JUST FINISHED WATCHING: THE AFFAIR (2014-2019)

JUST FINISHED WATCHING: THE AFFAIR (2014-2019)

A struggling novelist and a young waitress strike up an extramarital relationship that promises to forever change the course of their lives.

TRIVIA: The role of Noah was written for Dominic West from the beginning, who originally turned it down.

The Lobster Roll restaurant actually exists in Montauk, but is closed in the winter.

Star Ruth Wilson shocked people when she abruptly quit the show before its final season in the summer of 2018. When reporters pressed her for an explanation, all she said was "It isn't about pay parity, and it wasn't about other jobs," Wilson told The New York Times. "I'm not really allowed to talk about it. There is a much bigger story." To get to the bottom of what happened, The Hollywood Reporter interviewed numerous insiders, and then it published the untold story of why Wilson left. The actress, who is restrained by an NDA, knew her role on the adult drama would involve showing some skin, but she felt the frequency and nature of her nude scenes were gratuitous. The production team was also reportedly sloppy about protecting actors' privacy on a number of occasions. "There sometimes were people there who didn't need to be, or the monitor was in plain view," an insider told THR. Another source alleged that a complaint was raised after a monitor was left on and someone not involved with the production was able to watch them shoot an on-location sex scene. Wilson finally negotiated her exit from The Affair after a shocking account of a drunken run-in with the show's executive producer and frequent director Jeffrey Reiner was published on the now-shuttered website Lenny Letter in 2016. Allegedly, Reiner crossed paths with Jenni Konner and Lena Dunham in the Hamptons and tried to persuade the "Girls" star to have dinner alone with Wilson, to convince her to "show her tits, or at least some vag" on his show. Then, Reiner allegedly pulled out his phone and showed off a photo of Maura Tierney, another star of The Affair, with a nude male actor's penis near her face. Evidently, it was meant to prove to Dunham the show had an equal male-to-female nudity ratio. Wilson raised a complaint with Showtime in early 2017 alleging The Affair was a "hostile work environment," and the network's parent company CBS opened an internal investigation sometime after. According to THR, the Reiner incident gave the actress the leverage she needed to negotiate her exit from the show. She reportedly received a substantial payout, shot all her scenes in the fourth season early, and refused to share a set with show runner Sarah Treem.

The series was co-created by Hagai Levi and Sarah Treem. However, Levi retired from writing the series during the second season. His stated reason was that the show was moving away from what he had envisioned. Treem was therefore "the best person" to author the show from that point on.

The last names of Cole and Alison is Lockhart. That is also the same last name of Maura Tierney's character on "ER," Abby Lockhart.

MY VERDICT:

I really loved this show. It has some questionable ethics to it behind the scenes and in some ways in front of the camera, but I don’t think that should take away from what I feel like the show was trying to do.

It’s an exploration of relationships, of marriage, of gender and of life in general. Maybe I’m exaggerating in some ways but watching this has really caused me to think about the big questions.

In places the direction of the show was odd, but I feel like as a whole it is a great piece of television.

I love the theme that it started out on – to explore how different people see different situations, how the exact same thing can be interpreted in so many different ways. It made me think about little things like how I notice things but a lot of people don’t. Like if you’ve got a small hole in your tights some people won’t notice it, some people won’t even remember that you wore tights, some people will remember your outfit as completely different and that, in theory, if someone hates you they might always see you with holes in your tights. That kind of observation is very interesting to me. In the later series they veer away from this so overtly but are always telling stories from very specific point of views that I enjoyed watching.

For the record Helen is my favourite character and even though she makes some questionable decisions along the way I think Maura Tierney's acting is so great that you always understand her actions and are often on her side, even when you don’t agree with what she’s doing.

Noah on the over hand is my least favourite character, not only because he lies and cheats but also because he always expects to be forgiven, and the most annoying thing is often he is. Even more frustrating than that is that he seems to believe he is the most important character in everyone’s story. And the reason he has an affair is not clear to me at all. 

But the exploration of all the characters are still believable and interesting all the way to the end, which honestly gets a little weird.

I had already watched this show all the way through once but only up to season 4 as I didn’t know there was or at the time going to be a 5th season. Was it needed? I’m not sure, there are definitely some heart-warming moments in there but also some more ways in which Noah can get himself in trouble.

I cried several times during the show, it’s an emotional one, I wept at the end. I don’t know why, it’s not even clear to me. I will miss these characters though, they feel very real to me, whether I like them or not. 

 You can watch The Affair here…