review of The Affair 3.1 (w/spoilers) 

Well, I couldn\'t resist watching the first episode of

The Affair season 3 on Showtime On Demand - it debuts on regular Showtime this Sunday - and giving you my review.   In a phrase, it was different and excellent.  Spoilers of course follow in the longer review below ...

The biggest difference is in the structure of the narrative, with the first hour featuring only Noah and his perspective.   I didn\'t mind that at all, and, in fact, it was good to get a more sustained view of Noah.

He\'s out of prison, and the flashes around in time are flashbacks to when he was behind bars, instead of flashbacks to the future, concerning the who-killed-Scotty case, which was the pattern in the first two seasons.   The just-out-of-prison motif gives The Affair a touch of Rectify\'s ambience, and some of the scenes are almost as intense in their own way.

Noah\'s an adjunct professor, at an unnamed college in New Jersey, but the campus looks 100% like the Rose Hill Campus of Fordham University in the Bronx - where I\'m a Professor of Communication and Media Studies - because indeed it was.  I\'ll let you know should I run into Noah or anyone else on the show.

The classroom in which he taught, by the way, is actually not usually used for classes, but for high-level administrative meetings, and but it was cool to see Noah teaching in there, anyway.  His teaching about writing also gives us another good angle on the writerly life, which has been a strong suit of the series, especially in season 2.

Great conversations abound, inside and outside the classrooms, and a standout was a dinner with Noah, a French female professor (she likes Noah and invited him and the students to a little dinner party in her home), and several students discoursing about male-female relationships, attitudes, and appropriate behavior, with one of the guys, for example, saying he doesn\'t like asking for permission before making a move because that\'s "not sexy," and one of the women explaining how, as a woman, she always feels vulnerable.

Meanwhile, we\'ve seen nothing of Alison and Cole, and even Helen had little screen time - which means we\'re in for some revelations ahead.

I have a feeling we\'re in for a great and surprising season this year, and I\'m looking forward to more.

See also The Affair 2.1: Advances ... The Affair 2.2: Loving a Writer ... The Affair 2.3: The Half-Wolf ... The Affair 2.4: Helen at Distraction ... The Affair 2.5: Golden Cole ... The Affair 2.6: The End (of Noah\'s Novel) ... The Affair 2.7: Stunner ... The Affair 2.8: The Reading, the Review, the Prize ...The Affair 2.9: Nameless Hurricane ... The Affair 2.10: Meets In Treatment ... The Affair 2.11: Alison and Cole in Business ... The Affair Season 2 Finale: No One\'s Fault

And see also The Affair Premiere: Sneak Preview Review ... The Affair 1.2: Time Travel! ... The Affair 1.3: The Agent and the Sleepers ... The Affair 1.4: Come Together ... The Affair 1.5: Alison\'s Episode ... The Affair 1.6: Drugs and Vision ... The Affair 1.7: True Confessions ... The Affair 1.8: "I Love You / I Love You, Too" ... The Affair 1.9: Who Else on the Train? ... The Affair Season 1 Finale: The Arrest and the Rest

Labels: Fordham University, Rectify, television, The Affair

w/time-travel stories about Orson Welles, John Lennon, David Bowie

The Chronology Protection Case movie, with new extended ending

The Plot to Save Socrates on 10 Perfect Summer Reads Authored by NYU Alums

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Sopranos Conference at Fordham Universty, May 22-25, 2008

Enjoy Levinson\'s Field Guide to Republican Tics

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Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City.  His 8 nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997), Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003),  Cellphone (2004), and New New Media (2009, 2nd edition 2012), have been the subject of major articles in the New York Times, Wired, the Christian Science Monitor, and have been translated into 12 languages. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (1999, ebook 2012), Borrowed Tides (2001), TheConsciousness Plague (2002, 2013), The Pixel Eye (2003), The Plot To SaveSocrates (2006, ebook 2012), and Unburning Alexandria (2013).  His short stories have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, and Sturgeon Awards.  Paul Levinson appears on "The O'Reilly Factor" (Fox News), "The CBS Evening News,"  “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” (PBS),  “Nightline” (ABC), NPR, and numerous national and international TV and radio programs. His 1972 album, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was re-issued in 2009 (CD) and 2010 (remastered vinyl). He reviews the best of television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog, and was listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Top 10 Academic Twitterers” in 2009.

Chronicle of Higher Education puts Paul Levinson in Top 10 (#7) of Academic "High Flyers" on Twitter ... Online University Data puts PL in "Top 50 Online University Professors on Twitter Worth Following"...

Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy of The Plot to Save Socrates for seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren\'s fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchidren. Thanks! Tom

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radio stations that have played tracks from

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Paul Levinson appears on "The O\'Reilly Factor" (Fox News), "The CBS Evening News," "Nightline" (ABC), the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" (PBS), "The Dylan Ratigan Show" (MSNBC) and frequently on NPR and all-news radio...