In fact, it almost feels like Noah’s publisher telling him that the murder at the end of his story felt forced and lacking motivation is a sly way for the show to critique itself in response to the murder mystery that many viewers seemed to think was unnecessary, or at the least, jarring. I wasn’t entirely against it (although I admit that Scotty being the victim, when we’ve barely been given an opportunity to care about him might not have been the best idea), but to see that the show is perhaps more self-aware and rebalanced is certainly encouraging (and we definitely get the sparsest inclusion of the murder business this week). After all, this isn’t Of Mice and Men.

Even if the show seemingly learned from its previous mistakes, have its characters? Right from the start, we see Noah is now suffering from nightmares. Just like how the bifurcated perspective structure of the series is an escape from reality as the truth invades, the same thing is happening as Noah’s subconscious refuses to let him have peace. As much as he wants to be comfortable or hide behind rationalization, the truth won’t let him be. The first few scenes of the episode pointedly show Noah alone. He’s dominated by wide shots and plenty of empty space in the framing to show how powerless and small he’s become. The fact that these shots that cinematically “talk down” to Noah are then followed by him being scolded and turned down by his publisher is no coincidence. The show wants you to understand that Noah is starting out at his bottom here.

Noah’s side of the premiere is about him trying to find his voice and then figure out how to move forward in life with that. The ending of his novel is struggling to land, he’s emotionally in stasis, and he doesn’t know how to stake a claim with what’s left of his family. This is perhaps best personified when Noah tries to move out of Helen’s home, which becomes all about him being voiceless or speaking to deaf ears.

The moving scene is kind of a master class in subtext and escalation. “Is this all your stuff?” Noah’s movers ask him, and you can see him feeling condescended to—like he’s been slapped in the face—and then funneling this into alpha behavior towards his inconsequential items while he tries to be heard. It’s brutal, and Dominic West sells the hell out of it. The scene is one big pissing contest between Helen’s mother, Margaret, and Noah and quickly turns into an example of just how damaged his family seems to be by his actions. As despicable of a set piece as this is, Margaret is simply clinging onto a narrative for support just like Noah is (and is echoed again in his son, Ben, and the story that he’s held on to for safety). As the scene ends with Noah and the grandmother of his children as mirror versions of each other, we’re left with the message of how deluded we can become when we only listen to ourselves.

Noah and Helen’s divorce mediation meeting is a truly bizarre scene unlike anything that the first season of the show offered up, mostly due to the beyond-chipper official that’s mitigating between the two of them. The scene starts off innocently enough with a deep vein of dark humor coursing through it, but by the end this jovial middleman has only highlighted how bleak things are between Noah and Helen now. They keep getting told to congratulate each other on being so swift and sterile through everything, but they’re simply removing every piece of themselves. The only thing Noah wants is his children, and naturally Helen’s only request in their divorce is equally concerned with their kids—the one possession of theirs that they’re physically unable to remove the other one from.