The Affair: Furkat Returns to the Love of his Life, Whitney Solloway

The return of Whitney’s old boss and abusive ex-lover, Furkat, was an interesting twist to the fourth episode of The Affair’s Season 5. Of course, the initial reaction when he showed up in the intro scenes was “What the heck are they showing him for?” But the Whitney segment of the episode turned out to be the most interesting of anything in the show so far this season.

Teenage Whitney, as you will recall, was an enfant terrible and just a stunningly obnoxious brat who had enormous contempt for her mother for letting Noah use her and mistreat her. In this episode, it is very plain to see that Whitney is no better when it comes to choosing men than Helen. She feels like she has to marry this Irish character, Colin, because she “loves him” and if she doesn’t, he will get shipped back to the Emerald Isle.

Colin contributes nothing to their living arrangements. He has the perfect alibi, he can’t get a job because of his visa situation. He is an artist, (“mostly portraiture” is what he told Noah), and supposedly is working at that somewhere but won’t let Whitney see the fruits of his labors because “it’s not ready.” He can’t be relied on for anything Whitney needs or wants, like picking up some coffee or being on time for a dinner date with Noah. No matter how exhausted Whitney is, he insists that they practice for the immigration interview.

Whitney is slaving away as an assistant in Andrea Rossman’s art gallery. Andrea is too cheap to run the air conditioning and blows Whitney off when she asks for her paycheck. “Don’t take this the wrong way, sweetheart, but there’s a thousand little gallerinas who would do this job for free just for the access.” Enter Furkat. Andrea is all agog at such an important personage wanting to see her art. But it is Whitney that Furkat came to see.

He invites Whitney to a shindig at The Broad, pointing out that she can bring a “plus one.” Whitney drops it in the trash. She goes home and gets in an argument with Colin, who suggests that they just go to City Hall and get married so he can work. That only upsets Whitney even more. She has her heart set on getting married at her grandparents. She crawls into bed, practically in tears, and Colin starts with the immigration interview grilling.

The next day, Andrea has fished Furkat’s invitation out of the garbage and tells Whitney that she is going to The Broad, like it or not, because Andrea wants to go. At the party, Furkat publicly apologizes to Whitney for his brutish behavior in Paris and begs her to forgive him. She forgives him and lets him kiss her, more out of embarrassment than anything else. (This moment is going to be in the gossip rags and end her relationship with that schlub, Colin, right? We hope so anyway.)

Whitney then gets high with Furkat’s very rich gallery owner friend, Dashiell. She confides her dream of owning a gallery where she can support artists who are searching for something new. “I want to be the one who does the looking.” she says. So does Dashiell, it seems, when he pops in on Whitney and Furkat in flagrante delicto. Whitney started to panic but Furkat whispered “he could give you a gallery” and she continued on. Whitney later crawled into bed with Colin, the very picture of shame and misery.

I’m just wondering if the Furkat/Whitney storyline will now serve as a parallel to the Sasha/Helen affair, with both ending badly.

We’re not going to get into the Noah part of this episode too much. I have a feeling we’ll at least be seeing the fallout from Sasha Mann’s Halloween party from Helen’s perspective in the next episode after Noah tried to sabotage Helen and Sasha’s relationship by planting a female undergarment in Sasha’s bedroom. He was inspired to do that because his daughter Stacy told him that Sasha called him “a loser.” Of course, he got caught because he is a loser.

In Joanie’s 5 minutes, she paid a visit to the cemetery and we found out that Cole is dead. The dates on his tombstone said 1979 – 2053. He is buried in front of his brother Scotty and their father.