The Affair Recap: She’s My Daughter

We're slowly working our way into the meat of the Alison (Ruth Wilson) and Cole (Joshua Jackson) situation on this season of The Affair, with only a dash of Noah (Dominic West) thrown in — just enough to keep things off-kilter. Sure, I could walk you through the he said, she said of Alison and Cole struggling through their custody battle over Joanie (Reagan and Savannah Grella). I could complain about how the show's writers are beating that concept to death with the bit featuring Oscar (Darren Goldstein), the annoying red-headed friend at Joanie's birthday party. The real crux of the issue is that Alison is becoming a Noah. They're both the center of the hurricane that rages around them. They're both constantly destroying lives, yet compelling people to want them. I'm now completely Team Noah and Alison, because they're too dangerous for the rest of the world. They should just focus their unchecked sexuality on each other and spare every other person in their lives a lot of heartache. Case in point: this week, the fighting between Cole and Alison as they navigate the horrible world of supervised, shared custody ended in sex. Cole just couldn't help himself, even though he's married to someone else. Alison went along with it and I can't help but wonder if that was because she wanted to or because she's trying to gain favor with Cole and get unsupervised visits with her daughter. Alison always seems to have a lot of power or no power, but her life is never quite in balance. She walks the tightrope most women do in relationships, but it's fatiguing to watch her seesaw back and forth between Cole and Noah. Oh yeah, that's right — Noah left her a voicemail and hearing his voice shook her to her core. That's not over. I'm ready for this show to get into the meat of her depression and the episode that caused her to lock herself away and give custody of Joanie to Cole and his wife. We get a glimpse of it when Joanie falls off her horse at her birthday party and Alison imagines she's dead, like the little boy she had with Cole before. Something is not right in Alison's head and she's not going to be able to hold it together forever under this level of stress.