For four seasons, The Affair examined the aftermath of Noah’s (Dominic West) affair with Alison (Ruth Wilson) and the ripple effects felt among their spouses, Helen (Maura Tierney) and Cole (Joshua Jackson), respectively, and families. In Season 4, the members of the star-crossed quartet were all involved in new relationships, yet it was business as usual in the new normal. In Episode 406, however, a few hostile therapy sessions, earthquakes, sunny days, and – voilà! -enlightenment out of the blue. Abruptly transformed Helen gave Alison insight into how not to fall victim to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Noah and Helen commiserated for their losses (some kind of bereavement fellowship?) and seemed to have reconciled with each other in the finale episode. And Helen’s mysterious smirk in the very last scene – as if it were the series finale…Not so fast!

The Affair’s fifth and final season once again finds Noah and Helen trying to control everything from Whitney’s (Julia Goldani Telles) upcoming wedding to Helen’s tryst with a movie star Sasha Mann (Claes Bang). The show promises to reveal the characters finding out “how everything does really fall apart in the end, but somewhere in that wreckage, the seeds of change finally sprout.”

The final season also adds a P.O.V. of thirty-something Joanie (Anna Paquin), Alison and Cole’s daughter, in a series of flashforwards jumping roughly 20 years ahead. Don’t be alarmed when you see Joanie all grown up with existential crisis looming darkly above her. In order to avoid her husband and two daughters, she takes on a coastal engineering project in Montauk wanting to find out what really happened to her mother.

Last season, Alison finally realized that healing doesn’t just happen; you have to make it happen by changing your role and narrative. She was about to break the vicious cycle when her life was taken. On the other hand, Cole went on a walkabout and found out he did not want to give up on Alison. To his (and my) regret, he didn’t get to confess his undying love for her! Although they are much younger than Noah and Helen, they were on the verge of or a few steps into self-discovery. Their traumatic past informed them to explore their emotional baggage bleeding over into a new relationship. I also think they knew something has to be done. If you don’t have a vision however vague it might be, you’re stuck in what you know. And the only thing you know is what you’ve already seen and experienced growing up.

On the other hand, Noah and Helen float through life aimlessly. I don’t know what Helen wants out of her privileged and entitled life. I don’t have a clue what she wants to be when she grows up. The poor little rich girl saw a therapist right after she moved to Los Angeles, but she insisted she had put the past behind her and was in total denial of her own baggage and demons. Healing, forgiveness, and enlightenment are the last thing on her mind. If you’ve forgiven each other and are happy with yourself, you won’t engage in the dumper-dumpee drama. This brings back to my astonishment when Helen gave guidance to distraught Alison; stop being a victim, change the narrative, play a different character, and start thinking differently before it’s too late. Did Helen express her feelings of guilt and self-condemnation because she hadn’t carried out any advice given to her? Or was she just parroting what the New Age therapist had told her?

Noah, of course, suffers from arrested psychological development, specifically due to the traumatic mother-son relationship in his adolescence. He assisted in his mother’s suicide, remember? His question to his therapist “can a cheater be a great accomplished man at the same time?” is very telling. Noah is a narcissistic, insecure man-child! He could be a misogynist as well. Since neither of them examined their past, they are their circumstances. They both ran away from unbearable parents. Noah found a way to achieve an upper-class lifestyle he had craved all his life. The “it girl” Helen married a ‘safe choice’; the ultimate salt into Noah’s wound. In other words, their lives have been one ‘jumping out of the frying pan into the fire’ after another. Their lifelong habit has to stop!

Socrates preached that if we refuse to question ourselves and the world, we will act without reason because we cannot distinguish between good actions and bad actions. The good life is one in which we make both ourselves and those around us happier and better off, but the only way to pursue that life is to sit still, learn to feel, dig deep, and find out what we inherited from our parents. It’s a lot of hard work, but without self-knowledge, you’re doomed to repeat what you know.

The Affair returns Sunday, August 25, 2019 on Showtime one last time.

About the Author

Meg Mimura is a TV critic who actually watches shows zealously in search of thought-provoking and paradigm shifting human drama worth our precious time. She is a member of Television Critics Association. Follow her on Twitter.

Kirsten Dunst plays Krystal Stubbs, a minimum wage water park employee who figuratively loses her husband to the cult of free enterprise in On Becoming a God in Central Florida. This dark comedy follows Krystal’s relentless pursuit of the American Dream within and without the multi-billion dollar pyramid scheme, Founders America Merchandise (FAM).

“There’s so much rage within Krystal that I feel like I don’t necessarily always get to express in characters,” said Dunst at a press conference early August. Having given birth last year, she channeled her utter exhaustion into her character. “Krystal’s working so hard. She’s so tired. You just kind of put everything you have into it and be the most emotionally vulnerable you can so that you connect with your audience.”

Travis Stubbs (Alexander Skarsgård) quits his steady sales job and works day and night to climb the ranks of FAM. After his unfortunate death, Krystal quickly finds out that Travis had spent much more than he actually made. Bombarded with bills and debts, she has no choice but to pick up the pieces for her baby.

When FAM’s loyal and rabid follower Cody (Théodore Pellerin) inherits Krystal as one of his downlines, she develops a tangled relationship with him to get deep into this be-your-own-boss trap. She cons, schemes, blackmails, and manipulates to break free of the clutches of FAM. Little does she know, her scheme to take down the cult leader Obie Garbeau II (Ted Levine) would end up preying on her precious friends.

Robert Funke and Matt Lutsky, co-creators of On Becoming a God in Central Florida, did an intensive research on cults and decided to expose how their brainwashing and predatory practice ruin the most precious relationships. It’s about time somebody exposes the true nature of pyramid schemes/cults that exploit insecure and vulnerable people.

“There was something kind of moving and sad about the whole thing,” admitted Dunst about getting teary-eyed while practicing a puppet dance in Episode 2. Krystal tries so hard!! So do many decent hard-working people here and now. We are no better off than these Floridians were almost thirty years ago. Funke believes that “this show really lives in the world of people just trying to be happy in their daily lives, and they’re being preyed on.”

Although Krystal’s journey takes place in a small Orlando-adjacent town in 1992, On Becoming a God in Central Florida certainly taps into our own desperation and exhaustion to stay afloat and sane in the Trump-era zeitgeist. Not only amoral one-percenters but also self-serving criminals run this country for their own gain while ‘law-abiding citizens’ are punished because we do not believe in winning at all cost. Whether it’s a bully next door or in the White House, no matter how hard we try, we just cannot bring them to justice.

“I realize it’s all right the world is crazy as long as I make my little corner of the world sane,” said my role model Diane Lockhart (The Good Fight Season 2). Her wisdom was uplifting enough to last a while, but I’m afraid I’d lost the last piece of my sanity sometime early this year. I am exhausted fighting the evil in every corner of my life. My worst self is short-tempered, anxious, and gets controlling about stupid things. Watching Krystal’s crusade against the predators might be just what the doctor ordered for my desperation, rage, and exhaustion.

On Becoming a God in Central Florida premieres Sunday, August 25 on Showtime.

About the Author

Meg Mimura is a TV critic who actually watches shows zealously in search of thought-provoking and paradigm shifting human drama worth our precious time. She is a member of Television Critics Association. Follow her on Twitter.

Photo Credit: Liz Von Hoene /SHOWTIME.

Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry opened a press conference in LA by describing the origin of his new streaming series on CBS All Access. “I had an idea that I’d been carrying around for years about a housewife in the 1960s who finds out her husband’s cheating. And instead of telling him that she knows, she befriends his mistress and that starts her on a journey of self-discovery.” Cherry, however, added two more women in the 1980s and 2010s in the mix. Why Women Kill follows three married women living in the same Pasadena mansion in three separate decades. Their marriages are tested by betrayal and infidelity. Cherry also promised to “bring it all together in the final episode in a really glorious, surprising way that I’m so excited for everyone to see because we find a really fascinating way to connect these three characters.”

Beth Ann (Ginnifer Goodwin), a stereotypical homemaker à la Donna Reed, met Rob (Sam Jaeger) in high school. Rob, an aerospace engineer, reveals right off the bat that ‘there’s nothing sexier than a girl who wants to take care of you.’ Translation? He was looking for a glorified maid and she won a provider/protector. They seem to have it all, but Beth Ann finds out that Rob has been cheating on her with a young waitress. Rather than confronting him, Beth Ann decides to work harder to be a good wife in order to keep it together. She thinks there is something wrong with her, of course. Mind you, this is what the 60s society dictated and expected wives to do. Mistress? No big deal! After all, in any chauvinistic society, having an affair or two was considered ‘a status symbol’ or ‘a side effect of affluence.’

Simone (Lucy Liu) is a brittle socialite and businesswoman. She is a nouveau-riche social climber à la Alexis Carrington and stops at nothing to retain a mirage of well-to-do perfect lifestyle. Simone finds out that her third husband, Karl (Jack Davenport), is gay. Simone wants him to ‘suffer in a one bedroom apartment next to the airport.’ Everything the couple does is melodramatic, but the facade of being rich and perfect and having everything in its right place is critical to them. Her next project? To have an enviable divorce after her daughter’s wedding!! Go figure! Apparently Simone hasn’t learned her lessons yet.

Taylor (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) is a feminist lawyer à la Gloria Allred. It’s all about her career and success. Her husband, Eli (Reid Scott), is a struggling screenwriter and Taylor wears the pants in this open marriage. However, when Taylor invites one of her hookups, Jade (Alexandra Daddario), to stay with them for the weekend, their delicately crafted ‘house of cards’ begins to collapse. Although Jade claims to be bisexual, she fits Eli’s mold of a perfect wife.

While watching the first two episodes, I re-lived my parents’ dysfunctional marriage. I totally related to Beth Ann’s exasperation, frustration, and desperation since I am a product of a couple like Beth Ann and Rob. The conversation between them about ‘Who will I be without you?’ is extremely poignant; I’m sure it never occurred to my mother that there could be a life outside her husband. Unless you are Lady Mary (Downton Abbey), women had no choice but to get married for stability and security. It used to be a socio-economic survival strategy for most women. My mother stayed in her miserable marriage because she would have been penniless and homeless if she were to divorce my father.

For Beth Ann, her marriage is a lifetime employment that is vitally important for her survival. Simone and Taylor, on the other hand, treat their marriages as one of their life accessories they can pick and choose because they are financially independent. Cherry might be comparing apples and oranges here, but the takeaway message is loud and clear to me. Marriage is a lot of work, and death is cheaper than divorce. If you can afford to be on your own, why bother to tie the knot? It goes to show you how the times in which we live shape our beliefs, behavior, and expectations. Oprah’s certainly got the right idea!

Why Women Kill premieres August 15 on CBS All Access and every Thursdays a new episode will be rolled out for the next 9 weeks.

About the Author

Meg Mimura is a TV critic who actually watches shows zealously in search of thought-provoking and paradigm shifting human drama worth our precious time. She is a member of Television Critics Association.