Drama

The Affair Season 2 finale recap: One for all …

WARNING: If you have not watched The Affair Season 2 finale and do not want to know who killed Scott Lockhart, do not ready any further. I’m serious. Not … another … word. That said, no matter which of the likely suspects you had your cash on (unless it was Whitney. Whitney doesn’t drive, people!), odds are good you’re, at least in part, correct. Depending, I guess, on whose version of events you believe. Only one, however, exonerates Noah. We  open in the present, where Detective Jeffries has returned to the scene of the crime — the roadside spot with […]

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Drama

The Affair Season 2 episode 11 recap: This much is true…

With just one episode left in The Affair Season 2 (and a third season newly confirmed by Showtime), Montauk returns to the forefront of the story. Cole and Luisa seek Cherry’s approval and a place to marry. Alison realizes there is no place like home. And Noah realizes she doesn’t mean a New York City high-rise. But we begin in the courtroom, where Cole is on the stand. The prosecution asks him to recount the night Noah threatened to kill Scotty for knocking Whitney up, and Gottlief does his best to admit get the guy to admit he hates his former […]

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Drama

The Affair season 2 episode 10 recap: Daddy issues

With just two episodes of The Affair Season 2 to go, the past and the present are converging, with Scotty Lockhart’s death still squarely in the middle. We open episode 10 in the now, as Noah, Alison and Gottlief pull up to the courthouse for Noah’s trial to find a media circus looming. Helen walks by with Dr. Vic (really, Helen? He’s hot, but ew!). Gottlief tells Noah and Alison to follow him and not talk to anyone. Then it’s time for Noah’s perspective on a day a year after last week’s events, when we left him stranded in the hurricane the night […]

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Drama

The Affair Season 2 episode 9 recap: Reckoning — or when it rains, it pours

On this week’s The Affair, we spend a 24-hour (or thereabouts) stretch with all four of our main characters as a hurricane bears down on New York, lending extra drama to the myriad bad decisions that abound. The Lockhart case doesn’t really factor in at all. It’s just four people and the choices they make … and what it might say about them. 1 p.m. After a quick look at Alison cleaning her fridge, we begin with Helen, who is in a wine bar, waiting for a Tinder date. Deciding he isn’t about to show, she gets her check and does […]

Drama

Recap: The Affair Season 2 episode 8 — From the mouths of babes

This far into Season 2 of Showtime’s The Affair, I have to admit, I’m a little done with episodes that attempt to pass off wildly different versions of the same events as the mysterious workings of two separate minds. While this episode was intriguing — bringing Noah and Helen together for the most substantial amount of time since he bolted for the writers cabin — I gave up on figuring out how to meld the two versions into a probable truth. We learned some not-so-surprising stuff about Whitney in the front end of Helen’s parcel. After that: There was a book signing. Helen was there. Noah […]

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Drama

The Affair Season 2 episode 7 recap: The secrets mothers keep … and Oscar reveals another

Well. And you thought your family holidays can get weird. This episode of Showtime’s The Affair spends Thanksgiving with Alison and Cole as both navigate the boundryless minefield that is their simmering emotions, their fragile family ties and what is and isn’t real in their hearts, minds and lives. Athena reveals a touching secret — and Cherry a horrifying one — but are both revelations too late to be of any help to their children at all? And Oscar drops a bombshell that feasibly connects a few more dots in the mystery of who killed Scott Lockhart and what the real motivation might be. It’s a midseason-finale-worthy episode— and […]

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Drama

Recap: The Affair Season 2 episode 6 — The ending is the most important part

On this week’s episode of The Affair on Showtime, we hit the accelerator on our story a bit and see Helen’s and Noah’s perspective on consecutive timeframes. Our leap to the now comes sooner than we’re used to. And Alison’s sojourn home in last week’s outing takes on potential new significance, if the timing is correct. We start with Helen, who is watching Trevor working on a school project with Stacey’s help. She tells them to clean up their work and get ready to go to a ballgame with their dad, which thrills Margaret to no end. She begins Margareting in earnest. Can we talk hair […]

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Drama

Recap: The Affair Season 2 Episode 5 — Do you see me?

Here’s the thing about a fiery romance (and, oh, aren’t they all at the get-go?). Eventually most cool into something more … temperate. Practical. A durable partnership warmed by the embers of that earlier passion if the pairing good. A daily disappointment if it’s not. In the fifth episode of Showtime’s The Affair Season 2, we see Alison’s and Cole’s take on a day that demonstrates this  — and though we don’t see the same events from differing perspectives, what happens to each gives aching insight into who these two people really are at their core. If we believe what we see. We start with Alison, who, […]

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Drama

The Affair Season 2 Episode 4 recap — Parental advisories

I’ll admit, this week’s episode of Showtime’s The Affair — told from the perspectives of imploding marrieds Noah and Helen — was a head-scratcher for me. Would Helen really unravel in such borderline slapstick fashion after 45 years of being the very model of enviable cool? Would Noah — no matter how much of a lovestruck egomaniac he may be — really watch his son writhing in agony on the bathroom floor of a cheap hotel room and not make a beeline for the hospital? But maybe that is the point. The depths to which this situation is dragging everyone involved seems bottomless. And […]

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Drama

The Affair Season 2 episode 2 recap: Meanwhile, in the Hudson Valley …

Call this episode of Showtime’s The Affair — in which we get Alison’s and Cole’s take events of last week’s episode, and a disturbingly better idea of what may have happened to Scotty — for Joshua Jackson. By turns chilling and heartrendingly sympathetic as the beaten-down Cole, he is as mesmerizing as Maura Tierney was as the resolute Helen last week. No worries about a sophomore slump for Sarah Treem’s stunning psychological study with these two at the forefront, and Dominic West and Ruth Wilson as good as ever. We begin at Noah’s damn-near-cliché writers retreat by the Hudson, where he is late for that […]