That’s why the opening flash forward scene here is so fascinating. Gottlief and his associate are going over the details of the Scott Lockhart murder, piecing together all of the evidence that we, the audience, have also seen up to this point. After last episode’s smoking gun that Alison was (apparently) pregnant with Scotty’s child, Gottlief and co put together a very convincing story where Alison is the murderer, and frankly, it makes a lot of sense. The only problem here, and it’s a detail that Gottlief and staff couldn’t possibly have, is that we’ve never seen Alison share a remote interest in Scotty whatsoever. It’s a detail that screams to me, at least, that everyone is misinterpreting this footage and it’s not actually Scotty’s baby, but with there being two episodes left and these flash forwards being designed to mess around with you, there’s still lots of time for this plausible narrative to be built to or broken.

Back in the present, Helen innocently tries to take Whitney on a tour of colleges, and when they visit Williams, the school that her and Noah met at, she ends up turning it into a “greatest hits” of all of her and Noah’s romantic moments. While Helen is lost in the past, Whitney is far too interested in the future, going as far as making a Tinder profile for her mother (again, writing a narrative that might seem accurate, but is inherently flawed all the same, with this echoing further through the story that Whitney’s photographer friend has told her) and the actualization of what she wants to do with her life, which evidently lies outside of a college.

This could certainly be a weighty scene in a season that’s been full of weighty scenes for Helen, but it more than anything else just underscores the selfish behavior that Whitney’s been riding out all year. Her latest infatuation with being a model seems like it’ll be a good idea until the next pregnancy knocks her down rather than it smacking of independence and self-reliance. Whitney revealing that Helen’s only opposed to her idea because she wasn’t capable of such independence herself reeks more of Whitney knowing how to cut into her mother rather than what’s actually going on here.

It’s sort of amazing how much of this episode is just Helen watching Noah in a number of different circumstances. Tierney has been killing it this season and watching her face convey micro-expressions as she looks at her ex-husband is a meal to take in. As soon as the series began to even hint at the possibility of these two getting back to together I’ve been in full support of it and this episode is pretty much a love letter to that idea. As delightful as it is to see the two of them sharing sweet moments, or co-parenting together, it also feels like Noah’s about to fuck his publicist at the drop of a hat, so he’s sort of just this way with everyone (or at least anyone holding a copy of his book).

Noah’s book tour ends up coinciding with Helen and Whitney’s college tour (nice work, Eden), which conveniently provides a way for the stalwart Noah/Helen structure to overlap in a nice way. Speaking of conveniences, Noah getting asking point blank, “Do you think that love can last?” while doing a Q&A for his novel is a very easy way for the series to tell the audience where he’s leaning in the grander scheme of this series. That being said, like a lot of the moments in this show, it’s handled elegantly as hell and it’s artificiality is forgotten.