-and-out temptress enticing Noah with pills. Well, of course he would see her that way. - That final sex scene, though. Wow. That’s not anything a relationship can ever easily come back from. I feel like Helen’s tears recognized that, and also the fact that she let a perfectly nice man out of her life so that she could be with her drug-addicted, sociopathic ex. - Vic definitely deserves better though, and speaks for all of us when he says of Helen’s pull toward Noah, “I really don’t understand it. I have tried, but I don’t.” - Almost as incomprehensible: Whitney’s revelation that Furkat’s daughter is older than she is? Yes, Whitney is going to have some daddy issues, but this seems about the worst way in the world to work them out. - “Furkat camps?” “Why is that funny?” “I don’t know, it just is.” - Helen ignores that possibly saving call from Nina, right? - While this season is a confounding one, I think The Affair has a lot to say about the choices we make, why we make them, and where they could lead us. Noah started out as a mildly bored father of four, and has wound up in about the lowest place a person can get to, as Gunther notes in prison. Now he has another divorce and a prison record and a drug addiction and a life-threatening infection. Yes, the car accident wouldn’t have happened if he and Helen hadn’t been on that road at that very moment, but would he have taken the rap out of guilt then? Would Helen had already have had her drug conviction? For Helen, most of her problems can be chalked up to the fact that she just fell in love with the wrong guy in college. From a privileged background, she could have had about anyone, and she chose this broken young man that she still can’t stop herself from caretaking. Season three definitely has its frustrating moments (if not Gunther, is Noah just beating up his own self in his room at Helen’s?), but it sure offers a ton of food for thought. - So I’m reminded of show creator Sarah Treem’s tweet a while back: Sarah Treem ✔ @sarahtreem Me, re: S3: It's so slow and melancholy, I love it! Showtime: You gotta speed this shit up. Me: You're wrong! Twitter: Speed this shit up! www.avclub.com/tvclub/affairs-helen-and-noah-unsurprisingly-crawl-back-e-248093
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Post by sissa on Jan 15, 2017 7:28:36 GMT 10
'The Affair' Season 3 Episode 8 Spoilers: Alison and Helen Meet AgainBY JILIANNE ARBONIDA , CHRISTIAN POST CONTRIBUTOR Jan 13, 2017 | 5:56 AM Alison (Ruth Wilson) and Helen (Maura Tierney) will face off in the upcoming episode of "The Affair." Alison wants to talk to Helen in the upcoming episode of "The Affair." The eighth episode of the Showtime series will see Noah's (Dominic West) exes meet again. As seen in the promo, Alison will invite Helen so they can talk and waits for her in a bar. It is clear that Helen does not want to be there. As far as she is concerned, it is best if she and Alison keep away from each other. Alison is determined that they talk, though. She mentions the night Scotty (Colin Donnell) died. A flashback shows Alison pushing Scotty away from her and then him getting hit by the car Helen was driving. Helen shuts her down, saying she does not want to listen. Meanwhile, Alison is convinced that she and Cole (Joshua Jackson) are meant to be together. She tells him that they seem to keep on coming back to each other. They share a kiss. Still, Cole is unsure about his feelings. He cannot stop himself from spending time with Alison, but he also does not wish to end his marriage to Luisa (Catalina Sandino Moreno). Previously, he told Alison that they were finished and that he wanted to be a good husband to his wife. He could not escape Alison, though, since she was there to see Joanie. As for Helen, her boyfriend Vic (Omar Metwally) has finally given up on her. The last straw came when she brought Noah (Dominic West) home with her. Helen found her ex-husband wading, delirious, in the lake. He had been popping pills and has been having hallucinations. Even their children are against Helen's decision to take Noah in again. When Vic left, Helen made a huge mistake in telling Noah they should start again. Vic was right. She is still in love with Noah, but does he feel the same way? "The Affair" season 3 airs Sundays at 10 p.m. EST on Showtime. www.christianpost.com/news/the-affair-season-3-episode-8-spoilers-alison-and-helen-meet-again-172916/'The Affair' season 3 episode 8 spoilers: Noah and Helen's relationship gets more complicatedShiena Bernardino13 JANUARY, 2017 After the startling reconnection between Noah Solloway (Dominic West) and his ex-wife Helen (Maura Tierney) in the previous episode, more unexpected twists are about to happen when Showtime airs the next episode of "The Affair" season 3. In the previous episode, Noah and Helen narrated their different perspectives regarding the events that happened between them. According to Helen's side of the story, Noah needed to be taken care of to nurse his broken shoulders. But her involvement with her ex-husband caused her current boyfriend, Dr. Vic Ullah (Omar Metwally), to feel uncomfortable with the situation, especially since he kept on asking him to prescribe more Vicodin for his pain. When Vic opted not to give Noah another prescription of Vicodin, Helen decided to give in to her ex-husband's request to give him the hypnotic sedative Ambien together with his normal dose of antibiotics. This caused Noah to be more disoriented. Despite Noah's condition, Helen allowed him to sleep with her. Yet their intimate moment was suddenly disrupted, leaving Helen asking why Noah stopped touching her. Noah's version, on the other hand, was that Helen was the one who initiated their steamy encounter. She also encouraged him to take more Vicodin despite Vic's orders. As they began getting intimate, Noah tried to stop because he told her that she does not know him. When Helen argued, their sexual encounter grew more violent, and it appeared that the consensual affair turned into a disturbing event. Meanwhile, Helen will have a different encounter with Noah's other ex-wife Alison (Ruth Wilson), based on the trailer for the eighth episode of season 3. Sponsored Watch Your Favorite Christian Films, 24/7. Click Here To Start Your Free Trial Today In the trailer, the two women will meet up in a bar. Alison would want to talk about the fateful incident that killed Scotty Lockhart (Colin Donnell), but Helen will not let her. Showtime also released the synopsis for the upcoming episode, which reads: "An unexpected cause to celebrate provokes a sobering realization in Alison. Soon after, a startling warning leaves her pondering the unthinkable. Cole's frustrations with Alison come to a head, revealing a radical truth." The next episode of "The Affair" season 3 is slated to air on Sunday, Jan. 15. christiantimes.com/article/the-affair-season-3-episode-8-spoilers-noah-and-helens-relationship-gets-more-complicated/70049.htm
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Post by sissa on Jan 19, 2017 10:28:30 GMT 10
I have to say that Helen in Noah´s POV was quite interesting. She had a Hitchcock villain's vibe. I´d like to see Maura playing a villain, actually I would love to see that.
For no reason I still think there´s hope for Vic/Helen relatinship, and Rex. I remember his speech about good and bad person and his unique view may help her.
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Post by sissa on Jan 20, 2017 12:50:37 GMT 10
‘The Affair’ Season 3, Episode 8: People See What They Want to SeeThe Affair By MIKE HALE JAN. 15, 2017 Season 3, Episode 8 “The Affair” got back to Montauk with an Alison-and-Cole episode Sunday night, after two bleak weeks with Helen and Noah. But things weren’t very sunny on the South Fork. Cole worked out his feelings about his ex-wife over a couple of testy days, at the end of which Alison framed the question for him — he could leave his current wife, Luisa, to return to Alison and be a happy jerk, or he could stay with Luisa, preserve his self-image as a good guy and be a miserable hero. He decided to stay, and his episode-ending expression as he and Luisa hugged did look pretty miserable. It was also the first sex-free episode in seven weeks, since the season premiere. If you’re keeping score, it’s Helen 3 (Vic, Max, Noah), Alison 2 (Cole, Noah), Noah 2 (Alison, Helen), Cole 1 (Alison) and poor Juliette 1 (the irritating undergrad Mike). Presumably Whitney and Furkat are getting it on, but we’ve been spared the visual proof. Alison’s chapter came first, and the news for her was good. At a custody hearing, Luisa unexpectedly switched sides, saying that Joanie wanted to be with her mother and suggesting shared custody. And just like that, one of the season’s biggest conflicts was solved. Then Alison got a mysterious call summoning her to Woodlawn, the New Jersey psychiatric institution where she’d recently spent six months (losing Joanie in the process). It turned out that her former doctor wanted her to speak to a woman who, like Alison, had experienced the death of a child. Kendra was a straw mom, an unlikely plot convenience to get Alison from one emotional level to another, but the scene was moving nonetheless, with Hope Olaide Wilson doing good work as the young mom with thoughts of suicide. Alison half-jokingly said that she had come close to committing suicide by having an affair — “I wouldn’t recommend it. It didn’t end well” — and told Kendra that while she’d always miss her daughter, “It’s incredible to be alive.” Alison handled the situation so well that her doctor suggested she might turn counseling into a career. Her victories were interspersed with exasperating moments with Cole, though. After the scene in court, she drove to his unfinished house to thank him (with a peace offering of doughnuts) and he was less than gracious, fretting about the custody arrangement — “You’re still you,” he said — and getting angry when he learned she’d seen Noah. Alison lied, saying they met to sign divorce papers but leaving out their Block Island tryst. This paralleled Cole’s later lie to Luisa — more about that in a minute. (In Cole’s version of the scene, he had another reason to be upset — a new town building inspector had put a stop-work order on the house.) Even worse was their encounter the next day, after she returned from Woodlawn. When she excitedly told Cole about the possibility of a job, he was cold-water Cole again, asking how she could manage the job and still look after Joanie — was she going to abandon her daughter again? Talking past each other, they had their second fight in two days, which led to the episode’s one outburst of strangeness. An angry Alison went to a Montauk bar and, of all the gin joints in all the East End, she picked the one where she could run into Helen. Why was Helen in Montauk? And why was she having a “weird day”? Did the teaser for next week shed any light on this? In any case they had a surprisingly cordial conversation, despite Helen’s caustic “I loved hearing that” when Alison confirmed that Joanie wasn’t Noah’s daughter. Helen was still hung up on the question of who Noah really is and the two ex-Mrs. Solloways compared notes: charming and ambitious (Alison), insecure and spineless (Helen). “I think people see what they want to see in other people,” Helen said, which sounded like a sign that could be hanging in the “Affair” writers’ room and also resonated with Cole’s desire to see Alison as damaged and in need of his supervision. Helen admitted partial guilt for Noah and Alison’s affair, saying that she had made Noah feel insignificant for years, and Alison was so caught up in the moment that she tried to tell Helen about pushing Scotty Lockhart into the road. Helen cut her off and left, so Helen still doesn’t know that Alison was involved and Alison still doesn’t know that Helen was driving the car that hit Scotty. In Cole’s half we saw a more aggressive, harder-edged Allison along with scenes that fleshed out his conflicted, guilty feelings. Luisa asked him about having or adopting a child of their own and he stalled. In a counterpart to the Alison-Helen scene, Cole had a surprise visit from Oscar (carrying out his town-council duties by telling Cole to stop construction on the house). The all-knowing Oscar divined that Cole and Alison had had sex and counseled him to stick with the steady Luisa. Cole went home and told Luisa, “Let’s do it” — ever sensible, she told him to sleep on it — but discussions of parenthood were interrupted by another visit from the New Jersey cops. Cole’s car had passed through a tollbooth in New Jersey the night Noah was stabbed, blowing his alibi, and when he got angry with the cops, he ended up in jail. (Though not in a New Jersey jail, which seemed odd.) Alison came to visit him, and he finally spilled the beans: On the day of the stabbing, he’d gone to Woodlawn to get a “professional opinion” about Alison’s condition. He said he hadn’t told Luisa or the police because it would be an admission that he still loved Alison, which seemed like a stretch, but whatever. In Cole’s tortured logic, he had to lie because he’s a good guy — “I’m not Noah Solloway,” he said, though he’s kind of the less-skilled junior varsity version. Allison apparently had no qualms about Cole dumping Luisa. She just wanted him to make a decision, and, like Helen before her, she delivered a character-defining statement: “I’m stronger than I used to be, but I am always going to be impulsive and depressed. With mood swings. I know that I am not an easy person to love.” Back at home — did someone make bail? — Cole told Luisa half the truth, admitting he’d gone to Woodlawn on the fateful night but saying he was gathering evidence for the custody case, not gathering evidence for a possible return to Alison. Luisa knew he was lying, which led to a silent either-side-of-the-bed stalemate. Cole then got up in the middle of the night and met Alison again, this time on a Montauk pier, where she gave him the happy-jerk-miserable-hero ultimatum and left. Back at home at dawn, he cooked eggs — TV code for male fidelity — and told Luisa he was hers if she’d still have him. With tears in her eyes, she said, “I’ll still have you.” We’ll see how long it lasts. With just two episodes left in the season, one of them set in Paris, they might just make it. www.nytimes.com/2017/01/15/arts/television/the-affair-season-3-episode-8-recap.htmlThe Wives of ‘The Affair’ Swap Notes: Recap, Season 3 Episode 8 In a baffling episode of The Affair, Luisa suddenly thought Alison was a great parent, Alison was suddenly a grief sage, and Cole cracked some tear-stained eggs.TIM TEEMAN 01.16.17 2:00 AM ET Oh really, Alison (Ruth Wilson) as a trainer for grief counselors? Of all the outlandish and strange things The Affair has tried to convince us of over the past three seasons, having the drama’s most unstable, impulsive, miserable, and self-involved human—and that is some competition she is up against—now elevated to such a position of responsibility seems laughable, even ludicrous. But then this was a really odd episode. Did anyone else think the opening scenes, from Alison’s perspective, featuring Luisa (Catalina Sandino Moreno) suddenly painting Alison as a devoted, reformed mom who should be granted shared custody, was just plain weird? The last we saw, Luisa was undermining Alison at every opportunity, deriding her parenting skills, and menacing her into being as good a parent as she could be. And now, suddenly Luisa was casting Alison as parent of the year. Alison was as surprised by this as the viewers: “I thought she still hated me,” she said to her lawyer. So did we. As a result of Luisa’s intervention, Alison won shared custody of Joanie, and then popped over to see Cole (her ex-husband, Luisa’s present husband, played by Joshua Jackson). She went bearing coffee and muffins, but he—working on his new home, still a wooden skeleton—was not in the mood to see her, convinced that he couldn’t trust her not to run off again, as she had before. Cole snidely congratulated her for her divorce from Noah (Dominic West), as she lied she had seen the latter for just five minutes to ratify their divorce. They hadn’t. They spent a wild, sexy, intimate, moving, revelatory night together. And Noah doesn’t know that Alison had just had sex with Cole either. Then came Alison’s transformation into wise angel. Off she went to the therapy center she herself went to when she lost her mind where another young woman had just lost her baby like Alison had years before. (This young woman was black, the second black character in this episode—a dual sighting so rare it reminded you how few black people there are on The Affair.) This young woman was poorer than Alison and had suicidal feelings. Alison’s advice was to surround herself with her dead baby’s mementoes, accept things would not be the same again, and to choose to live because it was “incredible” to be alive. This all came from the lips of a person who has been a walking car wreck ever since we first met her, a masterclass in misery, dysfunction, and drippy self-absorption. Here she was, dispensing advice and wisdom like a breezy Yoda. “Everyone assumes life is given, but you and I know that it’s not. “You and I both know that breath can end, so we know life is a gift.” Alison helped the grief-stricken young woman much more than she has ever helped herself. On her way back from the facility, Alison thought it would be a great idea to pop into the Lobster Roll restaurant to tell Cole that she was going to take up the facility’s offer to train other parents with her alleged expertise. Yes, great idea. A whole arena of unwitting couples for Alison to bring trauma too, either by giving them the benefit of her wisdom, or shagging whomsoever she chooses, then feeling terrible about it! Good going, mental health care facility! Cole, reasonably, noted that Alison brought chaos wherever she went. How would this work—the facility is in New Jersey, a four-hour daily commute—if she was sharing custody of Joanie, their daughter? Then, the best part of the episode: Alison and Helen (Maura Tierney) met at a bar. The last time we saw them together it was not pretty, so this was a scene to savor. Helen was presumably in town to see her parents, and the last time we saw her she was tearful after Noah had forcibly had sex with her. There was some needling from Helen about Joanie not being Noah’s child—“I loved hearing that”—and Alison was surprised to hear Noah was staying at Helen’s, if only she knew how and why he had ended up there, broken and mad. Helen was equally surprised to hear that Noah had seen Alison too, although she lied, as she did to Cole, that it was momentary to sign the divorce papers. “You’re divorced from Noah, and so am I. Cheers,” said Helen in a wry toast, before asking Alison a series of questions that struck at the heart of the show. These questions are surfacing after being possibly sexually assaulted by her husband—she doesn’t know that Alison endured something similar. Who was the real Noah, Alison asked: the mature, in command, ambitious man of Alison’s memory, or the lazy, apathetic husband who always needed galvanizing of Helen to do anything? Maybe he was both: two different men with two different women. This split vision accorded to the show’s split structure. As Helen said, “I think people see what they want to see in other people.” Helen thought Noah would go back to her, even after he married Alison. Alison apologized for having the affair with Noah. Helen told her it wasn’t her fault: men need to feel important in relationships, and Noah hadn’t. (And women don’t?) And then, finally, Alison wanted to tell her the truth, from her point of view, of what happened the night Scotty died. Alison thinks she pushed Scotty into the path of a car driven by Noah. But the car was being driven by Helen, which explained why Helen did not want to talk about it. So neither woman realized the truth about that night. Back at home, a cop told Alison that Cole had been arrested for Noah’s stabbing: His alibi hadn’t worked out. In the second half of the episode, from Cole’s perspective, we saw Cole and Luisa talking outside the courtroom: Luisa’s change of heart toward Alison was down to Luisa supposedly being realistic about Alison’s place in Joanie’s life. In Cole’s memory of Alison visiting him at the house project, she brought doughnuts, not muffins and instead of talking about Noah, he recalled them edging around the topic of sleeping together. That building project is based on an out-of-date survey, meaning a delay in the work. At home Cole didn’t want to talk about a plan to adopt or find a surrogate (she cannot have children). Cole still loves Alison, of course. The next day another unexpected font of wisdom, Oscar (Darren Goldstein), guessed Cole had had sex with Alison, told him not to be a jerk, and stick with Luisa. Alison would screw him up. The lesson of his new life, said the apparently-no-longer-an-asshole Oscar, was to realize that marriage and being with someone was the recognition of the best partner offering the best kind of security. Luisa was that person for Cole, he said. “Shut it down,” was Oscar’s parting shot—a reference to Cole’s presently bylaw-defying home-building project, but also to his affair/lust for Alison. Cole’s memory of his meeting with Alison at the Lobster Roll after her encounter at the mental health facility was pretty much in accordance with hers, but the result was that he went home a little too enthusiastic to start a family with Luisa. She now wanted to go slower, probably seeing her husband’s ties to Alison. Then the police came to tell him his at-home alibi for the night of Noah’s stabbing hadn’t worked out. They knew he’d been in New Jersey. He was arrested. At the cells—aww, caged, just like Noah, but at the local police station, no obvious sadists—Alison went to see him. Cole told her he hadn’t been anywhere near Noah, but had gone to the mental health facility to get a professional opinion about Alison. If he admitted that to the authorities, he would have to admit to the truth about still loving Alison, he said. No he wouldn’t, this viewer thought. This made no sense in the scheme of the show, either. Cole was tired of pretending he didn’t love Alison, but also wasn’t Noah, he told her. He was a good man, and would not leave Luisa. Yes, Alison said, she was impulsive, depressed, she had mood swings, and was not an easy person to love. “I love you. I always have and I always will,” she told him. Back at home, Cole told Luisa that he went to the facility for information that would help in the custody case (which, presumably, he could have told thew authorities and no-one would have guessed he loved Alison, as he claimed). Luisa, rightly (as his wife and intimate, however), said, “I think you’re still lying.” Then--and the writing of this episode really was just loopy and bizarre--Cole got out of bed in the middle of the night, without Luisa noticing, and went to meet Alison on a pier. More anguished, cul-de-sac conversation ensued. They keep going back to each other, but it’s all impossible. He’s impossible, she’s impossible, everything is impossible. Alison, suggesting they be together, recommended he be the “happy asshole” by leaving Luisa, not the “miserable hero” by staying with her. This again made no sense, as Alison had just played the “miserable hero” rather than “happy asshole” by not deciding to be with Noah, as he had asked, and as she really wanted to do. So, Cole went home, and made eggs. “This is my home. Our home. If you’ll still have me,” he said to Luisa, righteous miserable hero that he is. She would still have him, though as they hugged his eyes to camera told us his heart was heavy with grief at the choice he had made. And us Affair fans? Well, we’re just baffled. www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/15/the-wives-of-the-affair-swap-notes-recap-season-3-episode-8.htmlThe Affair Recap: She’s A Good Person, That’s ClearCOURTNEY E. SMITH JANUARY 16, 2017, 1:01 AM It’s back to real life all around in this episode of The Affair, which means shifting the focus on to Allison (Ruth Wilson) and Cole (Joshua Jackson). We open in a custody hearing between Allison and Cole, from her point of view, and the whole thing bears out that the representative of the state who is advocating for Joanie (Reagan & Savannah Grella), is deeply biased against her. He calls Luisa (Catalina Sandino Moreno), Cole’s new wife, to the stand and something truly surprising happens: she suggests Allison have shared custody. For Allison, this is completely out of the blue and couldn’t be more unexpected, given how brutal Luisa has been until now. Even more surprising, the court agreed to it. When we left them, Cole and Allison just had sex but he wasn’t yet willing to grant her custody, and she gave him hell for it. Allison seems him arguing with Luisa as her lawyer delivers the good news, but has no idea what is going on. Neither do we until the show picks up the thread from Cole’s point of view later. Allison brings coffee and a muffin as a peace offering to the site where Cole is building a new house, only to get the cold shoulder (by the way, her coat in this scene is perfect). Oh, another bomb got dropped in the courtroom: Noah and Allison are officially divorced. That this hasn’t registered in Noah’s story so far is emblematic of his problem, to borrow a phrase from Cole, and Allison’s exchange about it with Cole ends with Cole being extended an invitation to go f**k himself, which seems fair. A doctor who knows Allison, whom it appears she became close with while she was institutionalized at Woodlawn, asks her to speak to a patient on suicide watch following the death of her child. The woman is very young and, at first, impenetrable. She’s unprepared for how well she’ll relate to Allison, and Allison’s clear expression of what she went through after losing her son is heartbreaking. That she’s got her feelings so completely under control now is a testament to the work she obviously did while she was there, for six months she reveals. “You won’t ever be the same,” she tells the girl, but she’s talking about herself and it’s true. This Allison is not the same; she is stronger, smarter, and stable. She describes the affair with Noah as the thing she did when she was trying to come out of her grief, and it reduces the power their relationship holds over her — and the viewer. When it’s over, she goes to Cole to tell him about the experience not realizing that though she might have her emotions handled, he clearly does not. She explains that she may want to become a grief counselor, which he turns into an argument about their custody agreement. Well, ostensibly about their custody agreement — in reality, it’s a fight they’ve been having for a long time, about what they don’t like about each other. He’s participating, she’s not. He’s pushing her away, but she doesn’t understand that yet. Then, the show does something I never thought it would do: they brought Helen (Maura Tierney) and Allison back together. Helen follows her into a bar, and the two have a real clearing of the air over Long Island Iced Teas. They’re surprisingly real with each other (can’t wait to hear what Helen’s “really weird day” is about) and share a laugh over both being Noah’s ex-wife. When Helen asks, “Who was he with you?” the conversation quickly gets to the crux of his character flaws. Also, this version of Helen is the one I want to be friends with, so does that just mean I want to see the world through Allison’s eyes? Allison ultimately apologizes to Helen for the affair, but Helen explains it wasn’t her fault. She places the blame on herself for not making Noah feel important in their relationship. Cool for Noah that no one wants to blame him or hold him accountable for his actions. Shit nearly hits the fan when Allison tries to bring up the night Scotty died, but Helen, who has a lot to lose in that convo, shuts it down promptly and rolls out as quickly as she rolled in. It’s only a matter of time until that comes back to bite Helen in the ass, right? A cop Allison and Noah both know comes to her house to give her the heads up that New Jersey cops have taken Cole in for questioning about the night Noah was stabbed due to a discrepancy in his alibi. That’s where we leave Allison’s POV and flip to Cole’s. The main things you need to know that you didn’t get from Allison are that Luisa gave Cole and his lawyer a heads up in advance that she was going to flip in court. For her, it’s a way to get on with things. Also when Allison shows up with her peace offering, she is not wearing that beautiful coat. We’ll chalk that up to men not paying attention to clothes. He has some feud with the new building inspector, who wants him to stop construction on the house because he’s got Kennedy-esque levels of ethics. Luisa drops the second bomb that day when she tells Cole it’s time for their family. It goes over like a deflated balloon. Cole ultimately realizes he kind of maybe actually still wants to be with Allison. Which is interesting, considering that they had a child who lived to age four together — it’s not like Cole is unaware of what family life is like, right? Maybe the writers forgot. So he drops all a huge info bomb on her with his feelings and desires and shortcomings, along with his angst (while she’s still not wearing the right coat, get it together dude) when she comes to jail to see him (also he made the most annoyed Pacey on Dawson’s Creek face EVER as the cops arrested him, it was total ‘90s nostalgia for a hot second). Always the visitor, never the prisoner. Why isn’t his real wife there? Good question. Cole reveals that the cops caught his car on a toll booth camera because he was visiting Woodlawn, to try and shake down Allison’s doctor for information and find out why she was so damn okay when she returned to Montauk. You know, not still emotionally scarred like Cole, who has done f**k all to resolve his issues. Cole has emotions but he’ll be damned if he’s going to handle them responsibly or rationally or if he’s going to tell Luisa about any of this. And just like that, he became the crazy, self-destructive one in their relationship. Funny how that flipped. www.refinery29.com/2017/01/135931/the-affair-season-3-episode-8-recapThe AffairWell? Not quite as excruciating as last week, I guess? Which isn’t to say I wasn’t saying oh nooooo at least three different times during this one. And, if we’re being positive for 2017, there’s the sheer fact that we got to spend some time with Cole, finally. Let’s dive in and sink back into the ocean, shall we? It’s an Alison perspective (which I never ever trust, if only because of what she imagines herself wearing all the time). She’s at a court hearing about whether or not she can have unsupervised visits with Joanie. The surprise hero? Luisa, who takes the stand and makes it clear she thinks that Joanie should be with her mother. This takes Cole almost as much by surprise as Alison, and Alison watches Cole and Luisa fight on the lawn outside. But, no matter: Alison’s lawyer tells her that Cole’s agreed to shared custody. Smiles all around! Alison drives out to Cole’s building site with coffee and muffins. He’s not having it. (Related: Who looks sexier counting tiles than Cole? Who, I ask you, who?) However the siren call of Alison and muffins is too much for Cole and they chat for a bit about Alison’s lack of consistency. It turns out he’s mad because she lied to him about seeing Noah. (If only he knew the half of it!) She continues to lie, btw, about how long she saw Noah for. He’s like, I just can’t trust you. Correct. Alison gets a call from her therapist. There’s another patient that can use her wisdom. Alison drives to New Jersey (getting so much play this season) and talks to the young mother who lost her daughter and is now on suicide watch. Alison is like, listen I get it. Instead of killing myself, I decided instead to have an affair and thus wreck a lot of other innocent people’s lives! The girl is like, yeah no that’s not at all what I was saying. In truth, she seems to really be comforted by Alison. Alison drives right back to Cole, who is at the Lobster Roll and excitedly tells him that she thinks she’s going to be a grief counselor. In New Jersey. Cole is like, um, how’s that going to work with shared custody? He then gets mad as that clearly hasn’t crossed Alison’s mind. He says, “Why can’t you just be happy and say thank you?” (Alternate tag line for this show?) He’s calls her chaos and stomps off. She goes to a bar and is all, I need a drink and guess who shows up? Helen! Wearing rather adorable glasses. Helen suggests a Long Island Iced Tea as their drink of choice, and this seems like a real down market call for Helen. I see her much more as a martini person. Or an old-fashioned. Also, I can’t believe I spent so much time thinking about Helen’s cocktail choices. Anyway, she sidles up beside Alison. Helen is acting just a wee bit nuts, and I hope we see why in a later episode. She brings up the fact that she was delighted to hear that Joanie was not Noah’s daughter. She reveals that Noah has been staying at the brownstone, which seems to surprise Alison. She pretends that Vic is still her boyfriend, which surprises me. But then Alison shocks the stuffing out of Helen when she tells her that she saw Noah a few days earlier. However, they smile at the idea that they’re both now divorced from Noah and clink glasses. Helen asks: Who was he with you? Alison calls him charming and ambitious and very smart and a man who could take care of things. Helen laughs at this and is like, yeah, no. I found him to be insecure and somewhat spineless. Alison is all, hey, he sounds like a whole other person with you! (And, in case this wasn’t clear enough, Jenny Lewis’ “Just One of the Guys” plays in the background.) Helen is like, people see what they want to see. Alison takes this time to sincerely apologize for all of it. And Helen is big enough to say it wasn’t Alison’s fault. She thinks she stopped making Noah feel important. (Now I’m really not sure if I trust this memory.) Alison tries to talk about the night of the murder and Helen is not hearing it and walks off. That evening a local cop comes to her house to tell Alison that the New Jersey cops are re-questioning Cole about the night of the stabbing. He was seen at a New Jersey toll booth. Dun dun DUN. It’s a Cole memory, hooray! We join him and Luisa in their argument outside the courthouse. Everyone is wearing different clothes. I’m totally with Luisa who is like, the path of least resistance is best. Always. Cole drives out to his house and finds a stop work notice on his building. He’s real bummed about this. With classic bad timing, Alison arrives. In Cole’s mind it’s donuts and why these paths diverge on the subject of snacks, I have no idea. He shuts her down pretty fast and she leaves, but it should be noted she’s a much more confident creature in Cole’s memory. He goes to find the new building inspector who is Timothy not Tim, and ole Timothy is not feeling Cole’s vibe (which is crazy). They bicker about new surveys and about getting roofs on a house before winter. Timothy is unmoved. Cole gets home and Luisa is like hey, let’s have a baby. We can adopt or use a surrogate. And I’m raising my hand for a question now: Why wasn’t this always on the table? Cole chooses to plead exhaustion and defer the conversation for another time. Oh look, it’s our exposition guy, Oscar! He comes out ostensibly to yell at Cole about not shutting down the work stoppage, but really he’s here to have amazing insight about how much Cole just wants to get with Alison. He counsels against this as I again wonder when we all became friends with Oscar. “Shut it down,” Oscar tells him. Meaning everything, I suppose. Alison again shows up to work to tell Cole about the grief counseling. She’s much more annoying in Cole’s memory. But the conversation goes pretty much the same way. But this time she makes the not untrue point, well if I’m crazy, you get to be sane. So he decides to lean in to his own crazy, and he comes home and tells Luisa he’s ready to start a family. Luisa, no fool, is like whoa dude. Take a breath. But before he can even do that, the cops show up and are like, we know you were lying. They talk about the picture of him by the tollbooth near “Livingston University.” Cole makes the mistake of being aggro with the cops, and they haul him off to… the local Montauk jail? Sure, that makes sense. And that’s where Alison goes to see him. (Not his actual wife, but Alison, it should be noted.) And here comes the part that had me full body eye-rolling to the point of pain. He admits that — surprise! — he was actually just in New Jersey to try to talk to her therapist. Because phones don’t exist. Or confidentiality agreements. Sigh. And this would all be too easy if he was just easier. (Also, why do they keep saying go up to New Jersey when I believe it is geographically down. Anyway.) Cole was like well seeing you with Joanie made me think about us getting back together. Oh, brother. He’s like, I can’t tell them that because then I have to tell them everything. Um, no, that’s not true either. He gives a whole speech about loving her and oh I can’t even recap this scene — it’s too frustrating. But, the point is, he’s like I’m not Noah, I can’t do it. She’s like, it’s your call. Since when? And what? Everyone is acting so weird. He goes home, and Luisa wakes up. He tells her the truth about his New Jersey trip. She says, why did you lie for so long about something so simple? ANOTHER tag line for The Affair! He gets into bed, and she’s like I still think you are still lying. He’s like no can do tonight. But he can’t sleep so he gets up and gets Alison out of her house, and tells her that he’s choosing Luisa. She’s like, but we keep coming back to each other. She also says that this is more about Cole’s fear in not being the good guy. Would he rather be a happy jerk? Or a miserable hero. He sits on the beach and thinks for a while. But in the morning, he’s home and making breakfast for Luisa. She’s relieved to see him and says of course she’ll still have him. But boy, is that not a look of happiness on Cole’s face. Can’t Cole be happy? Sigh. ew.com/recap/the-affair-season-3-episode-8/The Affair Recap: The Awful TruthBy Angelica Jade Bastién Season 3 - Episode 8 To love someone you can't be with, whether owing to circumstance or choice, is a special kind of pain. It's a pain that takes on greater resonance when home isn't defined by places, but by other people. For Alison and Cole, this sentiment is especially true. Despite the numerous wounds they've inflicted on each other, they continue to be drawn together. More than any other place or person, they are home for one another. I don't think that will ever change. After several episodes that focused on Noah's unraveling mental state and the alarming turns in his relationship with Helen, The Affair gives us a much-needed respite by turning attention to Cole and Alison's perspectives. "308" is an episode of great beauty and heartbreak, a high-water mark that reminds us why this show works best when it focuses on Cole and Alison. Again and again, their relationship wrings big emotions from minor events. "308" starts off explosively, at the hearing that's meant to decide Alison's role in Joanie's life. Mr. Gutman, as the judge notes, isn't acting as an impartial advocate for Joanie. If anything, he seems to get a thrill from cutting Alison down with incorrect information. She may not have a regular job, but being a partner in the Lobster Roll brings in all the income she needs. She's officially divorced from Noah, as well. Unfortunately, the real trouble for Alison has always been Luisa's opinion. When she's called to the stand, it's obvious what happens next will decide Alison's fate — and Luisa's testimony proves to be in favor of Alison. "This isn't about me," she says. She argues that Alison should have joint custody of Joanie, although that wasn't even on the table. Joint custody is the victory Alison has desperately wanted. However, this development also reveals the fault lines that still exist in such a makeshift family. Before her lawyer, Jessa (Deborah Ayorinde), returns with the good news, Alison watches Cole and Luisa argue outside. Although she can't hear them, there's an intensity to their movements that suggests Cole didn't know about Luisa's testimony. His perspective begins at this very moment, confirming that Luisa's statements were unplanned. That's something I'm not sure I fully believe. By solving the custody issue, Luisa obviously believes they can start their own family without Alison casting a shadow over their marriage. Later, she broaches the possibility of having a child through surrogacy or adoption. Cole recoils at first, until a tense exchange with Alison leads him to become excited at the possibility. Like so much of the episode, this sudden change suggests that Cole isn't holding on to Luisa out of overwhelming love, but as a reaction to Alison's presence. For Alison, the joy of joint custody quickly curdles in the face of Cole's casual cruelty. "You haven't exactly become a model of consistency since you've come back. You're still you," Cole says after she tries to thank him after the hearing. Cole's words directly echo what Noah told Alison earlier: No matter how confident and strong she becomes, Cole will always see her as "damaged goods." Later, when Alison returns to Woodlawn at the request of her former psychiatrist, Dr. Parry (Jo Yang), we see a glimpse of the kind of woman Alison once was. She still divorced from her grief, obscuring the other aspects of her personality. Dr. Parry asks Alison to talk to a young girl named Kendra (Hope Olaide Wilson), who recently lost her daughter and has been on suicide watch. With Kendra, Alison reveals a deep well of emotion, kindness, and a sharp sense of humor. "What did you do?" Kendra asks. "I had an affair," she replies. Alison laughs at the sheer outlandishness of her answer, but it's true. Her affair with Noah was always a reaction to her grief. Alison even opens up about wanting to kill herself, then offers a valuable outlook to Kendra in return. "It is incredible to be alive," she says. "Everyone assumes life is a given, we know it's not." This brief scene shows just how much Alison has grown recently. It also makes Cole's belittling of her mental-health struggles even more damning. The conversation with Kendra opens up a new possibility for Alison: working as a grief counselor. The logistics aren't nailed down yet, but Dr. Parry's offer would allow Alison to use her own struggles to help others. When Alison shares this possibility with Cole, he can only see the logistical problems. He quickly cuts her down, seeing her interest in a new line of work as another sign of her instability. "This is who you are," he says. "You're chaos." Helen would certainly agree with Cole. She makes a brief appearance in the episode by sitting next to Alison at a local bar, which is both awkward and unsurprising. After all, she's still trying to prove that she knows Noah best. It does bring up questions about the last episode and the logistics of Noah staying with Helen, but I'm far more interested in the dynamics playing out between Cole and Alison. Despite some subtle differences between their perspectives, there is a seamlessness to how they look at the world that underscores just how much they are meant for each other. Long stretches of "308" take place in broad daylight, where the characters struggle to put attractive faces on their warring emotions. At night, everything unsaid flourishes, and Cole finally drops the mask he's cultivated to reveal what truly ails him. He tells Alison the truth: "I built this whole life — I'm building a whole house — just to prove to everyone I don't love you anymore. That I don't need you, that I don't want you, that I don't miss you. The truth is that I do […] I'm tired of pretending I don't." Unfortunately for Cole, this declaration happens in a remarkably unromantic setting: a jail cell. After the New Jersey police return to Montauk with evidence that his alibi is false, Cole gets aggressive and lands himself in jail. He won't tell the police or Luisa his true whereabouts, but he tells Alison. He wasn't in New Jersey to attack Noah that night; he just wanted to talk with Dr. Parry. He needed to make sense of his emotions with Alison and find out about her mental state. Being an ethical doctor, Dr. Parry didn't give him any answers. After admitting what he did, Cole believes he also has to reveal he slept with Alison. She suggests he just stop pretending. They both know he won't. "I'm a good man," Cole says, as if he's trying to convince himself. There's this idea that suffering is imbued with knowledge and nobility. Cole definitely believes it. He stands in opposition to every character on The Affair who indulged their desires with little regard to people they hurt. His need to be seen as good may be noble, but it's no way to make a life. Why stay with a woman you don't love? Whose life are you really living? Nothing is as simple as Cole dropping his life with Luisa to return to Alison's side, especially since he admits he doesn't trust her anymore. After finishing this episode, I couldn't get Alison's words to Cole off my mind. There's a haunting quality to them. "I'm always going to be impulsive and depressed with mood swings. I know that I am not an easy person to love," she says." But I love you. I always have and I always will." These words make what happens next all the more heartbreaking. Unable to sleep after lying to Luisa once he got home from jail, Cole finds himself on Alison's doorstep. It was then I knew he wouldn't leave Luisa. "If you leave Luisa now, you can't play the good guy anymore," Alison tells him. "Then you're an asshole just like me. But maybe you're a happy asshole, instead of a miserable hero." "308" brims with quiet sorrow. It's The Affair at its most emotionally honest, with wounded, yearning performances by Ruth Wilson and Joshua Jackson being a highlight. Despite the simplicity of this episode, there is so much to consider — like Cole's odd decision to confide in Oscar about his brief affair with Alison, which will come back to haunt him. Nevertheless, I can't help but keep coming back to Alison and Cole. Their story illuminates how timing, circumstance, and selfishness can ruin a great connection. In another series, they would be the couple who lived happily ever after. In The Affair, that is an impossibility. When Luisa finds Cole at home the next morning, she's tearfully surprised. This is the victory she's yearned for: Cole choosing his present over his history and love for Alison. Of course, it is a hollow victory. Cole looks quietly resigned when he embraces Luisa. Yes, he will start a family with her, finish building their home, and create enough distance from Alison to survive. But at night, when he has no one to face but himself, it will always be Alison he dreams of. No matter where he moves or what happens next, she will always be his home. www.vulture.com/2017/01/affair-recap-season-3-episode-8.html
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Post by sissa on Jan 20, 2017 13:05:56 GMT 10
VIDEO: Sneak Peek - Helen Escapes to Montauk on Next Episode of THE AFFAIRTV News Desk Jan. 16, 2017 On the next all-new episode of THE AFFAIR on Showtime, Helen's escape to Montauk exacerbates her guilt and hastens a crisis as she confronts Alison in a Montauk bar about her affair with Noah. Starring Dominic West, Ruth Wilson, Joshua Jackson, and Maura Tierney, and Noah confronts John Gunther (Brendan Fraser) at his home. Starring Dominic West, Ruth Wilson, Joshua Jackson, and Maura Tierney, The Affair airs on Sundays at 10PM ET/PT on Showtime. Get a sneak peek below! In Season 3, it's three years later, and Noah (Dominic West), Alison (Ruth Wilson), Cole (Joshua Jackson), Helen (Maura Tierney) and their families are trying to move on with their lives. But the past keeps coming back to haunt them, and the trauma of what they've been through cannot soon be forgotten. www.broadwayworld.com/bwwtv/article/VIDEO-Sneak-Peek-Helen-Escapes-to-Montauk-on-Next-Episode-of-THE-AFFAIR-20170116Alright, "The Affair" fans. We've got some very intense episode 9, season 3 teasers, straight from TV Guide to share with you guys, right now. Apparently, we've got a disturbing identity crisis that's set to come upon Helen over some heavy guilt! And Noah will be no better off as something very horrific is about to creep up on him after his whole world crumbles, and more!Andre Braddox Published on:15 January 2017 It's called 9 in case you hadn't figured it out yet We were also given a title for this one. It's a very short one as you guys would expect by now. Heck, I don't really even think it should be considered a title as they're just calling it: "9" for episode 9. It turns out they've been doing this every season. It sounds kinda lazy, but whatever. She's going to need some professional help, I think Anyways, lets dig into this synopsis a little bit more. It turns out that we're going to see Helen make a big escape to Montauk at some point, and this will not be a good thing for her as it's going to start making her feel even more guilty than she already did. Then when you just start to think things can't get any worse for poor Helen, we're going to see her break down even more when these feelings of guilt, cause a quick onset of an identity crisis for her! Will she be able to eventually pull it together and get over this mess? Or will she let these circumstances just totally break her down? Geez, I hope not. One thing's for sure, we're definitely going to get a whole lot of emotion that results from these scenes. Is it really that bad? In this last scoop, we find out that Noah will not be doing good either. In fact, that's probably a big understatement as it's described that his entire world is going to just absolutely collapse on him. If that's not enough, we also learn that things are going to get even worse for him, because he's going to be left, having to deal with something that's described as being "horrific." Oh no! What could this big horrific thing be? Will it totally get the best of him? Or will he be able to stay strong and overcome this crazy situation? These are just a few questions that pop up for this Noah debacle. And again, we'll definitely see some heavy, dramatic scenes come out of this. Alright, guys. That's going to wrap up this session, but be sure to stay tuned for some new spoiler clips to hit the net later on tonight after episode 8 finishes up, because they'll definitely feature some extra details . We can also confirm that episode 9 is set to show up next Sunday night, January 22nd, 2017 at 10pm eastern standard time. Stay tuned. #The Affair us.blastingnews.com/showbiz-tv/2017/01/new-the-affair-episode-9-season-3-spoilers-noah-s-entire-world-crumbles-more-001397503.html
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Post by sissa on Jan 21, 2017 22:57:54 GMT 10
'The Affair' Season 3 Episode 9 Spoilers: Helen's Guilt is Consuming HerBY JILIANNE ARBONIDA , CHRISTIAN POST CONTRIBUTOR Jan 20, 2017 | 5:51 AM Helen (Maura Tierney) is close to a mental breakdown in the upcoming episode of "The Affair." Will she finally reveal the truth about the night Scotty (Colin Donnell) died? Facebook/TheAffairShowtimeHelen wants to come clean in the upcoming episode of "The Affair." The ninth episode of the Showtime series' season 3 will see Helen wanting to admit the role she played that fateful night of Scotty's accident. In the promo, she is telling her mother, Margaret (Kathleen Chalfant), that she killed someone. The older woman replies by slapping her, warning Helen not to say those words ever again. Helen was the one driving the vehicle that ended Scotty's life. Noah (Dominic West) told her to kept it a secret and went to prison for her sake. For years, Helen lived with her guilt, knowing her ex-husband was suffering because of what she did. Helen's sudden attack of guilt must have stemmed after she saw Alison (Ruth Wilson) last episode. Alison wanted to talk to her about what happened that night. She also had something to reveal. It was her who pushed Scotty towards the road. It was self-defense because he was trying to take advantage of her. Noah saw Alison hiding in the bushes, but he opted to keep it a secret. In the teaser, Helen also tells Vic (Omar Metwally) that she cannot live with the guilt anymore. He urges her to keep quiet, or she will end up in jail. The teaser also sees another meeting taking place between Alison and Helen. This time around, their conversation is not so silted. They even talk about mundane things. Meanwhile, Noah finds himself in one big mess. Viewers do not know if the prison guard, Gunther (Brendan Fraser), is part of Noah's hallucinations or not. Once again, Gunther appears in the promo. Noah is holding a knife, telling the prison guard to leave him alone. He is then shown running and crying. Noah's condition is becoming worse. As Alison's voiceover says, no one can help him. He alone can save himself. "The Affair" season 3 airs Sundays at 10 p.m. EST on Showtime. Read more at www.christianpost.com/news/the-affair-season-3-episode-9-spoilers-helens-guilt-is-consuming-her-173215/#f7WVmZqgYfSZ8Fj8.99“The Affair” Season 3 Episode 9 Spoilers: Will Helen Reveal The Truth About Scotty’s Death to Alison?Saturday, January 21, 2017 2:28 AM ‘The Affair’ Season 3, Episode 3 Spoilers: Noah Gets Attacked, Goes to Surgery but Doesn’t Remember Incident “American Crime Story” New Season About Monica Lewinsky; White House Clinton Sex Scandal Could Be Focus For Season 4 Relationships in “The Affair” are getting more complicated than ever, as the series progresses. One such relationship that would be put to the test is between Alison (Ruth Wilson) and Helen (Maura Tierney). A promo for Season 3 Episode 9 revealed that Helen is close to admitting her role in the death of Scotty (Colin Donnell). In Episode 8, Alison and Helen met at a bar, with their conversation veering to giving each other a compliment for both being divorced from Noah (Dominic West), The Daily Beast wrote. The conversation escalated into an awkward exchanging of notes about their marriage with Noah. However, Alison veered the conversation to the moment Scotty died. Alison thinks she’s responsible for pushing Scotty to the car’s path she thinks is driven by Noah. Helen was naturally mum about it, but the conversation somewhat sparked Helen’s apprehension about keeping the nature of Scotty’s death a secret. Christian Post noted that it was Helen who drove the vehicle that ended Scotty’s life. In Episode 9, the promo revealed Helen was obviously bothered with her conversation with Alison. When she attempted to divulge this to her mother Margaret (Kathleen Chalfant), she got a slap instead. Margaret advised her daughter not to talk about the accident that killed Scotty. Scotty’s death resulted to the arrest of her ex-husband, who largely kept the details a secret and went to prison for her sake. “The Affair” Season 3 will conclude with its season finale on January 29, Variety said. www.econotimes.com/The-Affair-Season-3-Episode-9-Spoilers-Will-Helen-Reveal-The-Truth-About-Scottys-Death-to-Alison-499913The Affair Season 4 Might Make Fans Witness A Huge Time Leap ForwardBy Devanjana Mukherjee Posted on 7 days ago The Affair Season 4: The upcoming American television drama series The Affair is all set to have a renewal with a recently made official announcement. The show has already received acclaim from both critics and viewers alike, so the news about The Affair Season 4 comes as no surprise. The series debuted in October 2014 followed by instant praises from the masses who viewed it in YouTube, SHO.com, and several other on-demand online platforms. Perhaps, this might be one of the reasons that the upcoming season got an instant nod for renewal and is most probably in talks about premiering in July or August 2017. The Affair Season 4 latest news, speculations and anticipations. Created by Sara Treem and Hagai Levi, The Affair Season 4 will be produced by Eric Overmyer, Anya Epstein, among others including the directing panel. With music composed by Marcelo Zarvos, the cinematography has been supported by Steven Fierberg and Tod Campbell. Showtime giving 50 minutes each to all episodes, the series will be aired on the online platform with 29 lists of episodes per season. However, this particular season may carry a total of 30 episodes of 50-minute duration each, thus giving fans an incredible opportunity to enjoy the mystery-drama. As per the rumours hovering, The Affair Season 4 may have a tough time ahead for Alison and Cole with their personal relationships and individual lives as we may witness a big leap forward in time in the forthcoming episodes. Noah will finally finish his much sought after novel/ book along with ‘ruining’ more girls’ lives by getting intimate. A murder mystery will be solved from the previous season followed by Whitney’s wedding with Mr Furkat. The wedding will be witness to a huge fight between Noah and Cole and Helen might suffer a mental breakdown despite deserving the best all the time. She encounters Dr Vic with his new girlfriend during a sale of an apartment and there are questions about whether the two will reunite. In the midst of all this, Helen might befriend Alison and the two might make something good out of it. With all the anticipation building up, The Affair Season 4 may form the crust of Cole and Alison’s life and whether they will continue to be together or not. To know more, stay tuned to our website for latest updates on the respective series. fabnewz.com/2017/01/14/the-affair-season-4-might-make-fans-witness-a-huge-time-leap-forward/
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