Alison performs an autopsy on their relationship — on the affair, if you prefer — that is meticulous, honest, and in many respects accurate. “You were the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Noah tells her, trying to effect a rapprochement. “You’re rewriting history,” she replies. “You were bored and you felt trapped by Helen, the kids, your fucking father-in-law, and you wanted a fling, but you chose me.” That was his fatal mistake, in Alison’s view, because she was “too sad to abandon.” So he convinced himself he loved her, and she convinced herself she loved him “because I so desperately needed someone to take me away. I used you, and you used me too. That’s what happened between us.” She breaks things down with the just-the-facts precision of a scientist.
Now, it may not be the most charitable read of things. For his part, Noah asks her later to please believe that it really was love on his end, while she says “I have these moments of such darkness, I don’t know how I’ll get past them. I seem to be making one bad decision after another” — a person who feels that way about herself is of course disinclined to be charitable to her own emotions and motivations. But this is how she feels about things now, and there’s no conscious dissembling or even wishful thinking going on here, no more so than when she tells him she worries she can never be a good mother. This is her truth.
I reviewed this week’s episode of The Affair for Decider.
Tags: decider, reviews, the affair, TV, TV reviews