The Affair

Los Angeles, California

SPOILER ALERT!

Awhile back, I wrote about the sudden death of Matthew Crawley on Downton Abbey. As an update, I did recover from that. But now, another one bites the dust, and that would be Alison Bailey on The Affair. An aside: my friend, Lynnette, tells a story about teasing her young niece that her pet rabbit would make a delicious meal (you'd have to know Lynnette to appreciate that this is funny). After taunting the six-year old niece about how the rabbit could be cooked (with white wine and herbs, I am assuming), this little six-year old responded: "Well! I didn't see that coming!" This has since become a well-used phrase in my vernacular, but never so appropriately applied as in response to the unexpected demise of Alison on The Affair.

I have had a love/hate relationship with The Affair, since its first season in 2014. I am not a series-watcher. I could count on one hand all of the non-PBS series I have watched in the last decade. I did not watch the Sopranos or Six Feet Under. I didn't watch Lost or 24, and I'm not about to watch Westworld, The Leftovers, or Sharp Objects. I did watch Big Little Lies because it was filmed around Carmel and Monterey and had an interesting cast. I hated it.

What I initially liked about The Affair was its presentation of point of view. In the beginning, the storyline, per episode, was told from the point of view of two of the main four characters. Hour-long episodes split in half, with the second half duplicating the same story as the first, but told from a different character's point of view. Changing the filter changes the story in both small, nuanced ways as well as more obviously. Clothing and furnishings, facial expressions, inflections in speech, all bind together to tell a different story. And the viewer is left in the middle with the various versions of the story in jigsaw-like pieces.

The series hasn't always been good. I threw up my hands in season two, it was so maddening. I criticized the writing that I had lauded in season one. The plot was now meandering all over the place, and I could barely make sense of it... until the season finale, where the solution to the murder mystery, strung out for two full seasons, was shockingly revealed. And that tied up the threads, and made sense out of what had seemed like a splintered season. But, by the end of season three, I was out. I felt the series had lost its way. However, by the time it rolled around again with season four, I found myself sneaking a peak, and subsequently, I was sucked back in. Season four ended last month following a tumultuous final three episodes.

Throughout those last few episodes, I found myself running a gamut of emotions. The third to last episode, where it was revealed that Alison had died, was a stunner. Alison was the centerpiece of the series which is hung on the shoulders of four characters who have been married and/or friends to each other in an  enmeshment of relationships. But, Alison, right from the get-go was understandably sad and suffering. And Ruth Wilson was so good at it. You didn't always like Alison. In fact, you don't always like any of them and that is the beauty and conceit of the writing. Just when you have had enough of these people, an episode shows you a character's vulnerability or tenderness. I flop around disliking them, then feeling varying degrees of empathy for them. By contrast, none of this happened for me with Big, Little Lies. The characters started as nasty and/or shallow people I didn't care about, and that impression stayed. Not so with The Affair. It is inspired writing to create characters with that much dimension to them.

A woman I knew once said that Diane Lane's character in Unfaithful made her hate her as well as the entire film. Why would we care about her, she lamented. She cheats on her husband with disastrous effects, then she feels bad. Huh? Madame Bovary..? ... Anna Karenina...? How about Graham Greene's The End of the Affair or Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, to name just a few. Perhaps we English majors developed a less narrow view of womankind through studying literature?

Alison was an adulterous wife... twice. She cheated on her husband before leaving him to marry her lover. Then she cheated on that husband with... wait for it... her ex-husband. You could write that off as a bad soap opera plot, except that the characters are so multidimensional. They are flawed, yet somehow balanced with sensitivity, pathos, and, yes, humanity. That is highlighting the human condition, and that is writing I envy. Alison alternately pissed me off and broke my heart. She was the victim who was always trying to shake her fist at those who had wronged or used her, and always trying to set herself right. But, alas, in the end, she was taken down. Although... although, we are not really sure about anything other than her death. For that we must wait until season five.

The penultimate (I've been overusing that word, I know, but I kinda like it) episode showed two perspectives as usual, but breaking with tradition, these were both Alison's. In the first, she was was not able to change her story as another character, Helen, had advised her. She was still succumbing to her attraction to damaged and dishonest men who offered her anything in the form of intimacy. In the second, dark episode she was changing her story, fighting back and ultimately railing against the man who was sinking her back into the ocean. In most of the episodes, you have this person's story, and that person's story, and the truth, which might be closer to one or the other but likely in the middle, or, more accurately, in the perspective of the viewer. In this episode, both perspectives are Alison's, and the truth... murky as the dark ocean water into which she was dropped. It was not an easy episode to watch.

And then we have the final episode, which didn't progress any further down the road than to show how all of the remaining characters, including secondary ones, are, in the words of Helen, so fu*%ing crazy. And yes, those characters are, and have always been so. But, as I take a quick mental inventory, I must write that so are many of us. It would take a multitude of blogposts to delineate the fu*%ing craziness I have seen amongst some of the people I have known. And I'm talking complex neuroses, eating disorders, hypervigilance bordering on obsessive behavior, even what seems like sociopathology (defined by the DSM as an Antisocial Personality Disorder (people who describe themselves as not being social?). Again, human condition. But, not going there, not here. Not now.

So, back to The Affair. For the evocative food for reflection that The Affair has given me, I am appreciative. Then again, I am always euphorically grateful for, as well as envious of, good writing. Especially when the product of that good writing sticks with me, and makes me think.

Thanks for tuning in here...