Saturday, October 11, 2014

The Manteo Job Haven S5E05 The Old Switcharoo (Part 1)

Previously! Oh our first glimpse is of Dave's adoption file and the cave and the thinny and possessed!Dave nearly dropping into said thinny. And being more possessed after. That's not good. I'll be over here getting the booze while we get the semi-short recap of talking to Audrey rather than Mara and how well that worked up until Mara found out Audrey was in there. Uh-HUH. Because that's going to totally convince Nathan she's gone. I believe that. Thousands actually would. Nathan, not so much. Although if we're getting into technicalities I can believe that Mara will eventually choose to accept the memories and emotions associated with Audrey and form some kind of synthesis, because how we remember things affects how we think about them and ourselves, and she's stuck with that now the same way all the AudSarLu constructs were stuck with memories of someone who wasn't really them, either.

Next morning, or some morning not very long after the cabin of really disturbing interrogation scenes that make us feel sorry for Mara, Mara's still not a fan of pancakes. You know, while I appreciate on some level the fanservice and in-jokes that they're doing with this, surely Audrey had another meal she liked? Even assuming she's in there I'd be sick of the same damn things by now too. Some standard gloating over how she doesn't like pancakes, the plan won't work, Audrey's dead, yadda yadda. Although she does point out one major flaw in this plan, which is that it requires her to have utensils, which gives her weapons. She will now insult Duke's tacos (could be worse, could be waffles) and get threatened with force-feeding. DUKE. You're supposed to be the good guys, don't even fucking start that shit. I'd throw a fork at him too, but I'd make sure it hit. Neither of you is making this whole thing where we try not to sympathize with the Evil Cackling Evil any easier right now. Especially not with Duke about to offer to create holes in order to feed her. DUKE. SERIOUSLY. I know you miss Audrey and you feel like shit in general, but oh my god that is not helping, either with getting Audrey back or with getting cooperation off Mara. For once I'm with Nathan, let's discuss strategy. Out back on the docks of the Gull where many a serious conversation's taken place over the last four seasons. Duke will now switch up providing the voice of reason, or at least the voice of Nathan you're completely fucking fixated would you consider the possibility that you're wrong? No? No. Not even with new and disappointing data about what Mara didn't know wasn't hurting Audrey, and now that she does, well. Bye, Audrey. Duke protests that he can't handle someone that hateful, essentially, looking out of Audrey's face, and hasn't he done enough, though he's pretty careful not to frame it in those words. Nope! Sorry, you're going along for the ride, Duke, and Nathan's just had an Idea. Possibly to probably not a good one, either, based on his track record.




Meanwhile Vince is driving… that's definitely a rental. Oh, I see, we're going straight for the Croatoan jugular, no, that's not actually meant to give Kitty fits about North Carolina. (K: Although it DID. Incidentally the accents are all wrong at least for mountain Carolinas, so that helped some. It's possible it's more accurate for coastal Carolinas, but mostly it sounds like generic Southern layered on too thick. This has been your regularly scheduled tangent off onto accent and dialect things that only we care about.) That's the coast of North Carolina as noted by the reference to the Outer Banks. Manteo, to be specific, and Roanoke Island (between Croatan sound and Roanoke sound in case you wanted to know without googling), so yes, yes that is definitely jugular territory. Safe to say that Dave doesn't know what Vince is doing down there since he's not coming along for the ride. One big old house, one adoption file, ooh that's a nice still of it let's get a good look, shall we? Dare County, yep, check. Decree of Absolute Adoption, okay, fine. David James Teagues, that's the first time we've had a middle name and it gives me ponderings about the Colorado Kid. Who was also, let us note, put up for adoption. By necessity. The Teagues live(d?) on Berkeley Street, I'm going with present tense because they're such an old family safe money's on having a family home that's still theirs. Plus the whole, you know, owning half the town bit. Mother's name is Margaret Joyce Teagues; whether that's mother or grandmother is a great question and I'm glad you asked it. There's an annoying lack of any other data; all we can see is that the adoption went through on the 5th of some month. It also brings up the interesting question of why the fuck is what looks like the original adoption document redacted? A true copy document might be, if it was a closed adoption (true copy, for those of you who don't know, means that it's been notarized and is acceptable for legal use) but the original document? Shouldn't that be intact? We're not adoption lawyers, we don't know, it's just suspicious and irritating. Fuck you too, Agent Barnvatar. The year in the upper left hand corner is 1936, but all we can make out is that it seems to read something County Court Rules, which so far only indicates that the adoption took place in or after 1936. The birth certificate gives us a little more, a supposed birthday of 2-21-36 which puts Dave at ~75 depending on how much time's passed, a nominal mother's name of Sarah Smith (hahahahaha Howard could you possibly have been a little lazier? Also that puts a slightly creepy twist on the incarnation the Teagues' first met being Sarah.) (K: Also the address for the mother is relatively generic too, for the region, do you know how many Haywoods are in Western North Carolina alone? Yeah. Though I am impressed by props' dedication enough to go for a name that's locally common, rather than a generically common one like Main, High, or First street.) and father unknown, mother's occupation listed as servant, age as 22. Well, at least it wasn't 27. Oh, the certificate is a delayed certificate of birth, too, which just adds to the deeply suspicious aspect; it means that nobody official was present at the supposed actual birth and, depending on what the laws were back then, Dave could have been anywhere from the infant the records claim to about 6. And the address of record for his mother, which we'll get to later. All good data! All of it says "this is a massive, massive plant, and there's something else here." Although I appreciate the break with tradition that gives us only mention of mothers here, not fathers. At any rate, suspicious background is suspicious. Vince, please don't get eaten by a grue. Or a William. Or an anything else. I mean I joke about ripping out your throat a lot for answers, but if something really does then we can't get them and that would be sad.

Vince will wonder aloud why Croatoan, and I will mutter darkly about Supernatural and Sleepy Hollow some more. Apparently down here the local historical society doubles as a cafe called the Old Croatoan. Vince, did you find this place on Yelp. You did, didn't you. No, this place is not real; yes, I googled it, what do you take me for. It does lend a standard King dose of the sinister ordinary to this trip, not that it needed it what with going Southern Gothic all of a sudden. A waitress about the right age to've been around and an adult for the Lucy Ripley round of Troubles will poke at the out-of-towner doing all kinds of research. As you do in small towns of all flavors when you've got a stranger potentially sticking his nose in where it's not wanted. Well, he'd like to know why it's named Croatoan! Vince honey does that harmless old man routine… I guess it does work on a lot of people, it's just that it hasn't worked on us in awhile, and it doesn't entirely work on Alison Doohan, either. We get a short recitation of the lost colony of Roanoke legend for anyone not up on their colonial myths, I confirm that 1587 does not by our math conform to an outbreak of the Troubles, and we skip all the modern theory that the colonists joined up with the local Native tribe in order to survive the winter and never returned. Because it's more fun to fuck around with the creepy spooky legends. Vince will throw out a line, and he's a little out of practice with it, about being there for a human interest stories about a pair of brothers, one of whom's from here and the other from Haven and he's just, you know. Following the story! Like you do. But she doesn't remember any stories about two brothers, and Vince clearly is buying the "Smith" about as much as we are. Heh. And now that he's lied to her and she's stonewalled him, she'll wander off to look after some other customers! Okay, he'll have a cup of coffee and play the blundering old man a little bit more, that's fair, and she'll get around to him because whatever other secrets she's keeping she does have a cafe to run.

Meanwhile back in Haven, Dave's griping about Vince being late and therefore he has to pay for the coffee (this and later in the ep, by the way, suggests that they don't have their finances completely mingled, which is interesting though not wholly surprising and makes me wonder how many brotherly rivalries have been played out via the chessboard of buying up properties, or if their personal finances are separate from some overall estate finances) so just in case we were in any doubt about Vince keeping secrets again, well, no. Of course he didn't tell Dave anything. Why would he ever do that. Dave is also annoyed! He's going to be even more irritated when he realizes that above and beyond standing him up for morning coffee, Vince has taken off to uncover Dave's past without telling him a thing about it. Oh, well, I guess swapping bodies in order to learn that works. Complete with Teagues'-cam view of blurred vision as they switch, and hands landing on tables as they try to adjust to being in a body that's not shaped right. Now, for everyone's reference, we will be using the old fandom standby of Vince!Dave to refer to Dave stuck in Vince's body, Dave!Vince for the reverse, so on and so forth throughout the ep because that seems, you know, rather useful. If you get confused, second name is the mind driving the body. (This seems to be a theme for this season, bodies and minds and who determines who the whole of the person is and all. More on that later.) Also indicative of the confusion. Vince!Dave sounds like he's panicking, which is not good, and like he might actually know what this Trouble is, which is... better? Or maybe he's just less panicked because he knows it's a Trouble and Fucking Haven will get you even when you're not in it. Dave!Vince would like to know what his errant brother has done this time, which, dude, really? Who's the one who took off for Roanoke without a word or as far as I can tell, the amount of research you could get done by basic googling? Really basic googling? This falls under the neither one of you has room to talk category. Roll credits, before I get any more irritated at them this round. 




After the credits we're back in Manteo and Vince!Dave is stumbling around looking like he's having some sort of fit. A dementia fit, by the questions he's asking, I'm rather impressed that he didn't get locked up as an escaped care facility patient. He's not handling this at all well. Dave!Vince is, though, or at least better than his brother, even if he is making threatening gestures at his/Dave's neck. We are not impressed, Vince. We are in fact deeply unimpressed. Gloria is unimpressed too, even if she thinks Dave is doing daily affirmations in someone's side mirror. At least the stammering yes-no sounds like someone who's embarrassed to be caught out as well as someone who has no idea what the fuck's going on! Gloria would like to know what he's found out from Cincinnati. .... This is the first we're hearing of this, at least I hope it is or we're going to rapidly start losing our incredibly nitpicky detail cred. This is also as it turns out the first Vince has heard of it, because all he can do is stammer some more. Gloria, it seems, thinks he's high. Oh Gloria. Never change. Or if you must, along the lines of what's about to happen would be fucking fantabulous. Vince is disregarding both of those now and would like to know if she's noticed anyone or anything acting strange. VINCENT. For one thing, yes, she's going to point out that Dave!Vince is acting weird, for another thing it is Haven. Your chances of finding someone who's acting strange, assuming you have a definition of strange that stays constant in this town, are very very good. Oi. Dave!Vince totters off to try and figure out what the fuck just happened, Gloria shakes her head and goes back to getting to work. As you do when you've just had a weird encounter with the Teagues.

Oh hey, it's the Freddy! I love the smell of continuity in the morning. It's still morning isn't it? Good. An orderly or nurse (from the hospital? the scrubs are maroon, like Guard!Nurse. Guard!Doctor?) seems to be attacking a patient. Joy of joys, and a relatively tiny nurse is trying to stop it, with spectacularly little result. We get focus on an older woman who looks faintly like Jamie Lee Curtis right before the chaos hits, and a younger man with long dark hair and some stubble who looks up as the chaos hits and offers the nurse a hand up, which she doesn't take. Hard to say if that's a precaution against being grabbed by someone who is known to be grabby or if she knows he's Troubled with something that spreads on contact, or if she's just putting on a brave front of authority for the patients. All of these could be true! The strangling person is screaming "what are you doing to me" which is a good indication that they've been switched and the patient is freaking the fuck out, as you do even when you're not mentally compromised already. Depending on the nature of what landed the poor bastard in the Freddy this could just be making it worse. I'm not sure if this is a callback to Lucassi being affected by a Trouble and subsequently freaking the fuck out, or if the person with the Trouble (Jeff. It's Jeff.) is making his own fun and it just happens to be similar to what happened last time. Either way, the body in the white coat is dead. And so, shortly thereafter, is the body in the maroon scrubs! Whoever was in them, they're gone now. Those of us who are at all familiar with magical theory, how magic and weird phenomena in speculative fiction tends to work can recognize this as some sort of sympathetic backlash, the injury in body A reflecting back on body B in which spirit A is now residing. This is going to get confusing pretty quick. Maybe there should be diagrams. At any rate, it's a familiar enough device that no one needs to explain it just yet, and all we are left to wonder is if the spirits snapped back after the patient's death or if it's just a side effect of this Trouble. Either way? Uh-oh.

The boys are doing a thing at the Gull still, and the cuts on this suggest we're running close to realtime again. They're going to take Mara on a case! Or rather, Nathan's going to interrupt this latest round of monologuing to inform her that she's going to help them solve a Trouble. Duke would like a word. No, actually, as plans go that's fairly subtle and if you hadn't already tipped your hand so completely and utterly in the cabin it might have worked. But no, you went the brute force route first and now Mara's spectacularly on her guard. Pun intended. Also boys, if you're going to have this conversation then you should maybe be better about not looking suspicious and thoughtful by turns in Mara's general direction? And turn somewhere where she can't read lips? You don't know all of the skills she has, let's just be overly paranoid here no? No. Dammit, Duke, you at least I expect better from. Though his poker face has been getting severely challenged between emotional hits and the physical toll of needing to release a Trouble every… other episode or so, is what it's seeming like at this point. He does have an idea how how to control her! I would also like it if either of them remarked on the fact that Mara looooves to gloat, can't seem to stop herself from gloating, so even if Audrey's gone they still get something. I mean, I'm just saying, this is a thing that works in their favor regardless of Nathan's fixated belief issues. Maybe Duke's thinking it but keeping his mouth shut on account of he is a suspicious bastard. I'm going to go with that one. Now they just need a case! Well, it's not like Haven's ever short of those. Ever.

Said case requires the coroner and the chief, oh this is going to be great. Pardon us while we sit back and cackle, not quite as much because of what's happening to the characters but very much because the actors are clearly having a field day with this. Bodyswap episodes, for our money, are best done at the point in the series when the cast is all comfortable with each other, enough so that mimicry is fun, hilarious, and not as steep a learning curve as it might be in the beginning. This often leads to assumptions that it's because a writers' room has run out of ideas, but given the body-mind control themes, as we've noted, this is actually completely in keeping with ramping those up. The main question we have at the beginning of the ep, though, is: why Dwight and Gloria? Gloria comes in with her trademark louder snark and humor; Dwight offers back some of his wry wit, I love you both, this is the best changeover ever. She's about to get the initial scene-of-death examination over with, and it's very subtle, figuring out where and why the changeover even happens, but we can see Jeff Doohan standing in the doorway Dwight goes through, and though we don't see him reach out and touch Dwight there's every reason to believe he does, because, well. Hello bodyswap! Cue the blurred vision handscam moment for both of them; Dwight!Gloria is the one who needs to look in a mirror while Gloria!Dwight reaches the conclusion pretty fast, presumably because he's the one (we'll go with gender of the mind driving the body rather than gender of the body) who spends more time in the field getting hit by Troubles. And dealing with his own, let's not forget that. Which brings up the immediate question of who has the bullet magnet Trouble now: is it tied to the body or the spirit, in other words. (I mean, we had that question earlier, but if you think we're getting answers on what the Teagues Trouble is AHAHAHAH yeah we've been waiting for that for over a season and we don't look any closer to a fucking answer. Dwight's is much more imminent as a problem.) Cue face-grabbing and vest feeling-up and a crotch-grab for the humor value, mostly, although frankly if I were in a body with a bullet magnet Trouble I'd want to know my crotch was protected too. I'm just saying. Gloria!Dwight refrains from the boob grab, which we all may appreciate, because Dwight is a gentleman. Yes. Yes you do need to talk. Quite a lot. Lucky for them that's going to be relatively easy given their jobs, but it does limit the ability of not!Dwight to go out into the field, since it looks like at least some of the muscle memory is missing, definitely on initial moments of swap due to disorientation. I'll be curious to know if/how much that comes into play later. I'll also be over here cackling at Adam Copeland's suddenly more exaggerated facial expressions because that is what Gloria would do; and at Jayne Eastwood's turn for the laconic. I love you both this is amazing.




After the ad break Nathan is desperately trying not to laugh at them. It's okay, Nathan, there's very little to laugh about these days, go on. He's also having a hard time keeping the who's who straight, although the fact that neither of them's having to pretend to be each other in front of the uniforms is helpful. Both for the humor value for us and for them letting off a little of the oh god we're actually completely freaked out steam. Dwight!Gloria, no surprise, is the one who gets to do that, with commentary on relative heights (actually she's not that short, but Dwight is that tall, and Nathan and Duke are both fairly tall and lanky) and muscle build, and Gloria!Dwight is snappish but I think a little bit relieved under that that they're having this banter. Having this kind of banter means not having other kinds of freakout later! The banter is hilarious enough that Nathan forgets or possibly "forgets," I'm going with the former because I don't think Nathan's quite that cruel, and addresses Dwight!Gloria to start with. May I just say that I'm quite impressed how they've managed to swap airs of authority? Because I am. Gloria!Dwight needs to be informed that Nathan's bringing Mara in on the case and now would be a great time for someone to bring up the fact that she likes gloating and it's not a bad theory, that's the sort of thing I expect out of Dwight. No, Gloria!Dwight would like his counterpart to punch Nathan in the head so he can arrest him, aw, he's thinking! And trying not to break his hopefully-temporary body's hand on Nathan's stubborn hard head! Everyone should appreciate that. Duke had the idea of putting a stun belt on Mara and handing Nathan the controls, which is all well and good until Nathan decides Audrey's really in there and it's safe to take it off, or whatever. But it's a decent enough hope as far as maybe, maybe this'll bring out any scraps of Audrey left. Not that it looks much like that as he walks back to the truck and she's sitting there acting like a petulant five-year-old. She gets a jacket and a badge! No gun, and Nathan's excuse is that if they're bringing her on the case in the fond hopes she'll help they need a semi-decent cover so people don't ask questions. I'm just going to side-eye everyone for a bit because what on earth did Dwight tell the Guard, after last ep? And how risky is it, given the number of Guardspeople around and that he did tell them Mara's in that body and started the Troubles? Isn't it possible that someone's going to take the suicide-by-cop (Nathan, Mara, take your pick) option here in an attempt to kill her for what she's done? I mean. This does not actually seem like the smartest idea when you get right down to it. Too many highly uncomfortable variables here. She does, though, see immediately what's going on with the bodyswap! Mara's only advice to Nathan about this Trouble and what she can see of how it works (and how it works now as opposed to when she first gave the Trouble, which says some interesting things about how she doesn't have total control) is that he should run if he wants to live. Well that's helpful.

And we're back in North Carolina again, and you know what's really starting to bug me about the sign on that cafe? It looks a fuck of a lot like the tree on William's box. There's no specific reason to think it's related, the legend does involve things being carved on trees so a tree is reasonable symbology to put on a cafe referencing that legend. I'm going to twitch anyway. Vince!Dave looks lost and a bit sad and scared. As you do when you've abruptly been swapped. Modern technology makes finding the car so much easier, all he has to do is push the button on the keyfob and listen for whatever car beeps. Cue snark about how Vince rents nicer cars when he's alone but, sadly, that doesn't last long, the body horror of being in someone else's body kicks in. The adoption file makes a great distraction. Back in Haven, Dave!Vince is walking down the street when... something happens, we're not given visual cues as to what although the auditory cues suggest something otherworldly and possibly involving voices in the brainpan. Dave!Vince doubles over, is this some kind of stomach thing? Which will be funny later because now everyone gets to cope with everyone else's digestive issues too! No, this is the leg wound thing. Seriously, what the hell took a chunk out of Dave's leg, a lobstrosity? We do not find out this episode. We do get treated to more of the Teagues bickering as Vince!Dave calls his brother up from his brother's body to bitch at him for what he's done, while Vince has no idea what the hell is going on and blames Dave. You two never grew out of the 'No You' phase, did you. At least they get that out of the way pretty quickly, though affirming it's a Trouble is pretty well useless, what else would it be? And the next thing they move on to is bitching about Vince keeping secrets from Dave and Vince explaining himself away. His logic is actually pretty sound, inasmuch as anything holds up to the fact that no one has sufficient data here. Dave is from Roanoke, Croatoan, whatever you want to call it, he's also from the other side where William and Mara are from (this part I have issue with, do you know it's the same other side? Do you know how many other sides are out there?), so maybe there will be answers in Roanoke? Or Manteo, as the case may be. Answers that could help with the Troubles! Including this Trouble. As always with anything to do with Haven it's more likely that the answers will come in the form of more questions, but hey. Dave!Vince is coming down there, and Vince!Dave is not to do anything stupid till he gets there. Look who's fucking talking, Vince.

Back at the Freddy, the nurse is talking to Nathan about the incident while Mara reads a pamphlet on, heh, schizophrenia. Because that's a condition you want in Haven. (No. No it's not, for so many reasons.) Isn't that also what Jennifer was thought to have? I do believe it is. The nurse claims that Barry (the orderlydoctornurse) didn't even have a relationship with Hopkins (the patient) as far as she knows, and I'm going to go over in the corner and twitch a bit because Hopkins was the gravedigger Trouble guy. Not that I think this is necessarily relevant, but if you work in post-life services and suddenly you start seeing dead people, yeah, that would probably get you time in the Freddy, for stress related conditions if nothing else. Let alone for whatever it was Hopkins seems to have done, she describes him as a monster, and in Haven, that's got to mean something. And now she has to go check on patients, and we get a pulled back shot with Maraudrey out of focus in the foreground, which means, yep. The next thing we get is Audrey saying that Hopkins and Barry switched bodies. This is a bit of a 'well, yes' moment except that Audrey hasn't exactly been around lately, and presumably is occupied with hiding from Mara. She's also not that with it, more focused on Nathan treating her like Audrey and keeping her around than the case. Which in retrospect should have been our first clue, since Audrey's priority has often been the Troubled people rather than herself, but we'll get to that later. She gets that out, and a 'don't let her know that I was here' and then nothing. And then silence. Though Nathan is thankfully at this point several paces away from Maraudrey's body so there's no indication that he was talking to Audrey. And when Mara comes back she doesn't seem to know any time has passed, instead going on about how everything is hereditary. I feel like that should be important later, and maybe it will be. Also she is tired, she is going to go have a nap, she doesn't care if Nathan tases her. Nathan probably doesn't care if she takes a nap because while she sleeps, maybe Audrey will show up. Not that he says it but up till this point he's been so fixated it's a reasonable guess. Oh you guys. You guys. Sometimes I really wonder how you've managed to live this long. Something is definitely hinky here, but what specifically it is, it's hard to say.

Oh, that says Maywood not Haywood. I take back my previous compliments about the props. Vince!Dave has come to the place where he was allegedly born, and decides it'd be a good thing if he got out and snuck around rather than, I don't know, ringing the damn doorbell. This is why Vince is the leader of the Guard, Dave, because he can pick a softer approach and come up with a decent lie on the fly, whereas you seem to have learned your detecting at the Inspector Gadget Investigatorial Academy. You're an idiot, Dave, and you should feel stupid. Indeed he is caught, and when Vince!Dave goes to turn around and address the lady who caught him he whacks his head on the branch, because Dave is a normal human being and Vince is approximately the size of a mountain. Seriously, you two.

Dwight!Gloria is apparently finishing up the autopsy and griping about the size of Dwight's hands. There are so many things I'm not saying here but yeah, given the degree to which fine motor control is necessary in Gloria's line of work I can see where that'd take some getting used to. Oh look at all the things I am not saying. Entertainingly, Gloria!Dwight is now wearing a sober-looking suit coat while Dwight!Gloria is lacking a vest, causing me to yell a lot you are in the body of a bullet magnet put some damn armor on even if you are in a morgue. And is a little buttoned down around the collar. It's a nice visual translation of how their personalities are manifesting despite the vastly different body. That and the 'whaddyou got', out of Jayne Eastwood is entirely the tones of a law enforcement veteran, I love you both for this. And for the punch through ceilings display, yeah, if I'd gone from Gloria's body which she's mentioned before is old and tired and failing her in some ways (5x01, that comment about old people needing more sleep than babies?) to Dwight's body which is clearly in pretty damn good shape, I'd be doing happy dances every so often, too. (K: I would be putting all the things on high shelves. An extra foot and a half of height? Yes please!) (A: I would be taking notes to laugh at you when you got back to your own body.) Gloria!Dwight is giving her looks, on account of they do not have time for this, dammit. That doesn't work. That only in fact distracts Dwight!Gloria by how tacky her glasses are and if Gloria comes back after the next episode with new more stylish looking glasses I will laugh my ass off. More subtly we also have different tones in their voices, not exaggerated to the point of cringing but audible, more along the lines of Dwight and Gloria not being used to working their vocal chords in certain ways. Which is interesting. Less interesting but good to have is the confirmation of the sympathetic link between switched people, if one person dies, etc. Gloria!Dwight doesn't like the sound of that. Dwight!Gloria at least admits that Dwight's body and therefore Trouble could be a problem, no, you're not used to it, how about you at least start getting used to it by putting a damn vest on? Argh. Although that's also an interesting question (and one we'll get confirmed later), do Troubles transfer with spirits or stay in the bodies? (No. The answer is no, they stay in the bodies, but we don't know that at the moment.) Gloria!Dwight's gloomy pronouncement that if his body is close enough for Dwight!Gloria to hear a shot they're pretty much dead (not accounting for walls, guys!) is a good cap on an already impressive scene. Oh you guys. Come here and be hugged.




I will be mildly amused if this translates to shared injuries over the course of time spent stuck in a switched body with this Trouble. Only mildly, because that causes a lot of issues, and is also reminiscent of, why yes, William and Mara's truly creepy physical bond. So. Vince!Dave will be getting ice on his head now, which does something for the pain if not the utter dissociative flail of being stuck in the wrong body. To the point of answering with the wrong name once it's established that Alison Doohan owns this house so lives here so what the fuck are you doing here, Dave. Politely. But what the fuck. See again, why your brother actually gets answers by way of pulling out plausible lies on the fly. And here comes a somewhat younger looking man (actually he looks not much older than James Cogan, which makes me wonder about my age estimate on Alison, maybe she is intended to be that young but something about her expressions says older or at the very least more knowledgeable than most people of her generation involved with the Troubles) to provide back up if his wife needs it. Wife? Yes, wife, this is her husband Skip (who's the worst liar I've seen in awhile), and if anyone happens to figure out why that name is pinging something for both of us in the backbrain do please share. I'm still distracted by how thoroughly the speech patterns have shifted and how actually subtle a change that is in the brothers Teagues, which means if this stuck around as a Trouble it could be hilariously sneaky for them to use. There's less authority and more fear to Vince!Dave, and more stammering and blustering to Dave!Vince, but a lifetime of proximity means their speech patterns were already very, very similar. DAVID TEAGUES STOP GIVING AWAY THE HOMEWORLD. I accept that he doesn't know that Alison stonewalled the shit out of his brother just prior to the switch; I'll even accept that Vince has forgotten it in the tumult of getting thrown into a whole new Trouble. But he's not even trying to hide the fact that they've switched, with the snark about being the ugly brother and Dave being the handsome one and seriously, quit it. Even more quit it with the entire story of adoption and files and records and I am not okay with this. This is the shit that results in Vince assuming you don't know what you're doing, because you don't. While I'm burying my face in my desk over this piece of idiocy, Alison and Skip will hold onto that polite Southern facade and look concerned after him. Dave. Do you know what else follows families for generations? Is it the Troubles? Why yes I think it is. Also note that she's being awfully circumspect about not lying: no relatives adopted, that doesn't say anything about strangers through the thinny, or, remembering that Dave's mother is listed as a servant at that address and that house is certainly large enough to have had servants back when, employees. Sigh. So much sigh. Bad investigative technique.

Back at the morgue Dwight!Gloria is slurping down a soft drink of some kind and by the amount of air getting sucked up through that straw, deeply enjoying being able to do this. Gloria!Dwight, on the other hand, is annoyed at her shoveling so much crap into his body. Oh my god you two. You are the hilariousest. Oh, milkshake, that's what it was. Their next challenge in this whole body switch will turn up in the form of Vicki, who Gloria calls Intern when they're on the clock, Gloria!Dwight, do a better job of paying attention and not blowing your cover. Not that Vicki notices too terribly much. And given the events of the last several days, I guess I can understand that, but it's something we picked up on, and therefore likely to be something someone else might pick up on, too. Vicki needs Gloria's signature for a package drop off! Yes, let's all stand around and look awkward, that won't draw any attention at all. It's interesting to contrast their behavior here, where the characters are doing a less than stellar job at acting like their bodies, with their behavior when they've got their guard down. In essence, here we have Adam Copeland playing Gloria playing Dwight and Jayne Eastwood playing Dwight playing Gloria and oh you guys, it is amazing. And hilarious. The exaggerated expressions. The slightly over-dramatized tones. The word emphasis. Capped off with Gloria!Dwight's expression when Dwight!Gloria says she's going off to the ladies' room. In Dwight's body. Oh please god I hope that was a figure of speech, and yet the yelps and strange looks when Dwight's body walks into the ladies' like he belongs there... We don't find out. Sadly and thankfully.

Back in Manteo, NC, Vince!Dave is still dealing with his pounding head, which is not made any better by Dave!Vince dropping into the passenger seat next to him. More griping about their body differences, including the leg infection Dave's been keeping from Vince. That can't have been pleasant for Dave!Vince to deal with on the flight down, ouch. There's a bit of silence while they stare at each other like they can either switch back or kill each other with their brains, I'm not sure, and then Dave!Vince proceeds to attempt to give orders. That's not going to work so much with Vince naffing off to North Carolina in the middle of the night (seriously, he would have had to for Dave not to know he wasn't showing up for morning coffee, unless they don't live together, which is contrary to what we've seen up to this point), and now Vince!Dave is mouthing off about how he gets to keep all the secrets and skulk around in bushes now! Dave!Vince comes back with the fact that Dave's been keeping his by-the-way-I'm-not-of-this-world secret for sixty years. I'm not sure that trumps everything they've been doing to each other lately, but it stops the argument there and moves it on to, okay, what's Vince!Dave found out? Well, not much. Just that the house Dave is allegedly from belongs to the Doohans, has for generations, they don't know anything about any adopted kid, and they also run the Croatoan Cafe and Historical society. In other words, my dear prince Hamlet, why are you behaving in this extraordinary manner? Seriously, the list of things Vince!Dave rattles off is a big fat list of why they should be investigating the Doohans, but he concludes with "she doesn't' know anything" like it's true. No. It's not true. They are lying their lying mouths off. Skip in particular is a really fucking bad liar with his oh, no, I've never heard of Haven before. You suck, Dave, and you suck almost as much in Vince's body. Vince!Dave offers as an excuse he's exhausted, with the body switching, the travelling, they bicker some more, no, that's a good question, actually. Why is Dave on the no-fly list? Given the brothers' history and Vince's leading a paramilitary group until recently, not to mention the commentary to Max Hansen, I'd've expected Vince to have a no-fly status or a criminal record or something. Not so much, as it turns out. Eventually Dave!Vince capitulates and says they'll get started first thing tomorrow morning, and while I'm calling people out for their performances Donat and Dunsworth do a really good job here picking up on each other's tics and expressions. As the brothers get more excitable and emotional they get more expressive, and swapping these traits from one actor to the other is no mean feat, and turned out very very well. Oh, and the cut on Dave's leg really hurts. Vince!Dave asks, quite reasonably, if he's put anything on it, only to be told a band-aid and quoted a price for it. I have no idea what the hell is with the money bickering between these two lately (third time! Drink!) but it's making me suspicious. Very much so.

Back in Audrey's apartment at the Gull, Mara's asleep (or "asleep") and Duke and Nathan have assigned themselves watch. That seems reasonable, considering that they don't know if Mara can break out of the chains but I wouldn't want to give her all night to figure it out, either. Duke's starting to feel like shit again! Oh honey. They're really going to run out of relatively harmless Troubles to let loose fast, too, or at least I frankly hope so, since otherwise we're looking at Duke having to admit tacitly to a lot of people what a long line of serial killers he comes from. Remembering that using the Crocker Trouble is addictive and therefore, yes, any number of his ancestors might have killed the less harmful just to get the rush. Easier to hunt, too, if you're that far gone. I think we can file that firmly under Things Duke Doesn't Want To Talk About Ever, please and thank you. Nathan expresses concern; Duke not so much blows him off as points out that it's not something they can know in concrete terms and until it gets more urgent they have an immediate problem to work. Namely, okay, if one person dies so does the other, that's pretty standard, but how did the Trouble get triggered? And/or how does it decide who's swapping with whom, and for that matter since it's part of another person how does that person trigger a bodyswap? Not that they're aware but these are all even better questions since we checked the background at the cafe Dave was in right before the swap, and there wasn't anybody from the Freddy there. So in conclusion, we're blaming the Doohans. Both of them. But they only have the one living case so far; they should really be looking into Barry and Hopkins some more, but they're not for whatever reason. Mental fatigue, maybe. Duke will file a request for Audrey and try and distract Nathan some more from how bad off he is with fussing at whether they're doing enough, up to and including snark about BDSM and their sex life, which makes the timing of Audrey popping out even more suspicious. This time she pops out with something useful, though! Genuinely useful as opposed to thanks we could've figured that out from the autopsy report useful. It's secrets, you flip with someone with whom you share a secret. Or are keeping a secret from, more likely, given a) the Teagues (one? ONE secret? hahaha. ha.) and b) the references to Cincinnati this episode and keeping Dwight from knowing things. And, of course, there's c) which is that we know the boys are going to flip bodies somewhere in here, that's practically a requirement by now. Maraudrey requests that Nathan not take her on the case tomorrow, Mara's getting suspicious, she knows something's up, which as far as I can tell is purely an excuse for Mara to get Duke and his rather compromised body all to herself for awhile. Well, I'm going to enjoy watching her underestimate Duke, who's sitting in his chair watching all this with deep, deep suspicion. As well he might be.

And back in North Carolina again, Dave!Vince is having coffee and behaving normally, so at least there's that. Certainly Vince's body can't show itself around that coffee house again without being eyeballed suspiciously, regardless of who's driving it. Dave!Vince will be more circumspect, so I guess we can be glad for the body switch for once, even if having a second stranger come into town after one was talking about a brother and the second being about the right age should set off some alarm bells, in time. So far, at least so far as we can tell, neither of the Doohans have seen them together, so they have some breathing room. Minimal looking around, walking with purpose, and that gets him back to a computer where he can look up the address of the house. And see a phone number written on the notepad! Not, in fact, a North Carolina phone number. Rather than take anything from the desk Dave!Vince will write it down on his hand, which, not a bad idea, that! I suppose that also probably rules out operative for Vince, since one would expect an operative and especially a TV show operative to be able to memorize something so simple as a phone number at a glance. Extra bonus ease of memorization because it's only seven digits instead of nine. And he only has to memorize it out to either the check (where he can write it down on the napkin) or the car. And yes, now I'm complaining for the sake of being an intellectual slight snob, there is nothing wrong with writing numbers down on your hand. Except trying to get the pen to write on your damn hand in the first place. Sharpies are better.




Anyway. Back over to Mara and Duke, neither of whom have been switched yet so we don't have to specify who's who! Thankfully. Mara's definitely the one driving that body when she wakes up, looking around for Nathan and then commenting on the fact that Duke was left behind. So at this point she's oh, heh. I figured out part of why we're identifying so hard with her, she's interpreting every part of their actions and fitting it into the context of the overall that she knows about them. Gee, that doesn't sound familiar at all! I highly doubt the writers did that on purpose, but it stands out here, and I will be in the corner facepalming and laughing. Duke is giving her as little as he can, although why he doesn't give her the increasing Trouble overload sickness as an excuse I do not know. He does point out that she seems to find him very interesting, at which point I will posit that it's not him so much as the Crocker bloodline. Yes. We, too, find this interesting. Give to us all your data, Mara. I know you won't! Duke will offer up his theories, though, one of which involves Mara being intrigued by or drawn to what happened between him and Audrey in Colorado. This seems like as good a place as any to note that while Mara's been harsh-toned, aggressive, and gloating at Nathan, with Duke she takes a more languid approach, so that it's difficult to tell when she stops being unmitigatedly Mara and when the memories and potentially Audrey kick in. Duke starts talking about what happened, and not just that but his memories of her at other significant times, including when they first met. He looks about split between wanting to bring back these memories, even if they hurt, and wanting not to talk about this with her, to share it with Mara. It's more than a little reminiscent of how he talked about Jennifer, with potentially good reason: in Duke's mind Audrey might well be dead, and this might be part of the grieving process. Calling her Audrey halfway through the reminisce is also probably due to Nathan's earlier urgings, and will not help. Still, it seems to have some kind of effect. Her voice is softer as she talks, signifying more Audrey and less Mara, and Duke takes it for encouragement. There's still something off about this, though. Mostly in the facial tension, which seems to be more Mara than Audrey, and something around the eyes even if that's a softer expression than we've ever seen on Mara. It's at this point that I feel obliged to point out to the audience and to Duke and Nathan, we've never seen Mara in a soft or tender or relaxed moment. Ever. She's in a hostile place surrounded by hostile people, she has no William, she clearly wants to get somewhere else or get her freedom back. That's not a situation in which one is inclined to be tender, and so nobody has any idea of what that looks like on her. It might look very much like Audrey! So, yes, I think Duke's leaping to massive conclusions here, but then Nathan would probably leap even further to bigger ones, so, lesser of two doofuses? Maraudrey sits up, whoever she is, and tries to leap out of bed but, you know, chained, and Duke settles her down and promises her he'll attempt to keep talking to her. Oh boy.

Working the case will be preceded by donuts. I know I'd prefer working cases to be preceded by donuts and followed by Chinese or Thai, what, shut up. I'm with Dwight!Gloria on this one. Remember the snark about digestive systems? Yup. Apparently Gloria's body can't have coffee, which Dwight as ex-mil, ex-cleaner, and current cop absolutely runs on. Because heartburn, you see. Poor, poor Dwight. Gloria!Dwight has the footage from the Freddy to show us, namely that Barry went all wobbly and loss-of-balance right before the strangulation incident. That's simple enough to understand, and Dwight and Gloria will spell it out as how you feel when the switch happens. Fair. Nathan supplies the additional data from Maraudrey, which gets him stonewalled by both of them, Dwight!Gloria somewhat less believably since she's the one we're pretty sure is keeping a secret. And since that secret is something that would presumably affect Dwight, I'm increasingly curious what it is. Guard-related? Family-related? Is Ohio where Dwight's father is from/currently lives? Where his daughter's mother lives? WHAT. Given that the personal and professional are so thoroughly intermingled in Haven, I can't even make a solid guess at which it might be on that front. Grump. Well, if there's secrets to be ferreted out, Nathan will go back over to the Freddy and start re-interviewing people with that in mind, even if he's not exactly the soft touch Audrey was as far as figuring this kind of shit out. There's another hilarious sight gag where Gloria!Dwight picks up her purse and Dwight!Gloria picks up his bulletproof vest and no, no, neither of you should be going out in public right now. I still wish we were getting some weird muscle memory versus narrative memory indications, or at least a few more than we are, but I suspect that'll have to wait for one or both sides of a bodyswap to be dumped in a crisis situation. Because that would be the sort of situation where I'd expect muscle memory to take over most firmly, although at this point I'm also wondering if the writers just didn't think to separate out the two kinds of memory. That's a much more simplistic explanation than I could get into, but suffice it to say that the mind-body connection is a very real thing, and given, for example, the extremely rigorous training Dwight's been through that should make for some really interesting automatic reactions and "oh wow I can do that" moments from Gloria if she were ever thrown into a physical altercation. Anyway. Nathan's taking this one by himself. Gloria!Dwight is still not allowed coffee for his own good, but Dwight!Gloria will tell him all about the wonders of chamomile tea. And gin. Oh Gloria never change.

Vince!Dave appears to actually be getting worse about knowing what his new body can and should be doing, I don't think the knocking his head getting into the car is being played for aggravating his brother intentionally. Oh honey. Dave!Vince is about as irritated as you'd expect, and they bicker some more over writing on a body that's not theirs, okay, as changes to the body goes, you two, it could be ever so much worse. I am duly impressed that as far as I can tell, everyone's maintaining very careful physical autonomy guidelines, aside from Gloria's snark about going to the ladies' room earlier. Nobody's deliberately testing the limits of their new body, or abusing it, or indeed trying to alter it; everyone is freaked and would like their own body back please, and whether this restraint is out of respect for the other person or fear of retaliation, I don't actually care, it works. And it makes me a lot more kindly inclined to everyone and their issues. As it seems to with the brothers Teagues as well! Dave!Vince points out that he waited for Dave to get back before dialing the mysterious phone number with a Haven area code, with a comment that he doesn't like keeping things from Dave. So what, you do this out of necessity? Vince, I think your definition of need-to-know needs some work. Dave admits that he didn't want to keep all of this from his brother either, they've both been, despite their reasonably good poker faces, acting on fear and other negative emotions for a very long time now. Especially Dave, who'll finally admit when pushed that he was scared of learning the truth about himself. Yeah, well, I think you kind of need to at this point, fear be damned. Vince sighs and pushes the button to call this phone number just to see if that gives them anything about the past. No, well, maybe, but it's definitely about the present! Considering how much of the past informs the present in Haven and related locales, I think it's reasonable to claim both, but given that it's the Freddy and Dave!Vince will confirm that quickly and then decline to offer any identifying anything and hang up, it's definitely an immediate issue as well. Not that they know that yet! Yes, E.T., do call home.   

Calling home comes from the point of view of Dwight-and-Gloria at the police station. And while Gloria!Dwight sounds mildly surprised that they switched and managed not to tell anyone, there's also some resignation there. Because you guys. Jesus, the Teagues would keep secrets even if it killed them. Thankfully they're not keeping that phone number a secret, and everyone quickly connects it all to the Freddy, pulling the list of patients and personnel and cross-referencing with Manteo. All right then. Oh, hey, speaking of secrets, Dwight!Gloria's comment after everyone hangs up would seem to indicate that they didn't tell the Teagues about that switch either. Except they must have, because they talked about being at the Freddy when "it" happened. So, practicing for the rest of the police station? Possibly. At any rate, Dwight!Gloria comments that she makes a pretty good cop, which Gloria!Dwight will grudgingly not shoot down. Aww you guys.

Back at the Gull it's apparently confession time, with Audrey listening to stories of what Duke did and laughing, like Audrey would. Duke doesn't seem as relaxed, though, and this is the point, let me just add, where we were certain this was Mara playing Audrey, and I think the point at which we were supposed to start to suspect. Honestly, the main reason we suspected it in the first place is because we've always been wary of Maraudrey turning out one or the other. We're paranoid like that. And so we're inclined to look for the little tells and suspicious speech patterns that indicate Mara's just pretending to be Audrey, but Emily Rose is doing a fantastic job here of giving it to us only incrementally and for the most part, not at all until this and the immediate preceding scene. It's not up to the point where Maraudrey says she wants to get out of bed, she feels good, like this could really work, that it starts being more blatantly Mara's speech patterns and not Audrey's. I can see Audrey saying she wants to get out of bed, yes. I can't see her actually pushing to do so, because she would be aware of and cautious about the consequences of letting Mara run loose, even if her body has to be imprisoned, too. The whole "I feel good, I feel like this is really working," that has just a hint of Mara's mocking edge to it, which is when we both started jumping up and down and shrieking f-bombs at each other. I'm not actually kidding about that, go back and look at behind the scenes if you don't believe me. Also the exhaustion and exasperation when Duke says that if this is working they should just keep doing it? Audrey is patient. Most of the time, but when it comes to talking down a Trouble, which arguably her body possession is related to, Audrey is patient. That's Mara's impatience and need to be free, there. And the don't leave is blatant playing on Duke's emotions. Bad Mara. No cookie. So, okay, away from talk of freedom and more to what happened in Colorado, she would like to know why Duke stopped the kiss first. And keeps insisting that he did. At which point we get the Duke blink and pull back of something is not kosher in Denmark, thank you Duke. Bless. Way to nat 20 your perception roll.

Doing proper research and sharing it around nets them the information that there's a longtime patient, name of Doohan, up at the Freddy and originally from Manteo. Yay! That's a clue! Vince!Dave will throw out the information that Alison Doohan owns the cafe and her husband is Skip; the patient is Jeffrey, guys, while I appreciate your theory that it's Skip's brother that only makes a limited amount of sense considering that Alison specified her family has been in Manteo for generations. And in this day and age women do keep their maiden names fairly often when they get married. Assuming those two really are husband and wife; they've been lying about enough else that I wouldn't put lying about that for reasons known only to them past them. Plus, since this Trouble turns out to be touch-based, we have… well, actually we do still have two possibilities. Alison is the blatantly obvious one due to the handshake. But Vince backed into a guy at the Croatoan who had a beard and about the right build, right before he switched bodies, and it would be logical that a bodyswap Trouble would require two people to trigger it. Still, it's not 100% certain who's the other Troubled individual here, and I disapprove of leaping to conclusions with insufficient data. Bad Teagues, no cookie. Regardless, Alison's in it up to her neck, whether as the other Troubled person or as their protector. They will now relay this information to Nathan up at the Freddy, and the Teagues do sound somewhat concerned. I would be too! We close on Gloria!Dwight getting some of his own back with the comment about always feeling like he needs to pee. Welcome to old age, Dwight, and infinite snark. Gloria clearly doesn't miss certain aspects of her old body! Not that I think she'll be upset to go back, all things considered, but there's something to be said for getting rid of the old age pains and limitations for a couple days.

Back at the Freddy we're approaching Nathan's attempt to talk to Jeff with the canted angles and the narrow shots, which is a good sign that something's about to happen. The nurse we saw earlier was speaking to him, but he's very upset and needs his medication. So, really, the proper thing to do, Nathan, is to go downstairs and give him ten minutes or so. Nathan. Nathan. Do not enter the room with the potentially dangerous oh why do we even bother. Yes, Jeff comes bursting out of the room. Yes, he touches Nathan as he knocks him over and then goes running. Yes, Nathan then switches. With Duke! Because you all knew where that was headed. Poor starving thirsty villagers in Mid-World knew where that was headed. So we get the requisite blurry shots, Nathan!Duke sitting up and gasping and staring at his hands and generally flailing over what the fuck is happening now, and back over to Maraudrey touching Duke's hand and trying to get his attention. Or rather, at this point, Duke!Nathan's hand. It takes a bit for the screen to come into focus, complete with Duke!Nathan glancing at the mirror, and then Maraudrey manages to pull his attention back to her. Mara remembers to slap the alarm back on her face when Duke!Nathan focuses on her face and calls her Audrey like he hasn't seen her yet that day, but, really, she totally knows at this point. Between knowing what Trouble is there and roughly how it works, and possibly weird magic-vision that they've thankfully mostly avoided trying to show us except with the thinnies, she knows. Lucas Bryant once again gets to show off his acting chops as he does a very good impression of Eric Balfour's Duke flailing, staggering to his feet, and stumbling off. Meanwhile Eric Balfour is doing his best impression of Nathan as a stunned mullet! Yeah, nobody is buying the light-headed excuse, Duke!Nathan. Especially when Maraudrey takes the opportunity to direct the conversation back to Colorado, with a grin on her face that tends not to come out of Audrey except when she's in a safe place not in the middle of a crisis, and with someone she cares about. Duke!Nathan has no idea what they've been talking about, so he can't come up with anything, but Maraudrey's not even trying to call him on it so much as taking it as confirmation and running with it, twisting the knife into Nathan even as she behaves as though she still thinks he's Duke. We had something, indeed. Yes, there was passion and there was friendship but this whole "we had something we couldn't deny" that sounds like it's off the back of a particularly passionate romance novel? No. Not really. And both Duke and Audrey have always been honest with each other about that. Not that Nathan would know, being emotionally oblivious and also being somewhat on the outside of this, they've never had much of a reason to tell him. Well, now Duke does! Or rather Nathan has a reason to go attempt to throttle it out of him. One last twist in the form of "did you ever tell Nathan?" and of course he didn't, and now Duke!Nathan looks like he wants to go punch his body in the face and Mara is snickering all the snickering ever. Because that's exactly what this situation needed.



When we come back from the ad break alarm bells are ringing, orderlies are running around, it's somewhat reminiscent of Harmony except it's much worse, in a way, this time. For one thing they damn sure don't have an Audrey to talk people down. For another, Duke and Nathan are busy flailing about, Nathan!Duke in particular because he has to do something other than sit there and look like a stunned mullet. He's run out onto the deck, and is trying to adjust to the whole not being able to feel thing, which tells us right away for sure where the Trouble lies: in the body, not in the mind or spirit or whatever you want to call it. I adore the body language here which is entirely Duke trying to figure out what the fuck he's doing and putting all kinds of bravado on it while the orderly talks to him about how Jeffrey's gone missing now. I also suspect that everyone in that psych ward knows that you don't touch Jeffrey going by the way the nurse avoided his hand up earlier and the more subtle way people seem to be avoiding just rugby-tackling him, which suggests that the Freddy's been keeping a lot of secrets too. Nathan!Duke will now do the immediate and logical thing, which is call his friend and warn the shit out of him.

Assuming he picks up, after that reveal. Which he does, if only because they did switch and they should figure out what the fuck they're doing now, and all of Nathan's instincts may be torn between tear Duke to pieces and trust Duke because he's not trying to hide things, but on the balance, he also knows Audrey. And he knows that Audrey's familiar with what Trouble this is, and that if she even suspected for a minute that he'd switched she wouldn't have said something like that in order to be sure she was protecting him. Because that's who Audrey is. So, yes, a lot of instincts, and all of them add up to picking up the phone. I am also duly impressed with how thoroughly Balfour's adopted the stoic attitude of Nathan here, even if half of that's shock right now. Nathan!Duke relays the vital information in as few words as possible, which is that yes, they switched and he would like Duke!Nathan to step away from the Mara as quickly as possible, because that's not Audrey. That's Mara playing them. Oh. Well. That's a good reason, and of all the things Nathan knows about his friend it's that Duke knows how to spot a con. Takes one, etc. Lucky for both the boys that Mara's still trying to play this con, because she doesn't try to stop Duke!Nathan when he steps outside to take this call and ask what the fuck. She can't, if she's going to keep pretending to be Audrey, though that's approaching a well-shit look on her face as Nathan moves away.

What follows is exactly what we'd expect, Duke!Nathan hissing out in anger about why should he believe Duke, and, well, because it's true is a pretty good reason! Except he then leaps immediately to Colorado, because that's the emotional aspect here. Once again we have a great actor switch-off; as Duke!Nathan gets his feet under him it's that cold, stoic fury that leaves his face less mobile and all his tells smaller. As Nathan!Duke listens, his gestures gets more exaggerated and more searching for humor value, anything to latch onto that'll let him drag himself through this with his usual snark and misdirection. Even if it's only self-misdirection away from being freaked out, which is exactly what all that facepalming and looking confused at how Nathan's body feels. Or doesn't feel. As the case may be. Duke is not the best at explaining his emotions, which makes it extra-hilarious to see on the face of Nathan Wuornos, constipated overemotional would-be martyr. But he manages to babble out that yes, they kissed; no, it didn't mean anything and that's how he knew that Mara was lying, because she was trying cheap manipulative ploys to get Duke to decide, what, that he'd give a relationship with her another go? Over and above his relationship with Nathan, over and above her relationship with Nathan? Hahahaha. Ha. Yeahno. He also finally realizes he should maybe lower his voice if he's going to shout at Nathan on the phone while being in Nathan's body. GOOD PLAN. Duke!Nathan still looks a little bit like a stunned mullet again, as you do when your best friend is dropping secrets like this on you, and Duke was absolutely doing that in the hopes that it would solve the Trouble. Except as you know Bob, the Troubles don't usually get solved by the people affected by them, but by the people who hold the Trouble in their bloodline. Which means there's a Doohan family secret that needs to be told, perhaps? The boys keep trading information in short order with the ease of long familiarity; Duke!Nathan would like to know, since he's now afraid of having been played and does trust Nathan!Duke to explain to him how being played works, how long. Duke surmises since they took her out on a case in order to get them to keep their guard down. If not that, then definitely since she woke up in the night! I'm going with Duke is right, though. And then Duke's body has an attack of the needing to let out a Trouble, and Nathan would like him to know that he feels awful. Yup! It probably wouldn't feel quite that awful if Nathan weren't so used to not feeling anything, but yep. Duke comes back with "you feel strange," and confirmation that his Trouble's getting worse, and therefore Duke!Nathan may need to let loose a Trouble. Hoo boy. That's going to be fun, if it means it's done while they're switched.

And back to the original switched pair, Vince!Dave is grumbling at his brother that he already checked out the house. No offence, Dave, but in either body you seem to be a less capable investigator than your brother, so let's just go over it again, shall we? Also yes, that was before they had all the information they do now, so going over ground with new information and freshened eyes isn't a bad thing. Only it stops right there because Dave!Vince is tottering and seems to feel he's about to keel over. At first Vince!Dave blames it on the digestive problems which, honestly, I can see them having this conversation even without the body switch. But then as Dave!Vince describes his symptoms and, more importantly, staggering off in a random-to-him direction as though drawn, Vince!Dave knows what it is. Has to confirm at least one symptom to be sure, but it turns out Dave!Vince is staggering towards a thinny. Oh goodie, now we know that's also tied to the body, Dave's other-worldly-than-these body, and Vince!Dave explains that that's what he felt in the cave. An open thinny. That wants to swallow him whole. Double-plus ungood is the nice clear view we get of the thinny, the open thinny, and its blue green beyond in a very yonic doorway of old brick and vines. That... doesn't actually go with the architecture of the house. You know what it kind of does go with though? Skip's pruning gloves. Skip what the fuck were you doing back there.

Next week! In addition to more body-swap shenanigans we have someone cutting themselves across the palm, implied to be Nathan, I think that is. Someone else (Skip?) taking Vince and Dave's hands, presumably to swap them back? Maraudrey bragging that Nathan's not going to hurt her. No, but Duke might, who's driving that body this time? Someone's been locked up. At least two other people are naked! Nathan's crashing his truck into a pole, Nathan, what the hell. And Gloria, or at least Gloria's body, is screaming for help right after Audrey shoots a gun. Sideways. Not that that matters to Dwight's body. This is going to be rough. Again. Some more.

2 comments:

  1. Was this episode actually filmed in Manteo NC?

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    1. No, unfortunately I don't think so, that would have been cool, though! I believe this was still filmed in Nova Scotia. I'd love for them to film here, though.

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