It is hard to hear the description for The Affair and not think of last year's Betrayal which was one and done on ABC. That "one" was a season, but the show could have easily been pulled after one episode because it was a bit of a bore and it did not help that the lead's American accent came and went from scene to scene. Both shows followed the extracurricular activities of two married people; one seemed to be in the perfect married, the other q bit of a messy one. There is also a murder clumsily tacked onto the plot that just reeks of network meddling which was probably the case for ABC, Showtime seems more laissez faire).
Of course that is the biggest difference is that the same type of show is much more likely to be more watchable on premium channels compared to free television because Showtime can attract better actors, writers, it is easier to tell a concise story in ten episodes compared to twenty-two, and it is doubtful ABC could get Fiona Apple to write them a theme song. The biggest difference story wise is The Affair tells the story from the narrative view of each of the adulterers. Sure, again, ABC just did that again this season with yet another one and done series Manhattan Love Story but where that show just followed the inner monologue from the two leads, The Affair give each lead their side of the story of a single day during their tryst.
Before you have Lost flashbacks where that show would annoyingly re-film a scene from a different point of view, basically seeing the same scene from different camera angle up to four different times, the adulterers Noah and Allison had different recollections of how their dalliance happened. Sometimes it would be as minor as he would remember her hair down and she would have it in a ponytail. Sometimes it would be wildly different (the biggest of which comes in tonight's season finale) and in some cases, he would remember them hooking up in a field but when she retold the story, she was not even there. Really this has to be the best writing gig in town because any pothole or errors in continuity they can just blame the characters on miss remembering.
The most interesting part of this storytelling is just how Noah and Allison view each other and themselves. According to Noah, he is this noble super-dad and husband (well aside from that whole cheating thing), while his parents-in-law are the big bads despite providing his lifestyle probably even helped him transition into a man because his father is not even worth mentioning. To Noah, Allison is a flirty local who always makes the first step.
For Allison, she is the victim, taking no culpability in her son's death; it was either bad luck or her husbands fault. Noah is the emotional support that she can no longer get from her husband because talking to him would mean having to come to term with the death of her some even if Noah come across as a little sleazy, and of course he always makes the first move. Really all the guys in her life are kind of sleazy, her bothers in laws are drug dealers (of course she is an unwilling participant again refusing to admit her involvement), and her boss is constantly trying to have sex with her again for the first time in fifteen years. And again, her mother-in-law can be seen as the enemy even though she was there for Allison when her own mother was not.
The two even have two different views on the murder that happens sometime in the future, Noah thinks he went through a messy divorce while Allison thinks he has been happily married for over two decades. Are they juxtaposition their own realities on him or is the detective telling the two what they want to hear to make him seem more reliable. In the finale we get a third extremely different possibility to the detective’s love life when neither of the two leads is around.
Alrighty, this is the part I am going to get into a bit of the spoilers from the first season now, continue reading at you own risk.
Like I mentioned earlier, it seemed like ABC meddling when Betrayal inserted a murder plotline, but that does not seem like Showtime's MO. But the murder subplot seemed to be shoehorned into most episodes, given about a minute at the beginning or end of each act of the show. The murder victim seem like it was some big mystery, but halfway through the season, the detective just causally mentioned that Allison's bother-in-law Scott was the deceased. Up until that point the other time I remembered him was trying to sneak upstairs with Noah's daughter. Which of course put Noah high on my list of suspects (okay, he was basically the only one, aside from creepy diner owner and un-scene drug traffickers). Not surprisingly Scott turned out to be Whitney's baby daddy.
As I teased, tonight's episode features what is probably the most different retelling of a scene this season which features many of the show's main players finding themselves in the same place at the time. Where I tend to believe Allison over Noah, this scene is one of the few times I believe Noah's version more, plus his version of events may be the best scene this season.
Though it seems like an after thought in the first couple episodes, we do spend more time in the still undetermined future (unless I missed if they let us in on a date). But unlike Betrayal where we got the murder mystery wrapped up in a nice neat bow before the
The Affair airs its season finale tonight at 10:00 on Showtime preceded by the season finale of Homeland at 9:00.
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