In the middle of this episode Alison is presented with the story of a girl who Dr. Henry treated, who cracked her jaw open two times doing the same thing. The girl felt awful about it until Henry told her about another girl who cracked her jaw open four time and it still looked beautiful. And even if Noah and Alison continue to crack their jaws here as they make the same mistakes, they shouldn’t give up because there’s always going to be someone else who has done it worse, and somehow persevered. This very much feels like the darkest point for these characters and the coldest the show has gone, so it’s more crucial than ever that they continue hanging on. The question is whether they’ll be able to, or just be left with a crooked, ugly jaw that’s their future. Granted, it’s through the lens of Alison, who has almost entirely been a questionable character and source, and so the material should be treated as such, but I stared at the screen with my mouth agape in disgust as Noah takes Alison to his home to have sex with her in Helen’s bed. He talks about renting an apartment that they’ll move into together once he moves out, and you can’t believe how far everyone has backslid, especially with the progress made last week. The entire time you’re also anxious, just knowing that Helen and the family are going to come home early and find him having sex with Alison while fawning over a future that doesn’t include them. He dreads the fact that Alison has to leave soon, and even though this is all coming from her perspective, where he suggests all of these things (and we’re not shown the initiation of it on his alternative side), while she tries to be as respectful as someone can be when they’re having sex with someone else’s husband, you’re still left disgusted with him. If this is to be looked at like horror, then Alison is most definitely some Final Girl that’s being chased by a slasher, because literally at every turn here she’s being attacked and forced to retreat. The promise of moving in together with Noah is guarded by lengthy postponements and a mistress’ apartment, and suddenly Alison comes to the realization that Noah might be having sex with her again, but this isn’t going anywhere, and he’s just trying to appease her. The corresponding confrontation between Alison and Cole’s mother is grueling at she chews Alison out, even going as far as saying that Gabriel’s death was her fault. “It should have been you,” she says to her, eerily detached, as more safety nets continue to tear apart. It’s overwhelming just to watch it, and that’s before Alison returns to self-harming, going a little too far and needing to see Dr. Henry. She ruminates on the events of Gabriel’s death, and when she even hopes to find some false comfort in the idea of Heaven, Henry shoots this down too, saying that he doesn’t believe in it, as more air is let out of Alison’s safety balloon. It’s crucial that the Final Girl never gives up, just like that girl with the broken jaw, and even though it feels like Alison’s story is going to end with her wet, alone, and lost in the sorrows of the past, triumphantly she manages to rise above it all. She gets the strength to be honest and have agency, and when she declares that she wants to live and needs to leave Cole, it’s beautiful. Alison survives here. And even with the final kink in her story, she’s still managed to pull herself out of the bottom. While Noah’s side doesn’t exactly read like a horror film, he might not exactly be the one trying to weave a narrative where he looks like a victim. On Noah’s side of events he is rushed, he completely changes demeanor when Alison is gone as if he’s putting on an act with her, and is not so head over heels with Alison as she implied. Not only does Noah not bring up the topic of a second apartment and leaving his family, he also doesn’t walk her to the station and they don’t have the colossal fight that indicates that they’re over, like she says they do. In fact, Noah’s story is void of all of the romantic flourishes and touches of character that Alison’s has, almost like they’re peppered in to give more flavor and credibility to a lie. Now’s the point where you’re going to have to choose sides here and figure out whose story you’re going to believe. While Alison’s side is all about her being attacked and her resources falling apart, Noah’s is much more about stability. Helen and him approach everything as a unit, and when they find out that Whitney is pregnant, they approach it delicately and keep things optimistic. This is much more about not giving up as a couple and as a family rather than Alison’s story of just not giving up as a person. I suppose that I’m kind of an idiot for not putting more together from last episode’s bombshell that Scott is apparently the corpse being dealt with in the “present”, and those seemingly random moments where we saw glimpses of Noah and Helen’s daughter, Whitney, having what could have been an offscreen romance with Scott, were in fact some of the biggest clues that the show has given. And then that pregnancy test shows up. And once you have that piece of the puzzle set, what could have happened in the “present” starts to be a lot clearer. Noah comes clean to Helen. He tells her everything, and even throws on that he doesn’t want this life anymore and is in love with someone else. He severs this tie. He gives up on Helen as he simultaneously doubles down on Alison. Their fight is brutal, but when Helen finds Alison’s underwear, the venom that Maura Tierney conjures in her voice when she figures out what’s gone on is tremendous stuff, as is the fallout afterwards. Alison’s story showed her getting beaten down before gaining strength and emerging as a renewed person. Noah’s exodus is sloppy and selfish and contains none of the confidence that Alison’s to Cole does. The Affair has often juxtaposed Noah and Alison’s stories where they’ve been at opposite ends of the spectrum, but this is the one that counts, and as Noah starts strong in this one, he’s left with nothing in the end. Maybe his story does sort of resemble a horror film after all… Just like Dr. Henry’s parable is about not giving up, we also see a man jump off the top of a building and fall to his death because he just couldn’t take it anymore. We have to be careful. We can’t let things overwhelm us, and as we’re poised for the final episode everyone needs to not give up more than ever. Noah is in the worst position moving forward, and perhaps he’s the one that saw the man plummet to his death for a reason. He especially must be careful, lest he end up with something much worse than an ugly jaw. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!
