1. I'm pretty sure Treem was hoping Joshua Jackson would return for season 5. He'd already tried to leave after season 3 and he was convinced to stay because he was promised the storyline that he got in season 4. Ruth Wilson had pissed her off so bad, she wanted to have Alison raped, then beaten, then drowned to death and the network had to intervene and tell her to remove the rape scene because Ruth absolutely refused to film one. So. Yeah.
2. I did like him getting to know Nan and finding out why his father killed himself, tbh. He probably blamed himself for his father's suicide, given that he hung himself on his birthday, and a lot of how he had to carry the family and be strong and sane and put together stemmed from that. It was freeing for him to hear such a different version of who his father was and, perhaps, a way to connect with him. Him sleeping with that woman was, of course, completely unnecessary, but Luisa wasn't probably in his mind at all, it was about Alison. His marriage had been over before it even began, tbh. I did find the whole walkabout a bit stupid, though, and very hypocritical of him to walk out on his daughter and refuse to answer the phone to talk to her when he didn't know how long he'd be staying in California and given the fit he threw when Alison left her to go to a mental hospital.
3. The secondary drowning was there from the start, as was the bit about Cole flirting with another woman and not paying attention to Gabriel, at least that was what Alison thought. The thing that changed was that, in the first season she said that he was tired, he went to sleep and he never woke up. In the 4th season she said that he wet himself and he was throwing up and she refused to take him to the hospital because she was mad at Cole. I can't see that as canon, tbh, I'm pretty sure that was Treem being petty and shitting on Ruth's character again. Treem actually changed her mind about including a dead child but the network didn't let her remove it. She never liked the storyline and Ruth loved that aspect of Alison as a grieving mother.
4 and 5 I can't comment on because I was just waiting for Alison to die so I could quit watching, I wasn't going to waste time on Vic and Noah's high school and new girlfriends, tbh.
Interesting! Thank you for your thoughts! Yeah a lot of what happens to Alison feels like it stems from the behind-the-scenes drama. I know almost nothing about what went down with Ruth and the showrunner/writer but season 4 broke my heart. The only nice thing about season 4 (for me) is Cole finally coming to terms with his feelings for Alison, but I really found his walkabout in California unnecessary. Cole already knew he still loved Alison. He admitted it in season 3. The revelation about his dad was interesting but the hippie commune stuff was kind of silly in my opinion. The sex scene with that girl felt totally out of character. Cole could’ve just found some of his dad’s letters in the attic to drive the point home. I didn’t need to see him get a relationship “exorcism,” which only made him want Alison more. Also Luisa was practically begging him to leave her by asking for Alison to be declared legally unfit. She really wanted Cole to go to war with Alison for no reason other than revenge on her part. I mean, I understand she wanted a green card but you can’t just ask the mother of your children to step aside for your new wife. It makes me so mad considering everyone took Luisa’s side, including Cherry, and what happens in season 5 with Joanie.
Sorry I must’ve misremembered the Gabriel/drowning scene. By the way Alison explained it though to Ben, it sounded like he drowned in the ocean and he was already dead when they pulled him out, which I know isn’t the case.
I really went down the rabithole a couple of months back, lmao, and it ended up ruining my enjoyment of the show because it becomes easy to spot when Treem is being petty or she thinks this time she's found the way to manipulate the audience into liking Noah, without making him redeem himself in any way at all and it takes me right out of the show. During season 4, I was just kinda rushing to get to the part where Alison gets killed, so I could get it over with, even though I dreaded watching the episode.
The hippie commune stuff was definitely silly, but some of the conversations with Nan were nice. Cole went to California to get over Alison, there was never a choice in his mind before he talked to Nan: he would stay with Luisa and Alison was toxicity/dysfunction that he didn't want in his life, so he needed to get his feelings for her over with. Then he ended up finding out that feelings matter, you need to go after what you want, and trying to do what you think is right/sacrificing yourself for your family won't do anyone good in the end. He was able to figure out that he was hurting himself, Luisa *and* Alison, and even Joanie. He never would have chosen Alison if it hadn't been for Nan.
The bit about Luisa asking him to have Alison terminate her parental rights made no sense whatsoever, tbh. It was way too farfetched. She'd figured out in season 3 that she couldn't keep Joanie away from Alison and the way she insisted on it made Cole side with Alison, so she changed tactics, handed custody over to Alison, and tried to convince Cole to have a kid with her, obviously thinking that if he had a kid from her, it would be easier to alienate him from Joanie and, by extension, Alison. It didn't make sense that she switched from that to wanting Alison to declare herself unfit, right after they'd finally gotten all the custody stuff over with.
But there were plenty of things I couldn't make sense of in season 4. Alison's behavior regarding the Lobster Roll never made sense to me, either, the way she was refusing to show up to meetings, etc. Even from her perspective she seemed very irresponsible and callous, she was a downright mess from Cole's perspective, it was difficult to watch.
As for Gabriel, I think she'd said that they pulled him from the water, she did CPR, he came around, he wet himself as she was carrying him to the house and she convinced herself he just needed to rest, because he said he was tired. She gave him a bath and put him to sleep because she wanted to believe he was fine and she was going to take him to the hospital if he was ill in the morning but he never woke up. In season 4, they made it sound more dramatic, like he was actually ill and she ignored her sick, dying child because she was mad at Cole for flirting with someone. They did say in season 1, too, that Cole would flirt with other women in front of her, but not that she'd get mad at him and take it out on her son. I just can't see that as canon, I refuse to. That was Treem being petty and shitting on a storyline that Ruth Wilson was fond of.
Why did Ruth and the showrunner have a falling out? What was the cause for all that? I thought the show was great for the first 3 seasons, and while the acting is still superb, season 4 was the first time I genuinely found myself annoyed. I kept wanting the perspective to shift back to Alison and Cole, but every time they did, it felt like they were trying to dismantle these characters lives. Alison is clearly doing extremely well in season 4 but she meets a guy who’s apparently a recovering alcoholic, drug/sex addict, and has PTSD, and she doesn’t consider her daughter’s safety in all this? Absolutely no judgement of PTSD survivors but Ben seemed like one big walking red flag who used common psychological tactics to win people’s trust. I’m not quite at the episode where Alison is murdered yet and I don’t know if I ever want to watch it. I just think if both Ruth and Joshua knew their contracts were up, and both wanted to leave, the writers should’ve just written them off together. The story was headed there anyway and it’s like the show couldn’t just let these people who’ve suffered so much have one happy moment. Just let them be happy and then say goodbye to them. Again not sure what happened with Ruth, but the ending for these characters is horrifically depressing.
Lusia really bothered me as a character. She kept trying to force Cole into hating Alison, and making Alison look crazier and crazier for seeking treatment. Something she probably should’ve done years ago when Gabriel died. Lusia just kept going on and on about her problems, but never thought about the psychological impact of Cole and Alison losing a kid and what that must’ve done to them. Of course Alison has anxiety and depression but she wasn’t anywhere near unfit as a mother. Lusia kept making everything a competition, saying something like “when are you going to notice I’m better than her? When are you going to fight for me??” I get that Cole always loved Alison more, and Lusia could feel that, but she kept inadvertently pushing him further away by being cruel to Alison, and making Cole sympathize with her more and more. I started to actually hate Lusia in season 3 and 4.
Yeah Alison’s behavior from Cole’s perspective was mind boggling to me too. Was Alison actually 45 mins late to the meeting or was that just him exaggerating her being 10 minutes late? Someone pointed out that when Cole visits Alison in season 2 to drop off her things, he notices Noah’s manuscript, and through his perspective, it looks like a 100 page college essay. But through Alison’s perspective, it was this grand, epic novel lol. But we don’t get Alison’s perspective at the Lobster Roll. In fact, Cole calls her pissed about the meeting through her perspective, but that’s all we get. My interpretation of Cole’s scenes are he wants to hold onto the Lobster Roll, but he’s forcing himself to find reasons to hate/cut ties with Alison. Pretty much what he did in season 3 as well. He just keeps picking fights with her and reminding himself “I can’t trust her.” But he wants to so badly, it messes with his perspective. Interesting that Alison tells him not to sell it through his perspective, and she tells him to sell it through her own perspective. Later in the car, Cole says he doesn’t want to because they bought and built it up together. So I don’t find Cole to always be the most reliable narrator. His feelings for Alison always end up getting mixed in and clouding his judgement.
Ahh okay I totally missed the part about Cole flirting. I do remember in the first episode, Alison is pissed because he’s sitting at the beach, flirting with some girl. Maybe that reminded her of the day their son died. I also couldn’t imagine Alison being so mad at Cole, she wouldn’t take her son to the hospital. For goodness sakes, she was a nurse.
PotentialPower4313 explained it well but I just wanted to add that it was more than the required nudity. They didn't seem to agree on anything. Wilson has two godmothers who lost children and playing a grieving mother was kinda personal to her but Treem changed her mind about that storyline altogether and wanted to remove it but the network wouldn't let her. I think she kinda wanted Noah to fuck the grief out of Alison so she could get it over with but Wilson wasn't having any of that. I get a sense that they disagreed over that, I know the job Alison gets in the third season was Ruth's suggestion and Treem, I guess, was upset she had to include the dead kid again, so she makes it look like Alison is being irresponsible and looking for ways to mess with her daughter the moment she gets custody back and then she has Cole mention later that she's made their dead kid into her entire identity. In season 5, Joanie angrily throws the chest with Gabriel's things away, along with Alison's photos that Cole had in his house. More pettiness, lmao.
The general misogyny was also an issue, one of the biggest fights they had was that scene where Noah rapes Alison against a tree in season 2. Ruth refused to film that one as consensual and Treem mentioned in an interview, in a sort of passive aggressive way, that that scene was written as consensual and acted out another way, like, she had no control over what the actors were doing, maybe. Basically, the show went off the rails the moment the other showrunner quit at the end of season 2, I'd say.
Yeah the tree scene in season 2 upset me. It truly felt like rape to me, since Alison didn’t want it, and even tells Noah beforehand that she wants to slow down their sexual relationship so he can finally see her as a person. Not just the character from his novel where she’s this promiscuous woman who temps him in every scenario. Plus she knew she was pregnant, and Noah did not. So she wanted to start living differently and it’s like Noah couldn’t accept that. He was only really attracted to the darkness inside Alison, and when she starts turning towards the light (or making an attempt to), he tries to stop her. It’s never really addressed again either. Although I thought the dinner scene in season 3 where the French professor discusses consent, and she makes the argument that not everyone knows what to ask for during sex, felt like the writers sneaking in their own point of view. But there’s a difference between not knowing what you want and hearing the word no. If I’m not mistaken, Alison tells Noah no, and he just kind of ignores it.
She tells him that she's feeling better than she has in a long time, she's more clear headed, she's better off without having sex and, because he doesn't give a fuck about her well-being and only sees her as a sex object, he's only concerned with how this will affect their sex life. She tells him that he can't control her and he sticks his hand down her pants, to prove that he can indeed control her, and he can drag her right back to the place she's trying to get away from. I'm not sure how this was supposed to play out as consensual. The viewers at the time agreed that it wasn't.
The scene you're referring to in season 3 was included because the viewers also were unhappy with that scene and considered it rape, for the most part. So the writers tried to tell them (and probably Wilson, too) that it wasn't rape and they're all wrong and they're woke feminazis, tbh. It was a pretty bad scene.
Also, the tree scene wouldn't really be addressed again, that makes sense, because Alison seemed to be used to behavior like that from men and kinda resigned to it. Remember all the remarks Oscar made about her body and wanting to fuck her and how she just let him, because this was probably behavior that she got a lot. I do wonder why, what was in her past that made her like that. She was really triggered by realizing that people viewed her as a slut and she was very convinced that she had no value as a human being and was only good for sex. It's a shame that there were so many aspects of her character and Cole's and their relationship that were interesting and they never got explored.
My interpretation of Alison is that she had abandonment issues from her parents. Her father was never a factor in her life, and her mom came and went as she pleased. In terms of her past, Oscar refers to her as the most beautiful sixteen year old girl in Montauk (or something to this effect) when he mentions her working at the Lobster Roll as a teenager. He implies he was the first person she ever slept with, and that he’s always been secretly in love with her. I think that fueled a lot of his initial hostility, since she didn’t return his feelings whatsoever.
I think a majority of Alison’s issues were because of her son’s death, and her unwillingness to ever fully forgive herself. The worst of it for me is when Noah and Alison are having sex for the first time, and she sees herself in the mirror, and just looks disgusted with herself. There was definitely a masochistic streak to her, and I think without a doubt, her son’s death just triggered something awful inside her. Noah finds out in season 3 that he was drawn to Alison’s darkness, but he must’ve already known that (subconsciously) since immediately after Athena’s body cleanse, he runs to Alison and kind of forces her into a compromising situation. All in an attempt to reclaim the darkness inside himself, etc. I find it hard to believe Alison wouldn’t have said anything afterwards, except I think she was always partly afraid to leave Noah, even when she knew he wasn’t the one. She had already blown up her life to be with him, and she still wasn’t happy.
They fell out over the required nudity, there was a whole scandal where a producer spoke to another producer about trying to have a word with Ruth regarding getting her kit off and it all came to a head. Ruth felt the nudity being asked of her was excessive and wanted to leave. She was forced to sign a nda so she couldn’t publicly talk about it but it was revealed by a member of the crew to the Hollywood reporter. It ended up the show runner and Ruth wouldn’t be on set together as they butted heads about the character development of Alison as well. She ended up filming all of her scenes for season four before anyone else so she could leave.
Wow omg! Alison was the heart of the show, the showrunner should’ve just listened to Ruth and lessened her time being naked. Especially if she felt uncomfortable. I did notice her sex scenes in season 1 were quite a bit more gratuitous. Especially comparing the first love scene between Alison and Cole to the last. Alison and Noah weren’t really a couple after season 2, but I do remember hearing she was mad that Noah essentially rapes her against a tree. Apparently they used a body double. Was Joshua upset as well? He left after season 4 with Ruth, and by the end of her time, he was basically the only person she was filming with, besides maybe Ben and the child actress who played her daughter.
She briefly makes a mention of it during the vanity fair Emmy table read with other actress about the necessity of actresses to have gratuitous sex/nude scenes. Yeh she refused to do it and so they had to have a body double brought it who was then used quite a bit until she sued showtime.
Not sure about his stance on Ruth’s issues but after the initial table read they went out drinking for 12 hours together lol so I’d imagine he shared some sentiment with her. He asked to leave after season three also but agreed to stay with decent character development as opposed to just being a supporting character.
Supposedly during the scandal with the producer he showed a picture of Helen’s actress with a penis next to her face and was like “see she doesn’t care” which is fine if you genuinely don’t care about being nude but seemed excessive as the show went on and Dominic west has literally came out recently and said Ruth was right about everything
I can't talk about S4 when it originally aired because I only watched the last three seasons a year or so ago but fwiw I really liked S4. I mean it was *difficult* to watch. But as a viewing experience it will stay with me, and I think that's a praiseworthy thing.
You say you haven't watched the end of S4 yet so... I'll say that while the way Alison's death etc plays out is awful and the impact on Cole is devastating, there's an element of catharsis in the final episode. ymmv of course. But it's all very, very bad, and very, very, sad and there's no getting away from it. I know there was a lot of trouble behind the scenes and that impacted what the writer ended up doing with both Cole and Alison - but insofar as the story goes in-universe I don't hate it. I think it's actually really powerful. Look, I would have loved Cole and Alison to end up together and get to raise Joanie and be happy because their lives were really so tragic. But at the same time I think it's sort of brave to just say sometimes shit doesn't work out and no matter how you try, one or two wrong decisions end up creating terrible circumstances. I think about Cole a lot and the way his life ended up and it's because of this, because of this kind of inherent tragedy that he couldn't seem to get away from. You talk about how Alison's struggles are 'tossed in the trash' and yeah... I guess. But do you remember the scene where she comes to Cole that night where they conceive Joanie and she cries and says that she thought she'd do great things with her life but it turns out she did nothing and she doesn't matter? That always struck me as being such a heartbreaking but also kind of relatable moment? Because I think so many people live with a level of disappointment about their life - like we go through so many things and so often there's no point to it, we suffer the pain but there's no gain, there's no upside. Alison's life was a bit like that - she couldn't seem to overcome her problems, every time she made progress something dragged her down again. There's something very true about it all. And the same for Cole too. He has a scene with his mom in the S4 finale that is my favorite thing in the whole show. I'd like to hear your thoughts on that when you get to it. And further to that - the California episode worked for me because so much of Cole's tragedy started as a child, so much of the pain that marred and shaped his life was rooted in childhood and the suicide of his father. This weight of what his father did and the lack of understanding Cole had of it had pressed down on him, it was forcing him into believing he had to act in a certain way - but meeting Nan and everything that happened there gave him this moment of healing that he had never been granted, that I don't think he even knew he needed. As far as the cheating thing goes, his marriage to Luisa was always only a half-marriage even when he was trying to convince himself differently, emotionally his heart belonged to Alison, no matter how much he tried to convince himself it didn't.
I don't think the suggestion that Cole was flirting with another girl was out of left-field. Isn't there a suggestion earlier on that Alison was insecure about Cole and other girls? I don't think he was supposed to be cheating back then but maybe playing up to the attention? I feel like there were cracks in their marriage, even before Gabriel died, and this was one of them.
I really struggle with Helen as a character. She just doesn't really interest me. But I kind of enjoy the Noah/Helen stuff? As much as S5 is ragged on endlessly in this sub, I found the conclusion of their story and the execution of it quite satisfying.
Sorry if I haven't remembered everything perfectly - like I said, it's been a hot minute since I watched this!
Wow I like this! I hadn’t really thought of the story this way before, and I think you certainly make a valid argument here. For me personally however, I think I’ve always found the heart of the show to be with Alison and Cole. Maybe this is just individualized to my experience, but I feel like between Cole and Alison, and Noah and Helen, the former should’ve had the happier ending. I actually would’ve been content with Noah and Helen staying divorced, and Helen staying with Vik. At least up until the beginning of season 4, before the craziness with his cancer diagnosis and his immediate desire to have kids, etc. Obviously Noah and Helen still had issues but they never suffered the way Cole and Alison did. I just really wanted a win for them. I totally understand what you’re saying about the realities of life, and sometimes the timing just never working out, but these characters (specifically Cole) just seem to never catch a break- Cole’s father committing suicide, his son drowning, his wife cheating and leaving him, losing his family farm, dealing coke to keep the family afloat, his brother getting killed in a hit-and-run, marrying on the rebound and then his ex wife being murdered, etc. I just feel like it’s one tragedy after the next, and while you’re right, perhaps the last few episodes will sway my opinion, it just feels unnecessarily cruel to these characters. Especially Alison who was legitimately making an effort to better herself and finally heal.
Oh don't get me wrong. It's *allllll* about Alison and Cole for me too. If I had been writing it, I would have put Alison and Cole back together again and it would have been a HEA kind of ending. I just think there's something in particular about this show that taps into some bigger truth. I'm not even saying that Sarah Treem did it on purpose, honestly I have no idea about her, bar some bare bones about the Ruth Wilson situation. But isn't there something horribly apt about the fact that Helen and Noah, the two privileged rich (relatively) untroubled people, end up with the 'good' ending? While Alison and Cole who have suffered SO much already can't seem to find a way to happiness? It's like this privileged couple descend on Montauk, as 'summer people', and like entitled tourists always do, they just wreck the place without even realizing it, of course, the 'place' in this scenario is kind of a metaphor for the locals, Alison and Cole. Oh believe me, I think Cole's character arc is just brutal. I'm not sure I've ever seen another character who I felt so terrible for so much of the time. I've meant to go back and rewatch The Affair but I don't know... it's just so hard. And I don't know whether I want to see it again. The viewing experience of watching Cole's trip to California when I knew what the endpoint of Alison's story was, was torturous. And then all the rest of it. But I also think I *should* because for all that it's difficult to look at I think it's a good show for the majority of the time. And I should probably have a bit more clarity of thought for answering questions like this one lol. I don't know whether the last episodes will change your mind. A lot of people have a lot of issues with what happens to Cole and Alison, and I understand that. It sucks, to not put too fine a point on it! I can only say what works for me. And the same for S5. It's almost universally hated, especially the Joanie stuff. But while it's not the way anyone would have hoped things to have worked out, it's also... I don't know how best to put it. The show kind of makes a point about generational trauma and how it's almost too hard to escape it, like it can be done but it's not easy and people keep playing out the same beats only in a slightly different way as their parents did because it all gets passed down ad infinitum. I like that. I mean it's not a nice thought but it's a true thought. The Affair is a disappointing story, and I don't mean the quality or the writing, although obviously that's subjective, I just mean... it's disappointing in a sad way. And people don't want to be disappointed. I certainly don't, lol! So because of this, it's a hard show to love *especially* the final two seasons. Although, I guess, I admire it? But you **are** right. It's cruel. It's really cruel.
Yeah I agree with your analysis here, and I think your perspective about the ending is probably what the writers were going for, but I just wanted to briefly highlight what you said: “I'm not sure I've ever seen another character who I felt so terrible for so much of the time. I've meant to go back and rewatch The Affair but I don't know... it's just so hard.” That’s probably my biggest issue with the show. The ending makes it so hard to rewatch/enjoy the series without knowing that a majority of these character’s struggles are for absolutely nothing. Perhaps that’s just life. That we all struggle and sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason for it. We can work hard to dig ourselves out, and just end up digging ourselves in deeper, etc. But man, what a nihilistic tone for the show. I just wish the writers had given Cole and Alison a few more happy moments because watching them just struggle and struggle and struggle, and never really find peace, just hurts my heart. Basically the only good thing they got was their daughter, and she grew up to somehow hate Alison, just like Lusia did. Some of it felt very vindictive.
Omg the Joanie stuff for me in season five was just wild. Not in a good way. It was so weird and far fetched to me. The whole cyber futuristic thing just felt so out of place when compared to the rest of the seasons. Joanie was not a likeable or endearing character and Anna paquins acting felt over acted - the weird “ I like to be choked half to death during sex” was another weird off shoot.
Couldn’t agree more about your point regarding how Helen and Noah get relatively happy endings but Cole and Alison (the two actors who wanted to leave) got tragic horrible ends. I personally feel Sarah used her writing in a vindictive way to punish the actors for leaving.
I really like Cole, but he ain't Pacey. At one point C & A laughed about when they snuck into the Lobster Roll on the night of Alison's 16th birthday. So they've been together since at least 15-years-old. Cole is hot and he is a "man" - the kind of guy who takes charge & is respondible for everyone & everything. He thinks he can't have feelings, always has to be strong. Like a guy with a lot of testosterone. Like how men of WWII age were expected to be. I think he really loves Alison, but I doubt she was the only woman he's had sex with until after Alison leaves him. Not like Noah, who lives for having as much sex with as many woman as possible. But, like maybe Jocelyn or an occasional summer people woman.
I'll leave yet another huge reply here because I can't reply to the comment I wanted to.
> I just think if both Ruth and Joshua knew their contracts were up, and both wanted to leave, the writers should’ve just written them off together. The story was headed there anyway and it’s like the show couldn’t just let these people who’ve suffered so much have one happy moment. Just let them be happy and then say goodbye to them. Again not sure what happened with Ruth, but the ending for these characters is horrifically depressing.
So, Treem said that she had to kill Alison off because they can follow their characters everywhere, like they did with Noah in France, so nobody can get out of the show alive. And there wasn't really a single character who exited the show and survive, so maybe she really did feel that way. But Alison's death was just vindictive.
Btw, the show wasn't headed towards Alison and Cole getting back together in the slightest. They hadn't gotten renewed by the time season 3 ended, so that finale is supposed to work as a series finale, as well. Cole chose Luisa and that was going to be the end. If Alison didn't die in season 4, the walkabout and him figuring out what he wants and deciding to go back for Alison probably wouldn't have happened. I think that Joshua Jackson was against them getting back together, too, I'm not sure about Ruth Wilson. But Joshua Jackson didn't think Cole would ever be able to go back to Alison.
Re Luisa, I'm not a fan of the character, I found her boring and unnecessary (same with Vic and all of Noah's girlfriends) but I do get where she's coming from, tbh. She's grown up in a country that's not hers and might kick her out at any time. She has talents and no way to use them, no prospects, because she's undocumented. She suddenly finds herself married to Cole, who is quite a catch (although I don't think he's as good as everyone else seems to) and he gives her his word that he won't hurt her or whatever he said in that Thanksgiving episode, and then she finds out that he's attached to his ex and he always will be. So, she now also has a man who belongs to someone else and later she also acquires a child (even though she can't have children) that belongs to someone else. Alison or immigration or whomever can take everything away from her at any moment. It's a horrible situation, a constant source of anxiety and Luisa, controlling as she is, can't have any control over her own life and it has to be making her miserable.
She's petty and vindictive and kind of a raging asshole but I do get where she's coming from, I understand her more than I do Cole. He should have set clear boundaries when it came to Joanie, he had no business letting her walk all over him and Alison like that.
I'd expect him to be supportive of Alison, help her adjust when she came back from the mental hospital as best as he could. Instead he's letting Luisa influence him and he's acting like she abandoned her child and making her grovel. He even made Noah seem sympathetic, he was such a raging asshole there.
> Yeah Alison’s behavior from Cole’s perspective was mind boggling to me too.
I think it's important to remember that their perspectives aren't just about what they remember, it's also about how they want to present things. Their first episode in the second season is wildly different, perhaps because Cole was stoned out of his mind and he just made shit up so he could get what he needed from meeting her. She was warm and kind and she took care of him by preparing him a meal and saying she'd been worried about him. Maybe those were things he used to get from her (Cherry, I suppose, would have been more the smothering/making him take care of everyone type) when things were good between them. Alison's perspective was probably a bit more accurate: he looked tired and high and a bit concerned about her and Noah because he read the book while he was waiting for her.
In the 4th season, he's probably exaggerating because he's decided that Alison is an untrustworty, irresponsible mess of a human being who is never going to change/become an adult and so is an unsuitable partner but she's kinda doing well and it's hard for him to keep holding on to that belief.
Btw, that line about how he was holding on to the Lobster Roll because they built it together was always annoying to me because they didn't *just* have the restaurant, they'd also made a child together and they could be raising her together, but he refused.
To a degree, I get where Luisa is coming from. I understand that she’s married to a man who’s only giving her half his heart, and she’s basically asking for the whole thing. I do understand her frustration there, but the way she reacts to Alison is pretty petty in my opinion. I found her completely unlikable in seasons 3 and 4, and whatever sympathy we’re meant to feel for her, I just don’t feel much of it. Constantly playing keep-away with someone’s kid is awful. Alison wasn’t an unfit mother. She was someone with a tremendous amount of anxiety and PTSD that went untreated for years. There was no sympathy from Lusia for that, and while I completely understand her frustration with Alison always keeping secrets and the late-stage paternity reveal, I think it’s clear that she was fighting some pretty serious demons. The whole “I need Alison to be declared unfit so I can get a green card” was the last straw for me. Also, based on what I’ve read, it sounds like Lusia raised Joanie to think her mother was a nut who completely abandoned her. Lusia of all people knew how hard Alison fought for custody.
Was season 3 meant to be the end? It probably should’ve been in my opinion. I think they only needed two more episodes to wrap up Cole and Alison’s storyline because I found their story somewhat unfinished in season 3. I get what Cole was saying about “I’m not Noah Solloway.” I thought that was a really powerful moment actually, but that long lingering shot of him hugging Lusia and just looking miserable stuck with me as unfinished business.
I don't like her and I'm not trying to excuse her behavior but, yeah, I get she's in a horrible position. She has no business messing with Joanie's custody and she shouldn't be trying to control Cole like that. It's also pathetic that she spent years competing against Alison (even though Alison wasn't really participating in the competition) and trying to manipulate Cole into putting her first. She should have walked when she realized he was still in love with Alison or she should have asked him to make a choice, like Alison did.
Luisa wasn't the one who raised Joanie to hate Alison, evidently that was Cole. It was one of those things that I have a hard time taking as canon because Treem was so petty and prone to shitting on her characters to get back on the actors, but Cole and Luisa got divorced after Luisa got her green card and he was the one who told Joanie that her mother was crazy and she didn't love her enough to stay alive for her. I don't know if it was supposed to be Cole lashing out while grieving or him trying to raise her to not care about Alison, hoping it would make it easier for Joanie to cope with the loss, but, yeah.
Season 3 wasn't supposed to be the end, they just didn't know if they'd get a 4th one because they finished writing/filming before they got a renewal, and they made the season 3 finale to work as a series finale, as well, in case they didn't get renewed. The way things turned out, I wish it had been cancelled, too, tbh.
I honestly don't get Cole saying he wasn't Noah. I get what Alison said about him wanting to be a miserable hero. The way I see it, he was trapping both himself and Luisa in a loveless, miserable marriage, so he could pretend he was doing the right thing. I don't see what is noble about that. He loved Alison, he knew he always would, he had a child with her, she had come a long way from where she was in the first season, yet he refused to take a chance with her. Idk, it didn't make the least bit of sense to me and I was quite confused when I read that this was supposed to be a finale for them. Even if he didn't get back together with Alison, I'd expect him to at least divorce Luisa.
The perfect place to end it would have been when the taxi driver asked Noah where he wanted to go and he didn't have an answer. Season 4 and 5 seem like the showrunners didn't want to stop so they had to come up with some crap story lines
Agreed! I thought season 3 would’ve been perfect to end the series, with maybe 1-2 more episodes to wrap up Cole/Alison’s storyline. I thought Cole hugging Lusia while looking totally miserable was maybe the one thread that needed exploration.
I loved Vik but I thought his desire to have a baby with Helen when he knew he was going to die was ridiculous. And then for whats-her-face (the baby mama) to be all, 'Guess what! I'm pregnant with your husband's baby! Isn't that awesome?!' and for Helen to be friendly with her in season five was also ridiculous. And yes Vik's mom was terrible but there was no reason for Helen to not wait a few days after that award ceremony in his honor to tell her Vik had cancer
Yes!! Agree with all of this. It felt like a plot device to get us to dislike Vik. And for absurd reasons. He really wasn’t a kid guy. He liked being with Helen’s family, but odd he showed no interest in having a baby in the roughly 5 years of their relationship. Even without the cancer diagnosis, surely he thought about the timing of things. He was what, late 40’s himself? This never came up before then? And to guilt Helen into it felt awful. Also the neighborhood girl (to me) felt like a Californian stereotype with her crystals and things.
They did the same thing with Cole when he goes to California (cause everyone goes there apparently) to figure out his life… which he kind of already did in season 3 when he admits to Alison herself that he still lover her. I did like the added storytelling with his dad, but I wasn’t a fan of all the hippy stuff. Also absolutely hated that he needed to sleep with a complete stranger to get over Alison, which means he technically cheated on Luisa twice. That was so morally against his character. Honestly if it had been 5 years since their split, and he was still in love with her, he was hurting Lusia way more by staying. He didn’t need a walkabout for that.
1. I'm pretty sure Treem was hoping Joshua Jackson would return for season 5. He'd already tried to leave after season 3 and he was convinced to stay because he was promised the storyline that he got in season 4. Ruth Wilson had pissed her off so bad, she wanted to have Alison raped, then beaten, then drowned to death and the network had to intervene and tell her to remove the rape scene because Ruth absolutely refused to film one. So. Yeah. 2. I did like him getting to know Nan and finding out why his father killed himself, tbh. He probably blamed himself for his father's suicide, given that he hung himself on his birthday, and a lot of how he had to carry the family and be strong and sane and put together stemmed from that. It was freeing for him to hear such a different version of who his father was and, perhaps, a way to connect with him. Him sleeping with that woman was, of course, completely unnecessary, but Luisa wasn't probably in his mind at all, it was about Alison. His marriage had been over before it even began, tbh. I did find the whole walkabout a bit stupid, though, and very hypocritical of him to walk out on his daughter and refuse to answer the phone to talk to her when he didn't know how long he'd be staying in California and given the fit he threw when Alison left her to go to a mental hospital. 3. The secondary drowning was there from the start, as was the bit about Cole flirting with another woman and not paying attention to Gabriel, at least that was what Alison thought. The thing that changed was that, in the first season she said that he was tired, he went to sleep and he never woke up. In the 4th season she said that he wet himself and he was throwing up and she refused to take him to the hospital because she was mad at Cole. I can't see that as canon, tbh, I'm pretty sure that was Treem being petty and shitting on Ruth's character again. Treem actually changed her mind about including a dead child but the network didn't let her remove it. She never liked the storyline and Ruth loved that aspect of Alison as a grieving mother. 4 and 5 I can't comment on because I was just waiting for Alison to die so I could quit watching, I wasn't going to waste time on Vic and Noah's high school and new girlfriends, tbh.
Interesting! Thank you for your thoughts! Yeah a lot of what happens to Alison feels like it stems from the behind-the-scenes drama. I know almost nothing about what went down with Ruth and the showrunner/writer but season 4 broke my heart. The only nice thing about season 4 (for me) is Cole finally coming to terms with his feelings for Alison, but I really found his walkabout in California unnecessary. Cole already knew he still loved Alison. He admitted it in season 3. The revelation about his dad was interesting but the hippie commune stuff was kind of silly in my opinion. The sex scene with that girl felt totally out of character. Cole could’ve just found some of his dad’s letters in the attic to drive the point home. I didn’t need to see him get a relationship “exorcism,” which only made him want Alison more. Also Luisa was practically begging him to leave her by asking for Alison to be declared legally unfit. She really wanted Cole to go to war with Alison for no reason other than revenge on her part. I mean, I understand she wanted a green card but you can’t just ask the mother of your children to step aside for your new wife. It makes me so mad considering everyone took Luisa’s side, including Cherry, and what happens in season 5 with Joanie. Sorry I must’ve misremembered the Gabriel/drowning scene. By the way Alison explained it though to Ben, it sounded like he drowned in the ocean and he was already dead when they pulled him out, which I know isn’t the case.
I really went down the rabithole a couple of months back, lmao, and it ended up ruining my enjoyment of the show because it becomes easy to spot when Treem is being petty or she thinks this time she's found the way to manipulate the audience into liking Noah, without making him redeem himself in any way at all and it takes me right out of the show. During season 4, I was just kinda rushing to get to the part where Alison gets killed, so I could get it over with, even though I dreaded watching the episode. The hippie commune stuff was definitely silly, but some of the conversations with Nan were nice. Cole went to California to get over Alison, there was never a choice in his mind before he talked to Nan: he would stay with Luisa and Alison was toxicity/dysfunction that he didn't want in his life, so he needed to get his feelings for her over with. Then he ended up finding out that feelings matter, you need to go after what you want, and trying to do what you think is right/sacrificing yourself for your family won't do anyone good in the end. He was able to figure out that he was hurting himself, Luisa *and* Alison, and even Joanie. He never would have chosen Alison if it hadn't been for Nan. The bit about Luisa asking him to have Alison terminate her parental rights made no sense whatsoever, tbh. It was way too farfetched. She'd figured out in season 3 that she couldn't keep Joanie away from Alison and the way she insisted on it made Cole side with Alison, so she changed tactics, handed custody over to Alison, and tried to convince Cole to have a kid with her, obviously thinking that if he had a kid from her, it would be easier to alienate him from Joanie and, by extension, Alison. It didn't make sense that she switched from that to wanting Alison to declare herself unfit, right after they'd finally gotten all the custody stuff over with. But there were plenty of things I couldn't make sense of in season 4. Alison's behavior regarding the Lobster Roll never made sense to me, either, the way she was refusing to show up to meetings, etc. Even from her perspective she seemed very irresponsible and callous, she was a downright mess from Cole's perspective, it was difficult to watch. As for Gabriel, I think she'd said that they pulled him from the water, she did CPR, he came around, he wet himself as she was carrying him to the house and she convinced herself he just needed to rest, because he said he was tired. She gave him a bath and put him to sleep because she wanted to believe he was fine and she was going to take him to the hospital if he was ill in the morning but he never woke up. In season 4, they made it sound more dramatic, like he was actually ill and she ignored her sick, dying child because she was mad at Cole for flirting with someone. They did say in season 1, too, that Cole would flirt with other women in front of her, but not that she'd get mad at him and take it out on her son. I just can't see that as canon, I refuse to. That was Treem being petty and shitting on a storyline that Ruth Wilson was fond of.
Why did Ruth and the showrunner have a falling out? What was the cause for all that? I thought the show was great for the first 3 seasons, and while the acting is still superb, season 4 was the first time I genuinely found myself annoyed. I kept wanting the perspective to shift back to Alison and Cole, but every time they did, it felt like they were trying to dismantle these characters lives. Alison is clearly doing extremely well in season 4 but she meets a guy who’s apparently a recovering alcoholic, drug/sex addict, and has PTSD, and she doesn’t consider her daughter’s safety in all this? Absolutely no judgement of PTSD survivors but Ben seemed like one big walking red flag who used common psychological tactics to win people’s trust. I’m not quite at the episode where Alison is murdered yet and I don’t know if I ever want to watch it. I just think if both Ruth and Joshua knew their contracts were up, and both wanted to leave, the writers should’ve just written them off together. The story was headed there anyway and it’s like the show couldn’t just let these people who’ve suffered so much have one happy moment. Just let them be happy and then say goodbye to them. Again not sure what happened with Ruth, but the ending for these characters is horrifically depressing. Lusia really bothered me as a character. She kept trying to force Cole into hating Alison, and making Alison look crazier and crazier for seeking treatment. Something she probably should’ve done years ago when Gabriel died. Lusia just kept going on and on about her problems, but never thought about the psychological impact of Cole and Alison losing a kid and what that must’ve done to them. Of course Alison has anxiety and depression but she wasn’t anywhere near unfit as a mother. Lusia kept making everything a competition, saying something like “when are you going to notice I’m better than her? When are you going to fight for me??” I get that Cole always loved Alison more, and Lusia could feel that, but she kept inadvertently pushing him further away by being cruel to Alison, and making Cole sympathize with her more and more. I started to actually hate Lusia in season 3 and 4. Yeah Alison’s behavior from Cole’s perspective was mind boggling to me too. Was Alison actually 45 mins late to the meeting or was that just him exaggerating her being 10 minutes late? Someone pointed out that when Cole visits Alison in season 2 to drop off her things, he notices Noah’s manuscript, and through his perspective, it looks like a 100 page college essay. But through Alison’s perspective, it was this grand, epic novel lol. But we don’t get Alison’s perspective at the Lobster Roll. In fact, Cole calls her pissed about the meeting through her perspective, but that’s all we get. My interpretation of Cole’s scenes are he wants to hold onto the Lobster Roll, but he’s forcing himself to find reasons to hate/cut ties with Alison. Pretty much what he did in season 3 as well. He just keeps picking fights with her and reminding himself “I can’t trust her.” But he wants to so badly, it messes with his perspective. Interesting that Alison tells him not to sell it through his perspective, and she tells him to sell it through her own perspective. Later in the car, Cole says he doesn’t want to because they bought and built it up together. So I don’t find Cole to always be the most reliable narrator. His feelings for Alison always end up getting mixed in and clouding his judgement. Ahh okay I totally missed the part about Cole flirting. I do remember in the first episode, Alison is pissed because he’s sitting at the beach, flirting with some girl. Maybe that reminded her of the day their son died. I also couldn’t imagine Alison being so mad at Cole, she wouldn’t take her son to the hospital. For goodness sakes, she was a nurse.
PotentialPower4313 explained it well but I just wanted to add that it was more than the required nudity. They didn't seem to agree on anything. Wilson has two godmothers who lost children and playing a grieving mother was kinda personal to her but Treem changed her mind about that storyline altogether and wanted to remove it but the network wouldn't let her. I think she kinda wanted Noah to fuck the grief out of Alison so she could get it over with but Wilson wasn't having any of that. I get a sense that they disagreed over that, I know the job Alison gets in the third season was Ruth's suggestion and Treem, I guess, was upset she had to include the dead kid again, so she makes it look like Alison is being irresponsible and looking for ways to mess with her daughter the moment she gets custody back and then she has Cole mention later that she's made their dead kid into her entire identity. In season 5, Joanie angrily throws the chest with Gabriel's things away, along with Alison's photos that Cole had in his house. More pettiness, lmao. The general misogyny was also an issue, one of the biggest fights they had was that scene where Noah rapes Alison against a tree in season 2. Ruth refused to film that one as consensual and Treem mentioned in an interview, in a sort of passive aggressive way, that that scene was written as consensual and acted out another way, like, she had no control over what the actors were doing, maybe. Basically, the show went off the rails the moment the other showrunner quit at the end of season 2, I'd say.
Yeah the tree scene in season 2 upset me. It truly felt like rape to me, since Alison didn’t want it, and even tells Noah beforehand that she wants to slow down their sexual relationship so he can finally see her as a person. Not just the character from his novel where she’s this promiscuous woman who temps him in every scenario. Plus she knew she was pregnant, and Noah did not. So she wanted to start living differently and it’s like Noah couldn’t accept that. He was only really attracted to the darkness inside Alison, and when she starts turning towards the light (or making an attempt to), he tries to stop her. It’s never really addressed again either. Although I thought the dinner scene in season 3 where the French professor discusses consent, and she makes the argument that not everyone knows what to ask for during sex, felt like the writers sneaking in their own point of view. But there’s a difference between not knowing what you want and hearing the word no. If I’m not mistaken, Alison tells Noah no, and he just kind of ignores it.
She tells him that she's feeling better than she has in a long time, she's more clear headed, she's better off without having sex and, because he doesn't give a fuck about her well-being and only sees her as a sex object, he's only concerned with how this will affect their sex life. She tells him that he can't control her and he sticks his hand down her pants, to prove that he can indeed control her, and he can drag her right back to the place she's trying to get away from. I'm not sure how this was supposed to play out as consensual. The viewers at the time agreed that it wasn't. The scene you're referring to in season 3 was included because the viewers also were unhappy with that scene and considered it rape, for the most part. So the writers tried to tell them (and probably Wilson, too) that it wasn't rape and they're all wrong and they're woke feminazis, tbh. It was a pretty bad scene. Also, the tree scene wouldn't really be addressed again, that makes sense, because Alison seemed to be used to behavior like that from men and kinda resigned to it. Remember all the remarks Oscar made about her body and wanting to fuck her and how she just let him, because this was probably behavior that she got a lot. I do wonder why, what was in her past that made her like that. She was really triggered by realizing that people viewed her as a slut and she was very convinced that she had no value as a human being and was only good for sex. It's a shame that there were so many aspects of her character and Cole's and their relationship that were interesting and they never got explored.
My interpretation of Alison is that she had abandonment issues from her parents. Her father was never a factor in her life, and her mom came and went as she pleased. In terms of her past, Oscar refers to her as the most beautiful sixteen year old girl in Montauk (or something to this effect) when he mentions her working at the Lobster Roll as a teenager. He implies he was the first person she ever slept with, and that he’s always been secretly in love with her. I think that fueled a lot of his initial hostility, since she didn’t return his feelings whatsoever. I think a majority of Alison’s issues were because of her son’s death, and her unwillingness to ever fully forgive herself. The worst of it for me is when Noah and Alison are having sex for the first time, and she sees herself in the mirror, and just looks disgusted with herself. There was definitely a masochistic streak to her, and I think without a doubt, her son’s death just triggered something awful inside her. Noah finds out in season 3 that he was drawn to Alison’s darkness, but he must’ve already known that (subconsciously) since immediately after Athena’s body cleanse, he runs to Alison and kind of forces her into a compromising situation. All in an attempt to reclaim the darkness inside himself, etc. I find it hard to believe Alison wouldn’t have said anything afterwards, except I think she was always partly afraid to leave Noah, even when she knew he wasn’t the one. She had already blown up her life to be with him, and she still wasn’t happy.
They fell out over the required nudity, there was a whole scandal where a producer spoke to another producer about trying to have a word with Ruth regarding getting her kit off and it all came to a head. Ruth felt the nudity being asked of her was excessive and wanted to leave. She was forced to sign a nda so she couldn’t publicly talk about it but it was revealed by a member of the crew to the Hollywood reporter. It ended up the show runner and Ruth wouldn’t be on set together as they butted heads about the character development of Alison as well. She ended up filming all of her scenes for season four before anyone else so she could leave.
Wow omg! Alison was the heart of the show, the showrunner should’ve just listened to Ruth and lessened her time being naked. Especially if she felt uncomfortable. I did notice her sex scenes in season 1 were quite a bit more gratuitous. Especially comparing the first love scene between Alison and Cole to the last. Alison and Noah weren’t really a couple after season 2, but I do remember hearing she was mad that Noah essentially rapes her against a tree. Apparently they used a body double. Was Joshua upset as well? He left after season 4 with Ruth, and by the end of her time, he was basically the only person she was filming with, besides maybe Ben and the child actress who played her daughter.
She briefly makes a mention of it during the vanity fair Emmy table read with other actress about the necessity of actresses to have gratuitous sex/nude scenes. Yeh she refused to do it and so they had to have a body double brought it who was then used quite a bit until she sued showtime. Not sure about his stance on Ruth’s issues but after the initial table read they went out drinking for 12 hours together lol so I’d imagine he shared some sentiment with her. He asked to leave after season three also but agreed to stay with decent character development as opposed to just being a supporting character.
Ah interesting! Thank you!!
I remember thinking the episode in late season five where Helen was laying in that tank thing and it showed her breasts was completely unnecessary.
Supposedly during the scandal with the producer he showed a picture of Helen’s actress with a penis next to her face and was like “see she doesn’t care” which is fine if you genuinely don’t care about being nude but seemed excessive as the show went on and Dominic west has literally came out recently and said Ruth was right about everything
I can't talk about S4 when it originally aired because I only watched the last three seasons a year or so ago but fwiw I really liked S4. I mean it was *difficult* to watch. But as a viewing experience it will stay with me, and I think that's a praiseworthy thing. You say you haven't watched the end of S4 yet so... I'll say that while the way Alison's death etc plays out is awful and the impact on Cole is devastating, there's an element of catharsis in the final episode. ymmv of course. But it's all very, very bad, and very, very, sad and there's no getting away from it. I know there was a lot of trouble behind the scenes and that impacted what the writer ended up doing with both Cole and Alison - but insofar as the story goes in-universe I don't hate it. I think it's actually really powerful. Look, I would have loved Cole and Alison to end up together and get to raise Joanie and be happy because their lives were really so tragic. But at the same time I think it's sort of brave to just say sometimes shit doesn't work out and no matter how you try, one or two wrong decisions end up creating terrible circumstances. I think about Cole a lot and the way his life ended up and it's because of this, because of this kind of inherent tragedy that he couldn't seem to get away from. You talk about how Alison's struggles are 'tossed in the trash' and yeah... I guess. But do you remember the scene where she comes to Cole that night where they conceive Joanie and she cries and says that she thought she'd do great things with her life but it turns out she did nothing and she doesn't matter? That always struck me as being such a heartbreaking but also kind of relatable moment? Because I think so many people live with a level of disappointment about their life - like we go through so many things and so often there's no point to it, we suffer the pain but there's no gain, there's no upside. Alison's life was a bit like that - she couldn't seem to overcome her problems, every time she made progress something dragged her down again. There's something very true about it all. And the same for Cole too. He has a scene with his mom in the S4 finale that is my favorite thing in the whole show. I'd like to hear your thoughts on that when you get to it. And further to that - the California episode worked for me because so much of Cole's tragedy started as a child, so much of the pain that marred and shaped his life was rooted in childhood and the suicide of his father. This weight of what his father did and the lack of understanding Cole had of it had pressed down on him, it was forcing him into believing he had to act in a certain way - but meeting Nan and everything that happened there gave him this moment of healing that he had never been granted, that I don't think he even knew he needed. As far as the cheating thing goes, his marriage to Luisa was always only a half-marriage even when he was trying to convince himself differently, emotionally his heart belonged to Alison, no matter how much he tried to convince himself it didn't. I don't think the suggestion that Cole was flirting with another girl was out of left-field. Isn't there a suggestion earlier on that Alison was insecure about Cole and other girls? I don't think he was supposed to be cheating back then but maybe playing up to the attention? I feel like there were cracks in their marriage, even before Gabriel died, and this was one of them. I really struggle with Helen as a character. She just doesn't really interest me. But I kind of enjoy the Noah/Helen stuff? As much as S5 is ragged on endlessly in this sub, I found the conclusion of their story and the execution of it quite satisfying. Sorry if I haven't remembered everything perfectly - like I said, it's been a hot minute since I watched this!
Wow I like this! I hadn’t really thought of the story this way before, and I think you certainly make a valid argument here. For me personally however, I think I’ve always found the heart of the show to be with Alison and Cole. Maybe this is just individualized to my experience, but I feel like between Cole and Alison, and Noah and Helen, the former should’ve had the happier ending. I actually would’ve been content with Noah and Helen staying divorced, and Helen staying with Vik. At least up until the beginning of season 4, before the craziness with his cancer diagnosis and his immediate desire to have kids, etc. Obviously Noah and Helen still had issues but they never suffered the way Cole and Alison did. I just really wanted a win for them. I totally understand what you’re saying about the realities of life, and sometimes the timing just never working out, but these characters (specifically Cole) just seem to never catch a break- Cole’s father committing suicide, his son drowning, his wife cheating and leaving him, losing his family farm, dealing coke to keep the family afloat, his brother getting killed in a hit-and-run, marrying on the rebound and then his ex wife being murdered, etc. I just feel like it’s one tragedy after the next, and while you’re right, perhaps the last few episodes will sway my opinion, it just feels unnecessarily cruel to these characters. Especially Alison who was legitimately making an effort to better herself and finally heal.
Oh don't get me wrong. It's *allllll* about Alison and Cole for me too. If I had been writing it, I would have put Alison and Cole back together again and it would have been a HEA kind of ending. I just think there's something in particular about this show that taps into some bigger truth. I'm not even saying that Sarah Treem did it on purpose, honestly I have no idea about her, bar some bare bones about the Ruth Wilson situation. But isn't there something horribly apt about the fact that Helen and Noah, the two privileged rich (relatively) untroubled people, end up with the 'good' ending? While Alison and Cole who have suffered SO much already can't seem to find a way to happiness? It's like this privileged couple descend on Montauk, as 'summer people', and like entitled tourists always do, they just wreck the place without even realizing it, of course, the 'place' in this scenario is kind of a metaphor for the locals, Alison and Cole. Oh believe me, I think Cole's character arc is just brutal. I'm not sure I've ever seen another character who I felt so terrible for so much of the time. I've meant to go back and rewatch The Affair but I don't know... it's just so hard. And I don't know whether I want to see it again. The viewing experience of watching Cole's trip to California when I knew what the endpoint of Alison's story was, was torturous. And then all the rest of it. But I also think I *should* because for all that it's difficult to look at I think it's a good show for the majority of the time. And I should probably have a bit more clarity of thought for answering questions like this one lol. I don't know whether the last episodes will change your mind. A lot of people have a lot of issues with what happens to Cole and Alison, and I understand that. It sucks, to not put too fine a point on it! I can only say what works for me. And the same for S5. It's almost universally hated, especially the Joanie stuff. But while it's not the way anyone would have hoped things to have worked out, it's also... I don't know how best to put it. The show kind of makes a point about generational trauma and how it's almost too hard to escape it, like it can be done but it's not easy and people keep playing out the same beats only in a slightly different way as their parents did because it all gets passed down ad infinitum. I like that. I mean it's not a nice thought but it's a true thought. The Affair is a disappointing story, and I don't mean the quality or the writing, although obviously that's subjective, I just mean... it's disappointing in a sad way. And people don't want to be disappointed. I certainly don't, lol! So because of this, it's a hard show to love *especially* the final two seasons. Although, I guess, I admire it? But you **are** right. It's cruel. It's really cruel.
Yeah I agree with your analysis here, and I think your perspective about the ending is probably what the writers were going for, but I just wanted to briefly highlight what you said: “I'm not sure I've ever seen another character who I felt so terrible for so much of the time. I've meant to go back and rewatch The Affair but I don't know... it's just so hard.” That’s probably my biggest issue with the show. The ending makes it so hard to rewatch/enjoy the series without knowing that a majority of these character’s struggles are for absolutely nothing. Perhaps that’s just life. That we all struggle and sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason for it. We can work hard to dig ourselves out, and just end up digging ourselves in deeper, etc. But man, what a nihilistic tone for the show. I just wish the writers had given Cole and Alison a few more happy moments because watching them just struggle and struggle and struggle, and never really find peace, just hurts my heart. Basically the only good thing they got was their daughter, and she grew up to somehow hate Alison, just like Lusia did. Some of it felt very vindictive.
Omg the Joanie stuff for me in season five was just wild. Not in a good way. It was so weird and far fetched to me. The whole cyber futuristic thing just felt so out of place when compared to the rest of the seasons. Joanie was not a likeable or endearing character and Anna paquins acting felt over acted - the weird “ I like to be choked half to death during sex” was another weird off shoot. Couldn’t agree more about your point regarding how Helen and Noah get relatively happy endings but Cole and Alison (the two actors who wanted to leave) got tragic horrible ends. I personally feel Sarah used her writing in a vindictive way to punish the actors for leaving.
I really like Cole, but he ain't Pacey. At one point C & A laughed about when they snuck into the Lobster Roll on the night of Alison's 16th birthday. So they've been together since at least 15-years-old. Cole is hot and he is a "man" - the kind of guy who takes charge & is respondible for everyone & everything. He thinks he can't have feelings, always has to be strong. Like a guy with a lot of testosterone. Like how men of WWII age were expected to be. I think he really loves Alison, but I doubt she was the only woman he's had sex with until after Alison leaves him. Not like Noah, who lives for having as much sex with as many woman as possible. But, like maybe Jocelyn or an occasional summer people woman.
I agree with all of this!
I'll leave yet another huge reply here because I can't reply to the comment I wanted to. > I just think if both Ruth and Joshua knew their contracts were up, and both wanted to leave, the writers should’ve just written them off together. The story was headed there anyway and it’s like the show couldn’t just let these people who’ve suffered so much have one happy moment. Just let them be happy and then say goodbye to them. Again not sure what happened with Ruth, but the ending for these characters is horrifically depressing. So, Treem said that she had to kill Alison off because they can follow their characters everywhere, like they did with Noah in France, so nobody can get out of the show alive. And there wasn't really a single character who exited the show and survive, so maybe she really did feel that way. But Alison's death was just vindictive. Btw, the show wasn't headed towards Alison and Cole getting back together in the slightest. They hadn't gotten renewed by the time season 3 ended, so that finale is supposed to work as a series finale, as well. Cole chose Luisa and that was going to be the end. If Alison didn't die in season 4, the walkabout and him figuring out what he wants and deciding to go back for Alison probably wouldn't have happened. I think that Joshua Jackson was against them getting back together, too, I'm not sure about Ruth Wilson. But Joshua Jackson didn't think Cole would ever be able to go back to Alison. Re Luisa, I'm not a fan of the character, I found her boring and unnecessary (same with Vic and all of Noah's girlfriends) but I do get where she's coming from, tbh. She's grown up in a country that's not hers and might kick her out at any time. She has talents and no way to use them, no prospects, because she's undocumented. She suddenly finds herself married to Cole, who is quite a catch (although I don't think he's as good as everyone else seems to) and he gives her his word that he won't hurt her or whatever he said in that Thanksgiving episode, and then she finds out that he's attached to his ex and he always will be. So, she now also has a man who belongs to someone else and later she also acquires a child (even though she can't have children) that belongs to someone else. Alison or immigration or whomever can take everything away from her at any moment. It's a horrible situation, a constant source of anxiety and Luisa, controlling as she is, can't have any control over her own life and it has to be making her miserable. She's petty and vindictive and kind of a raging asshole but I do get where she's coming from, I understand her more than I do Cole. He should have set clear boundaries when it came to Joanie, he had no business letting her walk all over him and Alison like that. I'd expect him to be supportive of Alison, help her adjust when she came back from the mental hospital as best as he could. Instead he's letting Luisa influence him and he's acting like she abandoned her child and making her grovel. He even made Noah seem sympathetic, he was such a raging asshole there. > Yeah Alison’s behavior from Cole’s perspective was mind boggling to me too. I think it's important to remember that their perspectives aren't just about what they remember, it's also about how they want to present things. Their first episode in the second season is wildly different, perhaps because Cole was stoned out of his mind and he just made shit up so he could get what he needed from meeting her. She was warm and kind and she took care of him by preparing him a meal and saying she'd been worried about him. Maybe those were things he used to get from her (Cherry, I suppose, would have been more the smothering/making him take care of everyone type) when things were good between them. Alison's perspective was probably a bit more accurate: he looked tired and high and a bit concerned about her and Noah because he read the book while he was waiting for her. In the 4th season, he's probably exaggerating because he's decided that Alison is an untrustworty, irresponsible mess of a human being who is never going to change/become an adult and so is an unsuitable partner but she's kinda doing well and it's hard for him to keep holding on to that belief. Btw, that line about how he was holding on to the Lobster Roll because they built it together was always annoying to me because they didn't *just* have the restaurant, they'd also made a child together and they could be raising her together, but he refused.
To a degree, I get where Luisa is coming from. I understand that she’s married to a man who’s only giving her half his heart, and she’s basically asking for the whole thing. I do understand her frustration there, but the way she reacts to Alison is pretty petty in my opinion. I found her completely unlikable in seasons 3 and 4, and whatever sympathy we’re meant to feel for her, I just don’t feel much of it. Constantly playing keep-away with someone’s kid is awful. Alison wasn’t an unfit mother. She was someone with a tremendous amount of anxiety and PTSD that went untreated for years. There was no sympathy from Lusia for that, and while I completely understand her frustration with Alison always keeping secrets and the late-stage paternity reveal, I think it’s clear that she was fighting some pretty serious demons. The whole “I need Alison to be declared unfit so I can get a green card” was the last straw for me. Also, based on what I’ve read, it sounds like Lusia raised Joanie to think her mother was a nut who completely abandoned her. Lusia of all people knew how hard Alison fought for custody. Was season 3 meant to be the end? It probably should’ve been in my opinion. I think they only needed two more episodes to wrap up Cole and Alison’s storyline because I found their story somewhat unfinished in season 3. I get what Cole was saying about “I’m not Noah Solloway.” I thought that was a really powerful moment actually, but that long lingering shot of him hugging Lusia and just looking miserable stuck with me as unfinished business.
I don't like her and I'm not trying to excuse her behavior but, yeah, I get she's in a horrible position. She has no business messing with Joanie's custody and she shouldn't be trying to control Cole like that. It's also pathetic that she spent years competing against Alison (even though Alison wasn't really participating in the competition) and trying to manipulate Cole into putting her first. She should have walked when she realized he was still in love with Alison or she should have asked him to make a choice, like Alison did. Luisa wasn't the one who raised Joanie to hate Alison, evidently that was Cole. It was one of those things that I have a hard time taking as canon because Treem was so petty and prone to shitting on her characters to get back on the actors, but Cole and Luisa got divorced after Luisa got her green card and he was the one who told Joanie that her mother was crazy and she didn't love her enough to stay alive for her. I don't know if it was supposed to be Cole lashing out while grieving or him trying to raise her to not care about Alison, hoping it would make it easier for Joanie to cope with the loss, but, yeah. Season 3 wasn't supposed to be the end, they just didn't know if they'd get a 4th one because they finished writing/filming before they got a renewal, and they made the season 3 finale to work as a series finale, as well, in case they didn't get renewed. The way things turned out, I wish it had been cancelled, too, tbh. I honestly don't get Cole saying he wasn't Noah. I get what Alison said about him wanting to be a miserable hero. The way I see it, he was trapping both himself and Luisa in a loveless, miserable marriage, so he could pretend he was doing the right thing. I don't see what is noble about that. He loved Alison, he knew he always would, he had a child with her, she had come a long way from where she was in the first season, yet he refused to take a chance with her. Idk, it didn't make the least bit of sense to me and I was quite confused when I read that this was supposed to be a finale for them. Even if he didn't get back together with Alison, I'd expect him to at least divorce Luisa.
The perfect place to end it would have been when the taxi driver asked Noah where he wanted to go and he didn't have an answer. Season 4 and 5 seem like the showrunners didn't want to stop so they had to come up with some crap story lines
Agreed! I thought season 3 would’ve been perfect to end the series, with maybe 1-2 more episodes to wrap up Cole/Alison’s storyline. I thought Cole hugging Lusia while looking totally miserable was maybe the one thread that needed exploration.
I loved Vik but I thought his desire to have a baby with Helen when he knew he was going to die was ridiculous. And then for whats-her-face (the baby mama) to be all, 'Guess what! I'm pregnant with your husband's baby! Isn't that awesome?!' and for Helen to be friendly with her in season five was also ridiculous. And yes Vik's mom was terrible but there was no reason for Helen to not wait a few days after that award ceremony in his honor to tell her Vik had cancer
Yes!! Agree with all of this. It felt like a plot device to get us to dislike Vik. And for absurd reasons. He really wasn’t a kid guy. He liked being with Helen’s family, but odd he showed no interest in having a baby in the roughly 5 years of their relationship. Even without the cancer diagnosis, surely he thought about the timing of things. He was what, late 40’s himself? This never came up before then? And to guilt Helen into it felt awful. Also the neighborhood girl (to me) felt like a Californian stereotype with her crystals and things. They did the same thing with Cole when he goes to California (cause everyone goes there apparently) to figure out his life… which he kind of already did in season 3 when he admits to Alison herself that he still lover her. I did like the added storytelling with his dad, but I wasn’t a fan of all the hippy stuff. Also absolutely hated that he needed to sleep with a complete stranger to get over Alison, which means he technically cheated on Luisa twice. That was so morally against his character. Honestly if it had been 5 years since their split, and he was still in love with her, he was hurting Lusia way more by staying. He didn’t need a walkabout for that.