The Affair Episode 2, Season 2 – Let’s Discuss!

So begins the introduction of 4 perspectives and a new one – Cole. Oh, do I love this season already….

PART THREE: ALISON

The exact same day opens from episode 1 but this time from Alison’s point of view.  Noah wakes Alison before he leaves to meet Harry. Alison is annoyed that Harry doesn’t know she is staying with Noah and she asks Noah “who am I to you?” He tells her she is the best thing that ever happened to him and we hear for the first time they say the three magic words “I LOVE YOU.”

The toilet is broken (remember first scene of episode 1) and Alison resorts to peeing outside.  She could have at least brought some toilet paper.

THE MANUSCRIPT

Having nothing to do, Alison walks around the house and stares at the manuscript Noah left on his desk. She flips a page and sees that the book is dedicated to her. At this point she has a choice, to read it or not to read it. I will tell your right now I would be 100% guilty of reading that entire manuscript front to back. But she respects his wishes and picks up another book instead. Still not interested, she decides to walk to town which is 6 miles away.

TOWN

Who decides to WALK 6 miles to town in sandals? Thankfully Robert shows up and gives her lift and they have a nice little conversation.  When Robert offers to pick her up after her town visit, she tells him she can’t contact him because she has no cell phone. Ok, I know she is a small town girl but who doesn’t bring a phone when they were going to walk 6 miles to town. I was hoping she would buy a pair of sneakers when she got to town, not band-aids.

After she bandages her foot, she notices two boys playing soccer one of which reminds her of her son. She tries not to think about it but I can only imagine hard it must be not to think about the loss of your child day in and day out. Can someone please recommend she start seeing a therapist?

Alison walks the 6 miles back home and notices her bike from Montauk is sitting at her front door. (Thankfully, she won’t have to walk to town anymore).

COLE

Alison walks inside to find Cole standing by Noah’s desk reading his manuscript. Alison, obviously very unhappy, wants to know how he found her. He tells her he got the address from Jane and he just came to he bring Alison her stuff. So sweet of him to drive 4 hours to bring her belongings. She is not interested in shooting the shit so he tells her he only has one question for her – “WHERE IS YOUR TOILET?” Ha, the toilet again. Of course Cole offers to fix it, makes a point that Noah doesn’t even have tools (he’s not manly enough) but Cole will grab his from the truck. (I thought he drove a taxi cab to her house as we see later in Cole’s perspective?)

Alison quickly hides the manuscript in the drawer.

YVONNE

As Cole is upstairs fixing the toilet, Robert’s wife Yvonne stops by with a welcome basket. Yvonne (sort of resembles Cher, right?) really needs to get rid of that hat. It is gd awful. As luck would have it, Yvonne coincidentally stops by to finally greet Alison when Cole makes a surprise visit. Alison is definitely bugging out and hardly cares about the cider Yvonne brought her from the Fall harvest.  Yvonne asks Alison if she read Noah’s book and when she chuckles no, Yvonne begins to say something very telling “It’s a horrible thing to love a writer. All their secret worlds, their fantasies.” And then Cole appears. UGH. At least Alison is honest and tells Yvonne that he came to drop some of her things and he fixed the toilet. But when he comes back from the truck after saying his goodbyes with “the most important piece of the puzzle” (Gabriel’s trunk), I am not sure Alison can take it much longer.  Yvonne, tensing that all is not okay, invites Alison for tea. Alison is not sure what to do with her son’s possessions and hides his stuff in the armour. Do you notice the parallel of taking and returning belongings from a move (remember episode 1 with Noah & Margaret?) Also we find out Alison and Noah have been living in the guest house for a month.

YVONNE & ROBERT’S HOUSE

Their house is GORGEOUS.  Yvonne compares their home to a marriage ” you have to be in it for the long haul if you ever want to see it come together.” Is she trying to tell Alison something? Full of innuendos that Yvonne. Funny also how Yvonne says “you must have had a good upbringing” to Alison.  HA! How ironic. Remember Alison’s mom? Not the best mother by a long shot.

Alison makes small talk with Yvonne and Robert and we find out a few things in this little conversation

1. Alison is 32
2. Yvonne is the head of Radford House (a major publishing company).
3. Alison takes a job as their personal assistant which she clearly needs before she goes bonkers from boredom

NOAH

Sarah Treem hands us this scene from an entirely different perspective. Interesting enough, Noah doesn’t walk in and stare at Alison lustfully as we saw in Episode 1. She is not wearing that pretty dress with no bra. She has a cookbook open to a recipe (episode 1 she seemed to have just thrown that gorgeous dinner together). Noah is quiet and not so nice.  For example when he asks what she is cooking and she responds “DOVER SOLE,” he asks obnoxiously “does that taste fishy?” My first thought was is he kidding? He was married to Helen for 25 years and he never ate Dover Sole?  (please…by the way, on a side note, you should def try The Clocktower’s in NYC  if you are a fan of Dover sole…go on a occassion though, its $62..yikes).

Noah confesses to his “shit day,”  exclaiming, “the mediator was a burnout, Whitney won’t speak to me, my mother in law’s homicidal, and Harry hates my book. He is not going to publish it, so in a month I will be broke, jobless, homeless and I will have lost custody of my kids.” WAIT WHAT?? Harry is NOT going to publish his book?? Did we get that sense when Noah met with Harry? It seemed he just hated the ending. Will Yvonne end up publishing Noah’s book??

Noah is worried about money because he casually throws in the status of Alison selling her home. Then Noah notices his manuscript is not sitting on the desk where he left it. If he only knew Cole was flipping through it a few hours ago.  Alison tries to lighten up the conversation by telling Noah she got a job as Yvonne’s personal assistant which Noah goes ape shit about. (Notice here that he never asks Alison how her day was, she simply tells him). He thinks its inappropriate for Alison to be Yvonne’s personal assistant because he is their guest. (Also odd that he never told Alison who Robert & Yvonne were all this time). He can’t deal with this any of it and storms outside.  But quickly realizes he is an asshole. He walks back in to apologize, acknowledges how hard this situation is and fucks Alison on the kitchen counter. Because, you know, sex always makes everything better….even if your hand winds up in the salad bowl.

 

After a 3 minute quickie, Noah cleans up for dinner and mentions that the toilet works. He asks Alison if Yvonne called the plumber to which Alison lies about because there is no shot she was telling him COLE fixed it. Wonder if he will ever find out?

They toast “TO US” and we move to the future.

FUTURE – PRECINCT

Flash forward to Alison arriving at the precinct with baby in tow.  She looks fantastic if I do say so myself. Alison runs into Noah’s lawyer, Jon Gottlief. He has no idea who she is but when she introduces herself, he remarks “Ah. The famous Ms. Alison Bailey” (in a very dickish tone).  Gottlief introduces himself but Alison already know who he is. Although she did not know that Helen hired him to represent Noah. She is NOT HAPPY about this at all as Alison is Noah’s wife now and all decisions need to go through her. Jon is an asshole to her (not sure why yet) and his last remarks are “I am sure this will work out it exactly how it….should.” Hmmmmm (seems as though there is a little history here we have are not fortunate yet to know about)

PART 4: COLE

BRUCE BUTLER

We are back in Montauk where Cole is job driving a taxi cab since he lost the ranch. Wouldn’t you know it, Helen’s father, Bruce Butler,  gets in his taxi. Cole knows the minute Bruce says “64 Elizabeth Lane, Montauk” who is sitting in his backseat. Now this is my question, if Bruce lived there for 40 years how in the world does he not recognize Cole? For gd sake, Cole was born and raised in Montauk. It is a very small town.  Plus his son in-law left his daughter for Cole’s wife! Seems totally absurd. But anyway…Bruce talks about Montauk as if Cole has no clue. This whole conversation seems ridiculous to me but I loved the monologue when Bruce reminisces about the golden days of Montauk:

“I love the colors in the fall and the fallow fields in the winter. The way the ocean changes like a moody woman. Bright and Blue one moment, cold and gray the next. It’s just not the same anymore and it will never go back. That is the terrible thing about living. You never get to go back no matter how badly you miss it. Just gotta keep moving forward. (beautifully written, Sarah)

And then Bruce drops the bomb. He’s leaving his wife (Thank fucking gd). Margaret sucks. I mean he is no saint either but she is like the wicked witch. I am at loss here though, why in the world would any guy tell his cab driver that his son left his daughter recently? Cole must be freaking out inside. Especially when Bruce remarks, “if Noah deserves to be happy, why shouldn’t I?” (LOL). Oh sure if his ex son-law deserves to be with the woman he cheated on his daughter with, why shouldn’t he be happy? PUH-LEASE.

Turns out Bruce tracked down a girl he used to see, went to Barcelona for the weekend with her and now they are in love. Remember Bruce spoke to Noah about this lost love in Season 1??

He rambles on about how he wasted 40 years of his life married to a woman he didn’t love.

After he drops Bruce off at his home, Cole backs up and almost runs over a little boy. He gets out to apologize to whom he thinks is the mother of this boy but its the babysitter, Luisa. A very very pretty babysitter. I am sure that is not the last time we will see Luisa. Who is this little boy anyway and what is his relation to Bruce?

BLUE WATER TAXI

Cole has now been driving for 24 hours and checks into the taxi dispatch.  He desperately needs sleep and looks like a hot mess. He runs into Scotty, who is still alive at this point, on his way out of the dispatch.  Cole wants nothing to do with him or his family.  Scotty inquires about the sale of his house (remember this is Alison’s families, not Cole’s, home although legally by marriage they each get half of the sale). Apparently their mom is not doing well and Mary Kate is prego. Cole doesn’t want to hear it and threatens to run Scotty over if he doesn’t get out-of-the-way. Too soon, Scotty, your day is coming…

JANE

Cole arrives home and notices a person walking around his house. At first he thinks its Alison but it’s Jane. He pushes Jane into admitting where Alison is living so Cole can deliver Alison’s possessions.  It’s quite obvious how much Cole misses Alison. He can’t even sleep in their house. He resorts to sleeping in the trailer in the driveway. Come on Cole, get your shit together. Sell the house and move on!

PRIVATE LANDSCAPE ARTIST

Cole is stuck driving around drunk, rich East Hampton girls around town. I think it was a little extreme to have a piss drunk private landscape artist hit on a taxi driver (even though Cole is so hot or as she puts it “so very masculine”) but we know Treem was trying to make a point. Cole has hit rock bottom and resorts to coke to rally through another shift after almost falling asleep at the wheel.

CAFE

Cole drives to Cold Springs (in a taxi cab, not a truck like I stated above) to hand deliver Alison’s belongings. There was definitely no bike in that taxi cab. Ironically he is in the same cafe with the same waitress Alison visited on her walk to town. Cole spots Noah from the cafe window and pretends to shoot him through the window.

ALISON

 

Cole arrives at Alison’s empty home (remember she is supposed to be in town) and lets himself in even though nobody is home. He sees Noah’s manuscript but does not read it like we see him doing when Alison enters from her POV.  Alison walks in wearing a very different outfit (pants and a sweater). She is not wearing that horrific blue partridge family dress and she is not sweating from walking 6 miles home.  In fact, in Cole’s delirium, Alison is HAPPY to see him. She is worried about him, offers to make him eggs (WHAT?), and brings up old times. Oh Cole, I am so sorry this is how you remember it. So sweet and so different. Cole asks Alison if she is ever coming home and she replies “I don’t think so.” A much gentler goodbye. Do you realize how Cole never meets Yvonne and there is no hand off of Gabriel’s trunk?

FUTURE – PRECINCT

Here’s the Cole we love and remember. Damn he looks hot. No more belly (although he could lose that beard) but that button down does it for me. (I love a guy in a button down – no idea why – but the good, expensive kind (Isaia, Zegna). Not those cheesy ones with the weird print on their cuffs. Add some cufflinks or roll up your sleeves and take me to bed 🙂

Cole runs into Alison and “her” daughter, Joanie. ( Joanie is a much cuter baby than Carrie’s baby, Frannie, from Homeland). Joanie, Frannie… where do they come up with these baby names? How about Sophie or Charlie?   By the way, we never discussed that Helen’s daughter is named Stacy. (just doesn’t seem to fit with Trevor, Martin and Whitney, right?)

Anyway, we are in the court room and the judge announces Noah’s charges: Obstruction of justice, leaving the scene of a crime and vehicular homicide with a $500,000 bail.  Noah is ushered off looking frightened and then the scene closes with Cole glancing over at Alison with a look on his face I could not figure out. Is he still in love with Alison or does he think Alison is involved in Scotty’s death?

That’s a wrap!!! Until next week…

I didn’t watch Homeland yet because I was away visiting the world of Harry Potter but will try to put a recap together this week!

xx

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