Is The Affair over?
The Affair — do you still care?
Some of us remain deeply enmeshed in Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi’s intricately structured and satisfyingly grownup Showtime drama about the endless aftershocks of what transpired between a married high school English teacher and a married Montauk waitress all those summers ago on Long Island, N.Y.
Showtime assures us that this fifth season will be the last, but every season of The Affair had a way of feeling like a final season — such was the show’s mastery of ambiguity and distance.
Constructed in a way as to always leave the objective truth in doubt, the series still does what it does best: offering wildly different perspectives on the same events, depending on which character’s viewpoint we’re watching.
It’s currently streaming on Crave in Canada.
We rejoin this unhappy bunch where we left them last year, in beachy Southern California, as an emotionally and physically exhausted Helen Solloway (Maura Tierney) endures the funeral and reception for her now-deceased second husband, Vic Ullah (Omar Metwally), while also accepting the fact that their dopey next-door neighbour, Sierra (Emily Browning), has just given birth to Vik’s son, the result of yet another affair.
If nothing else, The Affair is extra-accommodating of the notion that we all struggle as monogamous beings.
This show was never just about one affair, or even a singular kind of cheating.
It was about sex, but at its most consistent points, it was about emotional deceit.
It all comes full circle here. The Affair is certainly worth watching from the beginning, but if you start here, it will probably look mainly like fan service.
The first three episodes, made available for this review, are fine as they are, even if the loss of two of the show’s best characters and cast members (Ruth Wilson as Alison Bailey and Joshua Jackson as Cole Lockhart) is difficult to overcome.
As always, it takes The Affair several episodes to warm up — particularly as it fusses over extraneous characters from previous seasons.
Yet, to be entirely honest, I’d probably follow these characters for an indefinite number of seasons — partly because of the sucker that I am, but also because The Affair can never be completely considered down for the count.
On that note, the show cleverly takes a narrative detour that sends us a few decades into the future, where Joanie (Anna Paquin), the adult daughter of Cole and Alison, travels to Montauk.
It’s such an odd yet intriguing swerve, much in keeping with The Affair’s willingness to mess around.