MovieChat Forums > The Affair (2014) Discussion > Has to be one of the worst season finale...

Has to be one of the worst season finales ever


So, what, a six month time jump before the last episode of the season? To waste time on this minor character? Disappointing....

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They never even explained the whole "Gunther" thing which the entire season was all about.

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Did they ever explain Noah's dad chasing him through the woods? Maybe I missed something but I don't remember that being explained.















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I think the father had just realized that Noah helped his mother die.

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Gunther stalking Noah was all in his head, they did explain that in the last episode.

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The should have had an episode from Gunther's point of view.

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Indeed a very strange finale. The problem with the Gunther ending was that he seemed like a decent guy at his own house and you start to question if he was even a total a$$hole at the prison. I knew the guy was in his head the whole time but was he as bad as we all though is the better question.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpCwer0R-QR3GcAH3vvYuow
https://soundcloud.com/#carjet-penhorn

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It was ridiculous. How could Noah be hallucinating Gunther so vividly and so often and in such detail in prison? He did not have vicodin there or any other drugs....

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[deleted]

The problem with the Gunther ending was that he seemed like a decent guy at his own house and you start to question if he was even a total a$$hole at the prison.


The writers just left that unsorted heap right there so they can move on with their new material.

I too would have liked to see what the "real" Gunther in prison was like.... Was he at least good or bad to Noah?

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Agreed, very disappointing. I found myself fast forwarding most of Juliette's part. I couldn't believe how bored I was during a finale. The previous two season finale had you guessing and wondering what was going to happen next season, this finale has me wondering if I'm going to even watch next season at all.

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I couldn't believe how bored I was during a finale. The previous two season finale had you guessing and wondering what was going to happen next season, this finale has me wondering if I'm going to even watch next season at all.



^^^All of this!! I fell  -even though I wasn't at all sleepy. When I re watched I discovered it actually was a total snooze fest .

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I'm wondering what happened to Treem this season. The only episode I liked was 308.
I hated the way Luisa treated Alison, I actually like Oscar this season & never was a fan of Noah, but it was The Noah Show this season.
I won't watch next season. Out of 10 episodes, I liked one.

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Yes, it was awful. I too speed watched much of the waste of time that was the Julliette story. A pretty much non participant in most of this season. I found all of the subtitles to be badly contrasted on the screen, and, a pain in the ass. I give the writers a D for the finale, and a C minus for this season. I hope the next season, if there is one, will be better than this one was.

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They've already been greenlighted for a 4th season, but I imagine after this flop of a finale, they'll lose a number of viewers.

You're kinder than I about the finale; I give them an F for it, but a B+ for the season as a whole.

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Has to be one of the worst season finales ever


^^^Truth.


So, what, a six month time jump before the last episode of the season? To waste time on this minor character? Disappointing....


^^^ITA

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yes, a season finale that was worse than any mid-season episode of any other series. This show is dead, someone start shoveling dirt.

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Some random observations:

1. At best it would have made a halfway decent S04E01. It made a ridiculous season 3 finale.

2. Noah was still Noah (at least from Juliette's POV). Totally self-absorbed and oblivious to his surrounding realities. After everything that Juliette told him she had to do the best he could offer up was: "Play hookie today with me". The guy comes across as retarded more than anything else. Then while walking by the canal it's obvious that Juliette is reserved and doesn't want anyone to see the nature of her relationship with Noah but he just has to kiss her as if he's the only one in the world that matters.

3. At least ONE adult parent demonstrates some parenting skills. When Sabine started going off on Juliette after Etienne died Juliette quickly gained control of the situation and told her to get out so she could say her goodbyes. THAT rang true. Yes, teenagers and young adult children will vent on their parents and be disrespectful at times. But the way Helen and Noah dealt with their dysfunctional children was absurd; the way Juliette dealt with her daughter rang true.

4. Yet another character (Juliette) who gets caught up in her own lies.

5. This episode had more of a dramatic, vs a melodramatic, tone (at least in the Juliette POV). And yet, in the context of all the previous episodes, it stood out like a sore thumb.

6. Noah's account that only a few months previously he was a mess and now, thanks to Juliette, he's fine, felt totally bogus. It's yet another example of this show's non-believability.

7. Relying on the death of a character, even a minor character such as Etienne, to conjure up "deep emotion" is usually a sign of lazy writing as far as I'm concerned.

8. It seems as if sex is always the path this show chooses to go when characters are overwhelmed with their emotions.

9. When Noah was walking across the street to meet Juliette in the cafe I found myself hoping he'd get hit by a car. Now THAT would have been poetic justice! (Also, I was hoping that Noah would go off on Furkat and get arrested in Paris. That would ALSO have been poetic justice.)

10. Does it get any more pathetic than having to listen to Noah pontificate to his daughter on the subject of "love"? Really? Plus, the whole conversation by the canal just rang false to me. This show pulls out instant microwave resolutions when those very "resolutions" just seem too implausible, giving this show it's non-believable foundation. And that totally goofy talk to Whitney about parenting right before she goes to sleep? Good lord. It had me laughing out loud.

11. Noah's decision to go home with Whitney, at a very critical time in Juliette's life, is yet another example of what a selfish, ignorant cad he is.

12. Noah as the oracle dispensing advise on love and life to his daughter and lover is laughable.

13. In a way, the very last line of this show wraps up everything I've been trying to say: "Where are we going, buddy?" No response. Sarah Treem really dropped the ball and has no idea where this show is going.

14. This episode served as the series finale for me, not just the season 3 finale. Au revoir, The Affair. Au revoir.

"Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in." -- Will Rogers

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15. Locking your psycho parents in their "safe space" magically fixes everything.

My Chimp DNA seems to have lost its password temporarily. Sluggr-2

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6. Noah's account that only a few months previously he was a mess and now, thanks to Juliette, he's fine, felt totally bogus. It's yet another example of this show's non-believability.


That was in Juliette's account, not Noah's. It was his explanation as to why he bought her a beautifully wrapped and thoughtful gift. In Noah's account, he nonchalantly tossed her a bag and said he just came across it in a bookstore.

But anyway, yeah, the season finale was a total failure. To devote most of the episode to people we've never even met was absurd. Especially annoying after the penultimate episode was so promising. We jumped ahead several months, yet saw no resolution or even reference to anything that happened with Helen's revelation, save Martin's kinder reaction to Noah at the end.

It's become a show I don't recognize, full of pointless characters and convoluted, directionless subplots I don't have any interest in. I'll never understand why writers take shows so far off the rails, just to indulge themselves instead of the viewers. If you turn a show into something that doesn't even resemble the show everyone looked forward to watching, everyone will STOP watching.

I honestly don't care anymore where Noah goes, what he does, or who he does it with. I so looked forward to this season that I rearranged plans while on a weekend away just to watch the premiere. I won't be watching Season 4... I don't even understand why there will be one.

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Well yeah, it's Noah's account from Juliette's point of view. But does that mean it's not valid? (It's always been a question with this series as far as whose account is the more accurate one, the person giving the account about him/herself, or the other person giving the account about someone else. When it comes to Noah, I'd take the other person's POV above his because he's so clueless. But that's just me.)

"Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in." -- Will Rogers

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Well yeah, it's Noah's account from Juliette's point of view. But does that mean it's not valid? (It's always been a question with this series as far as whose account is the more accurate one, the person giving the account about him/herself, or the other person giving the account about someone else. When it comes to Noah, I'd take the other person's POV above his because he's so clueless. But that's just me.)


I wasn't commenting on whose account was more accurate. Only pointing out that It wasn't in Noah's account "that only a few months previously he was a mess and now, thanks to Juliette, he's fine," as you said. It was in Juliette's. In Noah's account, he never said anything of the kind, He was offhand and emotionally detached. I was simply correcting in whose POV segment Noah claimed this. As we see the same events twice, it's easy to mix up which things were done and said in which POV.

That said, I don't quite understand what you mean by "it's Noah's account from Juliette's point of view." No, it's Juliette's account from Juliette's point of view. Do we know if it's accurate? Obviously not, because we never do. But we do know that whatever happens in Juliette's POV is not Noah's account of the events. It's hers.

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To clarify, I meant it's Noah speaking (i.e. Noah's account) during Juliette's POV.

"Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in." -- Will Rogers

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6. Noah's account that only a few months previously he was a mess and now, thanks to Juliette, he's fine, felt totally bogus. It's yet another example of this show's non-believability.


That was in Juliette's account, not Noah's. It was his explanation as to why he bought her a beautifully wrapped and thoughtful gift. In Noah's account, he nonchalantly tossed her a bag and said he just came across it in a bookstore.


Partly true and partly not, if you're talking about only 2-3 months having passed since Noah's "miraculous" recovery, rather than Noah attributing it to Juliette.

It was only in Juliette's view Noah gave her the book, which was beautifully wrapped -- which he said was rare, and found it because "he knew a guy who knew a guy" -- and that his recovery was due to her, over the past few months.

In Noah's view he gave her the book very offhandedly, wrapped in brown paper and string, and said he'd just stumbled across it in a bookstore (i.e., he made no great effort for her). He said nothing about his preternatural recovery having anything to do with her, but later told Whitney he'd been seeing Juliet for a few months.

If you turn a show into something that doesn't even resemble the show everyone looked forward to watching, everyone will STOP watching.


Yeah. For me it was the finale that did it. Most of it was just filler, and what wasn't was not anything you couldn't see on any run of the mill TV show.

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Totally agree with your observations, Baltimore, except this one:

11. Noah's decision to go home with Whitney, at a very critical time in Juliette's life, is yet another example of what a selfish, ignorant cad he is.


His young daughter needed him more than his grown-up lover, who had her own family to deal with.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

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Nah. Not buying it. That whole Whitney thing was way too cheesy, as was that whole idyllic family out of thin air after he returned to NY. It was straight out of fairy tale land, and rang about as true. Plus, you make it sound as if she's 12 years old. She's old enough to deal with the mess she'd made of her life without daddy, who she's done nothing but diss, coming to her rescue.

His history of running away from commitments in relationships, OTOH, is quite real. (And it wasn't so much that Juliette needed him; it's that he needed to demonstrate to Juilette that he'd grown and changed and really appreciated everything she'd done for him. But alas...it simply wasn't in him.)

"Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in." -- Will Rogers

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Well, Whitney is certainly a young girl emotionally, regardless of her biological age.

I believe he'd be acting selfishly if he abandoned his daughter, again, to stay with Juliette, whom he's known only a few months, really. Juliette is way stronger than Whitney and I don't know that she needed him to demonstrate that he'd changed.

That's not to say the whole Whitney thing wasn't cheesy, as you say, on the writers' part. Such a coincidence they were both in Paris. And suddenly he's the wise dad, dispensing fatherly advice, and her rescuer. Then did the same with Juliette. You can definitely tell it was Noah's POV since he saw himself as such an emotional hero to both women, with his mere words making them feel better.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

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Well, reasonable minds can and do reasonably differ. Had the circumstances been different all along with Noah and Whitney and Helen and his other kids I'd agree. In this instance, however, I still think the right thing to do was to stay there with the very woman who just brought him back from the brink of insanity and addiction and send Whitney on her way with all his best well wishes. Whitney certainly didn't need (or maybe more accurately want) him while she was off screwing Scotty, or running off with Furball. So now all of a sudden she needs him to show her the way? Like I said...I'm just not buying it. But I can see your point of view. I just don't agree with it is all. (That's not to say I don't think she needs major help. But hell...EVERYBODY in this train wreck needs major help. It's just that now isn't really the time/place, although I could see an argument that it is.)

"Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in." -- Will Rogers

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[deleted]



Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

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Bad...yeah sort of because we were cheated any glimpse of Alison and Cole and really anything of significance re Helen. But NOT BAD when it comes to Noah's arc which is about self-forgiveness and reconciliation. He is offering solace to Whitney, a chance to forgo the sense of loss and wasted time

[The rest of the post cut off for some reason]

...for Noah and how he had forgone his connections to Whitney, to Martin, to Trevor and Stacey, to Helen and to himself. It was this deep cathartic vision that felt almost "invented" in Noah's mind, as much as Gunther was.

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What are you talking about? Noah is the same a-hole he's always been. You're just too easily seduced into thinking that crap Sarah Treem spoon fed you about the happy ending resolutions was even remotely real. It's all BS. It's totally out of character with the real Noah, which was evidenced more accurately in the first half, where he's accurately depicted as a self-absorbed, mindless retard. And it's one of the main reasons this show in general, and this season "finale" in particular, sucked so bad.

(Which is all the more surprising considering you've already posted background on how screwed up the entire production was, not knowing if the plug was being pulled after season 3 or if there'd be a season 4. That in itself should have told you that this thing was a corporate clusterfawk. And that's exactly how it appeared. It WAS a bad finale; one of the worst I, and a lot of other people, have ever witnessed.)

And here's what YOU YOURSELF posted in the "Season Finale: A big Meh" thread:

"So basically, the seasons big cliffhanger is what...

A) Whether Whitney models for Furkat's future artwork

B) Whether Vik (Tin Woodsman) gets a real human heart from the Wizard

C) Whether Alison (Dorothy) will be able to tap her shoes and finally go home again

D) Whether Noah (scarecrow) will get some brains finally...

E) Whether the Butlers got out of the panic room (flying monkeys get freed)

F) Jeffries, the black detective, returns to investigate the premature death of a quality show. It's another whodonit"


So again...WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

"Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in." -- Will Rogers

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It's all BS. It's totally out of character with the real Noah, which was evidenced more accurately in the first half, where he's accurately depicted as a self-absorbed, mindless retard.


Exactly...Etienne waking up, remembering Juliette and Sabine and even bantering with them was unreal, fake and utter B.S., as he dies just shortly thereafter and his lucidity faded rapidly just before this.

In that way, Noah's POV was b.s., it was lucid dreaming by Noah of an idyllic moment when he isn't self absorbed, when he says the right things to Whitney, when he consoles Juliette, when he delivers Whitney to Helen and family on Christmas even, when Martin comes out and initiates a meeting with himself and the younger siblings with Noah the next day, when Helen waves with affection and friendliness to Noah and he waves back with same.

All this in the span of just a few months? Nope...Noah's dreaming--it's his version or as close as he could get to it's a wonderful life. At least that's my theory.

On rewatch, and yes I put myself through it twice because I played with my phone so much during the first watch. It really seemed almost too good to be true for Noah. Nobody gets healed THAT fast with all that went wrong for him.

Etienne's terminal lucidity is a parallel for Noah's experience as well.

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Now that makes more sense. (Except supposedly there is something with Alzheimers patients where they might possibly achieve a brief moment of lucidity/clarity right before they die. But Noah's thing is just total BS.)

And make no mistake about it...all this lack of clarity/BS is coming directly from Sarah Treem, who clearly has no clarity/lucidity whatsoever. Once Levi left, the show went off the rails. And he knew it. That's why he left.

"Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in." -- Will Rogers

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Exactly...Etienne waking up, remembering Juliette and Sabine and even bantering with them was unreal, fake and utter B.S., as he dies just shortly thereafter and his lucidity faded rapidly just before this.


It's really not fake or BS. People suffering from dementia often enough do exactly this: suddenly becoming lucid for a day or several hours before they die. I think the doctor said the same to Juliette and Sabine. So if you're seeing this as substantiation for Noah's POV, it's not there.

Plus, Juliette and Noah's POVs were similar enough, when the two were interacting, for that to not be the case. In Juliette's POV Noah was much kinder and more thoughtful than in his. In his it was pretty much Noah as we've always seen him, except for him choosing to go after Whitney instead of knocking Furkat's lights out or threatening to kill him, as he did with Scotty.

His interaction with Martin was believable, since they'd already buried the hatchet in the last episode. Even Whitney, instead of saying "I love you too, Dad," just said thanks, which is what she'd do.

Nobody gets healed THAT fast with all that went wrong for him.


That I agree with, and is just part of why I hated the finale. Usually I watch the episodes twice, back to back. This time I don't even care about seeing it again. I skipped past the episodes with Juliette and Noah when I watched episodes again as it is, especially the one with her POV. After very much looking forward to seeing the finale, and what surprises they were going to reveal this time, instead all I got TWO parts of Juliette and Noah, with no meat on the bones to think about and talk over here. I love dissecting this show when there's something to discuss, but I was left with a handful of air, with the least interesting aspects of the show, and no depth to uncover, which is the main reason I watch this show.

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It's really not fake or BS. People suffering from dementia often enough do exactly this: suddenly becoming lucid for a day or several hours before they die. I think the doctor said the same to Juliette and Sabine. So if you're seeing this as substantiation for Noah's POV, it's not there.



Allow me to clarify--I wasn't saying that terminal lucidity itself was b.s. or false, I mean the hope that dawned on Sabine's face and to some extent even in Juliette was not based in reality, in truth, in what's actually going on. People with Alzheimer's don't get better. They were clinging to false hope.

In that way, Noah's rather rapid, remarkable, unreal recovery from true psychosis--seeing what's NOT there, carrying a version of reality that did NOT happen, to the point of visiting the real Gunther's home, threatening him with a knife, warning him to leave Noah alone--is not real, it's false. People with that level of a psychotic break don't get better that quickly and certainly not enough to warrant a trip to Paris within a few months.

So I'm saying that Noah's recovery and his rather tidy resolution with Whitney, his amicable departure from Juliette and from Paris, his composed handling of Furkat, his kindness infused exchange with Helen, his affectionate dynamic with Martin and expectation of future plans with him and the younger kids, they all ring with some incredulity. The same incredulity we could view someone with advanced Alzheimer's who suddenly demonstrates remarkable lucidity and awareness despite having such severe dementia for so long.

It feels as if we're given the "ending" that Noah would want for himself and his family. He reunites Whitney with the family he left behind on Christmas eve. He had his big excursion to Europe. It all seems, as Cotton-mouth put it, so idyllic. Almost too good to be true. Are we fools to be buying into it as such?!

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All this in the span of just a few months? Nope...Noah's dreaming--it's his version or as close as he could get to it's a wonderful life. At least that's my theory.


If Noah dreamt the season finale, what do you think happened in reality? Maybe S4 will explore this in it's dark, depressing detail.

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I honestly don't know, but it might be Noah in inpatient psychiatric hospitalization. I mean if he invented an entire reality where he was bullied and abused by a prison guard and even engaged in life-threatening self-harm, he's a prime candidate for intensive psychiatric care. I can't imagine that Noah, who tracked down Gunther's home and confronted him, at the same time Helen had been confessing her "sins" to the Butlers and Vik, was better in a short duration.

Frankly the timelines are quite convoluted, it's fall when Noah is teaching at Livingston, so we begin the season approaching Thanksgiving and Christmas. Noah delivers Whitney to Helen and company on Christmas eve. So are we talking a matter of a few months, or is this a period of one whole year. Alison attends Joanie's birthday party and it's outside and somewhat warm. When they head to Block Island it's OFF season:

So, are you happy here? Are you glad you came? Well, it's, uh it's better than prison.
[laughs] I'll have to remember that on the days I'm feeling particularly depressed.
[both chuckle] Why are you depressed? Oh, "depressed" is probably wrong.
I just feel bored.
Ennui.
I thought I'd come to America and have a grand adventure, you know? - Mm.
- I'd be at a famous university, arguing with passionate students late into the nights.
And instead, it's, um Instead, it's New Jersey.
Yes.
Where everyone is just so Nice.
Before I began, I got a kind of a a merde How do you say? A sermon from the dean about making the students feel secure.
I thought, "Secure, at a university? Why?" - [laughs softly] - [Juliette] I don't remember feeling secure when I was in school, do you? - No.
- You see? I said, "Monsieur, surely our job is to challenge them, to unsettle, to make them feel insecure, no?" - Mm-hmm.
- No.
[chuckles] [light music playing] Yeah, it wasn't always like this.
I remember back when I was teaching high school, I started noticing a change after 9/11.
Mm.
The president came on the television and started talking about keeping Americans safe, and suddenly all the students were repeating it.
And these current students, they're they're even younger, and and they've grown up on a whole rhetoric of s [ dramatic music ] [Juliette] <b>Noah, are you all right? Uh, yeah.
Yeah, uh I'm having a small dinner party tonight.[/b]
Would you like to come? Sure.
Okay.
Très bien.
So sorry I'm late.
Shall we? You're teaching only one class, correct? That's right, yeah.
I, uh I'm hoping for more next semester.
How's it going? Well, I think.
I think it's going well.
No trouble? Nope.
The job ends in December?
Yes, but, uh there's a there's a possibility I'll be invited back for the spring term.


So if it's compressed from say August/September to Christmas eve that we see in Season 3, that's NOT enough time for diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation from psychotic episodes especially with history of self-harm. Not to mention, he's a convicted felon on parole which kinda makes overseas travel not as easy as the show makes it seem.

IF this is an imagined ending for Noah--everything amicable, his relationships healed or at least not antagonistic anymore--then perhaps Season 4 begins with Noah in treatment, in therapy unpacking exactly what all had happened to his mother and what part he had in her demise, and maybe what exactly went down between his father and himself after his mother's death. For all we know, Arthur in his own guilt for not being there for his wife, and leaving Noah to care for his wife, and ashamed of not being at his wife's side when she passed, in reading the farewell letter written by Noah, projected his anger at himself and blamed Noah. And maybe THIS was the genesis of Noah's self-blame and the inception of the fabrication that he accelerated his mother's demise.

AT this point, who knows...

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It was horrible! I'm sorry but I do not care about Noah's French girlfriend and they spent over 30 minutes "telling her story". Really? Where was Allison and Cole? It was the season finale, they should have been in it. I suppose I was glad that Noah and his daughter had sort of a reconciliation.

There is nothing free except the grace of God

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Agreed. Only the final 15 minutes were good.

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Noah's story seemed like a dream to me and when he was sitting in the taxi just staring into the screen lead me to think it was really was. Wow...gotta be one of the worst season finales ever for Showtime. Bring on Billions, I'm done with the Sollways, Lockharts and Gunter...lol

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I just have to interject this here, because it amused me. On the Previously TV board someone posted this about Noah's expression when he was sitting in the taxi:

Let's talk about the last scene of the season, where the cab driver asks Noah, "Where to, buddy?" and Noah looks like he's been asked to solve a math problem about trains leaving different cities.


I thought that was pretty damned funny, and accurate.

I love Damian Lewis and tried two episodes of Billions (the second only because I was encouraged to by a poster I like), and ugh, not for me, thanks. IMO Lewis is entirely wasted in that part, which could have been played by almost anyone else.

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Agreed. Only the final 15 minutes were good.

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I agree 100%.

It was good seeing Whitney and Noah make up, but other than that. zzzzzz

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Anyone who wants to see a true K/A season finale should go watch Sneaky Pete's season one finale. It fires on all cylinders. It has most of the necessary resolutions, it's suspenseful all the way through, has intelligent twists, is true to its characters, and it opens the door to season 2 quite well. The show itself leaves a bit to be desired, though. A lot of filler in several episodes and Ribisi isn't my favorite actor -- he always has this look on his face like he's constipated. And there are mixed reviews on Cranston's performances as well. But as far as season finales go, that one is a 10/10 in my book, whereas The Affair's season finale is a 1/10.

"Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in." -- Will Rogers

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