They're Not Booing, They're Saying 'Bruuuuuuuuce!'

The premise of The Affair is that two unhappy married people met and after not very long started boning each other in a desperate and self-destructive attempt to escape all the people and circumstances that had been oppressing them. In the case of Noah, the unhappy married man, one of the people oppressing him was his father-in-law Bruce -- and that oppression is revived in the latest episode, with Noah volunteering to represent the Solloways at a literary event where Bruce is to be fêted and causing a fight with Helen. But you know whose fault that WASN'T? Bruce's. Maybe everyone should give Bruce a damn break.

Bruce Butler is a mega-bestselling author who has used some of his millions of dollars to purchase (or, more likely, build) a stunning house in the Hamptons that he opens up to his daughter, her husband, and their kids. This Bruce does even though fully 50% of his daughter's kids are 100% garbage, and her husband just mopes around with a puss on his face, being ungrateful of Bruce's largesse and resentful of his success. Well, you know what, Noah? Bruce didn't sell thousands and thousands of books to spite you. It wasn't personal. He wanted people to buy his books, just like you did when you wrote your one. It's not Bruce's fault that yours didn't sell. It's no reason to let the organic blueberries Bruce bought for your breakfast turn to ashes in your mouth.

Some will say that Bruce is a scumbag because of the way he controls his daughter and her family with his money. And sure, raising four children in New York City is expensive, and if you, like Helen, want to project a certain image by sending at least one of them (and maybe more) to private school, then it's going to take more cash than a teacher at a public high school and the dilettante owner of a tchotchke store can scrape together. But there's actually a pretty foolproof way for the Solloways to avoid giving Bruce any say over their household finances, which would be not to keep it afloat with his money. You know who probably didn't tell Helen and Noah to have four children? MY MAN BRUCE.

I guess we're also supposed to think Bruce is a bad person because he cheated on his wife, to which I have two rebuttals. One is that Margaret, his wife, is a fucking asshole. Remember in the series premiere when she congratulated the painfully skinny Whitney for not eating lunch and promised that if she lost five MORE pounds she'd take her to Paris? Last week's episode featured a snippet of a Vanity Fair article about Bruce that claimed Margaret was practically a co-writer on all of Bruce's books, which we have no reason to believe based on what we've seen of her. Long story short: I'd cheat on her too.

My second rebuttal is that another guy who's cheating on his wife is OUR ALLEGED HERO. Which is why the scene this week in which Bruce called out Noah for having this particular failing in common with Bruce hits so hard. It's been clear from the start that Noah thinks he's Bruce's literary superior; now he has to face the fact that he may not be Bruce's moral superior, and for him to have to hear a "We're not so different, you and I" speech from Bruce is just delicious.

Bruce is definitely not a great dad or grandfather; he's not a great person, overall. But the people around him who keep judging him are hardly any better themselves -- particularly Noah, his harshest critic. Bruce is just a rich dickhead trying to do his best in a complicated world! ...Okay, even I don't think he's trying to do his best. But he is just trying to have as nice a life as his fortune will allow, and as such is as close to an aspirational character as this depress-athon of a show has offered us. Bruce: keep doing what you're doing. And since none of your relatives deserves it, please leave your beautiful house to me.