The last few
Sundays, I’ve been having a love-hate relationship with Showtime. I love Homeland. I hate The Affair.
I’ve recently
become acquainted with the term “hate-fucking.” Is there such a thing as hate-watching?
Let’s start with Homeland.
I didn’t watch
the first few seasons of Homeland, but I
decided to give this season a try because I’d heard such good things about it.
(A previous attempt at trying to watch last season didn’t work because the plot
was already too far along for me to catch up.)
This season
started great and got better. And it was
also a new story line, so if you missed the first few seasons, like I did, you
could start from scratch.
This season’s arc
had Carrie (Claire Danes), a bipolar CIA agent, pursuing the Osama Bin
Laden-like character Haissam Haqqani in Pakistan. Along the way, she has a
make-believe affair with Haqqani’s young nephew, a slowly simmering attraction
to her hot fellow agent Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend), and has to deal with a
bunch of backstabbing coworkers that make your typical office politics look
like a walk in the park.
While the season
finale was relatively subdued compared to the rest of the season (Carrie
returns home to the United States while Quinn, after swearing he wouldn’t,
returns to Pakistan), there were some moments that were so suspenseful, it was
truly difficult to watch.
And I haven’t
even gotten into the sadomasochistic relationship between the U.S. Ambassador
Martha Boyd (Laila Robbins) and her traitorous husband or their double-dealing
Pakistani counterparts.
Really, a plot
summary couldn’t possibly do the series justice.
Let’s just say
that by the end of the season, I needed some of Carrie’s bipolar medication!
Now let’s talk
about The Affair.
What started for
me as a harmless bit of real estate porn turned into…well…just porn!
Holy crap!
Dominic West was naked more often on this series than Lena Dunham in Girls! (Not that I’m complaining…)
But the
histrionics were ratcheted up so high, it was more like watching a soap opera
than the True Detectives-like mystery
they were aiming for. (How creepy was that Fiona Apple song at the beginning?)
Noah and Helen
Soloway (Mr. West and Maura Tierney), a Brooklyn couple (he’s a teacher and
writer, she runs a home furnishings store) are vacationing with their family in
Montauk when Noah is drawn to a young waitress (Alison Bailey, played by Ruth
Wilson) at a seafood restaurant.
They immediately
begin a torrid affair, but this is no ordinary affair. You see, Alison’s young
son died several years ago and she and her husband are still in mourning.
Meanwhile, Noah has to deal with his rich in-laws who are constantly belittling
him.
While the series
shows the very real devastation infidelity can wreak on a marriage, Noah and
Alison are so self-destructive that after a while you’re like, “Oh, well, I
guess they’re gonna fuck again.”
OK, so we know
that—in America—sex is a greater taboo than violence and infidelity a more
serious crime than murder. But if you’re going to have a morality tale about
infidelity, go big or go home. I’m talking Fatal Attraction.
That movie was
more believable for being a one-night-stand gone wrong than the long, drawn-out
Affair. And Glenn Close (as Alex
Forrest) was so deliciously evil, she practically verged on camp. (As much as I
loved Cher in Moonstruck, I still
think Ms. Close deserved the Oscar that year.)
In the Affair season finale, when Noah is finally arrested for a
murder we never saw him commit, all you can do is yawn.
P.S. The Comeback is a bit of a disappointment this season, too. I
guess the first season (nine years ago) set the bar so high (and reality TV set
the bar for humiliation so low) that it was hard to top. (I also think that the
show-within-the-show, Room and Bored,
added a much-needed dimension.) This week’s episode, where Valerie wears a wire
to the restaurant where she and her husband are trying to repair their
relationship, approached some of the cringeworthy-ness that made the first
season so good.
Sometimes I
think, this isn’t a comedy about show business, it’s a documentary.
No comments:
Post a Comment