Should You Sneak Out To Fool Around With The Affair?

What Is This Thing?

Noah and Helen Solloway and their too-many kids leave Manhattan for the Hamptons, to spend the summer with Helen's rich parents. On their way, their path crosses that of Alison, a diner waitress still wounded from a recent tragedy. Then Noah and Alison run into each other again on the beach...and keep running into each other, apparently.

When Is It On?

Sundays at 10 PM on Showtime.

Why Was It Made Now?

I hardly need tell you that infidelity is an evergreen topic for exploration in movies and TV. But maybe Showtime, in particular, is trying to do penance for Californication and Ray Donovan by coming at it (so to speak) from a perspective that gives some agency to female characters, FOR A CHANGE.

What's Its Pedigree?

Series creator/sometime playwright Sarah Treem is a veteran of premium-cable TV: she's previously worked on How To Make It In America, House Of Cards, and In Treatment. The last of these marked her first professional collaboration with Hagai Levi, who adapted it from his original Israeli series, and Levi and Treem are both credited as executive producers here (though Treem seems to have done more of the actual writing). Our four leads are all TV veterans: Noah and Helen are played by Dominic West (of The Wire and many British TV movies) and Maura Tierney (NewsRadio, ER). Ruth Wilson, late of Luther, plays Alison, while her husband Cole was tested as a youngster on Dawson's Creek, and as a less-youngster on Fringe. The suddenly-everywhere John Doman doesn't stretch far from his work as McNulty's antagonist on The Wire: here he's Noah's awesomely prickish father-in-law, Bruce. Journeywoman character actors Mare Winningham and Kathleen Chalfant are also on hand to play Cole's and Helen's mothers, and Bunheads alumna Julia Goldani Telles plays Whitney, Helen and Noah's surly eldest daughter.

...And?

Not very long ago, I complained about the preponderance of premium-cable husbands who cheat on their wives, and I stand by that. It is, by now, a very hack way for writers to indicate all the usual baloney about male characters: their shrewish or otherwise disappointing wives have driven them to it; their outsize appetites, like their ambitions, cannot be contained; women can't stop throwing themselves at them because their anti-heroism is so magnetic and undeniable even if, to the rest of us, they're just regular middle-aged blandos who look like their teeth are hurting them, MARTY HART.

On paper, Noah Solloway slots into the first of these categories: his wife has disappointed him by making him spend time with his rich in-laws -- which is particularly problematic since Noah is a barely published novelist while his father-in-law can't stop selling his novels for film adaptations and, to hear him tell it, literally has more money than he knows what to do with so he figures he might as well throw some of it at Helen to buy a brownstone since Noah's anemic book sales aren't going to get them there. Helen also disappoints Noah by letting their young son interrupt their fucking and climb into bed with them after a nightmare. And was that a soft tummy I detected under her t-shirt? After she's only had FOUR of his children? How dare she.

But somehow, despite all the attributes that could make him really boring to me, Noah earns our attention. West is playing a character here that isn't quite the polar opposite of The Wire's Jimmy McNulty, but at least doesn't share McNulty's louche charm. West is six feet tall (real tall for an actor), yet Noah doesn't seem like he takes up that much space in the world, and at the point when we meet him, maybe wouldn't mind if it were even less. All cheating spouses are, by definition, restless, but West makes Noah's restlessness feel both credible and potentially dangerous.

Also intriguing is the show's structure: in the pilot, we spend the first half with Noah and follow the story of his day from his perspective; then we wake up with Alison and see how the day went for her. The points where their stories intersect are different depending on whose point of view we're sharing, and it will be interesting as the season goes on to see if the deviations of memory always favour the character we're shadowing; in the series premiere, each of Noah's and Alison's recollections or portrayals of how their relationship developed on the first day they knew each other makes the other look like the aggressor. Which is true? WE'LL NEVER KNOW, GUYS, THIS IS SOME DEEP SHIT.

...But?

Alison and Cole's relationship is informed by a recent tragedy: they lost their son, and on the day we meet Alison, it's his birthday. As one might expect, she's kind of emotional about it, but Cole has decided that he's ready to stop mourning and move forward -- his mom has tried to help by inviting the rest of his large, warm family over for dinner as a distraction -- and when Alison lets him down by showing up late, he's cold to her, and then lets some other chippie drive him home, so maybe he's got restlessness of his own. This is all dramatically effective and makes sense for the characters even given the little we know about them; the problem is that Cole's big scene in the premiere involves him getting aggressive with her about her lingering sadness, but Joshua Jackson is such a lovable sweetheart that seeing him trying to play the domineering husband caused me a lot of cognitive dissonance. The scene calls for a certain degree of menace and threat, and I'm sorry -- maybe I'll get there after I've seen more of Cole -- but I just can't believe that Pacey even might hit a woman.

There's also the matter of Noah and Helen's kids, who inspired this tweet when I watched the series premiere earlier this week.

Every child on scripted TV is a shithead.

— Tara Ariano (@TaraAriano) October 5, 2014

When the family is running around trying to get out the door for the drive to the Hamptons, the older plays a "joke" so horrifying -- which I won't spoil -- that I honestly can't think of anything the character could do to bring me back to his side or, frankly, care about him at all. And I get that we're supposed to get a glimpse into Whitney's private pain when they arrive at Helen's parents' house, Helen complains that Whitney didn't eat anything, and Helen's mother promises that if she loses a few pounds, Helen's mother will take her to Paris. Whitney's still a dick, though. Enough with the bratty teenagers on TV. "But that's what teenagers are really like!" I know that's true and it's why I don't hang out with any.

There's also a framing device around Noah and Alison telling their versions of how they met to what turns out to be a detective, so we're careening toward the reveal of some kind of crime, and if it's that someone murdered Helen, I will be pissed. Hands off Maura Tierney, you cheating jerks. She's TV's Catherine Keener. We need her.

Finally: the accents. West's American accent actually seems better than it was circa The Wire, or else maybe I have Stockholm Syndrome and have just accepted that it's how he talks. But I'm concerned that the storyline will frequently involve him and Wilson talking to each other without any actual Americans in the scene with them because I'm concerned that they're just going to reinforce each other's bad habits.

...So?

I like how formally unique it is, and though the crime part gives me pause, I'm still very interested to see where these characters go.