In the third-season opener , every relationship is completely broken. Alison and Noah aren't together anymore. Helen is helping Noah in some of the time jumps back to when he was in prison and trying to get him to spend time with his kids in his present life (as well as trying to reconcile their marriage). Cole is entirely absent. This season, we're adding one new point of view, with professor Juliette Le Gall (a new character, played by French-Swiss actress Irène Jacob), but more on her later.This episode is all about Noah (a bold choice, considering he's easily the most hatable character on the show) and the reckoning with himself that has become his everyday existence since jail. The time jumps are backwards in this episode — I hesitate to say that will be the case for the whole season — and we find Noah getting ready for his father's funeral. The affair that blew up his life is over, he's served his time, his book detailing the killing was a morbid success, and, now, he's taken a job at some less than top-tier university as a professor. Everyone he meets thinks he's an asshole; he is, in fact, an asshole — but he's coming to terms with it.Noah has become a guy who thinks things are happening to him, rather than an egoist who expects the world to bend to his will. His family won't let him be a pallbearer at the funeral. His father leaves him a house, causing a huge fight with his brother in-law and sister, the latter of whom takes his side against her husband — the sort of thing women often won't to do for Noah. He is sort of the Blanche DuBois: depending on the kindness of strangers and crashing at his sister's house. But shortly after that, he thoughtlessly eviscerates a student in one of his courses for, as he puts it, being very dull, shockingly unoriginal, and bringing her diary in to read to the class. He has no idea why what he's done caused her to cry until another student calls him out on it, also pointing out that his suggestion that she observe real people is ironic, considering that his novels are all about rich white-people problems. Noah swings from his new role as a victim to his old one as an egomaniac without even thinking. Not thinking seems to be his new, distracted default.To all appearances, the ray of light in his life comes when he meets Juliette Le Gall. After a very unlikely moment when he literally pops up in her class, Noah hears Juliette's lecture on the shadow-self of a fictional character. It mirrors what's going on in Noah's life closely enough to infatuate him with her.