Noah’s relationship with the rest of his family is also rocky. His ex-mother-in-law, Margaret (a truly glorious turn by Kathleen Chalfant ), wants him to help care for her husband, Bruce, who has Alzheimer’s. She also wants him to plant sex toys in Sasha’s bedroom in order to sabotage his relationship with Helen. At the same time, Noah’s daughter Stacey has her first period while Helen is out, and Noah is a poor, if welcome, substitute. On a lighter note, Noah buys the wrong fabric to complete his son Trevor’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter Halloween costume. (As a former “Rocky Horror” kid myself, I can relate.)

What follows is a relatively rare case of Noah’s getting exactly the humiliation he deserves. After sneaking into Sasha’s Halloween party, he is about to abandon the sex-toy plan when a smitten crew member comes on to him. Recalling how finding a telltale bra led Helen to end their marriage, he finagles a lacy undergarment off this poor woman, plants it in Sasha’s bedroom ... and promptly gets caught in the act by Sasha and Helen. It’s one of the most flagrantly scummy things Noah has done in ages, evincing a complete disregard for anyone but himself.

Noah’s daughter Whitney has the opposite problem, as we learn in her first ever (and, given the great performance of Julia Goldani Telles through the years, long overdue) point-of-view segment: She is putting others’ needs ahead of her own to a near-crippling degree.

Whitney is the sole breadwinner in a relationship with an artist who seems to spend his days doing more napping and texting her about unpaid rent than working. First thing in the morning and last thing at night, he quizzes her on the personal factoids she needs to know in order to win him a visa. He mocks her connections to the upper stratosphere of the art world as mere capitalist social climbing. (Perhaps Noah was right when he warned her last week about getting married too young.)

Whitney’s work life is no better than her life at home. Her boss is a condescending gallery owner who overworks and underpays her, if she pays her at all. And when Whitney’s abusive ex, the nude photographer known as Furkat, swans into the gallery looking for her, Whitney’s boss asks her to take her to his opening that night. (As played by the actor Jonathan Cake, Furkat is even more unctuous than Claes Bang’s Sasha Mann.)