Saturday, October 12, 2013

As You Are He As You Are Me Haven S4E05 The New Girl

Previously, on Haven: Nathan loves Audrey! Nathan's going to die by Audrey's hand! Lexie's stuck between worlds! If she makes it to the other side, who will she be? Whoever she most wants to be! And then someone shouts for Audrey and that should really be our first clue right there in the previouslies. Sadly, we didn't rate it high on the list of probabilities, though we did ponder it for a bit. Although that's the beauty of a great writing team, that after this long analyzing and predicting a show they can still surprise us like this. We should note that we'll be talking about the last five seconds' spoiler throughout this episode, so if you don't want to be spoiled we recommend even more than usual that you wait to read this until after watching. Boom! Audrey's on the other side, only now she's Lexie and she has no idea what's going on. Allegedly.


Today on Haven we pick up right where we left off and Nathan is pissed. Hard to say who he's pissed at, although he himself is probably at the top of that list. Lexie is a bit sheepish and also a bit wary of what's going on. Vince has that stricken look which means he's not looking forward to getting to know a fourth version and he's sad and misses Audrey. Jordan, as it turns out, is going to be gobsmacked by this for the least amount of time, likely due to her anger admitting only a limited amount of new information into her world view. The whole part where Audrey is now Lexie and this won't work is information her desperation won't allow. So, grab the shotgun, order Lexie to shoot Nathan. Or what? Or you'll shoot him instead? You can't shoot AudSarLuLex because she has to end the Troubles, and if you shoot Nathan you might kill him and then the Troubles still won't end, and this is all without her knowing that there is no barn anymore, so really this is grandstanding and venting rage and pain. (A: Can I just mention that Lexie's accent is in the process of disappearing already? Just saying.) Duke attempts to point this out to her, but she's even less prepared to listen to him than she is to listen to Vince's lameass attempt at barking commands. We've heard him bark commands with far more authority than he's assuming here; this isn't Master of the Guard, quick to grab a gun (yes we're going to keep doing that), this is tired and heartbroken old man. Dave has more force in his voice than Vince does, even though it's all desperation.







Duke will take advantage of everyone yelling at each other to grab another gun and use it to smack a Guardsman in the face! Good Duke! Then punching him in the face but as he looks at his fist we see this is less about incapacitating a Guardsman and more about charging up. Oh Duke. You're starting to embrace your heritage and that is very dangerous. Lexie's just sort of standing around like a stunned mullet, but it's mostly Nathan that Duke's talking to when he looks over his shoulder and shouts "Run!" It's sort of like their original plan! He even sends two Guardsman flying before Jordan yells at them to get Nathan and Vince, well. We're not entirely sure what Vince is doing. Rushing off somewhere, but his loyalties are seriously in question after his various statements to Dave. Lexie turns to one of the few non-threatening people left, because she'd like to know where she is, and most likely what the hell is going on. Well, Lexie, you're in Maine. And Jennifer doesn't necessarily have the rest of what's applicable down pat but she does sort of offer the steadiness of "you'll get used to it." What if she doesn't want to get used to it? This is vastly different from the folksy nice small town facade Audrey was presented with when she first arrived in Haven.


Running, running, running through the woods! Running for the road and his car and Nathan, I get that you're six kinds of messed up right now, but that is exactly the first place they'd surround and stake out and wait for you. As proven by the guy clotheslining you with his gun. I'm just saying. Not to mention the facepalming that the guys shooting at him wouldn't slow him down unless they actually managed to hit somewhere vital, come on, guys, this is stupid. Clearly none of you are marksman and your target is running. Dave seems to be the only one objecting to the kill Nathan plan on the grounds that things have changed and that door should never have been opened. Um. What? Why? Doesn't it usually open every twenty seven years? Did you even see or hear about what happened when the barn disappeared? And there will be no new in twenty seven years? And that had nothing to do with the door opening? WHAT THE FUCK WITH THE DOOR, DAVE? THE FUCK IS THIS? We've been yelling at him about this for the past episode or so and he hasn't answered us yet thus far. We also have theories ranging from the last failsafe to the last anchor point of the barn before it was destroyed, and that William and his goons who we know show up again are either the backup sent to help with whatever crossed over with AudSarLu or are the things Dave is so afraid of. ENJOY GUESSING. Sadly, we weren't at Comic-Con to throttle him in person. (I kid. I might make strangling gestures in Dunsworth's direction, but only out of love.) Whatever Vince thinks about this door he doesn't seem to think Nathan dying will affect it, or possibly his desire for vengeance against Nathan for shooting Howard outweighs the consequences. People are pointing guns at Duke, presumably to keep him from doing anything Crockerly that might prevent them from killing Nathan, not that they're obeying the rules of range of efficacy but there are three of them. Jordan is still the strongest voice behind killing Nathan, which I think is a tad excessive for a woman scorned. I'd say Jordan just needs a hug, but what she really needs is a lot of hugs accompanied by a shitton of therapy, no 'just' about it. There are multiple papers done on the deprivation of physical contact in human beings. Jordan's just exaggerating the effects of that stressor to a level suitable to television. Vince's sorry is convincing enough that he probably halfway is, but he's also lost a lot of positive feeling towards the man. And then, Lexie! Hey, Lexie, with the gun! This is probably a familiar place for her, come to that, which totally explains why everything up to the point where everyone focused on her was smooth and clean and professional. Uh-huh. Sure it does. No, but this is still a familiar place only this time instead of it being a setup by William and only two guys this is the real thing and there are four to six guys, Jordan, Vince and Dave, and Duke. We're just going to go ahead and say this is the part where we should have escalated that theory to the top of the list, because Lexie's intonation and vocal patterns when she's negotiating with Vince and the Guard for Nathan's release is all Audrey. Lexie, when shooting around William's mooks, had some quaver and a twang to her voice. Now? There's none of that. And her speech patterns are all Audrey. Right down to the sass. (Also, Cheekbones! Hah!) Duke has this blinky look like "hey, this might work" and also "wait just a fucking minute here." Also, note that Lexie's the one suggesting that they interpret her as not knowing how to use the gun. Otherwise most of their focus would likely be more on the fact that she has one and it's pointed at them. Jordan volunteers to deal with her, but Lexie is having none of that. And now it's Duke's turn to speak up and play the voice of reason introducing himself to Lexie and sharing in her desire that no one get shot and killed today. And he can clear all this up if he can just talk to the big gentleman over there! Excuse me, I have to go fall over laughing that Vince is "the big one." He really kind of is, what with the tall and the broad, but it's still hilarious because he plays meek and unassuming so well and did it so often until the past season and a half or so. Okay, Lexie's cool with that. Go on with your bad self, Duke, but remember she's got her gun on everyone. Vince doesn't think any amount of talking down is going to work, but Duke will now proceed to play on everyone's desire for the Troubles to end. Yeah, that might even work. Roll credits!


Can we blame Flagg for the Crockers? Because I want to blame Flagg for the Crockers. Or maybe the Teagues. Because right now we're at their home base, the Herald, full of Guardspeople and a ranty Jordan. The angle on her as she opens the scene with "This is insane" is somewhere between sitcom and horror movie, canted for horror and talking to the camera for sitcom. Which sounds about the right speed for Haven. She wants to know why we can't just turn Lexie back into Audrey. Apparently they tried that once, a long time ago, and oh really? Okay, I have this weird habit of inadvertently or half-advertently dropping lines into my stories that end up being hooks for whole other stories, and this is exactly like one of those. TELL US, VINCE. TELL US ABOUT THE TIME YOU TRIED. No? No, that would be like sharing information, and we can't have that. We do strongly suspect that was Lucy, though, that being the next incarnation after Sarah and it would explain why Lucy was particularly belligerent and distrustful of most of the people in Haven connected to the overall conspiracy. It would also explain why they have mementos of Sarah but not Lucy, and if they'd tried it overtly on Audrey we have to assume that would've been worth some screen time. (Come to that, it doesn't explain why Dave's worst nightmare was Sarah, we're still waiting for that gun to go off.) Jordan's next desperate attempt is that they find the barn again, shove her back in. Oh Jordan honey. The barn only came for AudSarLu, only when she thought of it or wanted it, and it kind of went all explodey. Duke takes a second to explain Jennifer's Trouble for everyone, apparently her Trouble is to be Jake Chambers and exist just enough in two separate realities at once to hear the other side. Okay, in this 'verse her Trouble is to hear the barn. Or she could! Before the explodie. She's doing pretty well up until she points out that the upside is she might be normal again. In front of Jordan. To be fair to Jennifer, she doesn't know all the facts about Jordan yet. But still, ouch. To Jordan's credit, she doesn't use this as an excuse for further tirades except for one snippy remark. Duke says that his plan makes sense as a permanent solution even if Jordan is done living like this. Honestly, I think I'd like it somewhat better as a more ... sympathetic? Comprehensible? emotional play if there was more of Jordan being hurt and exhausted by the whole thing and less of Jordan being angry, but hurt!Jordan was apparently so last season. This is Jordan out for blood, specifically Nathan's, preferably delivered by Lexie. Jordan snarks at Duke how he's just trying to keep Nathan alive and screw the rest of them (that latter is implied), Duke retorts at her about how she just wants to kill him and screw what that might do to their hopes of ending the Troubles (also the latter being implied) and Vince has had enough of everyone's shit. Hey, look, it's the Master of the Guard again! Jordan's right, but he only says that she's right about needing to end the Troubles, which are destroying the town. Not that they haven't been before, but everything in this season suggests that it's worse, on a physical property-and-body destroying level and on an emotional level. It's time to get Dwight on the phone. Um. Sure? We'll assume that's logical for some reason or another and wait for our goddamn explanations. By wait we mean chew the corners of our desks. I always wanted a round desk anyway.





We'll head over to the back room instead and check on Nathan and not!Lexie, who is becoming increasingly obviously not!Lexie. Maybe just to those of us who combed through s1 over the summer staring at clues? But the "tough guy" comment is what Audrey said when Nathan brushed off her concern over the car door slamming on his fingers in the pilot with the I-can't-feel-it line, which has the benefit of being both true and odd enough to be dismissed by anyone without knowledge of the Troubles or an encyclopedic knowledge of weird medical conditions. At any rate, this is the scene where we started to seriously suspect Something Was Up, because these are Audrey phrases and Audrey intonations but Lexie's body language, which frankly also gives her the freedom to touch Nathan more. Audrey wouldn't do that so much if she were being herself; she's very aware of other people's boundaries and has something of her own Touch Me Not attitude, whereas Lexie, or Lexie as Audrey is playing her, has almost a teenager vibe about her. Definitely more youthful, more willing to poke at people, more willing to ask the blunt and obvious questions. And that snark about made to work in a newspaper has, when you know what's going on, so many implications for how unhappy with the Teagues Audrey is. Nathan would see it if he weren't so self-absorbed, and almost does before he corrects himself. No, Nathan, your instincts are right. Semi-right. Ignore the self-destructive ones, for fuck's sake. We're afraid this episode is going to have quite a bit more swearing at Nathan in it, because that decline in being a decent human being who thinks about the other people around him (including, you know, the ones who aren't himself or Audrey) which got pronounced last season has hit runaway train speed in these last few eps. But he's got a point, he's the one who's the primary prisoner here although I wouldn't lay odds on Laudrey being able to walk out of there unquestioned. It also seems pretty obvious that even if Lexie chose to be Audrey, she also kept all her memories of being in the bar/n earlier, who Lexie was and what she went through, so this playacting is predicated on being able to access those memories as well as her memories of being Audrey. We'll come back to that, because we're betting This Will Be Important Later. She doesn't feel safe, is the upshot! No, I wouldn't either, no matter whose memories I had. Nathan has a moment of being not completely stupid, good for him, asking who Lexie used to be, thought she was, and also about Howard. An excellent pair of questions, in fact! Not-Lexie takes these with the seriousness they deserve, she was a bartender and she swears never to complain about anything (bar-related, is the implication) again, and no, no Howard, but a William there was! Mention the teeth, honey, those are as important as you are. And as scary.


Before they can dive into the mysteries of the bar/n and its psychopomps any further, we're interrupted by Vince. Great. Awesome. No, wait, completely the other thing, since he's ordering them to come with him with absolutely no explanations. For all we know he could be taking them out into the woods, putting a gun in Lexie's hand, and physically forcing her to pull the trigger. Actually I'm a little surprised Jordan hasn't suggested that one yet. Trained FBI agent reflexes or not, there's still more of them than there are of AudSarLuLex. Though I don't know if that would count, because intention seems to count for an awful lot in this town, so we'll just wait for Jordan to get angry and desperate enough to try setting it up like that anyway. And where are the unhappy couple being led? Why, to a crime scene! With a Dwight and Duke pulling up separate from Vince and Lexie and Nathan. The fuck is this. We love that Dwight's main reaction is "wow, okay, moving on, we have a case." Lexie is to stay by the car, at least Vince has some vague attempt at manners, but nobody's impressed with his treatment of her. Or of anyone. Short version, there's a couple of kids who were having breakfast, Josh and Katie, they're not stated as dating but it's halfway implied, and Josh went nuts and attacked her so the employees locked him in the kitchen. That alone says something about the state of mind of Haven's average residents, that they're in something of a battle/siege mentality for this to be treated as just another day in good ol' fucking Haven. Nathan still wants to know what this happy horseshit is, Dwight is deferring to Vince at least a little, oddly, and Vince is once again shot so he's obviously towering over both the other men. Considering that Adam Copeland is an easy 6'5" at minimum, that's no mean feat, and goes once again to Vince being the "big man" in more than just metaphor. Yeah, Nathan has no concept of what the fuck is going on or why they're asking him to be a cop who solves Troubles instead of a dead sacrifice to save the town. I can't actually blame him for that one, given how little information Vince is willing to dole out at the best of times and the direction negotiations seemed to be taking earlier. Duke's incredibly shitty plan is that Lexie needs to fall in love with Nathan so she can kill him. Nathan thinks this is a shitty plan. Nathan wants Audrey back. Nathan does not have a leg to stand on, Nathan, you slept with Sarah. That said, it's the sort of shitty plan that will buy them time!


Speaking of Audrey and Lexie, where'd she go? Oh right. Into the crime scene. Guys, I know you don't know Lexie that well, and I know she's giving off impulsive attitude all over the place, but I would think you'd guess that someone who claims she was a bar(n)tender (yes, I had to) before crossing back to Haven wouldn't necessarily walk into somewhere known to be a crime scene? With a violent person trapped within? No? Well, her scream brings the boys running, and we get our first look at the Trouble of the week! A young man who appears to be possessed or psychotic, hard to say which on first look without further data because this is the guy who's appeared in all the promos. Clearly he's the one they want us to think is Troubled! And he is, in a way, goes off on a rant about how he's not Josh and he trusted her and so on and so forth. Well, this can't possibly end badly. Lexie would like to know what the fuck kind of town this is, nobody's listening to her, that's the question for form's sake. And then Josh cuts his own throat while our usual threesome look on helplessly, Lexie with far less of a stoic cop-face than Audrey would have. Which, actually, that's the beauty of who Audrey's pretending to be: she doesn't have to do anything other than stop repressing her emotions all over the place, and maybe exaggerate them slightly. I can't imagine Audrey has fake memories of seeing all that many people cut their own throats, and that's the sort of visceral suicide (okay, visceral would be a little lower) that can get to even a hardened agent.


What FUN. For more fun, let's visit the station where Nathan and Duke are interviewing Katie while Lexie hangs out in the background. We'd question why they're letting her in there, but a) she needs to watch Nathan at work to fall in love with him by Duke's plan b) not that many people actually know about what the barn does to AudSarLu and they'll be expecting Audrey back and c) it's probably the safest place for her right now. So, Josh was Tyler's best friend, Tyler is Katie's boyfriend, anyone with any clue about basic teenage tendencies knows where this is going and Lexie and Duke are both waiting for Nathan to ask the obvious question about sleeping with Josh, but okay, fine, apparently we'll ignore that for now. Lead the witness to talk about Tyler, who wrecked a car a few days ago after randomly losing control of it, he's still in hospital, it's a miracle that Katie and Josh walked away. Well, that sounds like a Trouble being triggered, says not!Lexie's expression. Audrey, you're doing so well, just make sure you always get that look when Nathan's not looking at you, because you know damn well he won't be able to keep the secret. Because he wants to die because he is a selfish fucking moron who can't be bothered to look for other solutions. Just, you know, reiterating. Duke kicks Nathan in the head all but literally to take over the investigation that is nominally his yes thank you Duke. No, that does not mean concluding the questioning. Oh my fucking god, Nathan. Officer Rafferty will take the formal statement and brings the lampshades to the yard, no, that's not Audrey, or at least Lexie won't say so! We'll pause a moment to giggle over the mazel tov which we suspect is Balfour extemporizing rather than a written line, either way we'll giggle over the Jewish actor getting to toss out Yiddish. And with his ass planted on the door so they can be assured of some privacy Duke will establish the reasoning we mentioned up top of this paragraph, though Lexie will now emphasize how she's not a cop and not Audrey and methinks the lady is protesting slightly too much. But it's a good cover, and Duke's as eager as Laudrey not to let on to Nathan about any of his suspicions, and oh, yes, they need her help. Audrey has a moment of her own bitters over how everyone needs something from her, which is the first time she's ever expressed that sentiment even indirectly. Though we have to say we approve, because boundless compassion and selflessness are all well and good but Nathan is a classic example of what happens when you try to take the selflessness too far. Audrey needs to stand up for what she wants in all of this, in shrink terms she need to self-actualize, and suddenly I wonder if that's not the real way to end the Troubles. Let AudSarLu become a real girl. Anyway, what this woman needs right now because she's real in the flesh-and-blood sense is food. She'll accept vending machine food if nothing else, guys, she hasn't eaten anything that didn't come out of a bottle in however long subjectively she feels like she was there plus however long before that chasing down the barn at the end of last season. She also didn't come through the barn with pocket change, you guys. The vending machine will not kill her, but she can't have Baby Ruths because they stick, which is kind of adorable and kind of facepalm-worthy. Nathan, you're really not trying at all, here, except our patience. And Duke's.





In fact, Duke sounds a bit like he wants to throttle Nathan. We can empathize. At first he appeals to Nathan's participation in the plan, i.e. come on Nathan, be the man Audrey fell in love with. I'd go a little further to, dude, be any kind of a man a person could fall in love with instead of a sulky belligerent jackass. I recognize that Nathan's hurting here but this is grating on my sympathy. The last part is a dual appeal to that and to reminding Nathan that he's a cop, so be a fucking cop, which does seem to work. He starts pulling on the commonalities between the cases, there's an assumption being made here that Josh was suicidal rather than some other cause, but it's true that both young men had a deadly or near-death experience, and right now the evidence leans towards suicidal impulses in both cases. Duke starts speculating on how it could be contagious when Lexie comes back in and he shuts right up and moves a hand to almost complete the scratching the back of the neck gesture of a caricature of guilt. Oh Duke. In this case it's not so much that he's hiding information from her as that he's hiding the degree to which he was participating in the investigation, because of the shipping. The hardcore, internet fanperson style shipping. Shipping like FedEx! Also he's forcing Nathan to be in charge and make decisions for the good of the people in the office and for the good of Haven, which is a habit Nathan's somewhat fallen out of now that he's not Chief anymore and just a walking blood sacrifice. Come to think of it in those terms, it will be interesting to see when we take on season two how much it seems that being the Chief and having to live up to that responsibility affected Nathan's ability to grieve for his father, and to heal from that loss. Anyway. Where to, next? Why, the hospital, to talk to the other person who survived one of these incidents! Great! Lexie is all about the hospital, she can get her head scanned, and she's not even kidding. Oh Audrey. Though I would buy that she's now wondering if there's anything around that might give some sort of fucking clue what's going on, and a CT scan might do something? We've seen evidence before of Troubles affecting people's physical health and putting a strain on their bodies (Resurfacing 1x12, Magic Hour 3x07/3x08) or otherwise affecting their state of being (Real Estate, 3x06), so it's worth a shot at least.


In case we all forgot about the hospital, here's a flyby that reminds us that the hospital is where Nathan first met Sarah, focusing more on the older yellow-painted building (seriously, it's been painted pale yellow for 54+ years?) than some other shots of the hospital have done. Josh is paralyzed from the waist down, the doctors think, permanently, and his room number is 4012. I wouldn't take note of this so much except it's almost the focus of the frame for a second there, before we move over to Josh, and 4012 is very like 412, which is an upcoming episode. One we don't have a title for, as yet. Is this a message? Is something about this case going to bite us in the ass in 4x12? Or does this have to do with all the various madcap schemes currently going on surrounding the Troubles and AudSarLuLex? I'm betting on that second one, though given how many callbacks to previous episodes we've had this season I'm not ruling out the first. Anyway, Tyler is paralyzed and clearly still freaked out about it, as you do, and Nathan asks the requisite did anything "weird" happen right before the horrible thing, where "anything weird" is code for, is this another fucking Trouble. Or, given that it's always another fucking Trouble, whose Trouble is it this time and how does it work. Tyler says that Katie gave him a funny look and he lost control, not of the car but of his body, and that's why he crashed. So, right there, we have a rough description of how this Trouble works: people lose control and do lethal shit. The details, though. Devil's in the details, and so is the solution. We go through a round of question and answer but Tyler isn't yet ready to believe either in the Troubles or in that something his girlfriend is doing caused this, so nothing useful there other than a pile of subtle tells (just vague enough a story that other people fill in the details for him, way insufficient blinking, anger over his legs not working that seems oddly directed outwards instead of inwards if he really doesn't think Katie did it) that he knows something he's not saying. It reads fine as denial, though, and we know Nathan can't read people for shit right now and Duke's not accustomed to thinking like a cop. Duke, however, will write Tyler a prescription for boozahol at the Grey Gull when he gets out of there and, presumably, off medication that would require a lack of booze. Right, Duke? And also, awww. He's trying, in his own way, to do what Nathan's falling down on doing right now, which is to take care of the people affected by the Troubles and not just solve the cases. Admittedly, Nathan hasn't been falling down so hard on that this entire season, but this episode he's particularly bad, and he's been declining in his ability to see from others' point of view for the past season and a half.


Back over to another section of the hospital where Lexie has been getting her head examined. Or so she says. She also says she doesn't trust doctors, which has the intonation and focus of being important later, but I'm not sure how. Duke will once again proceed to ship it blatantly and awkwardly, but at least this gives the introduction for Nathan to update her on the case thus far, basically that he thinks Josh and Tyler were affected by the same Trouble, and the shared element is Katie, so she's the likely suspect for what he calls a "Black Widow" Trouble. Lexie thinks about this for a second, then wonders out loud why the hell anyone still lives here. We've been wondering that for many, many episodes. Except where we haven't, because solidarity against adversity and fucking weirdness. It does make a great opening for them to tell her about her role in Haven, as Audrey keeps giving them this episode and they generally don't take. Meanwhile over at what we assume is Katie's house or the place where she's staying, Officer Rafferty seems to be unstiffening a bit, though the dialogue still sounds mildly clunky, like there was supposed to be another line there that got cut. Possibly she's getting used to the role, possibly some of the greater ease is due to having more lines and more ability to have a personality than she has in the past. And yet, we're still going to take issue, this time with the fact that they put a new officer on the mantel several episodes ago and she hasn't gone off yet! Which might only mean that she's going to be another Stan. We're still going to grumble, given that Grimm did the same thing with Chekhov's Intern and fired him exactly three episodes later. Anyway, literary geekery aside, Rafferty has taken Katie home and is attempting to make small talk and make her feel better given, well, everything. It doesn't take long, though, before Katie stiffens and starts looking at her hands like she's either stoned or possessed. Given that nothing so benign as a marijuana high happens on Haven, we're going to go with possessed. It's not even the "it worked again" that's so creepy and violent, it's the "I have this coming" right before Katie's body runs out into the path of the oncoming car. We can tell she didn't survive not so much because of the sickening crunch or the horrific angle we see for half a second, but because of the fact that when we come back from commercial she's still on the ground covered in a white sheet. Ew.


So, not Katie's Trouble then. There's an argument to be made for projected empathy and suicidal thoughts, but that kind of loses cohesion when Katie was exhibiting signs of possession before she ran out into traffic, too. Duke is awfully cheerful and slap-happy about maybe they're on his hit list too. It's an awkward lampshade for later, but it works much better as a goad to make Nathan react to something outside of himself and his manpain, which everyone is still tired of. Except Nathan! Who is not yet tired of angsting, and will now proceed to ramble about how hard this is for him and how much he wanted to find Audrey even though he was totally prepared to die (dude, we get it, you don't have to repeat that two or three times an episode) and won't anyone think of how hard this is for him? No, Duke will not angst with him or on his behalf, Duke is busy trying to fucking fix things. Nathan could take a hint and start trying to fucking fix things too, yes? Be awesome for Lexie! Because here she comes. Trying to get an idea of what happened, or what Nathan thinks happened, and she's got a police radio! Apparently the cop gave it to her, and they all think she's an amnesiac Audrey. Which is that kind of sideways truth that we hate so much around here. Lying with the truth is the hallmark of some very manipulative (William) people, and we disapprove. Okay, we kind of approve in this case, because it makes things easier on everyone, but as a general tactic. Nathan half moves, half offers to take the radio away from her, giving no particular reason out of the half-dozen he could have, but Lexie is having none of this. William told her that she had a purpose and belonged in Haven, and this might be it! And the not very subtexty subtext here is that she is damn well going to help the people of Haven whether Nathan wants her to get involved or not. Which, really? Is not a very Lexie sentiment at all. Not the belligerence or the aggressiveness with which she attaches to the purpose of helping people, nor yet the swiftness with which she reaches this conclusion. Remember back in season three how we were saying that Tommy Bowen adapted awfully quickly to the whole Troubles thing? Lexie's doing it too. Even Audrey had a slower curve than one episode to reach this kind of acceptance, though her calm wasn't easy to damage, either. And now for something completely different! Jennifer running up with Audrey's clothes! Lexie is not at all sure she approves of these clothes, though she takes them readily enough, because she really does only have the one change of clothes. Audrey, you are the trollingest troll that ever trolled. Is this in revenge for Nathan acting like a dickhead, be aggressively unlike Audrey in ways that you know will needle him? Because I approve. And since Nathan and Audrey are heading out of earshot Jennifer will take advantage of the opportunity to inquire the fuck is Duke thinking. Well, Jennifer, Duke is thinking that this is the best plan he could come up with under pressure to keep Nathan alive long enough to think of something else! And as far as plans go, given the circumstances, still not a bad one. All right, so he and Jennifer will--  no? No. Duke will now engage in one of the two pieces of dumbassery he indulges in this episode, and attempt to protect Jennifer against everything Haven for her own good, etc. By telling her to stay away from it and not help or anything, and not actually telling her the underlying reason that might make her at least marginally more accepting of him saying that? No? No, god forbid anyone on this show openly state their feelings ever. Even Duke, who is otherwise being the best lately. Admittedly he's probably trying hard to reconcile potential feelings for her with lingering love for Audrey and juggling the infinite balls in the air of, protect Nathan, find out what Lexie's hiding, don't get shot by the Guard, don't let his brother into the family business. But STILL, Duke, she wants to be your ally. Let her. Jesus. Jennifer will slap a smile on her face now and go clean her stuff out of Audrey's apartment kthnxbai, with enough abruptness and forced perky cheer and not letting Duke get in a word edgewise that he knows she's upset with him. Good. Because she is. Duke. That was clumsy and silly.


Speaking of women who are being upset at Crockers, why hey look, it's Jordan at the Gull. Drinking. I'd question whether or not there's more than one bar in town, except really, this can also be an act of petty revenge: you took mine away, I take away some expensive booze. Also she needs a drink. Well, she needs a hug and all the therapy, but what she's getting right now is a drink. Wade starts off confused and a little belligerent when he comes in to find a stranger drinking liquor in the bar that no doubt he considers at least partially his and this is not going anywhere good. It could, except Jordan's furious and hurt and Wade pretty obviously has an addictive personality and we do not want to combine these two things with the Crocker Trouble, stir, shake, serve in a cocktail of utter clusterfuck catastrophe. But he's kind of cute for once, making bartender jokes about which liquor is best for which ailment, and I don't think it's just because there's an attractive upset woman in the bar. Jordan thinks he's cute, too. Jordan, where the fuck have you been for the last six months that you don't know this is Wade Crocker? I mean, aside from dealing with shit with the Guard, the Gull staying open because Duke's brother came to town isn't something you should be missing. Anyway, he offers an ear, they might start to have a long afternoon of bonding over the shit their lives are except Dwight walks in! Hi Dwight. I take it this is the other part of the plan that Vince referenced earlier, and I still want to know what the fuck their history is, why Dwight's been assigned to the Jordan problem. Okay, apparently she does know Duke's brother is in town, she just has no idea what he looks like, and since they're half-brothers they don't look so much alike that the resemblance is unmistakable. And for the first time we feel actively sorry for Wade, who has no idea what he did to generate that kind of reaction to being a Crocker. Dwight doesn't give a fuck. Dwight is here to flash his badge and shoo Wade off the dangerous woman who he has something to show. Jordan, the more you look at Dwight like that, the more we ship it. Just sayin.





Lexie picks up Audrey's nameplate from the desk, which is a useful tic for both women, and somewhere along the line she got to change into decent detecting clothes. Jeans, dark brown top, brown leather jacket, belt over the top to maintain some of the Lexie flair, jewelry all the same, hair pulled back. It's a very mixed look, as is only appropriate for dressing in Audrey's clothes while trying to give it some sass and style. Similar to Nathan's look, only neutrals instead of blacks, which is a fairly Audrey thing to do. At any rate, they need to figure out what connected all three victims, the boys are tossing ideas around and Duke rattles off a nice list of motives! Which Lexie points out could all be accurate, come to that, and Nathan tries to shut her down. Nathan. Stop being a dick for five seconds at a time, would you? Which is not quite what Lexie says, but now Audrey will troll him with the mispronunciation of his last name and that second where Duke's snickering into his facepalm? That's where it clicks that Audrey's combining Lexie traits with some of Duke's gentler antagonism/needling of Nathan from earlier seasons. Because he needs both, the unquestioning support and smacks upside the head with common sense which he's now getting from Duke, and the less overt support and jabs to action that he's now getting from Audrey. I mean Lexie. And now we over here are straight back to the OT3, so we'll wave our tiny shipper flags and then back away from the charging bulls of the assorted other shippers. But it's true that all three of them need the other two to be most functional, however platonically or romantically you take that to mean, and therefore this whole kill the person you love (most) (truly) (parentheses added for editorial non-Howard additions from other characters) thing really is going to be difficult to manage. Duke is thrilled by this turn of events, as they bat around theories like cats with a ball of yarn and get to the point of, Katie was feeling guilty because she was cheating with Josh, Tyler knew about it either before or after the accident (maybe during?) and the accident was just an accident and the kid lied. Well DONE all of you. Now stop checking with Lexie that she really wants to go to the hospital and confront the current Troubled person, this is her thing, right Nathan? Duke continues to ship it, to an exasperated if somewhat more restrained/fond eyeroll from Nathan, and off we go!


That is not Tyler in the bed. Or if it is, that's a dead Tyler, just by the way he's lying. Well this is gonna suck. Lexie has an excellent question by way of, if that's not Tyler and the orderly's dead, where the fuck could a paraplegic have gone? It's also delivered in somewhat cop tones, not that anyone notices. We pan over the town again and come back to security footage! We should note, by the way, because we've been sitting here staring in awe at the ep's writing (last ep that was a Millikin solo special was Real Estate, which should tell you something) but the acting is also insanely good. And about to get better, but where Eric Balfour's acting is… okay, not obvious in that he does a lot with very few changes, but obvious in that we the audience know what's going on? Emily Rose is working on playing everyone from her castmates to the camera in this episode, and it's a glorious feat of subtleties that frankly, speak to how much she's grown as an actress in the last five years. I'm not sure she could've pulled this off as well in s1, and I'm not sure any of the rest of the cast would have been as believable in their reactions to her, and this show just fucking gets better every season. Ahem. Security footage, in which the orderly hands Tyler a remote control and then falls under his control. Really, you guys? Seriously? I'm taking your puns away from you, Millikin. Oh, and then there's a seizure while the control fully transfers to the orderly, that can't be good. Orderly!Tyler hauls Tyler's body onto a gurney, off somewhere else, and then climbs back into bed and kills himself with a shot of adrenaline. Well, that's effective but offers no further clues as to motive, though the one Nathan comes up with about needing to kill whoever he possesses in order to get back into his own slowly dying body is a good one! As is that grab for data about the seizures and the slowly dying body, yeah, this is gonna suck. Also what the fuck kind of shittyass Trouble is that? That's almost as bad as the skinwalker one, and arguably worse than the chameleon one. Though do note that this is the third possession/doppelganger Trouble we've had. Just putting that out there. Lexie-Audrey takes clear and pointed note of the two get-well-soon cards on the table along with a flower arrangement, okay, and we have the remote, and she will now distract Nathan from noticing her noticing by asking if the rest of the world knows about this town? No, not according to Nathan. We would like to pause and point out that people come from all the fuck over to escape the Troubles, it's a haven for a reason, so that's possibly something of a misnomer and definitely some incomplete data, but no, just the lucky ones. Heh. Nathan, your bitters are showing again, but he's duly concerned for Duke going looking for that nurse! Smart man.


Except for the part where Duke called them, so it looks like it's already too late, those reactions are a little bit too choppy, and there's no psychopathic nurse in scrubs that we ever get to see, and we never get the additional body that there ought to be. So, yes, it's too late even then, though from a ten, fifteen second phone conversation there's no reason for Nathan to have picked up on that. I will still facepalm at him giving away the homeworld by confirming for Duke!Tyler that they know already. Nathan and Lexie go chasing down Duke, and here's where her cover ends up screwing them, because she can't let on that she recognizes it's not Duke (assuming she does) and Nathan's too monofocused and trusting of his friend to do more than follow cop protocol and check that random morgue unit for Tyler. Uh, yeah, no. This is a trap, Nathan. You should also never have left the damn keys in the door, and you really should've started moving earlier. Though it's a nice piece of writing and acting that depression/suicidal ideation like what Nathan's going through does make your reaction times slower, both mentally and physically. Balfour will now proceed to do an insanely masterful job of portraying a teenager who's psychotic, scared, hurting, and angry. Not necessarily in that order. It's in the lack of control over his face, and the very un-Duke-like lack of gun skills, and if Nathan were willing to trust that Lexie wouldn't get hurt/get in the way, or if Audrey could go all FBI agent on them it's possible they could get the gun away from him? But not likely. At any rate, it turns out that the car accident was a real accident, hopping into Josh was an accident, but oh by the way he has access to at least the knowledge if not the emotions involved when he body-hops. Hoo boy. So he found out, acted out a crime of passion to kill Josh, and then got more premeditated and desperate when he realized that a) his body was falling apart and b) he could take revenge on the people who'd hurt him. And I'd like to know if he was this unstable before or if it's all his Trouble causing it, since we don't really have a good baseline of prior behavior to go on. Nathan also catches onto Tyler needing an object given by the person he's possessing to maintain the connection, it's very rudimentary sympathetic magic and I sincerely hope it's not the sort of thing where once you realize that you're relying on a prop, you no longer need the prop. In conclusion, he's trading in his dying body for Duke's, and I gotta admit, that's a nice body to pick. Threatening Lexie is still a good threat to use on Nathan, and we'll also cringe at the notion of Tyler picking through Duke's knowledge base for everything he knows about the Troubles, the barn, AudSarLu, etc. Fortunately we've got a pretty good notion that this is a one-ep Trouble, so he won't have much time to make use of it. We also have a pretty good notion that a) Tyler's not bright enough to do active digging and b) Duke even when being mentally manipulated has some of the best goddamn natural shields of anyone we've seen (see also The Trial of Audrey Parker, 1x11). So we'll take that for the silver lining it turns out to be, pun intended, and leave them locked in there while Dwight unlocks something! What is that thing, I wonder.


It's worth noting that the first thing we see of Dwight and the Teagues MurderRoom (which is the name of my new London After Midnight cover band) is a newspaper article involving the words "trick" and "conjuring." Just saying. Also, they have SIX locks on that fucking door. SIX. COUNT THEM. I did. Or five locks and a doorknob but I'm betting that doorknob also has a lock in it. I have absolutely no idea where this thing is, only that it's underground (on account of the ladder/stairs they used to get there) and constructed out of or similarly to a tunnel. It doesn't look too far underground, that looks like natural light coming through the windows and down the access ladder, so maybe some sort of a bunker? Wait. A bunker? They made a bunker with a murderboard? I'm just going to move right along because if I think about that too hard I will die of laughing. (A: MurderBunker is the name of my new KMFDM cover band.) Sadly, their MurderBunker is way more informed than our murderboards are. We've got what looks like a map on first glance with me wondering how the hell they stuck the pushpins into the concrete, a couch, a side table with a teacup on it, several file folders, more books and what look like file cabinets and bookshelves and the logic intervenes again with how the hell did they get all this shit down here. Though I suppose when you've got two people the size of Dwight and Vince. And Dwight tells Jordan that this is what they've been working on for the last six months: finding another way to end the Troubles. Oh boys. Jordan looks around ooh, yes, Jordan, let's have the camera over from that angle and take a look at one part of their boards, shall we? Going from top to bottom and left to right we have the Colorado Kid picture, a sketch of the barn presumably from Vince and a cut out picture of where it last manifested. Another picture of either a pyramid or another angle of the barn and I'm going with the latter, the name Lucy Ripley written in very neat hand, a couple more location pictures, a picture from the early days of photography of a man with dark hair and a beard, and a picture of a person with no clear gender markers and dark hair and a bowl cut? Not sure what that's about. Or what the paper behind it is, other than there's a line that disappears under that last picture. Then there's a color picture of a woman with short dark-red? hair, another picture we can more clearly see is Sarah, a couple of pictures of Lucy, and past that it's into Audrey pictures. Next line or layer there's a two-column list of things, some pictures of Sarah again, a sideways list of what looks like descriptions and dates? Events and dates? and something circled on them, and what looks like Sarah Vernon written in the same neat handwriting. That's a very rough guess based on the shape of the first three letters of the last word, it's not actually that legible. A newspaper article or two about ... Lucy? Lucy and Audrey? Just Audrey? A calendar with the ninth circled and an arrow drawn past that, definitely a newspaper article about Audrey. And a plate. I don't know why that tin/brass plate/bowl is on the wall. Below that it gets somewhat fuzzy, except that there are a number of pictures from anywhere in the late 19th century to early 20th, and we have no context to draw meaning out of any of that. In fact we have very little context to draw meaning out of most of this, but I'm noting it down in case we get it. We still have no context on either of the significant rings we've seen in past episodes, nor has Omnia Vincit Amor had its trigger properly pulled (what. whaaaaat.), and I'm just waiting for those chickens to come home to shit on my head, so let's keep this around just in case, shall we?





So, what did Dwight and the Teagues find? Absolutely nothing. Which is not what Jordan wants to hear at all, but Dwight is apparently here to tell her that everything Nathan is saying is the truth, that really does seem to be the only way to end the Troubles, killing (the) (some)one she loves. So the plan, yes, is to wait around for Lexie to fall in love with Nathan, no matter how ridiculous it sounds to Jordan. Or anyone. And, heh, that said, it is a pretty fucking ridiculous plan. But this also looks like a pretty extensive MurderBunker, which means either something's wrong with the Teagues' and Dwight's assumptions and data criterion, or something's missing out of their data set. Spending six months creating this elaborate a pattern structure and not having even a bit more of a clue what's going on? Something's missing. It also doesn't sound like they've gotten any closer to first principles or first causes, even if they don't have a better solution for AudSarLuLex than kill the man she loves, so yeah, I'm leaning towards something missing out of their data set. Speaking of pattern recognition though, Jordan is going to take the overall pattern of AudSarLuLex coming with the Troubles every time and wondering if it's not that the Troubles are her Trouble. Which is not a bad working theory, to be honest. Dwight's knee-jerk rejection of it is, well, just that, a knee-jerk reaction. But then we also get Jordan taking this to a not-very-well-thought-out conclusion, which is that if Duke kills Audrey with his Trouble active, it ends her Trouble and therefore all the Troubles! Which it might do, or it might just kill the one person capable of stopping the Troubles, Jordan, this is a BAD PLAN. I see the somewhat skewed logic in this but BAD. Any plan you have that deprives you of some very essential pieces to your puzzle had damn well better have a greater chance of working, preferably a surety, but a better chance of working than what Jordan has now, which is basically pattern and hope. She could at least come up with a way to test the damn theory by seeing if Duke reacts to Lexie's blood! No, let's just kill her. What's she going to do if this fails? Dwight also objects very strongly to this plan, but he can't say that any evidence says it wouldn't work. Except for the utter lack of positive evidence. I'm guessing that the reasoning behind him bringing her here is to show her that yes, the Teagues and he are working on it and they do care about people and the Troubles and they're trying to fix it, but all it's done is give her ideas. Bad ones. His other argument against this whole Kill Lexie plan, which shows a mild lack of comprehension of how Jordan's mind is working now, is that Duke would never do it. That's fine! There's a spare Crocker!


Speaking of spare Crockers, let's go over to the Gull. And yes, I'm using that word on purpose; for those of you who haven't been watching us froth over the royal families on Grimm, tradition dictates that any family where bloodline is important have an heir and a spare. In most cultures this means a male heir, a son, and in the Crocker bloodline case by Simon's choice (and not primogeniture, which is interesting) that's Duke. Making Wade the spare Crocker. It's not Wade we're immediately concerned with here, though he's definitely a concern, it's Duke. And the person wearing him like a meatsuit. Let's call this a through-line, shall we? A theme in this episode since Audrey is wearing Lexie like a much more benign version of a meatsuit and also as a way of rebelling against who she was intended to be last time, against what other people have dictated she should feel and think and say and do. And now Duke is being forced to say and do things because he's being worn like a meat puppet, and in general, free will good. Meat puppet bad. Not that Tyler gives a shit, he's puppetting Duke right on into the Grey Gull. Wade is still setting up for the day's trade, is still full of moods of moroseness, and still trying to get his baby brother to talk to him about important shit. Like Troubles. This episode is the first one where I actually feel sorry for Wade, he's clearly feeling useless as shown by his reaction to Jordan reacting to his attempts at comfort, subdued attempts at that. He's gotten to the point where his questions to Duke are shrouded in sullenness but he's still asking questions, and reacts dully when Duke doesn't take him up on his offer to help. It's not even a show of wounded pride at this point, it's genuine hurt and weariness and resignation to being the outsider. And it's not reaching for a bottle, either, which indicates he's stopped dealing with his problems that way. For now. (We haven't forgotten that the entire male Crocker line does seem to revolve around alcohol, whether in addiction or as a bartender/owner: Roy the bartender, Simon the probable alcoholic because when you're addicted to one thing others follow quickly, Duke the Gull owner, Wade with a clearly addictive personality though maybe no chosen addiction. Yet. We'll wait.) And when "Duke" suggests he can help, there is some reaction of brightening there, eyes wider and brows lifted, very slight tilt forward which we remember from other of Camargo's works as interest and focus. Not always benign, Mr. Ice Truck Killer, but hey. That's more active interest than shown all episode. So, okay, Tyler-in-Duke starts talking about his Trouble and how it works as Wade sets up, and talking of microexpressions it's not so much Duke's face at this point but his voice and intonation that are different, that are distinct from Duke Crocker's normal and dear god this entire fucking cast. I mean really. Speaking of this entire fucking cast Camargo has played a sociopathic murderer before, and there are subtle differences between Brian Moser talking about killing people and Wade Crocker suggesting Tyler kill the original body as an academic and curious exercise. Less facial tension for one thing, eyes slightly wider, facial muscles in general more mobile and expressive. Brian Moser, when discussing murder even as his cover identity, tended to have the kind of facial tension that comes with making yourself have expressions. Much like Tyler-in-Duke's expressions right now, come to that. Wade doesn't have that so much, sure he's suggesting someone commit murder, but with no expectation that it will actually happen. He's too focused on the fact that he's actually having an open conversation with his brother, yay! Sadly, we move right along to another moment when I feel sorry for Wade, which is to say that he's fine with "Duke" saying hey, you actually had a good idea. But "Duke" thanking him and calling him helpful? That never happens! And now Wade is suspicious. And the fact that he's suspicious because his brother praising and thanking him is out of character is just depressing.


But, hey. Since they've been talking about possession, it's not that much of a leap to make to decide that "Duke" isn't Duke. Normally I would have expected someone to pick up on this one or two exchanges ago, but Wade's new in town, he hasn't had time to jump straight to the Troubles if anything even the least bit odd happens. "Duke" turns, admits the deception, and promptly punches Wade in the face. Interesting that Wade doesn't have the kind of reflexes to deal with that, but not surprising. Also interesting that bleeding all over himself doesn't activate anything, not for Duke and not for Wade, but, again, not surprising. I guess you could say I have a knee-jerk reaction of my own when it comes to blood being shed around Crockers. At any rate, having accomplished both a potential solution and clocking the person who's made him, Tyler will now proceed to rob the place. How... pedestrian.


Speaking of people being pedestrian, Nathan, hitting it the first couple of times didn't work, and the next few times probably aren't going to work, either. Audrey, trolling Nathan isn't going to help, either. Both of you need a time out. This is not at all like Seven Minutes in Heaven. (International audiences who are now staring blankly at the screen Google with safe search on.) At least this time he realizes she's trolling, though he's not aware of the extent of it. He even ventures a nice comment! It's a nice bit of bonding he's extending himself to perform, they laugh so that they do not cry. Which Lexie even almost quotes verbatim. Then goes on to say she really needs some hard drugs, which both sounds odd in her mouth and sounds odd when she goes on to talk about mescaline and peyote. (Scotch is just there for comic relief.) It's a bit obscure, but for those of you who are Dark Tower fans mescaline figures heavily in the first book, The Gunslinger. Roland takes some in order to be told of his future companions, that "three will be the number of your fate," etc. Given the array of things which could be described as hard drugs and the relative tameness of peyote, and the fact that this is a Stephen King originated show and everyone is very aware of it? Yeah, I'm going on record and saying there's no way in hell or any of the connected realms that's a coincidence. All things serve the Beam, say thankya. Ahem. Laudrey trolls Nathan some more, including that after jumping out of an extra-dimensional portal hard drugs would be among the least weird things she's seen and done. And she's got a point, and for once he's venturing out of his own head enough to realize it, and to really look at her. Audrey and Nathan's theme, or one of the Audrey themes depending on how you look at it, starts playing here. Only in a more major key than before, signifying some kind of difference. Perhaps Audrey's stronger sense of self, sense of purpose? Perhaps implying that once they come out of this challenge they'll be stronger as a couple. Either way, Nathan continues to take baby steps towards having a less hostile personality and suggests that when they make it out of there, maybe they could grab something to eat? Like pancakes? Laudrey makes a face at the idea of pancakes. Audrey, you're trolling again. Stoppit. Nathan turns back to the door and sighs and is clearly pissed off at being locked in and misses Audrey. And this is as good a time as any to mention that at some point when we watched this, we speculated that this was Audrey's way of, well. Maybe subtly punishing Nathan for sleeping with Sarah? In that she might not feel justified being too pissed off because it's still her, but at the same time Sarah was a whole other set of memories and experiences. How do you get pissed off at your not-quite lover for sleeping with another you? If not revenge, it may be Audrey's way of seeing if Nathan's in love with the idea of her, the overarching concept since she has more of a distinct overarching concept than most people, or if he's really in love with Audrey. It's a very good question. It's one we're not at all sure of when it comes to Vince. There's a couple other more concrete reasons she's staying Lexie for the moment, but we'll discuss those later. Incidentally, not believing Audrey would troll Nathan so hard is another reason we wavered on calling this one ahead of time.





So, okay, back to the Crockers. Wade, by the way, is gaining more sympathy points for being on the ground, facing down a psychopath, and still worrying about his brother. The perpetual question about possessors and body jumpers is answered as Tyler says that Duke is still in there, watching everything. So, yes, possession and not jumping. Tyler still wants to know where the safe is, but this is when Jennifer drives up, so he'll have to settle for kicking Wade into unconsciousness and going and faking Duke some more! Jennifer will start by giving him some cues to follow! She's made up her mind, don't try to talk her out of it, she's going back to Boston. Tyler has no idea what the hell to do with this, so "Duke"'s reaction is basically to stand there like a slapped mackerel and be all okay-sure. Which on the one hand goes right along with Duke's overprotective urges pissing Jennifer off and hurting her feelings, and on the other hand gives Tyler some very understandable cues to follow! She's flouncing out, which means it's his cue to apologize and make nice, or at least that's how I imagine Tyler is seeing it right now. Besides, it's an excuse to get someone to help with his escape plan. The fun part about Tyler wearing Duke like a meatsack is that Tyler doesn't actually know that Jennifer and Duke haven't acted on their attractions yet, so when he leans in to give her the apology kiss he thinks she expects, it's a complete surprise to her. If not an unwelcome one. We will also hypothesize that this is another side effect of the writers growing up at the right age for Babylon 5 to be a formative viewing experience; the trick of a couple having their first kiss and yet not having it be the real first kiss or a benign one is definitely out of JMS' playbook. The upshot effect is that she's not thinking clearly, she doesn't think about what it means when Duke says to drop everything they're getting the fuck out of Haven right now. Especially when he was so desperate to get back there on their first meeting. Right now, "Duke" can't wait to get out of Haven, he just needs to pay an old friend a visit first. Heh. Thank you, guys, for the creepy Tyler close-up there. We really needed that. Particularly when the light is glinting off his eyes just right to make them very slightly silver.


Back to the unhappy couple in morgue lockup, where Nathan has decided that Lexie mock-puking over pancakes is his cue to bodyslam the door some more. Nathan. I know you can't feel it, but for fuck's sake, what's the definition of insanity again? Never mind. Lexie has a solution. Well, Audrey has a solution, I'm not entirely sure whose memories she's drawing on here. The upshot is that she can pick locks, it's unclear what assorted bits of metal she's found to bend into lockpicks but we'll give it to her. Medical settings tend to be rife with those if you're at all capable of improvisation. Nathan looks like he's going to be a dick, so she makes her point by shoving him and pronouncing his name correctly so he knows she's done fucking around. Dude, isn't it obvious what she's doing? Though that's really just as a lead-in to his next questions, how does she know how to pick locks. Was she arrested a lot? No, she just had a kinky boyfriend. AUDREY. And yet I don't entirely doubt that Lexie might have, indeed, in those memories somewhere. Still. Audrey, quit trolling your not-boyfriend. Well, okay, if he's going to eye her up like that she can keep right ahead with the trolling, fuckssake, Nathan. Laudrey comes over to get some more makeshift lockpicks and to confront him on the whole no really I'm not her thing, in this case we won't even call it protesting too much. Because when a man looks at you-not-you like that, it is damn well time to put an end to any stupid thoughts he may have, especially when you're pretending to be an ex-bartender accustomed to fending off rude advances. But Nathan will pass this test! Sort of, inasmuch as he claims that he doesn't want Lexie, he wants Audrey, and he knows how bad that sounds but it's how he feels. Nathan, we're going to remind you of this an awful lot over the next ep or two: you slept with Sarah because you weren't getting anywhere with Audrey. Your ground, it's about as shaky as if Garland were still alive and using his Trouble in your general direction. It's enough to make her feel guilty, though, and that's the point at which we stopped doubting because that's too much guilt for it to be just Lexie in there. She feels bad for reasons all separate from this, but the best way to protect Nathan from his idiocy at the moment is to lie to him. We'll call the disastrous results of that now, too, because since when does keeping secrets have ANY kind of a positive outcome on this show? Yeah, never. As the final decoration on the doubt coffin, we have Audrey's theme playing in the background, very slightly different from what it has been in the past but very recognizably Audrey's theme. And any further conversation about this topic is forestalled for after they rescue Duke, though, because that door is open and Laudrey is making grandiose are-you-coming gestures. Yes, Nathan, she's back and she's saving your ass whatever name she's wearing. Try not to look so surprised.


Wade staggers upright with an interesting choice of camera angle, making the Gull look all serial killer struggling victim-esque, or if you want something even more gruesome like a man pulling his way out of his own grave, and places a phone call. Hey, he's finally wised up enough to be scared AND pissed. Good. And here's the man he's scared of, hello Duke and Jennifer. Who starts with a joke about flashing her boobs again, since they're at the hospital, and Tyler-Duke completely misses it. And then he calls her babe while acting all jittery and not like Duke some more, Duke when he's covering something up gets more expansive and louder and HEY LOOK OVER HERE AT THAT THING style of misdirection, not jittery and tense. Which she knows even by now, but the "babe" is the nail in the coffin. Or the pen in the leg, as the case may be. She calls him on it for that last bit of confirmation and because Jennifer is pretty much incapable of not saying every thought that comes into her head when she's tense, and say, eyeflick to Nathan's gun in the glove compartment there, eyeflick back, STAB. I love that she sees he's thinking of hurting her and doesn't hesitate, even to the point where she gets OUT of the car and holds the gun on him rather than staying within grabbing range. Smart, smart woman. We here at Murderboarding are still intrigued by the possibility that Jennifer was a potential candidate for implanting memories/personality into AudSarLuLex; the name on the surface is wrong but she'd just have to shorten to Jenny. Jenny Mason totally fits with the naming conventions they have. And the personality is very, very similar to one that would be useful, along with the newspaper reporter thing, but instead for whatever reason she got this Trouble tied to the barn instead. Whoever she is and whatever her family line, it seems awfully likely that she and AudSarLu are tied together in some way we don't yet know the extent of. She has an excellent point that if she tries to shoot Duke the chances of her accidentally killing him are really high, newbies tend to (if they hit) aim high and toward their dominant side, if I recall correctly. But she also tracks him with the gun as he runs off inside! Yay! Jennifer, please stick around and bond with Laudrey and be generally awesome. Don't go back to a foreign aid organization or die or get possessed or whatever. Please?


Out come Nathan and Laudrey pell mell there's a person with a gun looking scared! Say, they know that person. Nathan would very much like his gun back now please and thank you, and Laudrey comments that no, of course that wasn't Duke, he's been possessed. Yeah, I'd give her a strange look too, but this is a steep learning curve of suck and ow. They've confirmed that Tyler's original body is somewhere still in the hospital, someone accessed the basement in the period where Orderly!Tyler was off-camera, now Nathan's giving you a weird look. Audrey, I know things are ramping up to the inevitable conclusion, but you need not to give Nathan clues like that, because that sounds exactly like his former partner. Good cover with the eavesdropping, though. Were you also cutting a garden outside Frodo's window? Ahem. Okay, so they need to go save Duke, yes, this is true. Nathan would love to do this if he weren't concerned it would end in a dead Duke and a possessed him. Aw, you do give a shit about someone besides you and Audrey, Nathan! It's like you're growing as a person. Or maybe just haven't given up entirely on the rest of humanity yet. So, problem: Nathan gave Tyler his business card, and Jennifer left her pen in Duke's leg, so neither of them is safe. And Lexie's not safe because of the phones from when they were first getting locked up. Jennifer brings up the fact that she's immune because she's the messiah figure, thank you someone with the capacity to share information. Maybe too much information. Do you think you can figure out how to make that contagious, Jennifer? Please? Nathan is about as thrilled as we'd expect, not just that he's scared for losing Laudrey when he's just found her again but that he doesn't actually trust in her ability to fix things, she's new, she's got no experience as far as he knows with the Troubles, and at least when Audrey first showed up she was dealing with a relatively benign Trouble. Mainly in that the afflicted person didn't want to hurt people. Tyler? A psychopath. But yes, being immune to the Troubles is quite a bit, I'd love to know if they found out anything else she can do in the intervening six months besides call the no longer existent barn, and Nathan's still a moron. A stubborn, pigheaded moron who isn't swayed by the logic of how this is going to go down if Laudrey's the one to go in, namely that she can't be controlled. This is true, but not good enough, he has to be reminded that this is what AudSarLuLex does, this is her purpose in life, and that if he's a macho idiot he can be turned first and then turn on her, and does he really want that? No. No he does not. I rather think it's the emotional argument of "you don't want to hurt me" that works on him more than the logical one of "this is what I do and who I am," but Jennifer backing her up on that second one certainly doesn't hurt. Three minutes and a gun and then he's coming in after her! Laudrey trolls him a little more, though this one's gentler, by way of a no, seriously, lighten up.





Down the dark hallway with plastic sheeting and flickering lights! Over to the nearly comatose body on the gurney! Gun pointed at the drink ticket, honey, that's going to do jack and shit, exactly, you should remember your range of efficacy. You're allowed to do that while you're alone, just like the stance and stalking down the hallway was mostly Audrey. Alas, no, Tyler's real body still has just enough motion left to fling out an arm and knock the gun away, behind a… bike wheel? Okay then, this just got very Kingdom Hospital. Where she can't get to it, and a Wild Not!Duke Appears! He uses Psychotic Loom With Fire Ax! It's Super Effective! Audrey brings up the reasonable question of, what if it doesn't work? Well, then it's better than the alternative, to him. He doesn't have a usable body to go back to and the amount of prejudice against any kind of disability from this guy is staggering. And also not actually presented as a good thing; these are limitations that other people would have been okay with learning to work around, have learned to work around, but Tyler's such a selfish shit that he'd rather kill people with his Trouble and leave another one trapped screaming behind the scenes, as it were, for the rest of his life. That's just lovely. And we see that Audrey decides there's no other way out than to let the competing Troubles work. She's not immune to axes to the throat, after all. But she's very, very sorry that it's come down to this. She does, after all, know how Duke feels about using his Trouble, though she doesn't yet have the confirmation we do that it's addictive. Unless she accessed more memories in the bar/n than we know about. Her "I'm sorry Duke" has the inflection of knowing exactly what it is she's letting him do, or, well, letting Tyler do for him, too. Cue seizures for both Duke and Tyler's bodies as the ax slams down into his chest! Oh goodie. Silver eyes are a go, as is Audrey's expression of holy shit I can't believe that worked. Assuming it did, she has to check, yeah, it did, those are Duke's inflections and microexpressions back. Yay! Sort of. Also he remembers everything, hate to break it to you, Laudrey, but your cover is so blown. The questions she asks are rote and shaky in the wrong places, she's more shaken by the notion that Duke remembers everything than by the Crocker Trouble. Which he notices, and any suspicions he has are now full-blossoming into confirmation, but they have to clean this mess up before he can have any heart-to-hearts about lying to your friends. Also it's not easy being trapped in your own body! But yeah, that sideways look at Laudrey says he knows exactly what she did, and he wants her to know he knows too. Or at least to guess. We'll get the exposition anyway just in case, and for the people who only watch it sporadically and/or for the people who haven't figured out yet about Laudrey, and who would be surprised if he didn't explain to her.


Back to the police station! I'm giving myself eyestrain trying to figure out what's written on that notebook, but can't make out more than a word or two, pout. The music, though, that I recognize. Laudrey's looking through the Audrey notes, out of nostalgia? Out of relief that she's back? I'm going to go with out of a sentiment of oh Nathan, because that's not going away anytime soon. Speak of the not really devil, maybe more minor nuisance, here he comes to discuss how the day went with her. Laudrey says she just got lucky and Duke could have died, and I think in this case that really is Audrey talking, too. That was closer than anyone wanted, and Duke's going above and beyond this season to keep the people he loves safe. And she wasn't as effective as she wanted to be, which might be what spells the end of this Lexie business sooner than anyone thinks. We'll find out. Still, it remains effective for keeping Nathan alive for now, so Laudrey will continue to poke fun at Nathan for his former relationship with Audrey, this time by bringing up their nonexistent sex life. It's the kind of questioning that would have gotten her snapped at half an episode ago, but right now it only gets the picture yanked out of her hands. He's even kind of smiling, too! Probably, it partly helps that she's clearly not being malicious when she says it; in fact, I suspect this is Audrey's way of expressing a regret, maybe? That's not quite the phrase I'm thinking of, expressing that she definitely felt attractions that would have headed that way if they'd had time. If Nathan could hear it. And why didn't they? Well, that's Complicated. Laudrey will now point out to Nathan that sometimes complicated is just an excuse, and sometimes it really is complicated. In their case, probably, it was a bit of both. She'll leave him to think about that now.


And over to the Grey Gull we go, where Wade is putting ice on that puffy face of his. Poor Wade. He doesn't even seem to hold the punches against Duke, either, for all that Duke feels really bad about that part. There's a huge disconnect in this entire conversation, Wade isn't nearly as upset about the hitting and the kicking as he is about Duke not listening to him, not taking him seriously and not telling him anything and basically treating him like a child, and Duke is extremely apologetic for the hitting and for Wade being involved with and hurt by the Troubles but not at all for the keeping of secrets. You guys need so much therapy. And to get your heads knocked together. But I repeat myself. Wade tries to get Duke to either feel bad about not listening to him or to listen to the words that are coming out of his mouth, I'm not sure which his end goal is here. He does flat out pull the "you owe me so cough up answers" card. That won't play with Duke, sadly. Hey, Duke, you realize that if you don't tell him he's just going to hear about it from someone else, yes? Someone less with his best interests in mind, you realize this, yes? No? Fuck. Fuck you Crockers and all of your works. Wait, no, no fucking Crockers, I still bet that's how this mess got started in the first place. Duke is exasperated by what he sees as unreasonable sullenness on his brother's part, or maybe just exasperated that Wade won't leave town. You can't change your brother, Duke, so deal with him as he is. Which is almost what Jennifer says, actually. Maybe she can smack some sense into Duke? She does point out that Wade just wants to help, which seems a lot less smarmy and a lot more truthful this episode than it has in the previous four. Duke still claims he's protecting Wade, and it's interesting that he calls it a curse rather than a Trouble. You're in a town of Troubles, everyone else calls it a Trouble, but he calls it a curse. Why? Because he hates it? Because, consciously or subconsciously, he knows this is different? Because all three of these? Duke, he's still not going to leave, you're going to have to tell him something. Argh. No, no we're on to Jennifer's plans and how she wants to go back to Boston because her purpose here is done and this is a fucking crazy town. Not that she gives those reasons, but we can extrapolate. Duke is all "well, yeah, I guess you do 'cause Laudrey's moving back in..." which is totally just a setup for his "but I have this room on my boat" speech. And dear god that is an intense stare he's giving her. The last minute or so of this entire conversation is nothing but flirting and establishing that there is a two-way attraction between them that they'd both like to explore, and jesus is it ever intense. I don't think I've seen this much chemistry between Duke and almost anyone, except Audrey as things progressed. Which, in its own way, is potentially an argument for Jennifer being connected to one of the old founding bloodlines that started this whole mess, but for now let's just enjoy the budding happy couple.


Wade will not. Wade will slouch out of the bar and over to his gigantic compensation issue Range Rover, only to slow when he sees Jordan waiting for him. Jordan, that is a shitton of skin to be showing when brushing up against someone can drop them to the floor writhing in pain. I'm just saying. The gloves are a token in the direction of being able to touch someone with her hand and not hurt them, but come on. Wade, having had it thoroughly rubbed in his face that he is Duke Crocker's Brother Who Doesn't Belong, assumes she's there for Duke. No, she's there for him. And while Jordan looks softer than we've seen her be in a while around anyone but Dwight, Wade looks neither impressed nor credulous. Smart, Wade. Very smart.


One last turn around the Gull and hey, those flags have changed. Where before there were some clear alfa signal flags flying, this time it looks like all numbers, and the closest we can parse them is to 040?43, though the yellow over red may be a Royal Navy flag that means NU, signifying numeral, which would take it to #4 #?43. Maybe. That's a meaning that's been out of date since 1870, though. The black with yellow circle has no modern corresponding naval flag that we can find at all, though if the colors on it were reversed it would mean India, which is the signal flag for changing course toward port/coming alongside, depending on whose vocabulary you're using. We're really quite sure they didn't mean to use the traditional jihadist flag, so we'll take that as an unfortunate coincidence and stare at them hard. On the other hand, if we go back to the Royal Navy code, that red one with the white cross? That's called the Guard pennant. DUKE WHY ARE YOU FLYING THE GUARD'S FLAG. LITERALLY. Bad writers, NO biscuit, and that dates back to WWII. So our best guess is that missing pennant is actually another outdated usage, just not one we've found yet. At this point given colonies, Royal Navy flag code, usage dating back before the 20th century, and all that, I'm blaming William for fucking around with the flags because he is clearly the spirit of the first Troubled Crocker and everything is William's fault anyway. Anyway. Laudrey is once again defining herself as not-Audrey by being against a lot of Audrey's more tangible and visible traits, have we noticed this yet? Clothes, home, activities, foods, etc. Duke takes no umbrage anywhere, just teases her that she owes six months' rent. She teases back, referring to the whole lifesaving thing, which is only an excuse for Duke to pounce on that and shake her disguise till it falls to pieces. Oops. He points out that she just stepped aside and let the axe fall, so to speak, and she claims she was scared. He points out that she's done a lot of scary shit, including jump through an interdimensional door, and she doesn't know the first thing about any of it no really. And right when he says that Audrey Parker would have known, hey, there's her theme again! Right down to the piano notes. Dammit, Duke, indeed. She didn't want people to know this, if other people know she's still Audrey they'll make her kill Nathan, and she doesn't want to do that, but at a guess if it has to be someone who figures it out, at least it's Duke? Because she turns and hugs him like she thought the world had ended. Duke hugs her tightly back, but we do get a glimpse of the expression on his face, and it's not unmitigated happiness to see her. That's more of a "oh hell" expression, that is. That's the expression that says along with us, "This is not going to end well." No. No it really is not.




Next week on Haven! Jordan goes full-on Sith with the force-hold on Vince! Really that was only a matter of time. But she's also opening the door to some kind of barn, and we all know what doors and barns lead to in this town. Someone's going around stoning people! And Wade seems to have walked right into that convenience store and shivved someone in the stomach. WADE. BAD CROCKER. No biscuit.

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