Higgs

I don't do "likes", but I enjoyed a great deal in the posts since my last entry. Kudos all around. Some random notes: The water in the show's poster is a metaphor, but never having been an English major, I won't try to define it. At the time of the investigation, it is certain Alison is with neither Cole nor Noah. Because she stopped using the pill for some unknown period [feeble joke intended], her kid could be either's or anyone's, especially if, like the nurse in "The World According to Garp", she wants a child but not a husband. Because the investigation occurs at the midpoint of the series timeline, there will be ample opportunity for her to reunite with your favorite hunk. As Darwinian natural selectors of the pool of DNA allowed entry to the next generation, women are rationally much more choosy about their sexual partners. Having said that, when considering the sexual depth of the human female (which I personally haven't done since around noon PST, today), the adult male seems a pathetic, shrivelled, little gender, the need for which, with expected advances in biotech, materials science, robotics, and Google Glass, may ultimately disappear. Kindertoten has "nuffin' to do wid it." The dark that Noah first subliminally noticed in Alison suggested the possibility that, unlike his wife of 25 years, she wouldn't laugh when he asked her to look at him during sex. As soon as he saw Alison's quivering upper lip, whose heteroerotic symbolism I am loath to get into as I am already under a yellow card with the moderator, it was all over.

I'll deal with the second comment first as it's simpler. Noah wasn't looking for an affair, he was drawn for reasons he didn't fully understand himself to the singularity that was Alison, just as Bruce had been drawn to the student who "wasn't the prettiest" but who possessed the ineffable quality that "lit" him up. This sort of thing happens around the world a thousand times a day, if it happens once.In-laws help out their married children all the time, and often it's a great benefit. The problem with the Solloway/Butler arrangement was the specific psychological dynamics at play. Bruce was a successful author, Noah aspired to the same. As long as he couldn't succeed in that, and the large majority of the financial support for his family was due to his wife, there was a drastic psychological imbalance of power in the marriage. Here's how a reviewer for the New York Times sees it: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/author/ginia-bellafante/ "Helen’s good news is a publicity blitz, and Noah seems genuinely happy for her when she tells him at dinner. But what follows tells us everything about why the Solloways’ marriage is so troubled and why Noah’s yearning for something else might run so deep. At a restaurant, Noah gives Helen a Tiffany necklace. It is a gesture to recognize that she has stayed with him and stuck it out despite his infidelity. Her response is to insist that he return it because they can’t afford it. And after all, she controls all the money. We encounter this theme of Helen’s dominance and control again in the couple’s therapy scene (and how great to see Blair Brown in the role of counselor) when Helen recounts her decision to marry Noah nearly as an act of charity. He was shy and without any money or real ambition and Helen, as she describes herself, 'could have had anyone.' You may have paused at that moment to remind yourself that Noah is played by Dominic West and not Don Rickles. Noah obviously, had his options, too, but presumably as a working-class kid, little of the confidence that might have been required to exercise them." ................ Not only does the Butler money make Noah feel emasculated with respect to Helen, regardless of whatever the objective truth might be, and highlight his failure to achieve success as a writer, but it also undermines his authority over his children and the repect they accord him. Martin's declared hatred for his grandfather is his intuitive, if inarticulate, realization that something is rotten in the Borough of Brooklyn, and Whitney's suspicion that it's her mother who's unfaithful speaks to her sense of a woman's needs when she perceives her husband as a failure. The money also caused the Solloways to adopt a family lifestyle out of sync with Noah's basic nature. That he should choose to teach in a low-income NYC public high school (where the pay is HIGHER than in a private school, btw) I consider a good fit for his personality and abilities. He has the rare charisma absolutely necessary to command a classroom in that environment, gains great satisfaction from it, and contributes more than he would at, say, highly-selective Stuyvesant (where Pulitzer-winning author Frank McCourt taught for most of his career). But Helen? A Williams alumna selling tchotchkes in a vanity store that wouldn't survive a week without her father's dough, unless it was being used to launder drug money, and from which she can cavalierly take off two months each and every summer. This is a fantasy world of the kind George accused Kramer of living in. (Enough already with the Seinfeld references, Higgs.) This is the most fulfilling career a bright and beautiful woman can make for herself? The Solloways, in the right town and the right house, would be the envy of their friends and the pride of their community. In a Brooklyn brownstone, with a little kid's French clothes needing to be dry cleaned, and a brat getting trained in advanced brattiness at a $30k/year private school, they're a case study in dysfunction. Helen and Noah share the blame about equally for all this. Helen for her haughty obtuseness, Noah for his passive-aggressive cowardice.

At that point in time, Noah didn't yet know about Gabriel. He was enchanted. In this instance, there can be no question that Alison's version is definitive, as she is speaking about her own distinct characteristics.

We have been shown all that is necessary to comprehend how the Butler money corrupted the Solloway family, and, thereby, the psychological forces that drove Noah to infidelity. That the details of Alison's role, if any, in Gabriel's drowning have not been fully revealed is perverse. It's something Noah would (should?) have asked about, or Alison volunteered, and would have given viewers a deeper understanding of and empathy with the two characters important enough to have gotten their portrayers GG nominations for leads.

While the dual POV device has been fresh and fun, I cannot think of any discrepancy in the stories that made the slightest bit of difference between the expected and actual overt behavior of the characters that followed. Was Alison really flirty or reserved when they first met? It didn't matter a damn, as they got together on schedule, without even cuddly sexy-time pillow talk about who was the aggressor. In the last episode, Alison heard/said ILY, while Noah mutely looked at her like a rescued pound puppy. Does that mean Noah doesn't really love her and she's delusional? Please. In the latest preview, Noah "can't live without her" and is seriously considering a "starter apartment" for them. So, yes, they are getting back together. But we already know it will be over before Scotty's demise. God forbid adultery should be glamorized on premium cable by rewarding cheaters with a lifetime of happiness. Because it would strike a blow at the institution of traditional marriage? There needs to be a story to justify a second season. That's when we'll find out who killed Scotty? Maybe, maybe not. After all, Treem has said she hopes the show will run forever, and that the investigation occurs at the midpoint in the timeline of the currently planned story arc. Then there is a chance our unfaithful limey lovebirds will find a way back to each other after doing the time for their crime!! I can't wait.

Here's what I think I know about Bruce Butler: 1. He depended for a time on his wife's money. 2. He gave up an affair with a student, the love of his life, for the comforts provided by his wife's money. 3. He believes that affair inspired him to write the only novel that gained him major critical success. ("First time I was short-listed for the Pulitzer. The only time.") 4. He is disappointed in his talent. 5. Having gained popular success and fortune, he has come to realize he didn't ultimately need his wife's money but he sure as hell needed that student's inspiration. 6. He therefore regrets his decision to give up the student. 7. He therefore may (unfairly) resent his wife's mere existence. 8. He (therefore?) is currently having a long-running affair. 9. He loves his daughter, as almost all fathers do, and has supported her family with a ton of money. (Well-meaning, but ultimately disastrous.) 10. For the sake of his daughter and grandchildren, and for pride of mentorship, he wants Noah to become a successful author (just not more critically esteemed than he). To that end, he hooked Noah up with his agent and may have exerted some influence in getting Noah's first novel multiple reviews, a rare and highly sought-after privilege. 11. Almost as an act of professional courtesy, he has a sniggering respect for Noah's affair and can forgive him for it, but wants it ended for Helen's sake.

Yes, Bruce might well have secretly admired Noah for daring a risk-all amour fou in a manner so brazen it tempted discovery**, but the act of telling Noah that he knew suggests he didn't think it should continue. Whatever the affair did to spur on the writing, its purpose had been served. Noah surely had already discovered enough of the passion, guilt, loss, pain, and chutzpah that he might have needed to become a better writer. (I am of the impression that more than a few great writers have gotten by on imagination and talent, but, hey, who am I to judge? It was going to be a MAJOR motion picture, wasn't it?) **Check out the comments of Loren Mercola here: https://www.facebook.com/TheAffairShowtime/posts/304840993055754?reply_comment_id=304860349720485

Au contraire. Mr. Butler is acting in the role of a conceited, condescending, self-aggrandizing mentor to an aspiring author. As I wrote way, way upthread:"Never trust creative or performing artists. On average, they may be the most selfish and amoral group of people in the world, because they have to be."

Yes, and wonderfully described. This insight is an example of the work a viewer has to do to understand the characters' emotions, since no prompt was given in the dialogue, as could have easily been accomplished with something as simple as, "I relived my own mother's passing tonight, Alison, but I'm grateful you allowed me to be here to help you." Noah's omission of the others in attendance spoke not of a faulty memory but of the intensity of his focus on Alison. (Or, as they say at Microsoft, it's a feature, not a bug.) In this interminglig of loves, lives, and deaths, Alison became connected to a deeply emotional part of Noah's past. At that point, ILYs became as inevitable as the sunrise.

The show's official raison d'être, "The Affair explores the emotional effects of an extramarital relationship", is both incomplete and misleading. First, it ignores the fact that most of this season is (properly) taken up with the emotions leading TO the extramarital relationship, rather than its effects. Second, and more significantly, "The Affair" cannot "explore" what it doesn't objectively and reliably show: the words and actions that are manifestations of underlying emotions. The purpose of the split POV device is not to make the point that memories are subjective/fallible/incomplete (duh), but to force each viewer to perform the arduous task of coming to a psychological, empathetic understanding, first of the characters, and ultimately of themself. To this end, "The Affair" studiously avoids the lawyerly spoon-feeding of "facts" and "truths" for judgment by an audience jury. Essentially, each viewer is a therapist, having Alison and Noah as separate clients. At their weekly session, each tells you a story. As an experienced shrink, you know that clients not only lie, omit, forget, misremember, embellish, etc., but everything they say is malleable, affected by their emotional state during the session and all they have experienced since the related events, and that the emotion-descriptive words they use, e.g., "love", "hate", "care", "pain", etc., may not mean the same to them as they do to you. Furthermore, you work with the assumption that their respective spouses were also good, deserving people with their own stories to tell, and your job is to get your clients to understand their own feelings so they can make more personally satisfying decisions about their lives, not to root for any specific outcome. (In the face of all that you do not and cannot ever know for certain about your clients and especially their current significant others, you confine your rooting to such life-and-death matters as football games and rom-coms.) But even therapists are human and subject to their own emotions, yet professional ethics demand that they suppress any feelings of attraction/repulsion toward a client in guiding them to finding their own "truth". And the experience of listening to their clients' stories and their answers to informed questions** enriches both their own expertise and personal lives. **The first question that comes to mind, which the show may yet address in a future season when we get to spend time with the characters in the post-investigation period, is, "What do you think now about what you did and felt then?".

Not only can adolescent love be perfect and pure, it may also be the origin of all "love".From: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_basis_of_love "Evolutionary psychology has proposed several explanations for love. Human infants and children are for a very long time dependent on parental help. Love has therefore been seen as a mechanism to promote mutual parental support of children for an extended time period." Given the relatively short lifespans and harsh living conditions of our ancient ancestors, procreation had to occur shortly after the onset of puberty (which happened at a later age than it does today) between people who hadn't even graduated from a selective college. Without the natural selection for that primal, intense, and ultimately infant-protecting bond, which most adults enviously wish they could recapture all the rest of their lives, none of us might be here. "Mature" love, typically subject to hidden calculations of shared interests, income potential, family approval, friend envy, etc. (not too dissimilar from Elaine's evaluation - on "Seinfeld" - of whether a would-be lover was "sponge-worthy"), is ultimately self-interested and therefore corrupt. If we want to dissuade the kids from fucking, at least let's not do it by condescending to the nature and validity of their emotions. Preach, Noah!

L'esprit de l'escalier ("staircase wit") is a French term used in English for the predicament of thinking of the perfect retort too late, and as such has nothing to do with what was going on in that scene. I believe the unique employment of the device on "The Affair" was to suggest that in that supreme moment of the presence of death, Noah was so overwhelmed emotionally that he became almost trance-like, to the extent that any notion of precision in words spoken and thought was completely lost. It was in that sharing of a deep spiritual experience that the final bonds of love were forged between them.

The two youngest children appear to be perfectly normal, although I suppose some would argue that they just aren't old enough to have had a chance to become neurotic. In my experience, however, apples do indeed fall far from the tree, and even a cursory study of real families of one's acquaintance will turn up many examples of siblings who are greatly different from one another. So, in general, blaming the parents can become a modern form of witch-hunting, especially for irresponsible offspring (as in Whitney's hilarious takeover of the family therapy session) and competitively judgmental family and friends. But what about their role in this particular story? I believe the behavior of the two oldest children is to stress the marriage so as to reveal some of its strengths and weaknesses, to challenge the couple to become either a team or finger-pointing enemies. Noah and Helen have been generally excellent parents by that measure, but there remains one crucial children-related factor that has gravely undermined their relationship from the beginning: their reliance on Mr. Butler's money. It arose again in this episode in Noah's palpable fear of having to beg again to send Martin to a private school. When Carmela Soprano had a private session with a very stereotypical Jewish psychiatrist, he told her she had to take the kids and get out, and not take a cent of Tony's blood money. I, who only play a stereotypical Jewish psychiatrist on discussion forums, would counsel the Solloways to take the kids and their physical possessions, get the hell out of their Brooklyn brownstone, return the loan blood money from the sale, and move to an area and home they can afford on their combined incomes, where Noah has gotten a teaching job (at which he is terrific, BTW), and send ALL their kids to public schools (where virtually all American Nobel Prize winners went).

Considered functionally, Noah/Helen are way better than average. The problem is that, like a 1939 Volkswagon, there is something rotten at its core, and it's neither of their fault. .... If Scotty were continuing to deal drugs, Noah might view its detection as inevitable, which would eventually send Alison to prison. To prevent that, even if he weren't with her, he'd kill. (It's all I got.) According to the Treem interview cited above, the murder occurs in the middle of the series. So, whatever Noah's or Alison's complicity in the death, I'm not expecting to be watching passionate conjugal visits.

You are correct. Noah and Alison stayed as planned at "The Edge" after Max left. There would have been no reason to cancel, and his name was not on the list of registered guests on the night requested. (If you're going to grope your lover's ass on a public dance floor, the name on the reservation would not be a major concern. You just don't want it on your charge card transactions.) The detective is focused on the night of Scotty's death, who was on the road to "The Edge". If Noah had cancelled a reservation the night he met Max, that would only prove he lied (about even knowing of the club). If he had cancelled on the night of Scotty's death, the lie would make him a suspect in a murder.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." I give her some slack.

Helen allowing Noah to go to Momtauk was nothing compared to the middle-aged wife of a concert violinist who hired a piano prodigy played by a very young Ingrid Bergman (making her indelible Ilsa of "Casablanca" look like an old cow) to give her daughter lessons in "Intermezzo". Never trust creative or performing artists. On average, they may be the most selfish and amoral group of people in the world, because they have to be.

Alison and Noah both fell in love with their respective spouses and had marriages that worked for considerable periods of time. The couple's first-time expressions of mutual love were made on the basis of recognizing that each had the same feelings then that they had once had with their spouses, and their decision to stay together on that harrowing night gave them confidence they would feel the same and thereby be able to treat each other as devotedly in the cold light of the following morning. And the day after that? They'll decide again when they get there.For me, Noah's most meaningful verbal expression of love was not "I love you" or even the earlier "you look so beautiful", but the spontaneous and heartfelt "that's wonderful" when Alison tells him she and Cole are trying to have a baby.

What Noah "wanted" and what he felt are two different things. The conflict between duty and passion is his drama. Alison, on the other hand, is not so torn. Noah has 4 children, she has -1. Noah has his father-in-law's money and connections, she has her share of the ranch sale. Both love their spouses. The detective would have known if they were together at the time of their interrogations and, if they had been, would never have told them two diametrically opposite stories about his own marital status. The night of the cancellation was the night of Scotty's death. Speaking of which, what in hell was Scotty doing on foot way out on a rural road in the middle of the night after a party? Ruth Wilson was magnificant last night.

"Do you ever think about her?" "Every fuckin' day." Substitue "five minutes" for "day", and you've got Noah's state of mind. He'd been hoping to run into Alison very time he turned a corner in Brooklyn. Mention Montauk, in any context, and his reaction would have been "legendary". Cole and Helen are both caring, supportive spouses. Flawed, of course, but better than most. Neither deserves to be betrayed. But, as Snoop explains to a reluctant Michael about killing someone in "The Wire", "Deserve got nuffin' to do wid it." "The heart wants what the heart wants" (per a very famous film director whom I shall decline to name as it might confuse the point), and attempting to establish a completely rational basis for "falling in love" is a fool's errand. (However, Shakespeare, no fool he, provides a partial explanation of the psychological forces that drew Alison & Noah together in Othello's description of how he and Desdemona fell in love: http://nfs.sparknotes.com/othello/page_40.html - ending with "She loved me for the dangers I had passed/And I loved her that she did pity them.") I once wrote that Alison was married at the time of the investigation and that it was probably to Cole. Wrong, again. While there is still a chance she's married (wedding ring and detective's manipulative 25-year marriage story to her), the fact that she is sitting alone near the rear of the hall for Scotty's memorial suggests it almost certainly isn't to Cole. All scenes with the detective follow soon after his interrogations of the lovers. He is on the case. Remembering the blue boat picture on his cell when Noah mentioned it during his reading prompted the detective to return to "The End" to try again. Persistent bugger. A hit-and-run driver who takes his car to the most popular body shop in the area is too stupid to have deliberately killed someone with it. Just sayin'.

Scotty's death occurs about 4 or 5 years after the summer of the affair.http://forums.previously.tv/topic/18507-s01e07-7/?p=617065

"The Affair explores the emotional effects of an extramarital relationship". If the story line is to be tightly drawn to the very end, and continue to follow the basic precepts of ancient Greek tragedy**, Scotty's death should also be one of the "emotional effects" of the affair, and cause the downfall of a flawed "hero". That would rule out others in the drug trade, corrupt Montauk cops (Lockharts' "eyes and ears in the precinct"), Ma Lockhart (the Livia Soprano of Montauk) as a necessary sacrifice to save her other boys and all their assets from government seizure, and, alas, even Whitney (by then a long-gone college junior/senior), Then the culprit would have to be a main character, and they would have to have done it for noble emotional reasons, not to save their own neck. That leaves Noah, only. Why? Scotty died on the road to "The End", where locals so seldom go that Alison and Noah had no compunction in engaging in a very public display of dirty dancing. What was Scotty doing way out there? Selling drugs to partying tourists, in all likelihood. The interrogating detective knew nothing about the Lockharts' drug business. If/when he found out, most threateningly through Scotty (impetuous, violent, stupid, and stubborn, the Sonny Corleone of Montauk) being caught, Alison could eventually be implicated. Who is the one and only person whose feelings for another were completely due to the affair, and who loved so deeply that he would kill on their behalf? QED **https://mobile.twitter.com/sarahtreem/status/536651595824390144

Right, as confirmed by rewatching. The next scene was the coke buy in the taxi, without Alison.There is, however, a larger point to be made here. A serious TV drama series has a purpose and a style to which it has to remain true. The purpose of this show is given on its official website: "The Affair explores the emotional effects of an extramarital relationship". A key aspect of its style is that, while it doles out information piecemeal, purposely differing in the principals' POV, and incorporates a possible murder mystery, it hasn't yet resorted to teasing misleads or surprising plot twists. For example, it hinted at drug-dealing, then delivered drug-dealing. I can't recall anything in an episode that wasn't substantially as suggested in the preview. SImply put, if you have been led to believe Noah lied, he lied. There are also significant hints given by the stated purpose. Helen could not possibly have already cheated with Max, not it because it's unrealistic, but because "affair" and "relationship" are singular, not plural, and, more importantly, if she had then Noah's guilt and Helen's pain would both be dramatically diminished, and there would go the "emotional effects". Also, the show is not called "The Fling", because if that were all that had happened then Noah and Alison would not suffer the conflicts of emotions and life choices necessary to sustain audience involvement for at least another season. And maybe Scotty would still be alive (not that anyone except Ma Lockhart, maybe a few horses, and the unlucky convicted perpetrator really cares).

The biggest mystery for me in all that's been shown is Noah's lie about "The End". Here's what we know: Scotty died on the road to "The End". "The End" is a club frequented almost exclusively by tourists. Noah was a tourist. Noah met Alison at "The End" during the affair. That Noah and Alison had an affair was fully known to the detective. There were no drugs involved in the tryst at "The End". Given all this, what reason would Noah have to say not only that he'd never been there, but that he'd never even heard of it? The latter statement is implausible on its face due the frequent visits of the (tourist) Solloways to Montauk, and serves no purpose that I can imagine, especially as a lie, any lie, big or small, about anything, would immediately arouse the suspicions of a detective. Unless...he was spooked and blurted out an unthinking lie because something much more sinister had happened there since that summer. (Is not a public club a common place to hire a hit man?) If I turn out to be wrong about the exact nature of the "uncomfortable truth" of the next episoide, I will publically apologize.

There was an instance where details were indeed given. Noah: "And is this really what you want to know? Details on some fight I had with my wife?" Detective (chuckling): "Not really." I believe it's not the details per se that most interested the detective, but the level and type of passion involved. (If the detective had "not really" wanted Noah's details, he would have stopped him.) Passion can kill. The interviews are taking place at a Suffolk County Police location, most likely at its headquarters about halfway from Brooklyn (which Alison would also have referred to as "the city") to Montauk. Cops "bring people in" to create a fear factor so that they'll spill as many beans as possible, especially including the ratting out of someone else. Suffolk County does not provide normal police services to its easternmost towns, so the detective would not know that much about Montauk (56 mi. away), its denizens or their relationships.