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- SHOWTIME
- Oct 4, 2015
- SHOWTIME
- Oct 4, 2015
Summary The series focuses on Hamptons waitress Alison (Ruth Wilson) as she tries to recover from a personal tragedy while her husband Cole (Joshua Jackson) struggles to keep the family ranch and their marriage together. The ramifications of Allison's affair with Noah (Dominic West), a New York City teacher married to his childhood sweetheart (M...
Created By: Hagai Levi, Sarah Treem
- SHOWTIME
- Oct 4, 2015
- SHOWTIME
- Oct 4, 2015
Summary The series focuses on Hamptons waitress Alison (Ruth Wilson) as she tries to recover from a personal tragedy while her husband Cole (Joshua Jackson) struggles to keep the family ranch and their marriage together. The ramifications of Allison's affair with Noah (Dominic West), a New York City teacher married to his childhood sweetheart (M...
Created By: Hagai Levi, Sarah Treem
Where to Watch
Season Episodes
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5 Seasons
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 15 Critic Reviews
78
93% Positive
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
7% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 15 Critic Reviews
78
93% Positive
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
7% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
With its bold new move to double our number of perspectives, it appears that The Affair will sail over that sophomore slump that has felled so many other Showtime dramas.
That we never really know the people whom we love is a powerful, popular theme that fits snugly into the thriller and horror genres (think of “Rosemary’s Baby” and all those early ’90s erotic thrillers) but to see it rendered so artfully and crisply and unsentimentally as a weekly drama is to understand why we are so often informed that we live in a golden age of TV.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 71 User Ratings
7.5
80% Positive
57 Ratings
57 Ratings
3% Mixed
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
17% Negative
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 71 User Ratings
7.5
80% Positive
57 Ratings
57 Ratings
3% Mixed
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
17% Negative
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
In this season, everything works (Or almost, but I'm not getting into spoilers), all the main characters are likeable and have good storylines. The episodic format makes it feels more like the A Song of Ice and Fire books and it warms my heart.
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SEASON 2
What makes this show brilliant is the attempt to show how memories are flawed and self-serving. There is no such thing as objectivity. Adulteres Noah and Alison are looking for different things, and that is why in Noah's narrative Alison is sexier and dressed in skimpier clothes, while Alison thinks of herself as restrained.
In the second series with get more of the story told from the additional point of view of Cole and Helen, the betrayed spouses. The four voices are actually complementing each other. Individual narrative often starts where the previous one ended and this allows the story to move more fluidly than in the previous series, where the same event was told from Noah and Alison's point of view.
Neither main character is particularly attractive, and the more we get to know them, the more we realize they were better paired off with their previous partner. Helen (Noah's wife) is not pleasant herself, a rich, spoiled woman who despite being a Newyorker and well over 40, apparently never considered the fact that her husband may stray. I find it hard to believe that a mother of 4 could not perceive her husband's boredom and frustration with what seems a very stressful family life.
However, bewildered Helen is going through a crisis herself (no surprisingly) and Cole is not doing much better. He is perhaps the only sympathetic character in the show, a forlon, taciturn guy who lost everything and uncapable of moving forward. There is something touching in hs quiet dignity, although one can also see how Alison felt lonely with him.
Really intriguing show. Hope it will develop in an interesting way.
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SEASON 2
The Affair is still going to be a melodrama with pretty people having big feelings, but the potential to transcend that genre is happily in play. The first two episodes of Season 2 are rich, as series creators Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi expand the points of view to include those of Alison’s ex, Cole (Joshua Jackson), and Noah’s ex, Helen (Maura Tierney).
Season 2 improves on Season 1 by broadening the story to give us the points of view of the wronged spouses, Noah's wife, Helen (Maura Tierney,) and Alison's husband, Cole (Joshua Jackson.) Tierney and Jackson are both so good, they left us wanting more in Season 1, and it's great to see their characters do some well-justified venting.
Once you accept the absurdity, there is a minor intellectual pleasure to be had in using the opposing recollections as a kind of treasure map, not to figure out what really happened, but to figure out what the writers are so effortfully trying to convey.
Tierney and West do their best, but the script for The Affair 2.1 is too deeply flawed to ignore. Alison’s arc, which doesn’t come into play until episode two, is far more engaging. In fact, the entirety of episode two makes up for a lot of the mistakes of episode one.
Helen now has a perspective, which adds a lot of necessary depth (and gives us the added benefit of seeing Tierney do more things on-screen, which is never a bad thing). But the show is paralyzed by its own vision, at times; the problem with making a show about singular perspectives is that those people are necessarily self-absorbed.
Production values and acting seem spot on, but the writing and plot contrivances continually drag the show down. There are enough coincidences here that you'll be screaming out, "Oh, come on!" a few times. But it's an easy watch, even if it's sometimes a bit of a hate watch.
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SEASON 2
