The Affair came back and found Noah out of prison, but still feeling a little imprisoned by his demons. We catch up with him, and his grizzly beard, as he’s preparing for his father’s funeral. Helen, because she still somehow cares about him, shows up with the kids, and you get the sense that things aren’t great. Martin is straight up ignoring him, and Noah could careless that Helen traveled all the way there. Take the fall for her and go to prison? Sure. Say thank you for supporting me in my time of grief? Not so much.
During the funeral Noah gets up to say a few words and it’s safe to say prison has removed any verbal eloquence he once had. You know it’s bad when the priest doesn’t know what to say (he ends up going with: “Thank you for your… words”). Same, Father, same. We also learn that Noah, fresh out of prison, is living with his sister and her husband who is not happy about it. A matter only made worse when it’s revealed that Noah’s late father left the house to him, and not the sister. So, this causes Noah to look for some other means of housing. Student housing. Yup, even though he’s a convicted murderer, he’s out of prison and teaching young, impressionable minds. This makes sense.
The subject? Creative writing. And the first time we see him in action is when he completely tears into a student Audrey (Haddie for you Parenthood fans). She storms out crying and he’s slightly confused. One: Because he’s become a bit of even more of a dick. Two: because those demons I mentioned above seem to literally be haunting him. We see this shadowy figure numerous times throughout the episode, and it’s only when Noah gets a visit from his PO that we realize Noah’s not just being haunted by his memories from prison (something he downplayed to Helen in a flashback), but may also be haunted by a person. A guard from the prison to be exact. You do get to see the unshadowed version of this guard, and it’s Brendan Fraser. I feel like that reveal was supposed to be daunting, but all I can think of is Blast From The Past, so there’s that.
Anyways, while Noah tries to figure out if he’s going crazy, he attends the dinner party of a fellow professor, Ms. Le Gall. Spoiler alert: She’s French. At the party, Audrey is there, as well as some other students where the topic of dinner conversation is, you guessed it, rape! Nothing like talking about consent and then asking someone to pass the potatoes. Audrey then decides to use this meal as her opportunity to confront Noah about some questionable storylines from his book. Ms. Le Gall uses it as an opportunity to say sexual things in her french accent and seductively eat fruit. To each their own.
After dinner, Noah finds Audrey and apologizes to her for being so rude and then brings up a point she made during dinner: Does she really not feel safe in his class? The fact that this is even a question, blows my mind. You, sir, were convicted of murder. Doesn’t exactly give off “safe” vibes. Audrey’s response though is better: Yes, she doesn’t feel safe in his class, but as a woman she doesn’t feel safe anywhere. #Preach. Then, as if Ms. Legall’s advances weren’t subtle enough before, she interrupts their conversation and asks him if he’d like a tour. Sigh. Any guess as to where their first stop is?
While in her bedroom (did you guess right!?) she tells him that he is interesting and because this is Noah, and even though he is still wearing his wedding ring, this is enough to make him cheat… again. But before things go “too far” he leaves. When he gets back to his new, crappy apartment, (#TBT to college life) we finally hear something about Allison. He leaves her a message that even though “he’s not supposed to contact her” he needed to hear her voice. Why haven’t they spoken? And where was Allison this whole episode? The entire thing was told from Noah’s perspective (i.e: all about him). Some things don’t change.
The episode ends with Noah standing in his apartment and someone sneaking up behind him and stabbing him in the neck — and it doesn’t look good. Seriously. So much blood. And with that, we’re left waiting for the next episode, and to hopefully get some perspective (literally) as to what’s really going on.