That child of theirs is also hardly a newborn when we check in with everyone. It’s even speaking. So when Noah finds himself stood up for a session of couples therapy, you can’t help but notice how his life is very quickly starting to repeat itself. While this step forward is actually that for Alison with her character growing and pushing herself as a result of their kid, Noah feels like he’s regressing. You could almost get whiplash from how much the way Noah talks about himself and Alison echoes previous moments between Noah and Helen during the twilight of their marriage.

And it’s at this point that I reach the mark that I can’t hold in my unabashed love for HBO’s In Treatment any longer, and how this episode is basically that. Before Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi had teamed up to create the perspective piece that is The Affair, they worked together on another stylistic endeavor, In Treatment. The show would watch different patients go through therapy sessions, and that was it. That was the entire show. And this installment of The Affair is exactly that, right down to Cynthia Nixon stepping in as the resident celebrity playing the therapist.

Look, a lot of people might hate this episode (just like they did In Treatment), but for someone that’s brought up several times recently that reviving the show at HBO now would be a masterstroke, obviously I was all in with this one. What’s fascinating here is that a lot of dramas could benefit from giving themselves the In Treatment treatment, and picturing an “all-star” season full of television’s biggest flawed antiheroes being headshrunk is a tantalizing prospect. With the chaos that’s gone down for everyone in this series, now feels like the perfect time to have characters talking about their feelings and trying to dissect their flawed behavior.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Noah baring all here yields some worthwhile results. I was ready to completely abandon any remaining sentimentality I had for Noah after how poorly he was fucking up his life last episode, but it’s incredible to hear how sobering this event was for Noah. In the past year it seems like he’s done genuine work to atone for his sins. Last time we saw him he was the All Powerful Author that couldn’t decide if the size of his coke pile or if he got back end points on his film adaptation was more important. Now his writing seems to be at the bottom of his priorities. That’s why this character work is even more tragic when it ultimately looks like it might be too little too late for Alison.

This repetition continues to be pushed down on Noah, with divorce papers and a distant partner fitting him like a glove as he tries to reaffirm change. But even though the perma-temptation of his publicist seems to be a distant memory, Noah’s still back to old habits like wanting to sleep with his students. Water always finds its own level. Mind you, he isn’t sleeping with them, but it’s only a matter of time until all of this repetition gets the better of Noah and he submits. Adulter. Rinse. Repeat.