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TY! When I went back and read I saw that posted - how horrible!

Wow, my head was spinning at this episode - I actually thought parts of this ep were poorly conceived and pretty obvious and clumsy in pulling the strings of the plot. First of all, both Alison and Noah jump to the conclusion that Helen is pregnant when anybody with half a brain or anybody who has ever known 17 yr olds would immediately know the test was Whitney's. And the story is starting to rely too much on the characters NOT saying things that need to be said and that probably would be said. Noah is such a fucking self-absorbed asshole, but I kind of think they went over the top with showing it in this ep. Talk about piling it on, he fucks Alison in his marital bed; he dictates the wheres and hows of their affair, he refuses to take any advice from Max - who has already, presumably been through this himself - and he tells his wife of 20+ years that he wants out on the eve of their daughter's abortion. Then to top it off, his attack on Scotty, which, I know, sets him up as a suspect in Scotty's death but still seemed ridiculously clumsy to me. How much do they want us to hate Noah, because how ever much it is, I think most of us are there already. Alison is such a complicated character that I do have sympathy for her. I don't see Gabriel's death as a get out of jail card as some of you do; I just don't think that two years is long enough to have really dealt with a child's death, but on top of that, she hasn't been trying to. She's just shut herself off. I thought that sleeping with Oscar was the ultimate act of self-loathing and that push-pull is what makes her so interesting to me: she's self destructive enough to sleep with Oscar, cut herself and nearly commit suicide, but she's also able to pull herself together enough to know that she has to get out of Montauk and go through with it. The scene with the doctor was just gut-wrenching. But the shit with pouring out Helen's shampoo and fucking in Helen's bed are hostile and juvenile acts. Honestly, at this point I can't tell if I like Alison or not, but I'm still hoping that she finds some kind of resolution and happiness eventually. What did Gabe die of? I watched the scene twice but didn't understand what the doctor said. And am I right in thinking the end was completely ambiguous?

Yup, just change Thomas' name to Cain and you've got - oh wait, you've got East of Eden, don't you? '

Okay, I WAS an English major, but the water thing is Freudian - water in dreams represents sex. I think that Alison and Noah are completely hot together and utterly infatuated with each other. The infatuation phase of love lasts for about two years, so they have a way to go before they can make any rational decisions about their connection. Noah is right: Alison is very dark, and with good reason. I think she's been walking around like a zombie for two years, and her passionate reaction to Noah is the first instance of her coming back up to breathe. She explained it herself in that kitchen scene where Noah was freaking out about her being a drug dealer and how she could go to jail or die or whatever and she said "Don't you get it? I don't care what happens to me." It may be the first time she has ever come close to articulating her grief, and I found it very powerful (of course I think Ruth Wilson is fucking GREAT). Dealing with her grandmother's death and the subsequent opening of Gabriel's toy chest indicate she is truly coming back to life - she actually smiles at one point. But why the hell are she and Cole living in Ma Barker's house? I have to say I'm not sure about three seasons of this show, since it was originally meant to be one season. To me that stretching out of the story may be it's downfall. But of course, I'll watch it.

I'm really surprised that Maura Tierney didn't get a GG nomination - I think she is outstanding in her portrayal of Helen.

I didn't watch the aftershow - I barely made it through this cartoonish season. But I agree that it was really strange that Ron Perlman and Maggie Siff seem to have disappeared from Sutter's world view, Charming style. And I highly doubt either of those actors would choose not to be acknowledged at the finale since they both spent five or six years of their lives working on the show.

Wow, I must really be in the minority here, because I have a different POV on two major things. One is that of course Helen knew (or very much suspected) about the affair before Noah revealed it - it just hadn't been addressed or confirmed until Noah's self-serving "I almost had a heart attack so now I have to confess my sins" hospital scene. For one thing, at the Butler's big party, Helen asks Noah blatantly "Was she flirting with you?" after Alison deposits an unordered drink in front of Noah. Then after the weasel confesses, it's Helen who immediately names "that waitress - Alison?" and forces him to admit that his "fling" was with the waitress ("I knew it, I fucking knew it") is pretty much want she said. I mean, come on - women (maybe men, too) definitely sense when something hinky is going on with their spouse of twenty years and IMO, Helen had plenty of reason to suspect Noah. I think her icy response to Alison being in her store was exactly because she had this intuition about Noah and Alison, and seeing Alison show up in Brooklyn just added more to that suspicion. The other is that upthread someone said that Treem has claimed that Noah's best-seller-soon-to-be-a-major motion-picture (one of the clunkier cliches in this story). is NOT about the affair. Well then why does the detective perk up when Noah reads the passage about the blue boat that is abandoned on the way to The End, the blue boat that exists in reality? I think Noah's novel (complete with "recollections" of Alison in a tight black dress at Butler's award ceremony) is just a novelized and expanded memoir that has been turned into fiction. I also don't think Noah sees Alison as predatory as much as he sees her as a prisoner of all the tragedies in her life (and now, of the Lockhart clan,) who is a potential princess who he has to rescue. Unlike Helen, who loved and still loves him, but never needed any rescuing or help from him at all. He can be Alison's hero, while he can really only be Helen's weak and - in the Butler's eyes - unsuccessful husband.

Interesting point since Hamlet - even though there's a sword fight - actually dies of poison on the blade of the sword..

I might be the only one here, but I like Alison and feel genuine empathy for her. She's a hot mess, but she has a lot of reasons to be. I don't think she's even started getting over Gabriel's death and she's been almost sleepwalking through life since then - until she met Noah. Personally, I think she could have made a smarter choice that that ambivalent prick, but that doesn't really matter because I think this is more about Alison coming to terms with all the loss (aside from Gabe's death, she never knew her father, her mother is a major narcissistic flake who abandoned her, her grandmother just died) than it is about the affair itself. I think Alison is the only one I'm rooting for and hoping that somehow she comes through all of this with a better idea of who she really is and what she really wants. I hate Cherry, don't care about Cole and feel sorry for Helen, but Alison breaks my heart.

I am a creative artist and while I'm quite trustworthy, you are absolutely right- especially writers!

Maybe because Jax is so beloved by the gangs (I don't know why) they will let him off himself, ride his bike into a truck or tree or whatever killed his father, or just over some cliff. I think I would have liked this episode more if Jax had told Gemma to turn around and face him in the rose garden and then eaten his gun in front of her. But then again, those pesky kids would be left to her. . .

What a fake looking picture, and that femme fatale red lipstick is SUCH an appropriate color for children (eye roll). I think I've watched enough of Tori (2nd season I've watched) to override anything "Dr." Wexler says and give my own diagnosis: Tori as bat-shit crazy, obsessive, rigid, controlling, histrionic, a tinge of paranoia and with a big empty hole in herself that nothing - not Dean, not kids, not a hit show (well, MAYBE a hit show) will ever fill. The woman has so much negativity in every cell in her body, she's kind of like a black hole of emotional need.

I've been entertained by the show (mostly) up until this season. But I never thought the writing was particularly good; the unfamiliar world of bikers and some very strong actors carried most of it for me. But seriously? I can name half a dozen shows just in the past couple of years that leave SOA in the dust (no pun intended) writing-wise. Besides the obvious Sopranos, IMO there's The Killing, Homeland, Top of the Lake, The Affair, Mad Men (mostly), Masters of Sex - they all had top of the line writing. SOA, not so much.

Yes, that was Blair Brown playing the therapist who - to my surprise - didn't seem to think it was a bad idea for Noah to go to Montauk. I thought it was clearly a terrible idea - the wounds are too raw. I completely believed the exchange of ILYs between Alison and Noah. And I think the reason Noah was able to be so compassionate is because his own mother died when he was 17 or 18, and it affected him profoundly (earlier he alluded vaguely to marrying Helen right out of college because he was kind of rudderless as a result of his mom's death). And I thought Alison taking the toys out of the chest was heart-wrenching. Helen telling Noah in therapy that she married him because she thought he was safe was really a twist of the knife (not that I blame her for it). But if Noah was feeling emasculated before, what with his horrible in-laws, the jabs about his writing and the whole monetary issue, then I think Helen saying that was really the cherry on the icing. I didn't marry you because you were gorgeous, smart, promising, the best lover I ever had, I thought you'd make a good father, I thought we were meant to be together, hell no, I married you because I thought you were safe - OUCH!!!!!,

That was really strange, it took me a second to process the fact that she wasn't talking.

She was incredible, she's really an amazing actress.

Well then Noah sure has an active romantic/emotional sense of memory because that whole thing played out like he was her true love and white knight. Or maybe, being the essentially selfish writer he is, he engages in revisionist history that presents him in a good light. Question: what is with that huge house that Alison and Cole are living in? It's not their original house, which was a great location but a little funkier. And it's not Ma Lockhart's ranch. Anybody know?

Last night Watching this episode I started to wonder if Noah's point of view is actually what is in his second book - that cautionary tale (or advice, perhaps) from his father-in-law really seemed like something straight out of a novel. If that is what the novel is about, then he and Helen would definitely be separated or divorced by the time of the book signing. It was also the first time that Alison and Noah were truly intimate in a non-sexual way - they seemed to be growing closer and revealing how deep this relationship really is (or could be). Now I wonder if they do wind up together. .

I thought Tara signed custody over to Wendy if anything happened to her and somehow tricked Jax into signing the papers.

Thanks, Higgs.

What puzzles me is why Alison is in Montauk to answer the detective's questions.I'm assuming she now lives in NYC because she says she has to get back to the city. Surely she wouldn't just hop over to Montauk for questioning - the cops would go to see her in the city, right?

And wings and a crown, too! I used to get migraines, too, and like you, dark,silent rooms were the only thing that helped. FGS, those eyelashes alone would have given me a migraine - they must have weighed half a pound each!

I think the boys will automatically go to Wendy because didn't Tara have Jax sign some papers last season that were supposed to be one thing (divorce?) but were really about custody? This series has gotten me to the point that I don't give a fuck about ANYONE on it - except maybe Chibs, who seems to be the only one left with a brain. Wendy was never brain surgeon material, but she was unusually dense in this episode, never suspecting that something really bad was going down. As for Wendy and Jax fucking, don't forget that the first time (since high school) that Tara and Jax fucked, it was with the DEA stalker/agent that they both shot lying dead next to the bed. I don't think Jax's limp was a mistake that just got left in - that would be the laziest fucking filmmaking on the planet. I just want to know what it could possibly portend at this late date. With only one episode left, it's highly unlikely that we're going to learn that he has that rarest of diseases: aggressively spreading knee cancer that kills its victims in seven days. Gemma - UGH! The whole fucking episode was a stagepiece for her - Unser loves her, Chucky loves her, Nero apparently still loves her (I HATED the scene where he just sat on her bed all tormented and grieving). That death scene was absurd - I half expected Gemma to ask Jax if she could change into her old prom dress before she spent an hour blathering amongst the roses. Redemption? I think not. Just another Gemma-centric episode, salvaged slightly by the presence of the awesome Hal Holbrook (who can out-act anyone on this show, even in a ten minute scene). I agree with what someone posted above: I really would have liked Jax to kill himself right after killing Gemma. That really should have been the end of the show. But, sigh, I guess there are still more club-related loose ends that Jax has to tied up with the various completely interchangeable gangs.

Exactly how I feel about Mad Men at this point. Do it, Don, just jump out the frickin' window already.

Agree completely. It doesn't make sense that Helen would have an affair to me. She's got four kids, she owns a store and she is upset that Noah isn't having sex with her. It's that old (Freudian? Jungian?) thing about marrying your own parent. Helen probably thought Noah was about as far away - morally - from her father as it's possible to get. And then, blam! She learns he's a cheater, too. Alison is MUCH more of a mess than anyone else here, and I would guess that her obvious darkness (as Noah calls it) is a big part of her attraction. Helen seems to have it all together, from money to calm temperament to kids, store and seemingly happy marriage. She doesn't really seem to lack or need anything. Alison is the polar opposite, and I could see a man like Noah (who has been pretty effectively emasculated, especially in Montauk) being strongly attracted to a woman who he thinks needs him.