The Affair. Good until right before the last drop

As most of you know, from my previous article, I had made a pledge to watch a number of the shows that won for various awards at the Golden Globes, with The Affair being one of them

Created by Hagai Levi and Sarah Treem, The Affair stars Dominic West as Noah Solloway, a struggling writer and public school teacher who takes a trip with is family away from Brooklyn to Montague. Along the way, Noah encounters Alison Bailey (Ruth Wilson) a lowly waitress who is struggling with the death of her 4 year old, only 2 years past, and her rocky marriage to her husband Cole (Joshua Jackson). Through chance encounters and an eventual somewhat incestual mingling of story lines, Alison tempts Noah away from his wife, Helen (Maura Tierney) and vice versa. The show is done in a stylistic fashion in which these two individuals have the affair shown from their perspective points of view as each episode is broken into two parts. Sometimes, the story is repeated but from different points of view, sometimes it is continued on from different perspectives, and sometimes the order is flipped.

The writing and storytelling within this show is incredibly powerful where moments leave each character respectively and realistically speechless and various props are brought up again, the note in a bicycle, the panties on the floor. Very little is forgotten within this show and the actors themselves leave very little behind, with Joshua Jackson and Ruth Wilson displaying their aptitude as actors that I haven't seen from them before.

Most notably, Ruth Wilson commands the screen in her role switches, playing the eager cheater in Noah's storyline and playing the diminished broken flower within her own storyline. This actress often dances between both character types quite effectively, often displaying both characters in one storyline until they become truly merged until the end.

The biggest and most problematic qualm I have with this show is the finale. Throughout the series, there are cuts between the present and the past as Noah and Alison are telling each their own story, but there is a foreshadowing and references of things to come. Things that the viewer does not find out in its entirety this season, which is incredibly frustrating. This is because The Affair is built like a mini-series, but it isn't. And the most frustrating part, it could have made a great mini-series. It's as if the writer and creators found out that the show was getting a second season, while writing the finale. Because it feels as if so much is about to be revealed and it isn't. And it is extremely frustrating because it's as if the viewer has been galloping towards the end, I know I did I binged the last three episodes, only to be told, "Welp, sorry. Not going to happen right now".

I liked this show, it is incredibly original and well-written, the problem lies in the finale and the problem will continue if the writers continue to use the same formatting throughout the seasons. No longer will it be original, but tedious and boring.