The Affair

The moment we glimpse Helen’s inner life, she becomes the most fascinating character on a show that’s full of them.... When a friend asks if she knew that Noah was cheating, there are unspoken questions there: How would I know if it happened to me? And if I didn’t know, how could I move on? The fact that viewers are asking the same questions only makes this season more compelling to watch.

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.

Whatever reservations I had about Season 1 were eliminated after watching the first two of the new episodes, which add the perspectives of Helen and Cole.... Adding Helen and Cole also lifts The Affair to a new level by showcasing Tierney’s and Jackson’s considerable talents. Both deliver exquisite variations on heartbreak.

After the first season's packed finale, Sunday's episode settles down, takes a breath, and slowwwwws down. That's absolutely an auspicious and necessary development.

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).

Okay, I’ll buy into it for the sake of the wonderful acting being done here. Then too, Jeffrey Reiner’s direction is superb, the rhythm of his framing and the cameras’ points of view underscoring without intruding upon the drama.

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.

The combined performances here are exceptional. That work is helpful in glossing over some of the character flaws.

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.

The change in structure [expanding to four POVs] certainly helps the series, which though one of TV’s more ambitious writing experiments was beginning to seem limited by its own gimmick.... True, the consequences of the affair that set the series in motion are substantial and never-ending, but it’s all coated in an idyllic sheen.

While the whole enterprise sometimes feels more like an acting exercise than an actual show, at least these are four people who can act.

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.

On the plus side, The Affair is ambitious and meticulously executed, a grown-up series that allows its characters to be flawed and unhappy in a very real, sometime profound way. Even so, those late-season speed bumps and this opening salvo don’t elicit quite the same level of passion that the show initially provoked.