3 out of 5

Created by: Sarah Treem, Hagai Levi

covers season 1

Within ‘The Affair’ is a devastating study of relationships, of gender, of marriage, of aging…  It’s supported by some painfully realistic writing, patient, steady direction, and all-encompassing performances by our primaries – lead couple Noah (Dominic West) and Alison (Ruth Wilson) and their respective spouses, Helen (Maura Tierney) and Cole (Joshua Jackson).  Unfortunately, a good chunk of the intensity and the relevancy of all these pluses are diluted by the series just not sticking to its guns, hampering the setup with a lame mystery plot (which is lamely carried over to a second season…) and straying from its structure in interesting but questionable ways often enough that you begin to wonder if there’s a point to the structure at all.  Affair’s ten episodes stick, strictly, to what, at times, seems to be a Rashomon-esque split of showing 30 minutes of events from Noah’s perspective and then 30 minutes of the same (or events around the same) from Alison’s, occasionally flip-flopping the order for the sake of variation, but more often – and more interestingly – we get a dark he said / she said that drums up many questions of how perspective – a male and female perspective, driven by lust, driven by the need for change – can truly shape the way we see things.  There is no “truth” in The Affair, only our two tellings of the tale.  But then the show will cheat sometimes.  The two stories won’t just not match up, they’ll be drastically different to the extent that perspective can no longer account for the divide.  Or we’ll just be leveraging the extended point of view to move the story forward, stuffing plotting details into both halves, which is fair enough but only seems to be required more as the season ticks on due to adding a mystery coda onto each episode.  Because, as we find out, someone has died, and the stories we’re hearing are, maybe, accounts being told to a detective, separately, by Noah and Alison, maybe accounting for those grievous differences.  Maybe.  Unfortunately, this element of the show gets so little screentime that it’s really hard to justify that, when the dialogue and character interplay otherwise suggests we’re watching a relationship drama, not a murder mystery.

I understand the writers of The Affair figuring they needed to throw some twist into the mix to keep us watching.  And indeed, that probably will help it carry on to another season (…aaand it was already renewed).  But a willingness to commit to a short-term drama without that extra flash could’ve enhanced the shows many obvious qualities and driven them home all the more devastatingly.  Instead, it becomes harder and harder to believe that the interactions matter when you’re not certain of the series’ overall intentions.