Joshua Jackson | Motion State Review

After last week’s episode of The Affair I had an acid flashback to the first season of Homeland. Appearances to the contrary as Noah and Alison lounge around Montauk for the summer, The Affair moves pretty quickly. They meet, they imagine themselves with each other, they make love, they make love a lot more, and then they fall in love. They also bring the affair to a screeching halt along the way, essentially calling it quits last week and then going one step further this week by telling their respective spouses about the whole thing. The Affair just deployed an entire series worth of plot in the first seven episodes.

Nevermind what season two or three or four could hold — what the hell could possibly even go down in the final three episodes of this rookie season? Aside from simply knowing that three more hours of story will be told, this seventh episode is concerned with that uncertain ending too. “Looks like you got away with it,” taunts Oscar as he proceeds to blackmail Noah. But no one, not Noah nor we viewers, actually believe that to be true.

Continue reading The Affair 1.7 →

The second hour of The Affair expands on the first episode not only by advancing the story with additional plot complications but, more importantly, by delving deeper into Noah and Alison and their present-day perceptions of the ill-fated affair. The biggest plot-point revelation is the purpose of the investigation that frames The Affair, that being tied to a murder case, and we already know a few bits and pieces of that crime. “Just trying to figure out if anyone might have had a motive to kill this fella,” the detective states, while Alison later mentions something about “whoever ran him down”. This is, of course, only the second episode of the show, so it’s tough to say how much of this is actually truth. Still, The Affair isn’t giving us these pieces for no reason.

And so we begin speculation early, using what we’ve been given so far. An obvious choice of victim would be Joshua Jackson’s Cole, Alison’s husband. If Noah and Alison engage in an affair that becomes increasingly involved, it’s only a matter of time before Cole finds out. This early in the game, that possibility could easily be a red herring. Could it be someone more minor, like Oscar the diner owner? Noah’s father-in-law, perhaps, using the discovery of the affair as blackmail material? The person who ends up being this “victim” might not even have been introduced yet, but it’s a fair bet that they crop up somewhere in season one.

Continue reading The Affair 1.2 →