‘The Affair’ Recap: Unhappy Thanksgiving!

The Affair tells the complicated saga of an extramarital affair and the havoc it causes by splitting the narrative into two points of view: HIS & HERS. To wit, Decider will be recapping the show’s second season in a similar way with Sean T. Collins covering the female POV and Meghan O’Keefe responding with her take on the male perspective. Today, we’re discussing the seventh episode of the show’s second season (“Episode 207”).

PART 1: ALISON

It’s grimly fitting that last night’s episode of The Affair took place on Thanksgiving, because it was all about the consequences of shitting where you eat—not for you, necessarily, but for your fellow diners. After another significant leap forward in time, we rejoin the merry band of Baileys, Lockharts, and Solloways after Noah’s (Dominic West) book Descent has made him the toast of the town, and a pretty penny to boot. But while he’s living large, the people whose marriage he helped break up are paying the price. Cole Lockhart (Joshua Jackson), as you’ll see below, is facing the fallout from the ugly family history Noah dredged up in his novel, with a little help from family nemesis Oscar Hodges. And Alison (Ruth Wilson), whose POV comprises the episode’s first half, is struggling with a new life of luxury in which she has been reduced to a prop, or a PR ploy. Noah’s feast is their famine.

The fun begins for a very pregnant Alison at a party overlooking the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade route at the home of Noah’s editor, Harry. Solloway’s the star attraction, surrounded by well-connected well-wishers, PR flacks, and Page Six reporters. Alison wants nothing more than to dodge awkward questions about her pregnancy, her marriage, her first child, and Noah’s novel, while moving her fiancé out the door and back to their apartment to get ready for their semi-family dinner. But what attraction does setting the table hold when Jonathan Franzen wants to take you out for drinks?

In this scene, at least, it’s easy to see both sides of the argument. No one can blame Alison for feeling out of place, or for wishing their first Turkey Day together could be something more intimate and special. On the other hand, Noah is right when he says “This is work for me,” and ideally Alison would have made her peace with this before the party was in full swing. Her palpable lack of support for his burgeoning literary stardom is ominous—and, as we’ll see, completely understandable.

The next stop on Alison’s itinerary is home, where she finds her batty mom Athena waiting for her. Awed to the point of suspicion by the happy couple’s palatial apartment (the camera slowly tracks through each room toward them, emphasizing the sheer size of the place), Athena initiates an awkward conversation about money. This ends with the revelation that it was she who encouraged Alison’s beloved grandmother to leave her the house she and Cole lived in—the one that even now could rake in a small fortune for both of them. It’s a marked contrast with the grandparental legacy bequeathed to Cole by his murderous bootlegger Grandpa Silas, and Alison’s selling it for a payday. Might she have changed her mind had Athena told her the true story before now? We’ll never know, since her mom is yet another person making decisions on Alison’s behalf without informing or consulting her first.

The awkwardness merely compounds from there. Noah shows up hours late, without the turkey he’d promised to pick up. He’s briefly saved by Athena’s offer to lend him her stethoscope so he can hear the heartbeat of his (well, “his”) baby in Alison’s belly, but he fucks it up by saying “Gets me every time,” a reference to his children from his previous marriage, who unlike Alison’s son are very much alive. He’s brought along Eden, his obnoxious PR person, who obnoxiously PRs her way through the evening. (Which raises an interesting question: Why do public relations flacks have such bad PR?) When the sight of Alison’s waitress friend Jane making out with Noah’s inebriated gasbag buddy Max is the least upsetting thing going on, you know the holiday isn’t going well.

Things finally come to a head at dinner, when the public revelation of Noah’s marital status prompts Eden to suggest he play up similarities between his life and the life of the lead character in Descent for the press. Alison finally puts her foot down because—surprise!—she knows all about that life after all. Turns out she’s read the whole book and is horrified with both the dirty laundry on display and her own “death” beneath the wheels of the Noah stand-in’s car.

Most fascinatingly, she and Noah relitigate the major touchstones of their relationship during the argument, hashing out their memories of events we watched transpire from their rival perspectives last season. Max calls this “some minor differences of opinion about events you both agree on,” but to Alison there’s nothing minor about it. She remembers it one way, Noah another, and Descent immortalizes a third; given its impact on their life, she needs to know which one Noah believes to be true. “It’s just a story,” he assures her. “This”—he touches her stomach—“is real. This is my real life.” It’s a beautifully shot scene, thanks in part to the trademark shortsighting of Mr. Robot cinematographer Tod Campbell. But how reassuring to Alison could it really be? Noah’s book may have revealed the truth about the Lockharts (again, see below), but for Alison, drowning in an ocean of artifice is actually the best-case scenario. It could be worse: He could have been telling the truth.

PART 2: COLE

There was a heartbreaking moment last night where we finally got to see Whitney (Julia Goldani Telles) as more than just a tyrannical teen hopped up on lust and privilege. While both Alison and Cole are ruined by the knowledge that all their dirtiest secrets and most fetid parts have been laid bare in Descent, Whitney is sad that she’s not in the book. (It’s an interesting contrast to what happens in Manhattan — another lyric drama about the emotional destruction caused by the pursuit of genius — when Frank Winter purposely hides his rebellious teen daughter’s name in his atomic bomb equation to flatter himself into thinking she’s the most important thing in his life.) Cole suggests that Noah was actually protecting his daughter by leaving her out of the sordid narrative. Of course, Whitney doesn’t see it that way. She’s still too young to see that sometimes love isn’t given freely as a gift. Sometimes it’s about the burdens you spare someone.

It seems that Descent isn’t just about the darkness that lurks in Noah Solloway’s heart, but the evil at the heart of Lockhart clan. At first Cole is flabbergasted that Noah would suggest in prose that their grandfather was a drunk baby-killer who instigated the family feud with the Hodges clan. As Cole sees it, Noah is just trying to make them look like oafish brutes and not hard-working, salt-of-the-earth ranchers trying to make an honest living (selling cocaine). And then Cherry (Mare Winningham) has to go and reveal that Noah’s grisly account of the Lockhart family history is not all that fictional. It’s all true.
Like Whitney, Cole is furious that a parent would withhold something potentially hurtful from their child. Cherry’s only excuse is that she was trying to protect her brood from the curse on the Lockhart clan. “The sins of the father will be visited upon the children!” she cries before pointing out that every child one of her sons has conceived is now dead. Gabriel drowned, Scotty’s baby with Whitney was aborted, and Mary-Kate had a miscarriage. She warns them that the Lockhart line will die with them. And why? Because Cole’s grandfather found out that his wife had given birth to a Hodges baby. He drowned the boy, which sparked the feud (and some arson).

It’s chilling Thanksgiving chatter not only because it brings up the ghosts of the past, but foreshadows the possible tragedies of the future. We already knew that Alison’s baby could be either Noah’s or Cole’s, and now we’ve learned that it could also be Scotty’s. The final scene of the episode shows Oscar Hodges telling Gottlief that he overheard a potentially cataclysmic conversation between the two. So now we have a situation where Noah believes its his daughter, but what’s going to happen if it’s revealed to be a Lockhart child? Not just any Lockhart baby, but Scotty Lockhart’s baby. I’m foreseeing a dead baby. Are you foreseeing a dead baby? Maybe you should be. The sins of the father will be visited upon the children, after all. However, it’s not all doom and gloom and talk of dead babies.

Things are heating up between Cole and Luisa. She tells him in bed that she loves him and he loses his erection. Then he lies to her, snaps at her, and accuses her of stealing from him. Why the rage? Cole is reticent to fall in love again. He’s wary of being pulled into a new family and you have to guess that he’s worried that the sins of his last marriage might resurface in a new relationship.
The Lockharts might believe that Cole is their one hope of redemption, but Luisa appears to be Cole’s only salvation. He winds up at her family’s doorstep after dropping off Whitney at Noah’s. He stands in a stairwell below her, an erstwhile Romeo, looking up at this natural and uncomplicated beauty.

He begs forgiveness and declares his love and then she opens the door. It’s a happy Thanksgiving with a loving family untouched by Noah’s bestselling novel. But all this makes you wonder that if Noah has revealed the bitter truth about the Lockharts in Descent is it possible that he’s also revealed the truth about Alison?
[Watch The Affair on Showtime] or [Watch The Affair on Hulu]
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) is a freelance writer who lives with Diet Coke and his daughter, not necessarily in that order, on Long Island.
[Gifs by Jaclyn Kessel, copyright Showtime]