Ruth Wilson as Alison and Dominic West as Noah in Showtime's The Affair
Monogamy and emotional commitment are two qualities that have perplexed many people over the ages. The societal ideal of a relationship is built around trust, intimacy, and an exclusive love shared between two people. Most people believe—and our cultural ideal of "love" is predicated on—the idea that out there, in the sea of billions of people, there is someone on this planet who's here to share their life with ours. To paraphrase a
very influential apostle, love is patient, love is kind, and it always protects, hopes, and perseveres. For those who can find that kind of relationship, it's a beautiful fairy tale given form in the real world.
But think about this for a second. In almost every other aspect of life, there's change over time. We don't wear the same style clothes our entire lives. We don't keep the same hairstyle. We may move from town to town or city to city. We may work many different jobs. Our tastes in music may ebb and flow. Even our political beliefs may shift to some degree as we age. And yet, when it comes to love, most of us aspire for an ideal relationship that forsakes all others "till death do we part" ... or at least as long as we live together in the same apartment. Some argue this is a culturally compelled "patriarchal myth" and "unnatural."
Showtime's The Affair uses these issues and dynamics to tell a mystery involving class and money, with differing viewpoints about the mindsets of men and women in a romantic relationship. Follow beneath the fold for more.
"All happy families are like one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." —Leo Tolstoy, the opening line to Anna Karenina
According to
research compiled by the Kinsey Institute, approximately 20 to 25 percent of men and 10 to 15 percent of women have had sex outside of their marriage at least once. If you expand beyond marriage and include unmarried couples living together, around 11 percent of adults have been unfaithful. But there's a bit of ambiguity in words like "unfaithful" and "cheat," where the boundaries are going to be different depending on the relationship. Even in the absence of extramarital sex, there can be an affair and hurt feelings over kisses, hugs, and texts if it's part of an emotional connection outside of the relationship.
While these numbers speak to prevalence, it doesn't exactly answer the psychology of why? Are all of these people unhappy in their relationships and searching for something new? Is it a weakness in character where these people are indifferent to their significant other's feelings? Or do some people have the sex drive of a dog, where if it's warm, feels good and there's an opportunity, they're going to hump it? I once was in a college sociology class on marriage and families in which the instructor asked a student what her favorite food was. As a thought experiment, he then told her that he would give her that food, prepared in its best possible form, but that's the only thing she could eat for the rest of her life. The professor’s argument was that some people may love that arrangement and cherish it. But others will grow tired of it after a while, and they'll want to try something else, if only because it's different and new.
Created by Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi—he created the Israeli show that inspired HBO's
In Treatment, which Treem wrote for—Showtime's
The Affair has been critically lauded and is considered one of the best new series on television. The story concerns Noah Solloway (Dominic West,
The Wire), a New York City public school teacher who has just completed his first book. Noah's life with his wife, Helen (Maura Tierney,
ER), and their four kids is not perfect, but they seem happy. Noah and Helen decide to take the family out to Montauk, New York, for the summer to stay with Helen's wealthy parents. Helen's father (John Doman,
The Wire) is a successful author, and Noah resents both his money and influence over his family. Things change when Noah meets Alison (Ruth Wilson,
Luther). Alison is a waitress married to Cole (Joshua Jackson,
Fringe), who's the head of a prominent Montauk ranching family that has a few skeletons in the closet. Her relationship with Cole has been strained by the death of their 4-year old child, and the two have drifted apart. Noah and Alison begin a torrid affair that occurs in the backdrop of other momentous events in their lives.
From Eliana Dockterman's interview with Sarah Treem in TIME:
We did have a consultant on the show. Her name’s Esther Perel, and she wrote a book called Mating in Captivity. She has spent her whole life talking to couples about infidelity and affairs—that’s her bread and butter. And she has this great quote from Mating in Captivity where she says something like when people go looking for affairs, it’s not because they’re unhappy with their spouse but because they’re unsatisfied with who they’ve become.
All of this sounds like stuff that would be on a daytime soap opera (and it is). However,
The Affair is not really about the titular affair as much as it's about the malleability of the truth surrounding those events. The show would more accurately be described as a mystery, but it's a mystery where none of the details are a firm foundation on which to build a theory. What makes the series a bit different is its
Rashomon-ic framing device. In each episode, the audience is presented with two versions of events being told to a detective at some future point in time: one is of Noah's memories and the other from Alison's. The reasons for why Noah and Alison are being questioned are left vague, and we're presented only with scant details about what's happened to them and their families in the future.
The recollections between the two characters are largely consistent. But some of the details vary greatly, and we're left unsure as to which version's details to believe. The discrepancies also allow the show to be a character study that argues gender affects perception and how events are retold. If an affair is at its core a breach of trust based on deception of people one claims to care about, The Affair argues the deception of infidelity also involves deceiving oneself.
- The differences between the two stories: In each version, both characters present themselves as sort of neutral observers for which things happened to that they didn't necessarily instigate. Noah remembers Alison as a happy-go-lucky, sexually aggressive woman in tight shirts and short skirts. Alison remembers herself still being frumpy and depressed about the death of her child, and Noah as the one who came on to her and pursued her affections. They also remember significant details in wildly divergent ways. In the pilot episode, Noah remembers coming across Alison being raped by her husband. Alison remembers the night as a rough, but more consensual encounter with Cole. Noah remembers his first sexual encounter with Alison happening in a field after a town meeting involving Alison's in-laws. Alison's version of that night has her having sex with her husband at home, and her only contact with Noah occurring through text. At first, I thought the differences may be significant to the mystery of the series, and that one or both of the characters are lying to the police. And both characters are shown to have flat-out lied to the detective in their statements. However, Treem has implied in interviews the flashbacks are the honest recollections of both characters (e.g. Noah's flashback shows him entering the club he denied ever being at to the police). If that's the case, then it becomes a situation in which it's up to the audience to figure out where the truth lies between the flashbacks.
From Alan Sepinwall's interview with Sarah Treem at HitFix:
We wanted to tell a story about two good people. Who were committed to their marriages. This is not the story about people who are serial philanderers, people who are looking to commit adultery, somebody who’s just not a nice person. The idea was that you’re in a marriage, you love your wife, she’s a good woman, you’re a good man. You have kids and then you meet somebody by chance who you think is your soul mate. What do you do? And I think everybody gets to that time. You’re vulnerable, you’re in a long term relationship. At some point in your marriage, you meet somebody else and you’re just like, “I think I can be happier with this person.” And then you’ve got a choice to make. We really wanted it from the very beginning to be clear that these were good moral people. Who weren’t looking for this to happen and really were caught in a true crisis.
- Being in an affair is complicated: I always ask the people that I know who smoke how can they afford $4 per pack, especially if they have a two pack a day habit? In that same respect, I've known people who were cheating on their girlfriend/boyfriend, and I don't how they could deal with it, just on a logistical level. I can barely deal with all of the complications involved with one relationship. So I think trying to keep up two, and keeping one of those two secret, would kill me. Yes, there would be the potential for loads of wild sex in motel rooms. But there's also constant lying, and constant making excuses for why you need to be away for hours on end. This is shown in Noah's hypocrisy while trying to do the right thing with his daughter Whitney (Julia Goldani Telles, Bunheads). In his recollection, he wanted her not to be an "asshole" anymore after she bullies a girl into attempted suicide. But Noah's reaction to the situation and everything he tells her about "not hurting people" applies to his affair with Alison. And when Helen eventually asks Noah why he doesn't ever want to have sex anymore, the hypocrisy, excuses, and lies grow even further.
- Noah's version of Alison: In Noah's recollections, Alison is a reflection of everything he dislikes about his in-laws and arguably his wife. For example, where Helen is the product of privilege that defers to the authority of her parents, Alison is working class. But most importantly, she represents a vehicle by which he can escape the parts of his life he hates. When Noah and Alison are screwing each other like bunnies, Noah starts talking about running away together. It's the sort of thoughts that people drunk on sex and the moment have before reality and proper brain function return after orgasm. In a lot of ways, Noah's story exhibits the classic attributes of a midlife crisis where people do stupid things in order to reclaim their youth and the things they believe may have passed them by.
- Alison's version of Noah: In Alison's version of events, she paints Noah as almost taking advantage of her at a weak time in her life. But Noah represents the exact opposite of Cole. Noah is the writer from the city, which contrasts against Cole, the rugged ranch owner. But she also sees in Noah stability absent in Cole. Noah is connected to a wealthy family, where her husband's family is drowning in debt and resorting to dealing drugs to make ends meet. Alison is still working a job she hates, while being sexually harassed by her asshole boss/ex-boyfriend. Just like Noah's perception of her as an opportunity to be the kind of person he wants to be, Alison created the same ideal with Noah.
Joshua Jackson as Cole and Ruth Wilson as Alison
- No fate but the one we create: In the present-day, Alison has a child and Noah is married. Whether he's married to Alison or still married to Helen hasn't been revealed yet. Although, we do see him talking to his son Trevor about his essay on racism in Huck Finn. However, at the end of the call, he says I'll call you tonight. That would seem to imply that he might not be living with his children.
- Are the two interviews about the same subject?: The detective in both interviews has given conflicting accounts of his marital status, claiming to be divorced and lost custody of his child to Noah and happily married for 25 years to Alison. Either he's lying to manipulate Noah and Alison, or the interviews are happening at different points in the future, possibly years apart. What if one of the interviews is about the murder of Scotty (Colin Donnell), and the other is about that plus something else that happens in the interim?
From Drew Grant at the New York Observer:
These two stories don’t even remotely match up. Like … at all. For a he said/she said, these two seem to be talking two different languages, and there are more differences than similarities. (Did Noah meet Alison after the town hall meeting or text her? Did they meet on the wharf or in the library?) These questions are relevant not just in their stories’ difference in tone but in facts … where they were, how they arranged to meet up, what was discussed. This hints less at collusion between the two, than an attempt to reconstruct an entire history…perhaps one is so wildly different from the other because the person telling it knows her lover isn’t around to object ... While Noah might harbor fantasies about Alison coming on to him instead of the other way around, his retelling involves various wacky details that still paint him as an arrogant shmuck. Meanwhile, Alison’s narrative is much more self-serving, where she is a victim from the danger hiding around every counter. Oscar sexually harasses her in a totally absurd way that literally makes non narrative sense; her brothers-in-law are all super menacing, and now she has this creepier Noah hanging around. Noah might make himself the hero of his own story, but Alison is determined that the detective view her as a victim of every man she’s ever met.