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Showing posts with label Hagai Levi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hagai Levi. Show all posts

Sunday, November 3, 2019

The Affair Finale: Saving the Very Best for Last



Finales of significant and great series come in on all kinds of levels.  The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Star Trek: The Next Generation in their own very different ways came in the very best (see my PBS interview about this a few years ago).  I'd say The Affair came in tonight in that very lofty company.

It was a heart-warming, healing, beautifully and sadly appropriate ending to a brilliant, disturbing, unique, and refreshing series.  Noah and Helen in bed together, with all four of their children sitting on a bench outside of the motel room.  Just perfect.   Joanie finally growing into herself and going home to her husband and kids.   Noah on the cliff overlooking the water and dancing at the end, both of the finale and of his own life.  A Noah wiser than he'd ever been.

Those were the big things, pure gold, and there were more of them.  But there also were little things.  Bruce coming through for Whitney, even though his brain is faltering.  The fact that Helen and her mother died the very same year (poor Helen couldn't get rid of her). The dance that the kids and Whitney's new husband and Sierra and even Helen's mother did - no, that was not a little thing.  That was a big thing, and wonderful.

But I was sad that Noah at the end has lost Helen, in a way that can't be repaired.  Sad and glad that he can at least talk to her at her grave, and read to her from their daughter Stacey's book.  Life and love and talent can endure through generations.  That's a great parting thought, and I'm glad Noah was still alive to convey it to us.

What an Emmy-worth performance by Dominic West, and by Maura Tierney as Helen, too.  They both deserves the very highest accolades for their work in this series, as do the creators Hagai Levi and Sarah Treem.   The Affair was before the finale one of my favorite series ever on television.  The finale makes it even more so.



And see also The Affair 3.1: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 3.2: Sneak Preview Review: Right Minds ... The Affair 3.3: Who Attached Noah? ... The Affair 3.4: The Same Endings in Montauk ... The Affair 3.5: Blocked Love ... The Affair 3.6: The Wound ... The Affair 3.7: The White Shirt ... The Affair 3.8: The "Miserable Hero" ... The Affair 3.9: A Sliver of Clarity ... The Affair 3.10: Taking Paris

And see also The Affair 2.1: Advances ... The Affair 2.2: Loving a Writer ... The Affair 2.3: The Half-Wolf ... The Affair 2.4: Helen at Distraction ... The Affair 2.5: Golden Cole ... The Affair 2.6: The End (of Noah's Novel) ... The Affair 2.7: Stunner ... The Affair 2.8: The Reading, the Review, the Prize ...The Affair 2.9: Nameless Hurricane ... The Affair 2.10: Meets In Treatment ... The Affair 2.11: Alison and Cole in Business ... The Affair Season 2 Finale: No One's Fault


 

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Monday, December 7, 2015

The Affair 2.10: Meets In Treatment

Another fine episode of The Affair tonight - 2.10 - which ends in a cliffhanger, about the results of the paternity test for Joanie, even though it's got to be that the baby is Cole's.

Which leads again to the big question of who ran down Scotty?  Given the ambivalence that Noah has to being a father in a marriage with Alison - and being the "good" not the "great" guy as he put  it (for more of which, see below) - it occurred to me that he now has about the least motive for permanently shutting Scotty up.  If Scotty revealed that Cole not Noah was Joanie's father, that might well give Noah precisely the license to leave Alison that a part of him so much wants.

Alison and Cole still remain the main suspects with Noah out of the scenario.  But there also could be another:  Luisa now also a big motive.  She would be very threatened by the knowledge that Cole is Joanie's father, given that she can't have a baby, and she knows how much Cole wants one.   Would she kill Scotty to keep him quiet?   It's hard to say, because we don't yet know her well enough, but either she or someone else looking out for her interests can't be ruled out.

Noah's segment with Marilyn the shrink was excellent, a case of The Affair meeting In Treatment (which makes sense, since Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi are producers of both).  Noah's wanting to be a good family man, but not at the expense of being a great man - in his case, a great author - but which (on his analysis, at least) comes with the trimmings of "bending" an attractive graduate student over his desk - makes one of the best set-pieces of the series, as Noah comes to realize this and spell it out in Marilyn's office.   The twenty or so minutes provides about as good a probing as you'll get anywhere on television, or in the movies, about what it might personally take to make a big difference in the world. Significantly, Noah thinks it's either good or great, in contrast to Marilyn, who suggests that maybe you can have both, or maybe the two lifestyles have no intrinsic connection to greatness at all.

On thing is certain: Just two episodes left of this great season.




podcast review of every 2nd season episode


podcast review of every 1st season episode



the Sierra Waters time-travel trilogy


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