What About Your Future Haven S1E11 The Trial of Audrey Parker

Previously on Haven: We get a rundown of the various Troubles, particularly the (self-)destructive ones and ones that affect others' state of mind, including the pyromaniac angry kid, the chameleon, Vince (can we count Vince?), Vicki's Trouble used as blackmail and coercion, the McBreen madness Trouble, the taxidermy Trouble, a lot of Garland, poor Vanessa Stanley and Duke, the Carrs, the Dark Man, and Lucy Ripley's mysterious identity. Oh, and let's not forget Agent Fuck You and all his ridiculous knowledge. In short: this ep Will Be Important and maybe tell us a little something about how the Troubles work. Drink every time I swear at Agent Fuck You. Not with alcohol. I don't want you to go to the hospital.

We open the episode proper on Duke's boat with a poker game! Duke and Audrey and Julia and two guys who we don't know at all yet, but we're certainly about to. Some smack talk, some interesting blocking with Audrey at the head of the table, Duke and Julia on one side and Ezra and Tobias on the other. It gives us sort of factions, with Audrey as the bridge between the two, and it also gives us Duke and Ezra across from each other (two we now know for certain are Troubled) and Julia and Tobias facing off. (Julia I still suspect is Troubled due to that fucking tattoo; Tobias seems to have only been taking advantage of his partner's affliction but we could say that the Carrs have a certain history of being willing to do that, too. Particularly Eleanor.) At any rate, Ezra starts in with Audrey on what her favorite nut is, which is so out of the blue that it has to be some kind of cold reading. If only we'd known when we first watched! Plus there's some indication with the hour and the bottles that they've been at this for a little while. Regardless, Audrey wins the hand and calls Duke's bluff because that's exactly the kind of poker player she is. Much more interesting is the fact that Ezra folded on a full house, raising everyone's suspicions, not least because they have done this before and last week he took all their money. Uh-HUH. That's not suspicious at all. Ezra's squirrelly as hell, Tobias tries to smooth things over and hey, guess who the dominant one in this pair of con artists is? Yep. I already dislike him. After a few seconds of wary accusations about running some kind of con (though what kind of con requires losing in poker is an open question), Ezra coughs up some feeble excuse about feeling bad for last week and Audrey relaxes. Audrey, you need to get a more suspicious mind. Duke's about half-relaxed, I'd say.

They return to their game while we head over to the station, where Nathan's checking out for the night with da Chief. Garland is trying so hard to put aside being da Chief for a little while, offering to take Nathan out for shrimp night and beer, oh honey. And for once it looks like Nathan might respond to this, and they might get somewhere, but oh hello Agent Fuck You. I don't suppose you could let the poor Wuornos family have a few moments of happiness and bonding? No. They do a little song-and-dance that fools exactly nobody that they didn't know each other before Howard walked into the office. Nathan's immediately on guard, though it shifts to something more law enforcement related when the fake FBI badge comes out. Yaaay. God, Garland, you're a good liar normally but you're kind of sucking at it right now; his tone of voice is way too forced bravado and crankiness. I wonder if he has any actual idea what this is about, or if he just has a rough idea of what Agent Fuck You's role in this whole thing is and has been caught off-guard by what might seem like a random visit long before the Troubles have ended in the past. Plus there's the fact that Garland would have a child's memories of one set of Troubles, and the next set would have involved a steep learning curve, so he really might not be sure of the situation. Regardless, he was putting aside da Chief to be a father, and now he has to put it back on, and I think a lot of the things going on below the surface involve him kicking himself for allowing any softness in his dealings with anyone at all. Because he has to make some macho show at Howard rather than coughing up any data on Audrey or trying to make Nathan do it, but he's also not going to stand on more than the bare minimum of ceremony. It also, come to that, reads like he's reminding Howard of what proper LEO protocol is, since they have to keep up this masquerade in front of Nathan. Nathan, for his part, mostly seems to register that he's being kept in the dark about something, and that he's being coerced into giving up information about his partner's whereabouts to a man he has no reason to trust aside from the badge. And he feels run roughshod over, because he has been. Can't blame him for that, because he has been, and he hasn't had a chance to give her a heads-up, and dear god is he controlling the pissed off. Less well than usual, come to that, with the quick breaths. So no, they will not be having father-son bonding time over a bucket of shrimp, thank you Agent Fuck You for ruining everything. You know the meme about life-ruiner? It is actually true. You fucker.

Grumbling aside, we go back to the Cape Rouge, where Duke is proposing a very Duke-like toast of champagne and real pain for real and sham friends respectively, and Audrey won't drink to that. Which I think has more to do with the fact that whatever she said earlier, Ezra and Tobias have her spidey senses tingling, both in the cop sense and the Troubles sense, and she wants to keep her wits about her. Not necessarily so much that it's a toast she dislikes that much. Also, her phone has been presumably buzzing in her pocket for awhile, so she pulls it out and hey! Four missed calls from Nathan! And one horribly socially awkward joke from Ezra in response to Duke's thing about calling wifey, yes, Nathan, you are totally the wife, you fuss like a mother hen. See also trying to give Audrey a heads-up about Howard. Note that he's even creepier than usual because god knows that he can't have heard that he's under discussion, so he's leaping to (correct) conclusions about who's on the other end of the phone and what they're talking about. Howard wants her to "come home," which is notable for not being "back to work" or "back to Boston" or anywhere else that would be a more common feeb phrasing. No, it's "come home," as in, to the barn, and I believe he used that again at the end of s3, for that matter. Because Agent Fuck You Howard is a creepy fucker like that.

Roll credits! We come back to the boat, because apparently they're going to do this discussion here rather than somewhere that's more Audrey's home ground - though to be fair, she hasn't exactly established a base of operations (she seems to still be living out of a hotel room) and if we want to get technical, all of Haven is her home ground. Because duh. Howard takes a very aggressive tack and only gets more so as he continues to ask her what the hell she's doing here, why she hasn't checked in, so on and so forth. Are any of us surprised to find out that either Audrey Parker, personality implant or AudSarLu, Haven's messiah figure, is unenthusiastic about paperwork and bureaucracy? No? Oh good. This whole scene is shot and scripted as nothing so much as a disappointed father figure demanding explanations and accountability. Emphasis on the patriarchal aspects of that, too. Did you take lessons from Garland, Agent Fuck You? Just checking. Audrey's acting like a rebellious and errant child, too, and though I'm sure there are aspects of this that were present in the personality implant, it comes across as much more real and getting down to the core of who each of them is and how they work together. Contentiously, in other words. She tries to brush him off with a promise of a long, detailed report that goes to him directly instead of through Garland, I snicker at the sudden thought of the real Agent Howard (who we won't get to until we do s2, which won't happen until next summer hiatus, sorry guys) receiving these reports. Because I would bet that Garland suggested she just give him the reports, knowing that it's awful difficult to find the barnvatar to give him any such documents, and moreover he doesn't actually give a damn about them. But he has to pretend to! Because this is all about manipulating Audrey into staying in Haven for good. Alright, then, let's have a verbal report in which Audrey begins to talk about the Troubles and then stops short when Howard doesn't blink. But he's asking the questions, okay fine, she's got just enough of her FBI training left that she takes a new angle of attack when she sees all the gadgets in Howard's briefcase. Which, by the way, looks to be: a couple walkie-talkies, a smartphone or maybe a remote, another remote-type-thing, service piece and holster, flashlight (?), and a couple other things I can't make heads nor tails of. She's right, that's a lot of shit and I wonder if any of that is specifically designed to allow Howard safe passage out of the barn. Or something. Grumble mutter insufficient fucking data I cannot make bricks without clay. Anyway, he starts to challenge her on the official reports which he did get, or a nice facsimile thereof, and now I have this image of Garland going out to the empty square where the barn should be and leaving plastic-wrapped files. I make my own fun, okay? But before she can start explaining herself and why the Troubles need to be kept secret, there's an ominous clank-lock noise! Oh noes! And an anonymous hand, I don't know why they're keeping it anonymous aside from the narrative says so, because with the two strangers on board acting suspiciously you can be damn sure it's one of them. Probably Tobias. Conservation of characters says so.

Meanwhile, Nathan paces up and down trying to get hold of Audrey to absolutely no avail, and Garland came back with takeout anyway. He is trying so hard, and this is just painful to watch. No, Nathan, nobody believes that you already ate, we do believe that you're avoiding your father while you're still angry at him. Though staying at the station isn't much like avoidance, so there's definitely some internal debate going on. Garland's also trying to open up dialogue with his son, looking about as non-authoritative as we've ever seen him, and Nathan's about as open with his body language as we've ever seen him. So they clearly care about each other and the good opinion (or lack thereof) the other holds, and yet here they are stuck at cross-purposes. It's not so much that Garland has something to say - and Nathan's deliberately not making this easy for him - as that he knows Nathan has some venting to do, and he's trying to offer the opportunity. Not least because as Nathan learns more about the Troubles and becomes more proficient at handling them, Garland should be thinking about passing along his store of knowledge and training his son up properly to deal with this round and the next of Troubles. And it takes those words to get Nathan to open up at all: you're my son. Oh boys. I'm gonna lock you in a room until you talk about your feelings. Some swallowing and jawclenching later and Nathan spits it out with that calm and level gaze that's a mask for everything he's feeling. Which lasts about two seconds past "you knew" as he vents entirely justifiable anger at his father for knowing what was happening to him and never saying a word. Yeah, I'd be pissed, too. Garland taking off his jacket is, I think, a sign that he hopes for this to be a long and productive conversation, something that we know won't end up being the case. They're too much alike in certain ways and too long-used to butting heads in others to ever quite get their shit sorted out. But we do learn that Nathan went to the doctor when his Trouble came back, hoping that it was a medical problem, hoping that he could get help or therapy or something else, and either he'd forgotten what happened when he was 7 or 8 or his memories were pretty vague. Which in this case I will accept as aftermath of trauma and age, I don't remember a lot of things that happened when I was around that age. Garland makes the point that Nathan damn well knew that it wasn't medical, it was supernatural, which leads me to question what makes him say that - other Troubles being triggered prior to Nathan's? Family stories? Town legends? Something else? At a minimum town legends, anyway, and Garland's right that Nathan was ignoring what was right in front of him, and Nathan's right that he could've used some fatherly guidance and advice, and we have no grounds for determining the truth of Garland's counter to that. I will grant that Nathan has seemed disinclined, in the time we've known him, to take his father's advice on anything. I will also grant that that's since Garland kept the truth of his Trouble from him (and since right now Nathan believes they're biologically related he has even MORE reason to be pissed off about that) and that's what's deepened this rift into something unbridgeable. Not so much, I feel, whatever happened when Nathan was a kid. Garland, you know fucking nothing about child/developmental psych, do you. Yes, let's blame the child for the adult's mistakes, or sound like you are. Because that always goes exactly as well as it does right here, with Garland storming off and Nathan being generally furious but resigned. Swear to god. Audrey should bash their heads together.

Tobias appears not to be playing right now, which should really be tipping people off that something's rotten on this boat, and I assume he went off to use the head and locked Audrey and Agent Fuck You in then. Anyway, Ezra's winning hand after hand again, Duke's on the verge of blowing up, and Julia's a little more tipsy than seems wise under the circumstances. More smack talk, more discussion of whether Ezra's bluffing or telling the truth, more jittery and shady behavior, and why yes, Duke loses this hand, too. Nines over fives, three of a kind, for anyone who cares to investigate the numerology behind that, though I'm not sure that anything in particular exists. Aside from nine being three threes and thus a common enough numerological thing. Tobias tries for one more hand and really, dude, someone should be twigging to his weird behavior and acceptance of Ezra's jittery, practically drug-addict behavior. Oh, there we go, Ezra offering to sweeten the deal by doubling the pot and giving Duke an extra draw is weird and desperate enough to make him really realize something's off. Bonus points for the really obvious lying when Duke asks why this is so important to them: repetition, stammering, looking away, I'd say talking too fast but that seems to be Ezra's default mode. It's actually kind of tricky to do an acting job that sells an obvious lie, particularly in TV with closeups, so kudos there. Yeah, Duke's expression says he knows something is very wrong about this but the only way he's going to find out is to play the hand. So play the hand he will! I am not making terrible puns about last ep's title. Much. And that is totally his smuggler give-nothing-away face as he sits back down.

Downstairs, Audrey is checking - apparently again - for both a cell signal and a way out via the portholes. No, nothing doing, the boat is basically a Faraday cage and Duke sealed the portholes at some point. Or left them sealed, but I'm assuming it was a deliberate choice, as is everything he's done on or to his boat. Howard presses her for answers instead of escape attempts, which is completely not good cop protocol. At all. Someone's locked the two law enforcement agents in a room? Something shady is OBVIOUSLY going on, and as a supposed FBI supervisor, he should have the field experience to put aside his interrogation of a subordinate and move along to the first duty of a prisoner. Interestingly, though they have Audrey in white and Howard in black, they're shooting him on the right and her on the left, as if to indicate that she's at least partly in the wrong here. Which might be simply that they're shooting this from the authority's point of view, or it might be a visual cue about this being AudSarLu's punishment for… something. That we don't know about. That started all of this shit off. I just LOVE not knowing all of this! GIVE ME YOUR MURDERBOARDS. Audrey will give Howard some belligerence, and they talk a little bit about the life-sucking-kids Trouble before he reminds her that he can ruin her career if he wants. This reverse psychology isn't even beginning to be subtle, dude.

Ezra's won the final hand on a very high straight, while Duke tried for a flush and failed, apparently. Everyone is knowledgeable here, or at least Duke and Tobias sure as fuck are aware that this isn't about whatever's written on that paper in the middle of the table. Duke has one of the darker looks we've seen him get when he tacitly orders Julia to come get the winnings to take to the boys. Uh-huh. She is definitely not completely aware of her surroundings, and given that she's got MSF training I'm going to largely chalk that up to the alcohol. At least she gets it on the second round, and I'm none too fond of the way Tobias watches them go, so it's really just as well Duke dragged her out of there. Duke has no care for the baseball card he just "lost" in the game, because he's busy trying to arm them. Because he's a good, smart Duke who knows better than to let a winning streak like that slide, and who's attempting to protect his friend and maybe-ex. Julia finally sobers up with the sharp shock of getting locked into one of the storage rooms belowdecks, thank you, woman, yeesh. While I suspect he's been sober for a good long while and possibly faking the degree to which he's drunk; that would definitely be among Duke's many talents. Anyway, they're locked in, the boat is going out to sea for some privacy now, and Julia would like to know why he brought them down here if he thought this was going to happen? Oh, yeah. Because it's also the armory, or one of them. Given what we've seen of Duke's boat I'm going to assume that was the closest armory rather than the only. Also, as he points out, he thought he'd be better company than their kidnappers. Let us not forget, however, that Duke Crocker is a lethal man when he feels cornered, and right now he damn well does.

By the sunrise, it looks like they've been out to sea for a few hours when we come back from ad break, and Audrey and Howard seem to have at least temporarily abandoned discussing the Troubles in favor of their predicament. Thank you, Agent Fuck You. About time. He will, however, proceed to be absolutely fucking useless, by which we know he really isn't much of an agent at all. He's an inquisitor. Babylon 5 style, for those of you who get the reference, and in many respects this is exactly that kind of trial by fire, proof of Audrey's ability to deal with the Troubles and also a test of her loyalties, shoving her toward Haven and its Troubled residents more firmly than ever. At any rate, Audrey is in ignore the useless lump mode. It's a good mode to be in, and results in a large wrench through a porthole. Good thing it wasn't shatterproof! Not that I can think of a good reason for there to be shatterproof glass there, just, the way their luck was going there. Still no cell signal because they're too far out at sea, fuck you Agent Fuck You for being a useless snarky lump you're worse than the boys. I wonder what restrictions, geasa, that sort of thing he has on him regarding his ability to help with any of this shit. Because I swear at least part of it must be a geas and not just general orneriness. Anyway, that all said, you know what will fit through a porthole? A cell phone. Lucky for Audrey that's got a decent charge on it.

Nathan still frets like a mother hen, but this time with reason. Garland is Not Fretting At All Just Ask Him. Funnily, Garland's version of not fretting looks an awful lot like sitting and listening to Nathan fuss, having brought in coffee for the morning. Yeah, we see you not fussing there, Garland. It is worth noting at this point, if we haven't spelled it out already (and I know I haven't this episode) that Garland is one of those people where you need to pay attention to his actions instead of his words. Which kind of sucks, but Nathan's used to hitting back, which… no, that sucks all around. Boys, I am going to give you remedial communication classes. With a cluehammer. At any rate, Nathan runs down the list of evidence, namely that none of the locals (because Audrey does more or less count as a local even to people not in the know about who she really is. was. will be? ahem) have been answering their phones and Audrey should have checked in by now. Particularly, though he avoids saying it directly and rubbing salt in that wound, with her purported boss in town checking up on her. So the harbormaster's down checking for the Cape Rouge, and Garland continues to sit there while claiming they're passed out drunk/hungover and Audrey's been having a girls' night out. Yeah, I'm with Nathan on this one as far as seeing the evidence in front of your face, including the behavioral analysis that says Audrey Parker doesn't do nights out. We'll find out later that there's more of a reason behind Nathan's fretting, but they're parceling out information in dribs and drabs at the moment. Including to each other. Which, since she just works, maybe she was working out on the boat? It's as good a theory as anything anyone else has come up with. Also, Garland, you know enough that you can afford to be a little blase about her physical safety, on account of I'm pretty sure the barnvatar and/or the Troubles themselves would warp reality to keep from killing her. Nathan could use that knowledge one of these days, but oddly nobody seems to have quite made that leap on the show. Probably because she keeps putting her life at risk. We will all now snort and facepalm over Garland being decent at headology after a shot of caffeine and Nathan makes noises about trust issues. And Garland calling him on it. Of all the fucking people. Because why yes, trust is a massive long-running theme in this show: who has whose, who doesn't, how it's earned, how it's broken, what secrets trump the desire to trust a close friend or family member with information. So is communication. If you hadn't noticed, Kitty and I kind of have a thing about fuck this happy horseshit of secrecy, let's communicate and blast the issues away with logic. Which is why last season was like fucking catnip. Anyway. Whaddya know, Lucy's the password, and with a last comment about how at least he's a good cop even if he's a shitty father, Garland will wander off and leave Nathan to pore over the files. Leaving, we will note, Nathan's coffee and the pastries on the desk.

We head back out to sea for a moment, where Audrey finishes typing out her text to Nathan and assembling the mostly-waterproof container to send a message in a bottle. I do not apologize in the slightest for sharing the earworm. (Sendin out an SOS to the world inDEED.) Agent Fuck You attempts to lend a dose of realism to the proceedings, thereby causing us all to sigh and facepalm. Of all the people to inject realism, the barnvatar? No. Just… no. Bonus points to Maurice Dean Wint for that little smirky smile on Audrey's comment about it being a government phone, which could be the hidden snark of a government agent but in this case indicates that sure, if you could the barn as a form of government. Which I guess it is! Bottle away, and a nice shot of the barnvatar hovering over Audrey's shoulder through a very small window. That's not symbolic of anything. At all. Also I have a bridge to sell you.

Down in the hold, Duke's got an escape hatch and Julia's just starting to realize how changed Duke is from the boy she knew before she left with MSF. Initial explanations are forestalled by Tobias' appearance in said escape hatch, which he shouldn't know about. Duke is more than willing to blow his brains out in front of Julia! Lest we forget that Duke Crocker is not a tame smuggler. But this isn't HBO and they're not going to show that, even by suggestion, which means Tobias took Duke's bullets - yes, Duke, all of them - and will proceed to gloat. Can I just mention how great a throughline this is to s3, where Duke does exactly that? At least once; my buffer is currently broken on remembering if it was to more than Arla!not!Tommy. (My buffer is Kitty. I think Dragon*Con broke her. I'm hoping Voltron repairs go through tonight or we're in for a rough couple weeks.) He also has much more of a temper tantrum about it than he has about… well, most things in s3, or more of a pronounced one. Controlled violence in his movements and anger in his voice, though at least he's starting to think through this. Yes, they've been one step ahead of him, and yes, he's extremely well prepared for pretty much every eventuality, so therefore, Duke? Someone either sold you out, or there's something more fucked up and Haven-ish going on. I mean, or both, the answer could definitely be both, as Julia brings up the very good question of where did Duke meet these people, anyway. A friend! Okay, not a friend, a business associate. Oh look, there's that t-word again - not Troubles, trust. Both of them are getting increasingly angry, frustrated, scared, and are taking it out on each other rather than trying to find a solution right now. Julia's mostly the one doing the attacking because she's scared and inexperienced with this kind of thing, probably thought that she could handle whatever Haven threw at her after her time in MSF, and because Duke isn't the person she remembers. Duke, by contrast, is extremely defensive and self-protective; he's been attacked often enough for being a smuggler that this additional person that he probably trusted to have his back is making him even more upset than usual. Plus the added stressors, but really, when is Duke being yelled at about being a smuggler and NOT under additional stressors? Because fucking Haven, that's why. And let's not neglect the camera angles, here: Duke's being shot to the left of the screen, at a slight slant when we get into the closeups and panning between him and Julia, whereas Julia's on the right and on the level. Double meaning absolutely intended. Small words, that's a bit condescending, Duke, but he gets his point across. Finally. Julia presses her point, and at the heart of it is why would he do this, what made him change and become a smuggler, what happened, but she can't quite spit that out yet. Instead it's the legalities, what about the ugly things he might be carrying, what about the danger and the chances of being caught? Oh both of you. Now kiss. (No, don't really, that only works in romcoms and Broadway. But I repeat myself.) No, Duke does care about the ugly things, but he's made his peace with that a long time ago and he resents Julia coming in and shaking up his comfort with his moral grey-ness. On the other hand, he can and will assert his authority as captain of the ship, albeit imprisoned captain, to keep her from sticking her nose into the boxes. Besides, this way he avoids letting on that he's got an idea of what they're after, and it's not in any of the boxes in the hold. No, it wouldn't be; anything worth this much trouble (pun intended) would have a special hiding place. I'm sure Duke has a number of them.

We'll put a pin in that and go over to Audrey and Howard's continuing interview. Interrogation. However polite you want to be in naming it. Audrey's jittering nervously more obviously than Howard, hands on the table and again seated at the left but in white, where he's on the right but in black. And jittering with his thumbs rubbing over his folded hands which are below her line of sight, a common enough tactic. In short, everyone here has something to hide and Audrey's not necessary in the right, but she's… less in the wrong than viewing things on the slant, as it were. She's also still being rather a surly teenager at the barnvatar. I keep laughing about that, because if I laugh about it I don't have as much brainspace to think about how creepy it is to have a barn for a father. No, it would be damn difficult to arrest the Troubled for the crimes they've actually committed, knowingly or otherwise. I will also draw your attention to the ceremonial mask on the wall between them, which looks Native. Aheh. Aheh heh heh. My toes, you guys. They hurt. This entire scene is about the layers of reality and how the mundane world has nothing to apply to the Troubled, there's no laws to arrest the Troubled under, there's no easy answers. Which is something Audrey has long since come to accept, and is now proving to the barnvatar that she's capable of asserting in the face of a greater authority. Or at least an authority she believes to be greater. (I wonder just how many subroutines they program into AudSarLu every trip out to accept Howard as the ultimate authority figure in their lives? Because Audrey's responded to him as everything from a substitute father figure to a boss in this ep alone.) Which involves the barnvatar pressing his point, in something of a mirror of the scene down below, the authority figure/figure supposedly in the right alternately discouraging and encouraging consideration of moral issues, and Audrey and Duke being drawn closer to a moral middle ground as they engage in pushback against their respective testers. Particularly because where Audrey's form of pushback will result in her giving the FBI the finger, Duke's form of pushback will result, slowly, in his accepting that there is a greater good and that he can even be part of it. That redemption exists. Which is another theme, less prominent in this ep but extremely prominent in the series as a whole.

All of that said and done, the message in a bottle just floated within range of a cell tower, so now it's time to crack into action! Nathan has a text, Garland has a phone call confirming that the Cape Rouge isn't in harbor, and it's time to call the Coast Guard. I kind of wish they'd actually show us the Coast Guard (I nearly typed the Guard and then realized that was a whole other thing) on the show, as much as they must have to do within Haven and as many weirdass things as they see. Up to and including mermen, come next season. Oh, and we'll pan directly back to the boat after that, where one of those increasingly less mysterious cracks appears in the hull of Duke's boat and begins to gush water. Well, shit. I'm sure that's still not related to Garland at ALL, no, couldn't be with that direct pan from Garland finding out where they are to the crack. Nevah. I am also not making Leonard Cohen references much no really oh fine. My self-control only goes so far. Sadly, Garland never seems to have figured out how to let the light in through his cracks, because he keeps insisting they don't exist.

After the ad break, we return to the boat where Audrey gets down on hands and knees to actually try and find the escape hatch that must be there. Because duh. There's a lot of books on those shelves, low enough down (quite sensibly) that the worst you'd get in heavy seas is a bruised foot. And they're designed to mostly prevent that, anyway. Whoever did the set design for Duke's boat really did actually think about boats and the necessities of life on the seas, high or low or in the middle. It's interesting that though Howard's looming over her and Audrey's in what would normally be considering a submissive position, there's absolutely nothing submissive about her actions or posture. She's still the proactive one trying to find a solution, Howard's still the authoritative dick who won't (or can't? depending on what the barnvatar geasa are) participate. He's also much more interested in Audrey's close working relationship with Duke, which is accurate both for the fed he's pretending to be (just think of that rap sheet) and for the barnvatar he actually is (hello, Crocker Trouble). I think this is the first time we see genuine alarm from him, as opposed to the interrogator's facade designed to push Audrey into staying. I mean, he still wants her to stay, but he seems an awful lot like he wants to warn her away from Duke Crocker. He couches this in terms of a special detail, which gives us all flashbacks to the Shop, or those of us who are King nerds, anyway, but Howard's warnings and freakout come right as Audrey finds the escape hatch. Because of course it does. She has snark in return, which seems to be her primary (possibly only current) coping mechanism when dealing with unfriendly authoritarian figures. Heh. Note that Garland doesn't come in for as much snark as Howard does because Audrey is capable of separating actions from words, even if she doesn't entirely appreciate Garland's inability to use his damn words.

Speaking of which, let's go see if he's improved on that any. A little! Particularly with the cop banter, they've got a situation for which they have no real motive on anyone's end. Including Audrey's, for being on the boat investigating the poker cheats who've been kicked out of casinos up and down the coast in the first place. Well, Nathan, it probably sounded like a Trouble! Because that's what she's drawn to. Sadly, Nathan in distress over Audrey in distress and not right there to help fix it means he's not thinking like an investigator. The smart thing here would be to sit back down and look closer at Ezra and Tobias' records, see what patterns pop out, including the ones that shouldn't be possible by non-Haven standards of normal. The Nathan thing is to try and go running off to… the middle of the ocean? Seriously, Nathan, I know she's the only person whose touch you can feel and that you're falling head over heels for her, but you're being a DUMBASS. For once I agree wholeheartedly with Garland: whatever she's into, he can't search the whole fucking Atlantic Ocean. And if it's not Duke's fault that she's trapped on board (which she probably would have said), then he doesn't even have the knowledge of What Would Duke Do to guide his search. It takes a nearly physical intervention, and there's a nice moment here where Garland grabs Nathan's shoulder for the briefest of moments, like it used to be some kind of a signal or common enough way in which he'd touch his son, and then jerks back. I don't think Nathan's the only one unused to his current condition, is what I'm saying. And I think that Garland, if he used to touch Nathan in familial ways, has largely stopped so as not to remind either of them of the loss. That might be more for Garland's benefit than Nathan's, honestly; he's the kind of person who would engage in that kind of self-protective behavior. Though the flip side of this is that Garland turns around and reveals something of himself, that Nathan needs to pretend he's her father, not her partner or would-be lover or any of the other things they are to each other. If there ever was a Mrs. Wuornos, she's long gone in some capacity or another, and Garland clearly views the parental bond as one of the - if not the - most emotionally challenging and probably rewarding thing he's ever done. In this case it's about the challenge, the sit-and-wait, and the comparison as a father is an interesting choice because that's as much the traditional woman's role as anything. Widow's walks, the woman left behind while her husband goes to war, all of that imagery would apply as well to what Garland's saying. But it's father to child, instead, partly because that's what he values the most and partly, I think, because he doesn't want Nathan to be in love with Audrey even now. I wonder, in light of the s3 revelations and taking into account Sins of the Fathers, just how much Garland knew about what would make the barn(vatar) come for Audrey. Because a lack of love would prolong their time together, as terrible and backwards as that is. At any rate, what Garland gives Nathan, along with all of their still mostly-unknown history, works. Yes, Nathan, do go digging around in Audrey's files some more, maybe you can figure out WHY she was after these two jokers.

We cut directly from Nathan sitting at his desk, restrained and repressing all kinds of emotion, to Duke sitting sprawled in the hold with his empty gun expressing all of his annoyance and frustration with the clack-clack of an empty magazine. Yes, thank you, we see what you guys did there. Julia's on pacing and fussing aloud duty, Duke is still snappish and bitter. Mostly at the situation and having been fucked over this badly, he's not the kind of guy who's used to people being able to do this, but also partly at Julia who's reminding him of all the things he used to be that he gave up, I'm sure. There's a whole lot of history here that they don't really talk about, but between this and previous episodes I'd hazard a guess that they had a big-brother-little-sister relationship for awhile, until they hit puberty and hormones kicked in and Duke became a local heartthrob. Which led to Julia's crush on him, and combined with the stories he told her about living on a boat/his travels (when did he get the fuck out of Haven, anyway? and what's the age gap between him and Julia? we don't know! isn't it great!) there was probably some hero-worship going on. Plus Julia was probably one of the few people Duke was close to as a boy/young man, just at a guess; he seems to have always been one of those people who knows everyone and lets very few past the ahem-business-partner stage of acquaintanceship. Definitely one of those people with multiple levels of trust to be gained. Anyway, he snaps at Julia that he doesn't know the dance she's doing, he's doing a shitty job of being reassuring, and overall he looks more like he's pouting than like he's trying to evaluate his options, which I'm sure is what he'd claim he's doing if pressed. The fact that Julia leaps immediately to death (and frankly, probably rape, and I wonder just what kind of trauma she went through with MSF in Darfur, either to herself or as a doctor dealing with so many atrocities) is pretty telling. The look on Duke's face suggests that he knows all too well that there are things worse than death, and okay, he's at least been thinking over Tobias and Ezra's past actions and figured out a) what they were really doing and b) what they want now. They want a particular box, and they were casing the place, this does not take genius-level IQ to figure out, but I'd guess that Duke is so careful not to know or think much about his cargo that he needed a moment to ponder which of the many possibilities the kidnappers are after. The main point is, they want a box and they need Duke alive and at least plausibly cooperative to acquire it. I wonder how much of his brooding has been thinking back over their forearms and checking for that tattoo, since he's just now received that bit of information. (Speaking of things worse than death: being told what the last thing you see before you die will be and having insufficient data to track that down and try to understand it and stop it.) All things considered, he's pretty confident he's not getting dead, and I'm guessing he's also pretty confident that if they're not going to kill him, they won't kill Julia either because they know she matters to him. Which doesn't preclude them from hurting her to get him to cough up information, not that he's saying that right now, he's not that stupid. He can also be pretty certain they won't be stupid enough to do anything more than kidnap a pair of supposed federal agents, because let's not add reasons for people to throw the book at them if they get caught. At least, since they're smart enough criminals to get this far, we can all hope they're smart enough criminals not to torture Audrey to get information out of Duke. My morbid curiosity wants to know just what the barnvatar would do/be allowed to do in that situation. Anyway. Duke is awfully blase about the possibility of his own torture, having undergone it before; it's a bravado that's helping keep him functional but given what we know about Simon I would guess that he's an old hand at dissociating from physical pain. I need to go punch Simon some more now, even if I feel marginally sorry for him after Sarah. Julia either doesn't see that because she's so wrapped up in her own freakout or she doesn't care, I'm betting mostly on the former, and plus she's feeling severely disillusioned. The looks Duke gives her as she goes down the rabbit hole of, what happened to you, how did you get from a big dreamer to here, you're just a petty crook, indicates that he at least thinks this change of heart may say more about Julia than about himself. He… may not be wrong, since we know something of what he was like in high school. More to the point, he doesn't have time for this shit, they're stuck in a hold and Julia can have all the unpleasant revelations about what she believed Duke to be versus the reality of him, but they're stuck in a hold with kidnappers doing god knows what on deck. Or belowdecks. There's a lot of belowdecks, this is a smuggler's boat, after all. This whole scene, by the way? Beautiful and classic example of all of Duke's defense mechanisms at work. From the gives-no-fucks body language to the dismissive banter to the mock-offended attitude (yes, honey, you're an exceptional crook) that's hiding genuine hurt? Yeah. But he'll drop most of that when he realizes that his boat is fucking sinking. I also love that we get to see Duke as a decent sailor, and completely freaked out about his baby leaking, plus the slow realization that maybe he can use this for leverage with the kidnappers. Which is all conveyed in body language, because Eric Balfour is just that damn good.

Speaking of the kidnappers! Ezra is a twitchy little fuck who's been combing the boat over by "thinking like Duke," which is the first clear thing we've had said about how his Trouble works at all. Or at least, how he thinks his Trouble works, which as we well know isn't necessarily accurate. Particularly when you're essentially carrying other people's minds in yours and you're not trained to handle that kind of shock to the system. The upshot, at least as Ezra and Tobias understand it, is that Ezra asks people a couple questions and then understands how they think. Not a bad way to con people, in other words! And it works on Audrey, too, which is another of the Troubles that works when used on her, probably because it's not directly interfering with her well-being. Or possibly because of the proximity of the barnvatar? I really wonder on that score, if the barnvatar confers greater immunity to the Troubles to her or lessens it. Argh. (You would assume the former, because of what the barn is, but the barnvatar isn't quite the same as the barn and he's away from his natural habitat. With every variable introduced we get greater instability in the system. Like a fucking game of Jenga I'm playing blindfolded.) The nice thing about being able to think like Duke is that Ezra can tell when the boat's sinking, too, which means they need to either call this quits or speed it up. No points for guessing what Tobias is all about! I would also point out here that the fact that Duke is the person it's hardest for Ezra to read is indicative of a lot of things about Duke: his ability to lie, his ability to compartmentalize, his wariness of everyone and everything new to him. In general, what they're getting at is that Duke is a twisty, twisted individual who's unpredictable and capable of great feats of mental acrobatics in order to accomplish his goals. Which is absolutely true, and which we see addressed throughout the show, with the conflict between Duke's strong moral center yet his willingness to break whatever laws he feels he needs to in order to follow that morality. It's a morality that has little to do with the letter of the law, but a great deal to do with its spirit.

Instead of cutting straight to the torture scene (for small favors we will be thankful), we revisit Audrey and Agent Fuck You in the kitchen, where the first book title we can see on the shelf is La Prisonnier. Yes, that means what you think it does. Yes, that's French, which probably means Duke speaks French or maybe Evie does? Someone who was on the Cape Rouge frequently speaks it, anyway; given proximity to eastern Canada I'd be surprised if Duke didn't. For a change, Agent Fuck You is helping, albeit the kind of helping that entails stacking books off to the side while Audrey hands them to him. Passive rather than active, again; in fact the only times he's active are when he's challenging Audrey's desire to stay in Haven and her beliefs about how she's handling the Troubles. This time he's pointing out that she's got talents that could be used outside of this one tiny town, and moreover that given what she's told him, this is the sort of place that could use a full detail, still. Howard, you have to pick one, you can't make both arguments at once. Audrey's not calling him on that, though, she's pointing out that she understands these people and can help them. With a hesitation over "help" that suggests she's beginning to have an idea that it's a good deal more than the usual kind of psychological help that a well-trained agent can provide. Heh. Double heh for the Children of the Corn reference, really, you guys? Also, as we learned in s3, the Troubles are far from contained within Haven; there's a reason for the town name, after all. That's where people are supposed to go when their Trouble activates. Triggers. What have you. We have the hilariousest reference to Mulder and the X-Files here, the guy who was chasing aliens and it's a shame what happened the last few years. Uh-huh. I love whoever dropped that bit of snark in. I'm half-betting on Millikin, but I wouldn't put it past anyone else on that writing staff. And then Howard puts his foot down, she's too good an agent to stay in Haven, he needs her back in Boston despite her unorthodox methods of solving conventional crimes, blah blah ordering her back. To which Audrey's response could only be more "yeah whatever" if she actually said it. Preferably with a Valley girl accent. Seriously, would you people hanging out with Duke and Audrey focus on the escaping imperative? And I'm not actually going to stop and run down the list of books on Duke's shelf, if you want that you can go reread the post on Duke's boat. Suffice it to say it's enlightening.

Now we cut over to the torture scene, where Tobias has been whaling on Duke for awhile and Ezra has a gun on Julia with no sense of range of efficacy and the shakiest hold I've seen recently. If Julia were even a little bit trained she could take that gun away from him. (Actually, I question her apparent lack of any and all self defense training. I can't find a citation, but that seems like the kind of training you'd get at some point in MSF as a last resort, along with substantially more skill at negotiating hostile situations than she seems to possess. Depending on what her actual job was, etc., but still.) This is in pretty much every respect a bog-standard blunt force torture/interrogation scene, in which Tobias punches Duke a bunch - in the hard places, really? Wow he's bad at this. Ezra makes commentary about Duke's state of mind, which does finally get a rise out of him, but given Duke's actual self-control as opposed to the control he wants everyone else to think he has I would so not want to be those guys when he gets free. At all. Spitting blood, Julia freaked out and trying to get Duke to give up the information which at this point he won't for principle's sake. Though he might when they imply that they're going to split them up and torture Julia. Not that I think they're going to, mainly because they're not making this show quite that dark. I actually believe Tobias would, but in this case he doesn't have to.

Instead, those screams we hear from up on the deck with Duke and Ezra sound terrified and angry but not in pain. It's probably indicative of what kind of TV I watch that I can determine that in two seconds. Duke might be able to determine that but he's angry, in pain himself, possibly mildly concussed from all those hits to the head, and near the end of his tolerance for this bullshit. So he'll agree to do whatever they want as long as they don't hurt Julia. Possibly he's agreeing because he, too, can tell she's not yet being tortured - but she will be if he doesn't start talking. Hard to say for sure, since Ezra's not spelling it out for us and Duke damn well isn't saying. He would much rather they let Julia go before he gives them what they came for, which bargaining would work better if they didn't hold all the cards. And we start to see some of Ezra's own psychosis here, he's getting used to his powers and annoyed by Duke's ability to circumvent them. Oh, hey, Duke does have a pretty good idea of what's going on! Both by the look down and away from Ezra, he's lying when he says "keep what up" and that means he probably got a decent idea of what was at work down in the hold. And also by the litany of things he's using to keep from thinking about the box, though by the surprise on his face it was just a theory and this is confirmation. Extremely unwelcome, shocking confirmation, which is what leads his mental defenses to crumble. That and the beating and the stress of the whole damn situation, Ezra you are officially just as much of a creepy fucker as your friend downstairs. Poor Duke knows when he's been beat, this was essentially the don't think of a purple elephant on roller skates trick and sadly, he's been weakened enough to fall for it. Also that's kind of a brilliant hiding spot and not one anyone on the boat would think to look for.

We come back after the ad break to Tobias up in the pilot house, relaying their location and ETA to their employer. Who we never hear about again but may be someone smart enough to make use of the Troubles. Grumble mutter, but at least we know they were employed by someone else for this job. And so does Duke, now! Audrey also knows and has heard the information as she comes up the escape hatch which, yes, leads to the pilot house, appropriately enough. Or maybe led to a hallway that led there, who knows, the main point is, she's there! And now Tobias isn't, which means it's time to radio for help. Somewhere along the line Audrey's learned to work ship's comms like police comms, which since they're not that much different is entirely plausible. She's also got her back to the windows overlooking the deck, which is just bad police work even if she thinks she knows where Tobias and Ezra both are. Okay, there, that's better, and Nathan thinks so too! He's about as freaked out and relieved as we've seen him so far, she spouts off the information she just overheard, Garland goes to call it in. They do work well together as cops, I will say, even if not so much as a family. Nathan stutters over the admission of reading her files on them, not that Audrey's overly upset in this instance. Besides, I'd bet half her passwording her computer was ingrained FBI habits. Implanted. Whatever. Guys, we don't really have time for the whys and wherefores, though it's telling that Nathan wants that reassurance that she wasn't keeping it from him on purpose right away. She wasn't! She was digging into things, trying to figure out their Trouble, before bringing Nathan these thinnest of thin threads to hang a case on. Nathan has information, too, they've got this packing information into very little time into an artform already, both the writers and Nathan and Audrey. It boils down to, Ezra got locked up for being Troubled because his Trouble is limited precog, specific to people, and when he's got multiple people all thinking at him at once he can see all of them, and in conclusion ow. That's gotta suck. Not that I have much sympathy for him, but it does have to suck. Tobias is enough of a dumbass to go menace Duke without looking up at the wheelhouse - nobody ever looks up - and if Duke sees her at all it's out of the corners of his eyes and he's very carefully giving no sign. Audrey's off to do something unorthodox now! Things always do seem to work out better when she does that.

This doesn't make Nathan even a little bit happy, of course, and just in time for Garland to come back and announce that the Coast Guard's on their way isn't that nice. It'd be a lot nicer if they didn't know there was someone Troubled, potentially violent and definitely dangerous on that boat. Not that Nathan's spelling this out for Garland. He's still surly and in fact, even more upset with Garland's attempts at being a decent father. Which are, as he says bluntly, too late. I could argue that from both sides, but the upshot is, dude, the person who doesn't want the relationship (re)established is the one whose boundaries get respected. If you can't accept that, you're being an asshole. Garland, stop being an asshole. Interesting, that the only two people we've ever heard call Nathan "Nate" are him and Duke, and he doesn't have the best relationship with either one. What follows is a heartrending account of what happened to Nathan and Garland way, way back when, prompted by Garland using the "I'm gonna die someday and then you'll be sorry" schtick. Garland. For fuck's sake. That's one of the oldest parental guilt trips in the book, and it often backfires when you're talking about a dysfunctional relationship. Especially with someone as stubborn as Nathan. And stop telling him how he feels. This is one where the words/actions split isn't holding up, because all Garland has left are words, and my god, Garland, could you just shut up and stop digging. No, no he cannot. He thinks they used to ever get along, which I will allow as how that's a possibility but if so, it was before Nathan's mother died. Interesting that Garland never identifies her as "my wife" or similar. It sounds like she died sometime after the last round of Troubles or possibly during, so 27 years or less, but very formative years. No, Nathan doesn't think that if his mother were alive she'd be able to fix them, he thinks that if she were alive they wouldn't be nearly this fucked up in the first place. This is probably not an unreasonable belief to hold, since Garland's grieving process appears to have involved withdrawing from the entire world. Including his son. I think only now is Garland really realizing how badly he fucked up back then, too, that he was grieving and doing it badly and didn't have a support network to rely on, and when he looked up Nathan was an independent teenager who couldn't be told what to do. And Nathan was his "idiot son," an interesting choice of labels, presumably related to his first bout with the Troubles and/or the trauma he had to handle even after Lucy went into the barn? Which means nobody looked to take care of Nathan, either. Oh everyone. Regardless of whether or not Garland wanted Nathan to go away and stop looking to him for love, advice, pride, all those things a parent's supposed to do, that is what he got out of all this, and that's what he's stuck with. Apologies only go so far, though at least this time Garland knows what he's apologizing for. I would bet even odds that this is the first time he's ever been fully informed of how Nathan feels about all these wasted years.

While I'm attempting to reconfigure my heartstrings into less of a jumbled mass of ow, Tobias checks in with Ezra. Who, remember that stint in the mental asylum? Yeah, he's losing it more and more as he's locked on a boat with five people who all are probably thinking very loudly right now, at least two of whom he's read deliberately. Probably three, counting Tobias. (Can he read the barnvatar? If he tries, what does he get out of it besides a headache? INQUIRING MINDS that will never get answers to this, because the writers are evil fuckers. I say that with love.) He's got braintoofull. Tobias' comment about communing with the fish should be setting off alarm bells but maybe Ezra's brain is too full to register the connotations of that, but if this job had gone off I wouldn't place any kind of good odds on Ezra's continued survival. Meanwhile, we get a couple shots of the boat continuing to sink, one of Julia in the hold tied to the chair looking nervous, one of the barnvatar in the kitchen - sorry, sorry, galley - patting himself down with a handkerchief. Which is an amusing affectation. Yes. I would be concerned, too. I would also be wondering if it were possible to wedge through that escape hatch, even with those broad shoulders of his.

Hey, the rescue squad is here! And by rescue squad I mean Audrey, who is looking up as she goes, checking to be sure the deck's clear in front and behind her before she runs over to untie Duke. Cue snarky banter to conceal and avoid acknowledging the fact that Duke's in pain and embarrassed and pissed. Mostly those first two. Audrey will even participate, albeit it briefly and with the larger point of "so, Duke, what ARE they after?" We will now embark on the rapid-fire process of explaining what Ezra's Trouble is and how it works, which Duke had yes, pretty much figured out but he's a lot happier bouncing the accumulated data back and forth with someone else. Audrey for preference, since he certainly didn't try very hard to do so with Julia. (To be fair, Julia wasn't trying very hard to do so with him, either.) So! Not a mind-reader but a limited precog, which means Audrey has an idea of how to sidestep this Trouble. Oh, and by the way, the boat's sinking, in case she missed that earlier when she was clambering up the escape hatch into the pilot house. I don't think she did, I think that pause is more for registering how distressed Duke really is than for recalculating her plan based on the new data, but could be a bit of both.

This plan turns out to be sticking Duke on deck with Audrey tucked out of sight, while Duke asks Buddha to let this work. I love a good bit of character consistency, and I think he's dropped that bit of development in later seasons - which may have more to do with a loss of faith in higher powers outside of the Troubles and the weird supernatural shit that's become his life and less to do with suddenly dropping a character tic. We'll try and remember to keep an eye on that during s2, whenever we get to it. (Probably next summer's hiatus. We'd apologize, but our wrists and our sanity aren't sorry in the least.) This is now the point at which everything breaks down for Tobias and Ezra, and all I can assume based on Tobias' unwillingness to just shoot Duke is that he's never murdered anyone before. Battery, kidnapping, sure! Murder is harder. Meanwhile Duke's blanked his mind - probably with a meditation technique he learned while he was studying Buddhism - and is taking nothing but direction from Audrey. Who is having a fucking blast with this. This must also have been hysterical to film. Also, Duke's not being out and out threatening, just weird and confusing, and Tobias isn't smart enough or capable enough of changing plans on the fly to just grab him and make him stop that shit. He's gotten over-reliant on his partner telling him what's going to happen next, so now he can't improvise. That's just pathetic, dude. Ezra's also pretty pathetic right now and no, see, you have to be the one doing the tying because nobody with any training (hi, Duke, you have training) would be the least intimidated by Ezra with a gun. Even with precog. I question why the fuck Tobias gave him one in the first place, he looks more likely to shoot his own foot than anything he's aiming at. Okay, well, they could just shoot him! To which Duke has many objections, not the least of which is that he's unarmed. Okay, maybe that's Audrey having those objections, and now we get a proper look at their setup. Ezra looks like he's getting the merest flashes of maybe-what's-next and nothing else, as Duke gives the sky rude and displeased looks over being told to strip. Nobody here is displeased over this! I'm just saying. Audrey! This is a family-friendly show, he can't strip down that far! Okay, okay, so we get the rest of this scene played out, Duke monologuing away and he's sort of reinterpreting what Audrey has him saying in a more Duke-like dialect. We will all nod our heads sagely at this show of trust, because it is one hell of a show of trust. It's also the only plan they had that had even a chance of working. And I'm also duly impressed at Duke's ability to block out everything but what Audrey's telling him to do, and then to come up with a LOOK OVER THERE that actually works for long enough to disarm Tobias, who's the real threat with a gun. I love everyone on this ship. Well, all but two. Three. Audrey is enjoying mostly-naked Duke way too much and he will, in fact, decline to put his clothes back on. Mostly because I think he'd much prefer to be intimidating and mostly-naked with a gun at the people who just stole his boat and beat the shit out of him and threatened his friends. I hear casual lack of body modesty is sometimes more intimidating than being fully clothed, particularly when dealing with people who think the world works in very particular ways.

The Cape Rouge limps back into harbor, yay! The felons are led off in handcuffs, double yay! The Coast Guard does appear to have found them, and the Wuornoses are there to greet them. Semi-yay. Garland has only a couple comments, one of them the cover story they're going with, and a long look for the extent to which Tobias has been beat up, which looks like a near-mirror of what he did to Duke. I don't know if he got Audrey to overlook that or if he simply went behind her back to do it, but it's a nice reminder that Duke tends to be an eye-for-an-eye kind of guy. Julia's standing with the feds like that can separate her out from what happened on the boat, whereas Duke's more near Nathan, for a change. Who checks up on the boat rather than Duke, as the most concern they'll allow before actual fatalities are involved, before moving to welcome Audrey back to dry land. Aww. This leaves Duke standing on his own. That's not significant at all, of course. Given that they're in public and on duty, there's no hugging or tearful reunion, and in fact Nathan gets in a whole two sentences about how glad he is that she's back in one piece (all the while evaluating her physical well-being) (look, I'm trying to be polite here) before Garland drags him off under the guise of we have work to do. Agent Fuck You would like some explanations for this bullshit, which he's not getting. Not from Duke, who lies with the ease of long habit, and not from Julia, who reluctantly backs him up against the outsider. I will pause while you all laugh hysterically about the barnvatar as an outsider, given the givens. (Which isn't to say he's not, but he knows way more about what's going on than he's telling us, anyway.) Audrey snorts over the full report comment and leads her purported boss off so they can have it out away from Duke and Julia, who also need to have it out. Except she's really not ready to have that discussion, she just gives him reassurance that she wasn't hurt physically. Emotionally, on the other hand, we're Not Talking About, including the fact that she still cares enough about Duke to be upset about even the suggestion of more harm coming to him. To say nothing of the medical training that means she can picture what that would do to him in excruciating detail. Duke's not used to apologizing for much of anything, so it rings rather false when he tries, but he does at least try right away rather than waiting thirty years. I'm just saying. Not that Julia's going to buy that or, for that matter, forgive him even if she believes that's the best apology he can manage right now. It'll take time, at a minimum, and a willingness to deal with the ramifications on both their parts. Look, a theme! A veritable anvil! And the other anvil of Duke alone because he's managed to alienate his allies.

Down the dock a little ways, Howard continues to shove and reverse-psychology manipulate Audrey into staying in Haven. Complete with trying to strongarm her about her insubordination. But she's not having any of it, and she quits, just like that, because she wants to know more about herself, her history, where she comes from, all the things that have been driving her this season. Nobody is surprised, and in fact the music is the somber guitar music of The Necessary Thing Is Happening. Howard looks like he's trying not to twitch a smile in places, which is a) very subtle, I only noticed it because I was looking specifically for smug/smiling tells this time around and b) a nice bit of acting, and a good indication that Maurice Dean Wint knows pretty much everything. Which we could have surmised from some of the interviews where the actors have said that they're told everything their characters know about Haven. Come to us, Wint and Donat and Dunsworth, let us feast on your thinkmeats.

A few loose ends to wrap up, now. Duke settles back onto his boat, still bruised and bloodied though more cleaned up than he was before, and makes the decision not to break the lock on the box he just got bruised and bloodied for. But he calls the buyers - who are apparently Japanese, adding yet another language to our list, at least enough for the basic courtesies to open and close a conversation. (Balfour's accent also doesn't suck, which suggests he's got some degree of fluency himself, or a good coach.) Lying through his teeth about the no Trouble at all, we will all facepalm mightily at the choice of words and wonder how much the buyers know about Haven. And if they were trying to get the package from him without paying his rates, which I'm sure is something he's had to deal with from time to time in his line of work. Speaking of rates, his are going up, which is to say yes there was trouble (and Trouble) and he's not having any of this bullshit again. This is all conveyed through nothing but Duke's side of the conversation and body language, too, which, again: fucking hell, Balfour. The box goes back over the side, since the only person/people (depending on if Ezra told Tobias or Tobias figured it out) who know that hiding spot are in prison now.

We go on over to the back of a mysterious house, white but dingy, possibly a split-level since it's built into the side of the hill overlooking the harbor. It might be Garland's house, or it might just be a convenient out of the way rendez-vous point. Not knowing irritates me. Why, who's Agent Fuck You meeting? It's Garland! Don't all rush for the jar, now. I'd love to know if Garland tried to call Howard into town to give Audrey that push, or if this was at Howard's prompting during essentially a debriefing. I'm guessing the latter, since the barnvatar's job is to send AudSarLu on her way, check in with her to be sure she's doing her job, and pick her up when it's done. Whatever the case, Garland definitely knows a good deal about who Howard is, though maybe not what he is. (K: If he doesn't know what he is, and I'm inclined to say he doesn't, Garland must be coming up with some interesting theories for why Agent Fuck You doesn't seem to have aged since the last time. The reason, though, that I think he doesn't know what the barnvatar is, is because that conversation about deserving all of this sounds far different on the barnvatar's end than he does later; he sounds like someone who doesn't know her much more than Garland does, someone who at least is pretending not to be as familiar with Haven and its Troubles as the barnvatar is. Which inclines me to believe no, Garland doesn't know the full extent of Agent Fuck You's nature. Whatever that might be.) Difficult to say for sure. We will now snort over the manipulative sonsofbitches saying that Audrey doesn't like being told what to do and that she had to think it was her idea. You fuckers. I mean, she did have to do it, I understand why they did it, but that doesn't mean I approve. At all. Howard has that I-know-more-than-you-do smirk on when he asks if Garland thinks she really deserves all of this, which in conjunction with his sidestepping Audrey's comment about being punished at the end of s3 really seems like he thinks she deserves punishment. Garland's somewhat more philosophical about it; no, nobody deserves this, but it's what they got. And moreover, they need her. Haven needs her. Oh, and by the way, the crack in the boat? Yeah, Howard knows what that means, and Garland knows what that means, and when he talks about getting this place under control soon he doesn't mean Haven, he means Garland's dumbass inability to ask for help with his Trouble. It has the weight of a threat behind it, though, which is interesting and speaks to either a more involved role from Howard or the appearance of one, which makes his presence easier for Garland to accept. Again, this is all so fucking ambiguous and layered over with last cycle's history that it's still open to interpretation even this far down the line. On account of how Garland went and got dead, and didn't bother leaving a last will and testament filled with everything he knows about Haven and the inner workings of the Troubles and everyone associated with them. I also wonder, now that we've pretty much got his earth-mover/cracks Trouble out in the open, which side of the family he got it from.

These questions and more, not to be answered anytime in the near future. Unless season 4 brings us some really awesome history! We can hope! We hear they're promising to tell us lots about Lucy's stay in Haven this season, to which we can only say about goddamn time. For the next three weeks, we'll finish out the s3 posts on Fridays (they're all done and prepped, we're just staggering them so you guys have time to read) and put out the new eps by Saturday evening, as per our usual writing-to-deadline schedule. After that we'll stay on the Wed-Sat posting schedule as we continue to catch up with Person of Interest, and Grimm will be added into the schedule as per our usual mad dash to do TWO recaplyses in one day come October.