‘The Affair’ Season 5, Episode 6: Generational Trauma

Thinking about this "EJ is Eddie" theory, I can't decide if it progresses the series, or even ties any generational or story lines together. If EJ and Joanie end up a couple, it's only a coincidence and not a neat, "tie it up in a bow" denouement. Joanie didn't know Vic or Sierra (or even Helen that we know of), Vic and Sierra are only connected to the original characters peripherally, and if he is Vic's son it doesn't further the Montauk arc beyond him being an epigeneticist. So what would be the writers' purpose here?

Can someone explain to me why Montauk is more or less abandoned & the net value of the area has been reduced to zero?

Is EJ simply a MacGuffin? He seems to old to be Sierra's child - or maybe he just looks more like a Gen X than a Gen Z

This season is SO DARK. I do enjoy the scenes set in the future, the technology and the ruination of the planet.

I love reading the comments, it's so much fun! I was hooked on the first four seasons, have to admit it. Season 5 is a major letdown with side stories and plots veering off in all directions. The casting choices make it worse, Joanie, followed by EJ. It is too bad. I will keep watching though. The strength of the first four seasons was in the cast, from Helen to Noah, to Allison, even to Helen's parents, Vik, his parents. Joanie and EJ's characters and acting can't hold a handle to the original cast. Yes, the writers have something to do with it but great actors can make poor writing feel better by adding gravitas.

Great recap from Sean Collins as usual. Thank you! I agree about the void left in the wake of the departures of Ruth Wilson and Joshua Jackson - a massive void, indeed. Harder to care about Joanie's husband and her kids, as they are such minor characters, and I agree that EJ is a plot contrivance, though he does provide some much-needed levity to the Montauk scenes. Joanie so far has not been terribly likable, but Anna Paquin is doing an admirable job. Lastly, Luisa's makeup was incredibly disappointing. Could they not have done a better job aging her? I love this show, but it was hard to even look at Luisa's face, as the makeup was just not convincing. Looking forward to next week!

Is anyone else curious as to the references to quotes from movies from the 90's? Singles for one. And between the no photographs of loved ones and the ending scene when he was standing there as she woke up, I started to think if EJ was a killer? Related to the killer? Perhaps his dad was the man who allegedly killed Alison? I weirdly liked this last episode for its thought-provoking elements; definitely not for it's use of makeup. Interesting in everyone's comments!

Watching Ej's mannerisms and listening to his speech patterns has me certain that his unknown father is Cole. I wonder what joanie would think if that revelation came out. I wonder if EJ would revert to character as a child of trauma and off himself over the incestuous mistake. I bet it would bother them both ,but hey,its not like its the end of the world right? lol I wonder if EJ's mom was the woman from the west coast that Cole slept with? I wonder if there is time enough left to tie up all of the loose ends and provide a tight amazing end or if we will be left to sink back into the ocean without knowing the effect the affair had on all of them.

Yuck! The episode was dreadful. Worst yet. I hope it's the last if its kind. I'd rather watch Furkat and Sasha run off together.

One hour of my life I can't get back....

i lived in montauk year round for 5 years. had reccuring dreams that it was cut off from the rest of long island by storms and floods.its only connected by a 20 mile stretch of beach to east hampton.it was the perfect place to stage this show, and has bee one of its stars.too crowded in summer too lonely in winter, and the wind blows for months, but cole and alison were shaped by that wind and place, and will be missed.but the writers seem to have been making it up as they go along, as alison, ruth wilson really left the show over money.but i still watch because season one and two were very good, and t.v. is the vast waste land that montauk appears to be 25 years from now.

I too have been wondering where Joanie & family live, but I don’t think it’s Houston. In Episode 2, as her train pulls into Montauk, Joanie calls her husband Paul - she says “how was Houston? He said fields, entrance to park all flooded, so we had to come home”. I think Paul travelled to Houston, doesn't live there - also seems unlikely that Luisa would have relocated to that area. I suggest they live somewhere around NYC.

Ugh. I couldn't care less about the Joanie story line. I agree with a previous poster who said Noah could have gone back to Montauk and addressed the issue of how Alison died. Anna Pacquin's character is so incredibly unlikeable (I realize that's by design, I guess). EJ, I'm sure is Eddie - son of Vik and Sierra... I mean, why not?

1) Anna Paquin was born in Canada and raised in New Zealand, not Australian. She is not Australian, and the accents are different. 2) Joanie didn't run back to EJ in Montauk. There are many skyscrapers in the background outside his apartment window. So does he live in NYC or elsewhere? 3) While I don't think he's Sierra's son, I'd be tickled pink to be proved wrong. So Joanie should put on those computer glasses again and find out who he is. 4) Looks like the killer's strength hasn't diminished with age.

Thank you Sean T. Collins/NYT for allowing weekly updates. I have nothing negative to express, still immensely intrigued with the show. Note to Mr. Collins: I could not follow your logic upon you catching the time/date stamp on screen with Joanie’s ‘google’ glasses. Perhaps you uncovered a filming error.

I have already commented but I guess it was rejected. Looking at the comments it seems like we enjoy our comments more than the actual pathetic series. I think the only reason I watch it is to laugh. Hey - maybe it will come back as a sitcom (which, if you think about, it already is).

Another excellent recap of another dreadful episode. The writers are going back to the future with Joanie in Montauk as she visits Cole’s house and grave. She learns that Alison may have been murdered, which we already suspected. We learn that, like her mom, she suffers from depression, cheats on her husband, and frequently thinks of suicide. The ravaged Montauk post-global warming serves as a heavy-handed metaphor for the wasteland Joanie has become. When she returns home, the low-oxygen sensor in the indoor garden goes off and we see fruit beginning to rot. This is an unintended metaphor for The Affair: It has lost its narrative oxygen as it begins to die in front of us. That is sad because this was once great television.

I'm loving that we got an entire episode with Joanie!! And learned about Cole, and got to see Luisa (YAY -- and YAY that Joanie considers her "mom") ... and got to see/hear Alison and Cole. Sigh. They are so missed. Poor Luisa, though, having to hear yet again how Cole never stopped loving Alison first and foremost. We only have 5 episodes left, so I can see why Joanie went to the Ben Cruz murdered her mother conclusion so quickly, but it does seem a bit unrealistic. As does leaving your house with nothing but a backpack and going straight to the creepy, oversexed guy (ew on how he kept trying to hit on her during the first meeting -- comments about what turns her on, etc.). I agree with the review -- EJ definitely feels like a plot contrivance, albeit not one as useless as the French woman in season 3. Another gratuitous and completely unnecessary breast shot, as is common in this series. I like Anna Paquin and don't mind at all that her Australian accent slips in. In fact, if it were me, I would have worked with that instead of trying to suppress it -- maybe she did her studies in Australia or something, and that's how she picked up the accent. So I remember Alison being thrown in deep water, from the jetty. How is that possible given what we now know about the tides? I most definitely do NOT want to live in an tech-driven house, now or at any time in the future! Dang that wall unit thingie was annoying (as was the tech toilet in the first episode).

This was still one of my favorite episodes of the season, and the complexity of how Joanie became so broken after Alison's death, even going as far as trying to build her life completely opposite to Alison's, was quite fascinating. I am really liking what the writers are doing with the idea of how trauma can be passed on from one generation to another -- but I feel as though they could have gone about it a better way than to have E.J., a literal expert on Joanie's entire lineage just show up and guide the way for her.

Helen, Noah, Cole and Alison were the draw. Their relationship dynamic was what was interesting about the series. Straying away from Helen and Noah is a mistake. The last episode was done well (actors / story lines) but it's not why I'm watching The Affair. Showing Joanie in the future doesn't blend with the rest of the show. It's awkward and out of place. I watched the entire episode, but only because I was waiting for Helen's story to appear. Instead, it was an hour of Joanie.

Could someone tell me where Joanie's family lives (lived)? I thought it was Houston (but, frankly, I'm not interested enough to plow back through the first episode to check). Are where does E.J. live? She leaves her house and shows up at Eddie's, but WHERE are they? Thanks for providing the links I probably missed. (The episode was so annoying and unintentionally funny that I might no doubt missed a lot more.)

Egad, one more big reason why this show should never have had this segment of futuristic gobbledeguk. What a miserable character this little girl has grown into, even more morose than her mother. Sheesh. And this pop-in character at the cemetery?? If this isn't a cut-and-paste job in the writers' room, I don't know what is. Honestly, what was this writer-producer thinking when she lost these 2 main characters, putting this futuristic segment into this final season? A lame attempt to cover up these missing 2 people, i do not have a clue. They could have just as easily kept the story in real time - leave Helen and the 2 remaining kids at home out in Vik's house in LA, and send Noah back to Montauk, where he belongs, looking for Alison's killer. Wasn't he as obsessed as Cole? He would have brought the program back to Montauk where it belongs, and gone back to teaching there instead of some magnet school in LA. Where would Cole and Joanie be? Away from his wretched family and his own melancholy, starting a new life with his little girl, maybe even Vermont - more likely Massachusetts by the water. Bring back the original investigator who spent the 1st 2 seasons trying to nail him to now-assist him in finding this slimeball who murdered Alison - and voila! We're finally done with this show, without this nonsense in LA that is straight out of a Woody Allen comedy - the cocaine, the new age nonsense - and without projecting this grumpy-cat Joanie into the future.

This was the worst-written episode in the entire history of this show. After the first half hour I was muttering to myself “This is terrible. This is so amateurish.” It was about the most obvious use of a deus ex machina (mentioned by someone earlier) that I’ve seen recently. The saving grace was Anna Paquin‘s performance in the last 15 minutes or so.

Thanks Sean Collins for the thoughtful episode recap. Yes, it is satisfying to turn to the Lockharts, who helped make the show special. More Joanie please.

This show -- the entire season -- has been such a ludicrous train wreck that it is cemented firmly in the category of "so terrible you watch to laugh, at all the wrong moments." Remember that old saying that if a trillion chimpanzees typed for a trillion years one of them would eventually write Hamlet? Reduce that to three chimps and six weeks and you've got last night's script. The ridiculous overlay that 30 years into the future the entire planet is so toxic that Montauk is a dystopian wilderness like the outskirts of Chernobyl and people are growing mini-groves of Strawberries to try to keep breathing oxygen is howlingly funny, unless the show wants to be taken seriously. And having a Rob Schneider -- Male Gigolo -- lookalike show up conveniently as a Lockhart family genetic historian (there's a degree for that?) /lothario was side splitting. As a show to watch while surfing the internet and reading, then perking up for a few seconds to snicker at the stupidity, the Affair has it all.

But on the plus side, we were spared the appearance of Sasha Mann. Not to mention Furkat.

Anna Paquin was absolutely riveting as she poured out Joanie’s emotions. For me, it is the best work of her career . Bravo!

It didn't even occur to me that EJ might be Eddie, but could be! Though did he react when Joanie brought up the Solloways? Or maybe he wouldn't have known about his father's relationship with Helen...As for the episode as a whole, I agree with the reviewer on pretty much all points. The performances, especially Anna P's, were great, though yes, too many contrivances throughout for the sake of advancing the plot. One thing I got hung up on -- how old was Luisa supposed to be? Was she significantly younger than Cole? Or maybe, as the reviewer points out, it was the bad age makeup that threw me.

What a boring episode this was. Made no sense at all, as if a Police Department is going to leave all of their files scattered about and not take them with them. Lazy writing and lazier character development. It was a chore to sit through the entire episode based on Joanie's POV, the shots of Cole and Allison made me long for their characters to be front and center. Paquin's performance left me cold, the rudeness and constant annoyance left me wanting to switch the channel.

Why didn't Cole have his own copy of the police file, given that he was obsessed? The episode reeked of Emile Zola, and his literary naturalism, and I say that in a good way. I was sleepy - did EJ say anything about the children of genocide survivors? If EJ IS Sierra's son, and if he and Joanie get married - oh, how sad to have Sierra as a mother-in-law.

Throughout this episode I kept thinking that Alison's complicated psyche was and continues to be used as a scapegoat for both the Lockhart's and her family's pernicious natures. Even though this episode has several contrived plot points, I found it pretty satisfying.

Has anyone considered that "E.J." may be "Eddie," Vik and Sierra's son? The fact that he's identified by initials only and that his father died before he was born are prime indicators.

Has anyone considered that E.J. might be "Eddie," the Vik and Sierra's son? The fact that the character is identified by initials-only and his revelation that his father died before he was born are prime indicators.

EJ is little Eddie, Sierra and Vic's son. The constant film references, etc.

This episode reminded me that The Affair is not just some typical soap opera. For all the instances in which it does indeed delve into soap opera sudsy-ness... it is much more. This episode showed that the original affair not only had a direct impact on those involved contemporaneously, but it had ramifications that reverberated into the future. It's trying to show a bigger picture. It deserves credit for that.

I'm as anxious as any other viewer for Joanie -- or someone -- to discover the truth about Alison's death. But I agree that this week's plot turns felt contrived, far-fetched, and too expedient. Another tidbit: Once Joanie confronts her guilt over abandoning her father and admits that his love was "suffocating," her choking fetish magically vanishes. I hope we return to Noah and Helen next week.

Tonight's installment of "The Affair" was maddening. For a show that's all about nuance and perspective it was all so hit-you-over-the-head. The good news: we finally learned what became of Cole and Louisa (surprise!). The bad news: it would seem The Affair is headed into some pretty sudsy waters from here on in until the conclusion. And what's the deal with the new 'love' interest? The coincidental meeting at the cemetery and the stupid movie banter is straight out of a rom-com. It's like Nora Ephron meets Blade Runner. And Joanie figured it all out in less that 24 hours? Come on. The best part were the flashbacks and hearing Ruth Wilson give that heartbreaking last monologue again. The show is so diminished without her and Josh Jackson and this episode reminds us just how much. At least the increasingly annoying Soloway tale and that insufferable 'movie star' were absent. Grade: B-

I like E.J. (and the actor playing him), although the conceit of having him tell us about Cole's death seems a bit contrived. (A classic dues ex machina? Trying to remember from high school English). His unpretentiousness is a breath of fresh air in muddy Montauk, and the way he cuts through Joanie's off-putting anxieties shows guts and stick-to-itiveness, a nice contrast to the high-wire act that is Joanie. He's already provided us (and her) with more direction and answers than she's gleaned in thirty-some-odd years. Whether E.J. will be around to help put her back together, after she inevitably falls apart, will be more interesting than her stultifying and decaying home life. But isn't that exactly what Alison did?