Joggers in the woods! And a biker, by the look of it. Possibly a public park or some other place where joggers often go, only with a typical New England set of greenery. Between the nature of the show and the minor key music we know that Greg isn't going to make the caterer's. Or the wedding. By the time she picks up the shoe we totally know something gross is about to happen whether or not we've seen the preview scene. And indeed, she steps on a pair of lungs. Ew.
Duke! Duke being adorable. Duke calling himself Audrey's neighbor and not her landlord, which puts him on an equal footing with her and even to the point of being cute rather than assuming the title of landlord, which he could if he wanted to assert authority over her. The 'please don't shoot me' part, which is probably also accurate, is entirely because Duke cracks jokes and puppy eyes when he's worried about the people he cares about being upset and thinks he can get away with it. It hasn't escalated to the point where he has to be serious yet, so he'll crack jokes to ease the tension. This is seriously the episode of 'oh DUKE.' And he's brought her coffee, presumably he knows how she takes it. "One shot or two?" Which is likely half joking and half serious, he's a proprietor of a bar and sometime bartender, he knows how some people do like to catch a break from their lives with alcohol. The part where she tells him she has to go to work and he replies with "A triple, then!" is all joking, you can see it in the crinkle and twinkle in his eyes and in his smile. Except Audrey's not looking at him. Half on purpose not looking at him, she has the posture of someone who's avoiding something, and she turns as he comes in, keeping her back to him. Good choreography there. Avoiding him, avoiding him being so nice to her because she's going to disappear, because it's a reminder of what she can't avoid. Or so she thinks. Whether or not that's true remains to be seen.
Interesting that she equates going to work with helping the Troubled. She's a cop, it's her duty to help everyone, but she focuses on the Troubled because it relates to her aspect as a whatever she is. I doubt she thinks of herself as Troubled, because apart from their Trouble they live largely normal, human lives. She doesn't age, and she doesn't live longer than six to eight months at a time. Interesting, also, that she's wearing the flannel coat which isn't like her usual attire, but closer to what Nathan playfully foisted off on her in episode four of season one, and that she's actually fumbling with her things. For the first time that gun and badge look (and by the movement of her hands, feel) awkward on her. Helping the Troubled, yes, is the one thing she knows she wants to do. It's also the one thing she probably feels she's good at right now, the one thing she knows she has a purpose for, and the one thing she knows she can do of her own volition. That no one else can. There follows a typical statement from Duke, typical of most people who are seeing a friend going through a really hard time, that involves "if I were in your situation I would do this." And another one whereby he tries to distract her by dangling a just-the-two-of-us here's-something-about-me-no-one-else-knows in front of her. She, of course, pays not a jot of attention. Although I have to wonder what the hell oysters drizzled in absinthe tastes like.
Duke, not being distracted by impending fate, finds her car keys and dangles them at her with a very pointed look. The point being that she needs to calm down, take a breath, relax. His contradictory feelings on what she should be doing intrigue me, but I suspect any vacation he suggests would be only temporary, followed by the getting down to the business of how to avoid her disappearing this time. At any rate, his question about "I am gonna grab the first flight outta here" is more relevant to Duke than Audrey, keeping in mind that Duke's the one who lives on a boat, Duke's the one who's left before, and Duke seems to like keeping his options open to run away if it gets too tough. And while Duke's definition of too tough isn't a conventional one, there is a part of him that feels that very childlike fear and impulse to go curl up somewhere and hide until the bad thing goes away. In this case, curl up "on some island where nobody does anything... wears anything. Nobody turns into anything unnatural." But he wants to take Audrey with him because Audrey is his stuffed toy, his woobie (in the more classic sense), Audrey is his security blanket because she makes things better. I dare say, she's also one of the few if not the only person who makes him believe he can be better. Audrey brushes off the idea that 'Chief Wuornos' would want her to take some vacation time because she's gotta go to work, and Duke picks up on both her tone and her avoiding his eyes and the phrasing. We noticed it too, Duke, but thanks for calling her on it.
Outside as she's locking up he points out so we can hear it in words that she hasn't told him yet. She avoids his eyes for another line or two and then does look up when she says she's waiting for the right time, this time, as a plea for Duke to understand. Only Duke knows that there is no right time for this kind of thing, partly because that's Duke and partly because of his history, he knows there's always going to be something making things go wrong. But also that you should take the opportunities that are there. Duke's choice of approach is to tell her that he couldn't handle living in this town if Nathan was running around tearing it apart looking for her, but if you take away all the parts about Nathan it's still just as true. Brows lifted and mouth half-smiling, there's earnestness wrapped up in fear in his expression. He doesn't want her to go, but he also knows that she's at her best when she's working with the both of them (not necessarily together) and he wants her to tell Nathan so she has all the tools available to her and then maybe she'll stay. It's a beautiful, perfectly understated, and a wonderful performance from Eric Balfour that showcases Duke's complex feelings for Audrey, most of them starting with the letter L. Whichever variation on those words you want to pick out, Duke wants what's best for her. And Audrey, being stressed and freaked and upset, takes it out on him with a snippy comment about how it's going to be so hard on him. Audrey, if you were less frazzled you would remember that Duke phrases things to be all about him to protect himself. Be nice.
Audrey ducks under the police tape and is straight down to business, which Nathan interrupts with a "Good morning" and a smile. Which is about the strangest thing I've seen this season; people getting abducted by aliens and lungs on the ground are normal for Haven, but Nathan smiling and being cheerful and good morning? That's weird. Nathan has coffee for her too, but because this is Nathan and Nathan doesn't know yet, and because this is normal cop stuff, she accepts it. Though by her face I wonder if she's missing the shot or three of Bailey's. Nathan gives her the sitrep and takes her over to the body and the new coroner, who is none other than Doctor Lucassi! Hi, Doc, we haven't seen you for any length of time since early on in season one. (Well, brief appearance in season two, very brief.) Of course, this is a name we've heard before, but this is the first time they brought the actor back, which is interesting. The one-to-three-sentence summary of his episode, for those of you who don't remember, is that he was the doctor running the psychiatric hospital where he treated the wife of a Troubled man who cured mental disease or defect (and caused it in the healthy) by playing music around other people. In the end they all went off onto a boat to make music and be cured together, so as not to cause a city full of violent mentally ill people from the previous population of the healthy. So, two sentences! I do find it interesting (and maybe a little clumsy) that Nathan says the good doctor hates it when his patients talk back, but the last time we saw him his field of study was Alzheimer's and he didn't seem to have much of a bedside manner for his study subjects and patients at the hospital. Or much of anyone. So maybe that's accurate. Fun additional facts: he also locked Audrey out of a room by deception so he could dose himself with potential psychosis inducing drugs and had a mild case of OCD related to cleanliness. Probably being a medical examiner where he can control more aspects of his doctor-patient interaction is a wise idea after all. I do wonder if we'll see more of him now, though, and if so, if he's going to turn out to be Troubled or not. If his Trouble is OCD Nathan is officially off the top of the lamest trouble ever list.
Doc Lucassi goes on to describe his pretty physically impossible findings, which is about standard for Haven. We get as much of a lampshade as we ever get, which is Audrey asking how the lungs come out. I will never, ever be able to use the phrase 'coughing up my lungs' again without thinking of this scene. But wait! Oh noes! Here's a shady man taking pictures of the crime scene and then disappearing! He's even got a fedora type hat and black leather jacket, just so we know he's sketchy. I will note that modern technology makes it really, really easy to pull this stealth photography crap, which both amuses me as a writer with a potential plot device and makes some other plot dilemmas really unrealistic and therefore annoying.
Anyway. Cut to the police station, of course, so Audrey and Nathan can go over the details of the crime. She looks more confident without the wrapped in flannel, which to my mind confirms my suspicions that the flannel was her comfort blanket for the morning to get her into the thrust of the investigation and therefore out of the mental rut her thoughts were circling around. Nathan has the list of lung transplant wait listed, which he's most likely pulling for form's sake. Neither of them believes this is about organ-legging, it's a Trouble. And this is possibly the fastest they've lept to that conclusion ever, skipping all the preamble with a brief nod to normal-style police work and straight to the Haven special. Which actually does happen to be about organ-legging! But Nathan's hoping it's Greg's Trouble rather than a Troubled murderer, and Greg just happened to have one of those self-destructive Troubles that involved coughing up his own lungs. I'm trying to think of anyone whose Trouble involved basically killing themselves the first time it manifested. Apart from Audrey talking the pyrokinetic into blowing himself up, and setting aside the danger potential of Nathan's inability to feel, I can't think of one. Sorry, Nathan. And that was a bit brutally practical, especially for you.
Audrey's not so interested in the lung transplant waiting list, for which I can hardly blame her, but more interested in the theatre tickets Nathan's got on his desk. She's trying for her usual playful/teasing smile when she asks Nathan what that's about, and almost succeeds. Nathan almost succeeds in looking like a real live boy, too, with his sheepish explanation. Or start of an explanation; Audrey deliberately misunderstands when she asks who Nathan's taking, and we know it's a deliberate misunderstanding because once again, she's avoiding looking at him. She's avoiding looking at both of the men in her life a lot lately, not knowing how to handle the knowledge that whatever connections she keeps building with them are going to snap utterly when she disappears and loses all her memories. Possibly she's also remembering finding the other Lucy Ripley and what she told her the first time around, and wondering if that's going to happen here. There's a theory I have that goes something like, if she breaks all ties to both the boys now, she and they don't have to hurt as much when the inevitable snap happens. We'll even see how that theory bears out and if it holds up a lampshade later in the episode! Right now Nathan is being very boyish and shy in his asking her out on a date, not actually using the words 'will you' or 'date' or 'go out' or 'with me', but you know that's what he's doing. He's even almost smiling. When Nathan smiles you see it more in the crinkle at the corners of his mouth, there's no full on grin, and actually when I realized this my estimation of Lucas Bryant as an actor about quadrupled because there is a lot of facial and body control that goes into being that flattened when your natural instinct is to smile big and be goofy. Damn, Lucas Bryant. You amazing. So, Nathan's almost smiling, but the smile fades as Audrey doesn't respond the way he expected. Sweetly and tellingly both, he doesn't say he'll find someone else but first that they don't have to go (no pressure on her) and she says she wants to, but she can't. So he's all okay, he can get a refund, and then Audrey realizes she does have to tell him. And part of what Duke was trying to say is that it's cruel to keep Nathan in the dark like this.
Nathan's worried puppy eyes know there's something more to this than just that she has a scheduling issue, or some other minor, non-Havenite reason she can't go to the theatre with him. Audrey sits down so she doesn't have to stand while she says this, and Nathan's what's wrong about breaks my heart in two syllables, thanks for that, Lucas Bryant.
Audrey tells Nathan what might be the shortest possible complete version of the story as far as she knows it, with careful calm and self-control. Once Nathan realizes what she's talking about he has minimal self-control, and his instincts are to find out or figure out what causes her disappearance and go fix it. Oh honey. It sounds like he says we'll call and gets cut off there, but it's hard to say. Audrey tries to impress upon him the finality of this, which says something about where her head's at. She's trying to cope with the fact that she'll disappear in forty six days, not trying to find a way out of it. How good of a response that is to the situation is an exercise I leave for the reader. Meanwhile Nathan asks how she knows this, and when she tells him that Duke found it out he doesn't respond with the kind of hostility we've seen from him towards Duke in the past few episodes. He doesn't doubt the information because it comes from Duke, in fact, he seems a bit startled and maybe hurt or puzzled, with the faint narrowing at the corners of his eyes, why Duke figured it out before he did. There's none of the violent outburst, no viciousness, which to my mind lends further credence to our theory that he's not actually as angry with or hateful of Duke as he pretends to be. Now that only Audrey's here to see, he does believe in Duke's ability to find things out and he's not upset with Duke for bringing this down on their heads, doesn't blame Duke for Audrey's upcoming disappearance, which would be in line with his previous behavior this season. His head's still spinning and he's a little hurt that Duke knew, but that's it.
We interrupt this fresh burst of heartbreak to bring you Doc Lucassi, asking if they have a statement from the fiancee yet. Audrey says Nathan was just about to do that, with a look that reminds him they have police work to do. And in response we can see Nathan putting away his pain and his anticipation of loss and heartbreak to become a cop, to deal with the cop problems, with a firm little nod and a tap of whatever that is in his hand on the desk. Lucassi reports that the lungs found next to the body didn't belong in the body, implying that the unsub removed the victim's healthy lungs and replaced his own diseased barely functional lungs with the new ones. Audrey is incredulous, or at least, as incredulous as she can get knowing about the Troubles. More like "what fresh amazing new hell is this" incredulous. But when we switch cameras over to Nathan he isn't quite paying attention, breathing shallow, fidgeting with a pen. It's possible he recognizes the Trouble. It's more likely that he's still processing about Audrey.
But no, Audrey's right, Nathan goes over to interview the fiancee and get her statement. The usual cop statements, this shouldn't take long, and did they often go on that trail. The fiancee is freaked out, upset, doesn't want to go through this again oh hey look. It's more of that graffiti. Hi graffiti. You are not at all obvious. Also, what other guy? We don't know! Opening credits! At some point we will do a post analyzing the opening credits and the changes they've made from seasons one and two to season three. For now we will only say hi to the opening credits and hiss at the poster for 'the Revered Flagg.' Because reasons. And Stephen King's goddamn basement muse.
We get a quick establishing circle-over shot of the police station and then Nathan comes in, rattling off a description to Audrey of the second unsub who came into the police station and questioned the fiancee as a cop. Yes, that is ballsy. That's also, even in small town New England, the hallmark of either a serial killer or a rogue cop/fed or both. Serial killers often insert themselves into investigations, I know most of you probably know this but I'm repeating it anyway for the sake of completeness, and a rogue cop/fed would be able to pass as a cop who's supposed to be there. And I add rogue to the description because if he really was supposed to be there, he'd've asked first. Or at least made a polite pretense of asking before he brushed on through to question the fiancee. Nathan goes into crisis mode, albeit somewhat slowed crisis mode. We've seen him in a few crises before, and both his words and his actions are muted by a little bit and slowed by about half a second. Still processing the news about Audrey. In a way, both still processing that and the fact that she's the only one he can feel, a fact which he's had to share with Duke most recently, underscoring his vulnerability there. And now he's all too aware that he's about to lose the one person who can reach him in ways no one else has been able to for years. It's a lot to deal with, and he doesn't have time, poor bastard. Because not only does he have a spy in the station, he has another call-out.
Shot of Nathan's truck, heading away, along the coast at a good clip. Leaving things behind, rushing off and leaving someone or something behind. Because this episode is very much about leaving things behind. Most of them to do with innocence or better days.
They enter in standard cop fashion, and look! There's a body with a guy kneeling over it. How convenient. More accurately there's a body with a guy kneeling over it and a pair of kidneys beside it, how disgusting. The second unsub rises with his hands in the air and a rapid fire delivery of easy, he's a cop, all repetitious-like. The repetition and the rapidity could be the telltales of a lie, or it could just be his natural inclination when he's staring down the barrels of guns, hard to say at the moment. Rest assured, though, we will be working up a profile of our newcomer. Audrey confirms that the de-kidney'ed guy is dead, and not even an ice bath to make the urban legend complete, dammit. Nathan suggests with a glare that the guy 'get on the wall', which he does, offering them the badge in his pocket verbally rather than reaching for it. Smart guy, whatever he is. Audrey collects his badge, looks at it, and passes it to Nathan after confirming the picture is indeed him. Although given who Audrey is, I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't take the badge and ID for granted, after all, she had one when she came down here as well and she sure as hell wasn't FBI Agent Audrey Parker. His badge number is 879, though I doubt that's very significant. The usual questions, why are you here, what do you want, who are you, where's your toilet seat... sorry, wrong show. He claims to be a cop, claims that he didn't check in because he didn't want to get in the way which no one actually believes, and grins when he says he's checking in now with exactly the sort of grin troublemakers give right before they either bolt or talk their way out of things. The grin that says they've caught him but he's either too charming or too well-played to stay caught. Then he tells a story about an unsub who reached down a guy's throat and took out his liver and left him a bad one in its place and can they please all work together. Nathan is not inclined to let him off the hook so easily, cuffing him first with his hands behind his back and then to the stair as they hear floorboards creak and realize someone's upstairs. More of Nathan's callousness and cold ruthlessness shows through here when we get the bit of dialogue of "Shh." "You're leaving me cuffed in a house with a perp?" "Yeah. So shh." That's cold, Nathan. That's really cold.
Upstairs, there is someone, but it's a young woman, sweaty and pale and looking kind of out of it. They holster their guns as soon as they see this, which they really shouldn't, you guys, this is Haven. More to the point, you're cops. You've barely spoken with her and you're clearing her as a threat? Come on. They do exchange a bit of dialogue, then, and she asks if her brother's okay, which is probably the guy on the floor sans kidneys. In other words, no.
Back over to the police station, and starting with the sweaty pale young woman pillowing her head on the table. For the record, it was at this point in time that we started profiling the first unsub and drawing a similarity between the two survivors of the two attacks that we knew about. Both women of mid twenties to mid thirties in age, both with short cropped hair, both in good physical shape, we wondered if there might be a connection between them as victims as well, and how the unsub went around choosing who to steal organs from. As it turned out, not so much the case, I'll tell you that right now because if you're reading this you've probably already seen the episode. While we're doing this Audrey sums up the situation for Claire Callahan, who is considerably more subdued in this episode than she was previously. Apart from now having a few days' experience working with the police in general and Audrey in particular I can't find a Watsonian reason for this, though I suspect the Doylist explanation is character settling both with the actress and crew and with the writers. When she starts in on Audrey some of the manic energy comes back, but her words seem much more considered. The tension is obvious, and she says 'interesting' with that drawn-out manner meant to highlight that everyone is knowledgeable here. Audrey pulls out the lampshades as to psychiatrists/ologists saying things like 'interesting' and Claire lampshades her lampshade by pointing out that that's half the fun of saying it. Oh Claire. You'd be a woman after my own heart if you didn't have all the subtlety and finesse of a bullet train. But she's not stupid, and when she looks at the young woman she sees the girl's in trouble. Physical distress, more than the other, right now.
Duke must have just arrived in her office because he's sitting down as Audrey walks in, still bundled in her flannel, still with her hands in her pockets from dodging and resisting answering Claire's questions. Remember, hands in pockets, and especially hands in pockets with shoulders hunched, is self-protective body language. Sometimes it conceals deception, right now it projects 'leave me alone.' Duke, perceptive enough to see this, reaches out to touch her a couple of times but stops himself both times, holding out his hands to show he's not touching or approaching. And he apologizes for pushing earlier, which is both a fairly rare show of humility from him and an admission of wrongdoing that isn't necessarily his to make. Or maybe wrongdoing isn't the word, but an admission that he pushed a boundary he in retrospect sees he shouldn't have pushed. And he starts to say something else but Audrey admits that he was right, which is a tacit apology if not an outwardly stated one, and stops Duke before he gets out whatever he was going to say next. She takes off the flannel, sits down, lets herself be a little more vulnerable in front of Duke. Duke sits down and there is nothing but concern on his face, so whatever bad blood he feels is now between him and Nathan, it gets put away because of this.
Audrey says he's (Nathan's) confused, and her tone seems almost like someone talking about a child who doesn't understand why Mommy had to go away. But she admits that she is, too, and it alarms Duke as well as the rest of us, so that he brings in a chair closer to her and sits closer, incidentally putting himself between her and the door/the rest of the world. He leans in, he's earnest and wide-eyed, and he tries to get her not to believe that this disappearing fate is inevitable. He uses himself as an example, thereby setting himself a massive Chekhov's gun with which he will later be forced to shoot someone and carry out his destiny, and at this point A and I both sigh oh DUKE. Not that we didn't see this coming from actor Eric Balfour's twitter feed at the start of the week. But there's still something gut-wrenching and heart-rending about Duke's earnestness that he can beat his destiny, he can avoid using his trouble, and therefore Audrey must be able to, too. We know by the laws of narrative causality that he's going to eat his words later, and now that he's tied in Audrey's impending disappearance with his own future as a Troubled bloodline- and person-killer when that becomes a reality, it will underscore the inevitability of her future as well. All together now, oh Duke. There's going to be a lot of that this episode.
"I'm supposed to be out all silver-eyed killing people and ending their family's Troubles..." He laughs like it's ridiculous, and Audrey interrupts him with "But, you're not." with what's almost her first smile of the episode, there. And a look for Duke that reminds him that he's not that person, because she believes he's not. And he takes that and accepts it because he believes he's not, either. And he thinks that proves his point. There's a lot of emphasis on I-choose in his next words, which Audrey then counters by pointing out that Lucy and Sarah didn't have a choice. I do find it interesting that she leaps to the conclusion that they didn't, because really, she doesn't know what happened. No one living does, except maybe Bolt Gun. And since Bolt Gun's words ("You stand there so smug and possessive." "You think I don't know you're the same person.") seem to imply that she could have disappeared and returned with her memory intact, either Bolt Gun knows that the memory erasure and disappearance aren't certainties or he refuses to believe otherwise. It'd be nice if we had more information on what Bolt Gun knows. Vince and Dave also imply something similar, very very early on in the series, when they suggest "We were hoping you could tell us [who the woman in the Colorado Kid photo is]," but AudSarLu doesn't recognize her previous incarnation Lucy Ripley. At any rate. Different people, is the thrust here, have different expectations of what AudSarLu should know about the Troubles and her part in their process. Audrey believes it is inevitable that she cycles out of the town, with no memory of what happened and no clues left behind as to where she goes. Duke is sad about this, and while he phrases it as "I want to help you, but I honestly just have no idea how to do that" at least half of that is because he can't help her unless she is willing to believe there's a chance the disappearance won't happen, and half of that is because he really doesn't have the information. And yet, his earnestness does bring out only the second smile we've seen from Audrey all episode. He gives her the if you need anything speech, which is also a far cry from the Duke who initially liked her so much better when she was locked up in her cupcake room and thought she wasn't that bad, for a cop. I'm not sure if this is actor decision or show direction, but they are very much hammering on Nathan and Duke's feelings for Audrey, both of them, in ways both scriptural and in this case musical that they didn't last season.
Over to a different kind of character building we have Stan NoLastName talking to someone named Mark, who we learn is his nephew doing a ride-along to see what being a cop is like! Awww! Clearly something bad is going to happen to the kid soon. Claire walks up and points out that the young woman still faceplanted into the table isn't well and asks Stan to find her a blanket while she calls for an ambulance. What Claire's been doing in the meantime that wasn't getting the girl to a hospital I have no idea, though it's possible she's also been tracking down someone who would know whether or not an ambulance has already been called, and taking the young woman's vitals. Stan and Mark go off to get the blanket, Claire goes off to get the ambulance, the young woman goes off like someone lit a rocket under that table, lifting her head and eyes darting around, nostrils flaring. And at this point we revised our theory to maybe she was the unsub! Because really, the young lady looks Troubled. Actually at first we revised our theory to that her brother was the unsub because as we all know, Troubles run in families, but ID probably confirmed that the body was her brother.
Detective Bowen apparently is Detective Bowen, or he has someone similar to Audrey's Agent Howard covering for him that no one else knows about. Nathan's comment about how it sounds like Bowen goes his own way is polite cop speak for "Bowen has a tendency to go rogue, off the rails, or AWOL regularly." At that rate I wonder why Bowen's still on the force at all, but there are any number of perfectly mundane explanations for that one. Audrey asks what happens when outside cops start poking around Haven's troubles and Nathan quips that sometimes they keep 'em, with a look to Audrey that is blatant fondness and affection. Audrey looks less pleased by the affection (though still somewhat flattered and comforted) than she does made uncomfortable by it and the reminder it brings that this isn't something she can explore deeply. She moves away as she asks what happens to the others, at which point Nathan gives her the answer we (and probably she) was expecting, that they get rid of them any way they can.
Over to the cell the cop is in, aww, they left him with his laces and his belt! No, no one believes you're going to kill yourself, Officer Bowen, so cut the shit. Nathan snarks off about Bowen's poor record of conduct in his previous department and Bowen snarks off about how he and his boss were "in a difficult place in [their] relationship." Apparently at no point in this conversation do we get any sign that Nathan talked to anyone other than the boss-sounding person in Boston nor do we get any indication that Bowen is up here legitimately. Even quasi-legitimately. Yes, they've taken him off the suspect list for the murders, but not, as Audrey says, the working outside his jurisdiction list. Snark all around! Bowen paces and goes back and forth as he gets his stuff out of the evidence bag and replaces it on his person; Audrey and Nathan are calm and upright. Bowen does calm down some when he's got his cop stuff on again, which might be personal identity security issues, and when he gives the description of how he knows the case and what brought him to Haven. Hi ho, Sea Dogs. Nathan tries to get him to go away but Bowen doesn't let him get any further than "I appreciate how you've got a personal stake in this case" before he threatens them with the Feebs. At which point your friendly neighborhood profiler gives a little squee of not being the only one who calls them ickle nicknames. Ahem. He means, of course, the FBI, as would normally be the case when there's a multi-state serial killer, and possibly the BAU given the special circumstances. I pause now to let those of you who also watch Criminal Minds ponder the crossover and the subsequent Hotch-Nathan stoic-off.
Flyby of the hospital before we go in; Claire now seems to be the liaison between medical and police, which actually makes sense in this context because she was the one who had called the ambulance for the young woman in the first place. We learn that both the organs we saw so pleasingly displayed on the ground, urk, were from the same person and that the young woman whose name I should really remember is Zoe is also suffering from massive organ failure across the board. Claire exposits that the best organ matches come from family (which I don't think is always true but is generally true enough to go on with) and then everyone else fills in the nature of the Trouble of the Week. It's like a grotesque game of tag, in which one person runs around trying to steal organs and if he doesn't get them and the victim lives, the victim's Trouble is then activated by the stress and they run around compulsively stealing organs as well. Yay! Oh, wait, no, that other thing. More exposition, this time about the potentiality of all the victims being related. Which, since their parents all used sperm donors, is pretty high! Why yes, they do have a fertility clinic. At 42 something something, I only make note of the number because, heh, 42. Life, the Universe, and Everything. At the Haven's Hope fertility clinic the receptionist and possibly doctor insists the donors were all different, but no one believes her. They get the patient files and the employee records going back 25 years, and Nathan foists Bowen off on the clinic worker to get him out of the way so he and Audrey can talk about the Troubled aspect of the case without him. They go over to the wall of children's photos. All of them could be current victims that need to be protected or, eventually, current killers. Audrey says they have to break the cycle and she and Nathan exchange a look, but while Nathan's look is somber and trusting, Audrey's has the narrowed-eyed look like she's just thought of something.
We zoom in on one of the children's photos and then pull back to reveal the same photo stuck in a notebook. And underneath the photo in that notebook? Is that a hashtag I see? Why yes, yes it is! #EscapetoHaven is written, and this might be the first instance where it appears not just as a bit of graffiti posted by the guard, but potentially in the context of someone making a note of it and taking that advice. Remember, this unsub started out killing in Boston. And though the hashtag has turned up in all sorts of places it shouldn't right now, it's not unreasonable to assume that he copied it down from somewhere to do just that, go to Haven. If so, I may have to find a Guard member to punch them in the face. Then we pull up from the notebook to get our first good look at the unsub, not exactly non-descript but definitely in the more numerous category of descriptions, white male, older say in his mid fifties, graying at the temples and dark of hair other than that, casual clothes. He looks over at a young woman who's clearly one of the kids he has a photo of and sniffs the air, because this episode wasn't scary/gross enough. I know this is a Trouble, but I can't help but be amused that familial recognition is scent based, because in many mammals and even other classes, I think, familial recognition really is scent based.
Moving along to the police station again, we have confirmation that all the victims are related, from the same donor at that clinic. Half a dozen in Haven, more scattered around the country, most of them that they've found written up on that whiteboard in someone's terrible handwriting but the one that catches my eye is Rolly Deschain. Really? SERIOUSLY? We had to pause for a fit of capslocking flail over that one, because Roland Deschain is the protagonist of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. In which, I might add, Flagg also features. When I look up from slamming my head into my desk Audrey and Nathan are talking about the latest scientific impossibility, er, Trouble, with the door open. Not smart, you two. They're not used to having around people who don't either believe in or tune out the Troubles, and it allows Bowen to walk up on them from behind and mock their "chupacabra organ-sucker" theory. Which would be hilarious if it weren't true.
The girl the unsub was sniffing earlier comes around an SUV with the hood up, and we have a classic abduction scene where the unsub presents with a broken car and a broken phone and asks to use his intended victim's phone. This all plays out pretty boilerplate. She's taken in, I want to punch him in the throat, fairly standard. Cut to Audrey and Duke coming up and Duke half-complaining, half-teasing about how helping her isn't any fun. He knew, and she knows he knew, what helping her would entail. A bit of banter involving drinks with funny umbrella hats and he comments that the freaky thing about her is that finding some guy who's hunting his kids is her idea of fun, which she rightfully lampshades. I single this quote out, though, because Duke clearly admires her for it, for being the good guy, for tracking down someone doing a really bad thing. Audrey gives the girl a name, so it is the same girl both in the baby photo and the older picture, Miriam Lacroix. And as she describes the potential victim Duke spots her with the fake-broke-down SUV! Of course they're too late to stop him whipping out what appears to be his inner Elder God and trying to harvest the girl's spleen or something. Thus triggering her trouble, thus Duke gets a look at what the stakes are up close and personal, thus setting the scene for something dire to happen later on.
Back to the police station, in which Bowen is taking this all a little too calmly. Granted, he's right, after a while cops tend to be able to spot someone who's lying, someone who's saying something they believe is true even if it isn't, and someone who just plain can't tell the difference between reality and fiction. And Nathan's story rings true because it is true. That doesn't mean Bowen should be taking it this easily, which makes me suspicious even if no one else but my partner is. Admittedly, Bowen also thinks Nathan falls into the second category. He's still taking this way too quickly and calmly. One of the names behind him, by the way, is also Penny Callback. I'm going to spend the next several minutes planting my face into the wall.
Ahem. Audrey calls in the SUV, and we learn that the guy's name is Harry Nix and he has an address in Haven, and worked at the clinic until six years ago. Audrey and Duke have nothing at that address, but Audrey picks up a picture and when Duke asks about it, hands it to him. She claims to need a current photo for the APB, which is complete bullshit because if she's calling Nathan at the station they have access to driver's license records which include, wait for it... photos! And since the station would be putting out an APB, Duke, really, you should be calling bullshit right about now. But no, Duke gets an eyeful of the happy family instead, and it affects him the way Audrey knew it would. Just to underscore it when Duke realizes aloud that he took his kids with him she points out that Mr. Nix might need to harvest his own kids' organs. Everyone is dismayed by this, as well they should be, but Duke doesn't yet seem to grasp what Audrey brought him along to do. Either that or, and possibly more likely, he's not letting himself think that she brought him along to do that on purpose. Because Audrey knows how he feels about that, and she wouldn't make him do that, right? Of course right.
(Not right at all, but poor Duke doesn't know that yet.)
Back over to Nix, who is at some poor bastard's house trying to find someone else he can steal organs from, but they're not there. My heart bleeds for you, Nix. His wife clearly has no idea what's going on, and he tries to pretend everything's okay, but if my husband smiled at me like that I'd be reaching for the automatic door locks and window toggles. I'm just saying. And it's definitely a mark of how far gone he is down the path of sociopathy or related emotional lacks that his first thought is oh well, gonna have to snack on my own kid. So he makes the excuse of a pit stop to take him into the woods. Why the woods when there's a perfectly good house there he's already pretended to know the owners of? Who knows. Maybe his lockpicking skills aren't that great or he hasn't checked the usual places for a stashed key. Why not around the back of the house? Yeah, I don't know that either.
Audrey and Duke pull up to the Draper house, outside of which is parked the SUV of facehugger doom. Duke already has this look of bracing for something, either the something horrible they're about to walk up on or the something horrible he's about to be asked to do, hard to say. Given the depth of his denial about whether or not he would ever kill someone to save them/their family/Haven from their Trouble I'd say the former. Audrey goes up to the SUV first, asks where Nix is, But before Audrey can manufacture an adequate keep-calm-everyone type excuse for why she needs to know where the woman's husband is Duke comes up on her other side, clearly more agitated and urgent, and asks where her son is. That's not helping anyone keep calm, Duke, but it does get their whereabouts quicker. Everyone races to stop creepy dad and his creepier facehugger tongue from harvesting his son. Bowen now believes, at least, and has that expression of the fuck was that? and as everyone recovers, Audrey asks Nathan to get Bowen and the boy out of there. She only needs Duke. Nathan's 'why' is less a real question and more of a I can't have heard you right what did you say? Duke's face falls as it finally hits him. Audrey can't look at either of them. And Nathan's expression slides from stoic but questioning to grim and disappointed. He doesn't want to think that Audrey is actually advocating for this. Tellingly and still in line with his attitude this episode and last season, he doesn't blame Duke for any of this. He doesn't even direct his harsh words towards Duke. He gives that 'heh' sound of 'jesus christ Audrey' and tells her she doesn't know where this ends, which is a valid argument. It also showcases, subtly, his faith that Duke isn't a killer like he's been shouting about for the first two episodes of the season. Audrey's just thinking about the lives it can save today, because yes, this is the most pernicious and destructive Trouble we've seen yet. Not just wholesale destruction on the line of meteor strikes or towns being erased, but a plague of organ-harvesting that would slowly consume all of Haven or reduce it to organ-seeking shamblers. In essence, a budding zombie apocalypse. And by now she's seen four kids fall victim to death by slow organ failure, and she's made Duke watch a couple of them, and she's even further convinced that this is the only thing she can do to save them. Neither Duke nor Nathan can believe that Audrey planned this, and probably Audrey herself can't believe she's doing it, but as she said at the very beginning, saving the Troubled is the one thing she knows she can and will do. In that sense, it's actually a very selfish act. And in another sense, she's right, because it will save many, many lives.
Duke still doesn't want to believe this as he stands up, as the kid is led away. Audrey tries to tell him she's sorry, but he doesn't seem to believe that either. We get some good Duke teeth, because his jaw is clenched as he accuses her of setting him up to kill Nix. And we get both of them arguing good points, Audrey arguing that there are scores of children who are going to kill their families, that this is a cycle that will not end unless they can end the Trouble in one fell swoop, and only Duke can do that. And Duke arguing that Audrey has no right to do this to him, knowing him and how he feels about this, and not even telling him. She offers him her gun, which he slaps out of her hand like he doesn't know how to use it or is scared of it. Which tells us that he's scared of what it represents to him, because we know damn well he knows how to use a gun. Duke looks betrayed. As well he might, because he has been. And he accuses her of planning this the whole time he was helping her, which she denies, but it's true. If we take it from the pictures at the fertility clinic, yes, Duke, the whole time you were helping her track down the kids, she knew she was going to have to get you to kill someone. She argues that she was trying to get him to see the kind of monster Nix was, and he argues that she's trying to turn him into a monster. Which can be argued both for and against, whether or not killing a man to prevent a plague of organ theft/failure is monstrous, etc, but it also unquestionably shows how afraid Duke is of becoming his father, or what everyone else seems to either want him to be or think he already is: a killer. Someone who coldly and deliberately murders people is someone Duke would see as a monster, and he doesn't want to be that. Audrey, perhaps in one last guilt attempt (or at least it certainly seems that way), tells him to go walk away and she'll deal with it. Duke is more than willing here, because she's played him like a cheap harp. "Damn right you will." Nix lies panting on the ground as Duke walks away, and Audrey stares at him trying to come up with her B plan as we black out.
Back in Haven we have five dead people in the room and five living ones, going again with the set of fives we started noticing last episode. One morgue attendant, doctor Lucassi, Bowen, Audrey, and Nathan. The bodies, Nathan exposits, were discovered when the police sent to look for Nix's children, well, found them. We see on the toe tag that Harry Nix was a Caucasian male and 46, not 48 as earlier stated, so someone screwed up. And that's not even the least of the age-related bad math here, but we'll skip that in favor of watching the closure, temporary as it is, of the Bowen line. No, he's not going to tell anyone what he saw because they'd think he's crazy, which is true. Sure, maybe he'll come back up to Haven someday. Nathan even calls him a good cop, aww, Nathan, that's so cute.
Nathan catches up to Parker after that and decides to have what he seems to think should be a private conversation in a public hallway. She doesn't want to talk, Nathan thinks they have to. The whole conversation is framed in the sort of language where Nathan doesn't understand, Nathan needs to talk to her, and it's about her disappearance, but what they're not talking about is that kiss or the date or the relationship they were kind of sort of maybe starting at the end of last season and the beginning of this one. And perhaps Nathan's decided that gets tabled until he figures out where her head's at regarding her disappearance, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Audrey doesn't want to talk, doesn't want to look at him, keeps turning her eyes down or searching around the hall. Nathan brings up her asking Duke to kill people, again, not putting anything on Duke at all, it's Audrey asking him to kill, still distant from when he called Duke a hunter and a killer an episode ago. And his voice cracks, just a little, when he asks her why she won't even talk to him about it. Now there's some of the hurt from not finding out about this with her and her finding out about it from Duke, but there's also some hurt from her running around doing things he can't understand. And she, rightfully, turns it back on him since he hasn't told anyone about the tattoo and as far as anyone knows, Nathan got that tattoo to potentially be the one who kills Duke. Although given his behavior in this episode and the way she cuts short his explanation, I would argue that it's equally possible that he got the tattoo to try and save Duke, secondary to saving Audrey of course. Nathan starts almost shouting something about trying to protect her and Audrey interrupts him with a very curt well, don't. And we can see something snap inside Nathan, with his eyes glittering and his face in shadow. And we can hear it when he says "See you around the office, Parker," as he walks away.
We get a moment to breathe as she says that to Claire Callahan, "and then he just...walked away." And it's meant to be a sign of her disbalance or desperation or both, that she's talking to Claire about this. She can't talk to Duke after what she did to him. She doesn't have any other close friends. This is the first scene in which we get a sign that Claire Callahan is actually a competent shrink, too, as she teases out of Audrey that Audrey did that on purpose to push Nathan away, to keep someone she loves out of harm's way, because of what Bolt Gun said. Because now she believes that the Colorado Kid died because she loved him. Which brings up all kinds of interesting speculations about whether or not Bolt Gun said that on purpose to cause this kind of reaction, whether any of it is true. We know so little about Bolt Gun it's hard to tell whether or not he could have foreseen Audrey trying to push all her loved ones away so that they don't suffer the same fate as the Colorado Kid, or even whether or not he knew saying that would send her into a tailspin and make her fractured and alone. It does seem pretty certain, however, that Audrey is now more vulnerable than she's ever been. Underscored by the fact that she's talking to a woman she barely knows and doesn't even much like about personal matters, psychiatrist or not. (A adds: Another point about her talking to Claire, I think Audrey may have semi-consciously realized that having someone whose job it is to listen to her but not to be her friend is a useful thing.)
Someone calls Audrey. It's hard to tell who, there's no voice and no sign that she picks up a call or anything. She looks at the phone and says she has to go. My suspicion is that it's the hospital call or a call from Stan saying that his nephew was recovered, but whatever it is the call tells her to get up and bolt for the Gray Gull. Where Duke is holding up the notably empty bar. It might be after hours. He might not have opened the bar that evening. He is definitely fairly well plastered. Audrey asks for a drink by way of breaking the ice and Duke very pointedly pours another one for himself, so she talks at him until we understand that everyone has recovered, miraculously, and since we know how Duke's Trouble works we know what he must have done. He doesn't look at her after that second drink as she exposits this, not until she asks him what happened back there, and when he does look at her we can see his eyes are wet. A flashback gives us Duke trudging through the woods only to come out as Conor's mother is panicking over her son's condition and her husband's disappearance. Audrey calls for an ambulance, but not in a hurry, and Duke quietly kneels down over the dying Troubled man and suffocates him with a hand over his nose and mouth. We get to watch the blood soak in and Duke's eyes go silver-white, to contrast with the wet deep brown eyes we get as he just stares at Audrey, who already knows what must have happened. He's not happy. At all. He still blames her, but he's not going to say anything. Just gets up and staggers away, all kinds of reasons why he might do so but most of them coming back to how he doesn't trust himself around her right now, drunk and probably feeling more fragile than he ever has in his life. And she is the reason he feels this way. Someone who he trusted, who we saw him clearly and deeply loving at the beginning of the episode no matter what form of love it might take, has put him in a position where he had little choice but to turn into the monster she knew he feared and hated and never wanted to be. There's absolutely no good sides to this, there is no safe haven for Duke but the bottom of the bottle, even his own ship isn't safe now that he knows it was given to him by his father, who also wanted him to become a killer. The Gray Gull might be the last safe place left, since it was sold to him for $20 by his friends, but Audrey's there. So, no safe haven for Duke, either. And it is heartbreaking.
Our last couple scenes of the night follow Bowen, just so we don't end the episode sobbing into our whatevers. Coming out of the shower, still in his motel room, and there's a mysterious jiggering of the doorknob. Like a good cop, the second the door starts to open with no announcement of Housekeeping or who it is or anything, he goes for his gun. Cut to the shoreline, and then to a car which makes the remote-control beep and pops the trunk. Bowen comes into frame saying he's done, "Donovan" sent a guy to kill him so he's out, he's very sure about this. He'd rather be in the sticks than a body bag. As he hangs up the phone, he smirks, slightly enough that I wonder if I imagined it, but enough to cast doubt on the veracity of that whole phone call. Either way, he's got a body wrapped in plastic in the trunk, which he then pulls out, drags out, and buries. And if that's not raising hackles and suspicions all over the place, I've got a nice piece of property to sell you. At the very least, Bowen is a dirty cop, since straight-arrow cops don't normally dispose of people who break into their hotel rooms in body bags in the middle of the woods at night. He might not be a cop at all, since as far as we know Nathan only talked to one person in Boston, and we already saw with AudSarLu that that isn't necessarily enough. Time and the rest of the season will, of course, tell out.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go dig out those onion halves some ninja left under my desk. Ahem. I think I got a little something in my eye.
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