The only place Helen finds comfort that isn’t weed-scented is her kids. Wearing a lived-in t-shirt that makes her look physically as well as emotionally at ease, she turns their glum family dinner around with a self-deprecating quip or two; she seems at home, in other words. Strangely, the only other moment she truly comes across as satisfied she’s doing the right thing is when, in the flash-forward, she goes to the jailhouse to pay for Noah’s lawyer. The implication may well be that this reflects her own self-interest, that she knows more about Scotty’s death than we’ve ever suspected. But could it also indicate her self-conception as a woman far more at ease with being selfless than with being selfish? Isn’t this — the different yet equally self-defeating forms of martyr virtue men and women allow themselves to embody — what The Affair is really all about?
My fellow critic Meghan O’Keefe and I will be tag-team reviewing The Affair, one of my favorite shows, for Decider this season—she’ll handle the men’s points of view and I’ll be examining the women’s. We started with last night’s season premiere.
Tags: decider, reviews, the affair, TV, TV reviews