A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend, Nandita, when the topic of this column came up. “You should watch The Affair ,” she told me. “It’s the only show I watch, and I love it.” Now, Nandita is someone who works close to 14 hours a day, and has a really active preschooler at home; so, if she was making time for a show, I knew it was going to be a good one.
The Affair , as the name suggests, deals with the murky aftermath of an extramarital affair between a teacher (and writer) and a diner waitress. Noah Solloway (Dominic West), to the rest of the world, has a perfect life — he has been married for the last twenty years to his college sweetheart, Helen, has four children and lives in a beautiful mansion in an upmarket area in New York City (so what if it’s been paid for by his wealthy father-in-law?). Unfortunately, Noah is unhappy. Something about his life feels incomplete, and fate introduces him to Alison Bailey (Ruth Wilson), a beautiful waitress with a mysterious past. What happens next, of course, is all too predictable.
Lavanya Mohan What makes the screenplay really interesting, enigmatic even, is the fact that each episode has “parts”, where events unfold from one character’s perspective, complete with their own memory biases. It’s what they remember from that day, and those events. As a viewer, you really have no idea of what is true, and what is not, because there is no objectivity anywhere. In the parts where it’s Noah’s recollection of events, Alison seems cold, while he comes across as a struggling writer, dripping with love, who’s trying to get his life together. In Alison’s, he’s mostly a selfish idiot. Similarly, Helen comes across as an Upper Eastside brat from Noah’s perspective, but when you see hers, the story takes a different turn.
There is bias everywhere, and the characters are much more than what meets the eye — one minute you think you’ve figured them out, and the next, you’re proven wrong about them. It’s completely engrossing, and at times, consuming. The Affair is one show you’re going to want to be in a relationship with.
(Season 2 of The Affair is presently being telecast on FX India.)
