YMMV / The Affair

• Alternate Character Interpretation: All over the place, one mean moment can also have an earnest counterpoint. The contrasting points of view often give contradicting portraits of the same character, making it very hard to discern their real nature.
• Fridge Logic: While Noah paints a pretty unflattering picture of the Lockharts, making them out to be a hardcore organized crime family, he can easily escape a defamation lawsuit as the Lockharts, in real life, are secret drug dealers in their hometown. Also, a defamation lawsuit is one of the one-half of the lose-lose situation for the Lockharts as the other would be law enforcement coming down on them.
• Nightmare Fuel: Noah's memories of the sexual encounter with Helen in season 3. From her point of view she's simply nurturing a broken, adled man and telling him he always has a place with his family, culminating in a touching, romantic sex scene. From Noah's point of view, Helen is extremely manipulative, basically winning him to her side with drugs and guilting him, and almost seems to get off on the thought of having sex with a murderer. As with most scenes, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
  Helen: I know who you really are.
• Retroactive Recognition: Carolina Ravassa, who plays the comely swimmer who Noah has a dalliance with, is better known these days as the voice of Sombra in Overwatch.
• The Scrappy: Some fans strongly feel this towards Whitney.
• Seasonal Rot: When it came to Season 3, fans were undeniably split.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The sordid story of two unfaithful persons who break-up their own families, are Unreliable Narrators and self-delusional to a certain degree makes it all hardly relatable at times.
• The Woobie: Helen, an amiable and accommodating woman who finds herself with a broken family overnight with little to no fault of her own. Deconstructed in later seasons when Helen starts to appear more and more as a Control Freak who is not a perfect person either.

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