The Affair wraps up season 3 in Paris, because why not

Because The A.V. Club knows that TV shows keep going even if we’re not writing at length about them, we’re experimenting with discussion posts. For certain shows, one of our TV writers will publish some brief thoughts about the latest episode, and open the comments for readers to share theirs.

• Welcome to the end of The Affair’s bonkers season three! In our latest “makes no sense” trajectory, Noah has gone from the sobbing, destroyed mess we saw on the floor of his kitchen last week to a happy, well-adjusted Parisian writer, merely due to the divine intervention of a few months with Professor SexFrench. Remember, we have no idea what’s really in it for her, this unemployed ex-con who smashed up her car, except his magical penis. I can appreciate the show’s desire to wrap things up at the end of the season, but this is a bit abrupt, to say the least.
  
• And so we get our second “Juliette”-led POV, as she gets a few kind of lucid moments with her elderly husband before he dies. Again, I have to wonder about the show’s decision got include a fifth character at this point in the game, and to sacrifice a half-episode to her surrounded by people we don’t know or care much about. But by the end of the episode, Juliette is also jobless, alone, and off to her husband’s funeral, so yay?
  
• Noah’s reconciliation with Whitney was a decent way for his flawed character to get some redemption. Whitney’s latching onto Furkat shows that there are consequences for Noah’s actions, the affair with Alison that broke apart his family. Now Whitney is a young woman with definite daddy issues, so much so that she thinks she’s in love with an abusive asshole artist. Noah’s right when he admits that he failed at this job as a parent: To make Whitney stronger than that, and to protect her from men like himself.
  
• So bringing Whitney back home is about the best Christmas present he could offer his family, and even earns him a smile from Helen through the window, and a plan to go sledding with the kids. It’s a lot. Maybe even more than he deserves. But at the end of the season, when the taxi driver asks him where he wants to go, none of us have any idea.
  
• Anyone else get the feeling that the show creators just wanted to go shoot in Paris? It did look amazing.

• Thanks for reading along this season: As usual, I would not have enjoyed the show nearly as much without your comments (in fact, Professor SexFrench was your idea). When I reviewed the premiere and announced that we were not going to be running weekly reviews, you guys asked for this comments section, and I think it worked out well. At the end of this season, I’m still pondering what The Affair really wants to be about, or what its message is. “Don’t have an affair” seems to be the main one, but I do still appreciate its take on the same events as told by different viewpoints. This season appeared to add the long-term effects of other actions, and how they will continue to affect you until you deal with them: Alison’s involvement in the affair, Noah’s mother’s death, Helen’s lie about Noah’s guilt. And no matter what they’re given, the actors always bring it, and their performances continue to fascinate me: especially last week, or whenever Joshua Jackson is around. So hopefully see you next year for The Affair’s final season; as nuts as it gets, I just can’t quit this show.