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TV Show Reviews
"The
Affair" review by
Sundi
10/12/14
Airs Sundays at 10pm on Showtime
I’m not going to lie, Showtime got me with the promos for their new Sunday night drama
"The
Affair". They were pushing this as a sexy, infidelity story À la USA’s "Satisfaction", but what they
gave us was much more "Gone Girl" than steamy night time soap.
Don’t mistake my surprise for disdain, however. Going in, I knew I was going to get a lot of R-rated
sex (think about some of the sex scenes in "Ray Donovan"), but I didn’t think I was going to
get as much emotional nuance and pain. Without giving away any spoilers. this show is not just
about cheating spouses.
The show features Dominic West and Maura Tierny as Noah and Helen, a successful middle-class
couple with four children that go to a seaside town for summer vacation. They arrive in town
and eat lunch at a diner, where Alison Lockhart, played by Ruth Wilson, is a waitress. Alison is
married to Cole, played by Joshua Jackson, and their marriage is complicated by events that
happened before we met the duo.
What is most fascinating about this show is that its events are told several times, from different
perspectives, and it offers the audience the chance to see the varying interpretations of the
same events, usually varying by gender.
In a time in pop culture where the opposite sexes are often pitted against each other, this
seems like a show that is meant to contribute to the conversation about how differently men and
women see things.
Showtime is good at giving us what we think we want (provocative sex scenes and juicy, dramatic
plot twists), but it's also really great at couching important subtext within that.
"The Affair" is an
example of them pushing one thing, but delivering another, and I mean that in the best possible
way. This show is amazing and has the potential to be one of the most important shows on
television. Don’t get left out, folks.
For more of my thoughts and opinions about the
shows I watch, visit my blog at Entertainment
Weekly’s
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