We pick up right where we left off, with Audrey over the body and Duke hovering protectively over both of them. Have I mentioned in the last thirty seconds how much I adore this wacky triad and their screwed up but incredibly tightly-knit relationship? Because my god everyone. And a repeat of the last lines from last ep, so we can be reminded how shady Tommy's acting. I mean, yes, he should be upset if he's just a cop and he's seen his boss get shot, but he should also be acting. Cops are trained to react in situations like this, call for backup, get first aid, chase after the one hope they have of getting Nathan back alive, and he's quite obviously frozen. Not, as I'm sure he wants them to think, because he's having a bad reaction/bad flashback to one of the things that drove him out of Boston (though if he IS a chameleon and took on the real Tommy's memories that's entirely possible too), but because he would vastly prefer it if no rescue was forthcoming. Hi Duke's "you're a lying liar full of bullshit" look!
Audrey doesn't understand why Tommy would shoot at Noelle, not when she's the only hope they have of bringing Nathan back. Well, Audrey, when a serial killer wants to cover his tracks very much... but they'll get there. I will say, for as traumatized as she and Duke are by Nathan being dead, they come to the correct conclusions really damn rapidly. But first we need to track her out to the road and have a whole bunch more of Tommy acting suspiciously. Who doesn't volunteer information the way he usually would on a case, Audrey has to pretty much shout at him until he starts behaving like a cop instead of like a serial killer who's scared shitless that he's about to be discovered. And since we have reason to believe that the BGK wants Audrey alive, then he can't kill her to save his own ass. Nor is he likely to kill Duke, because Duke was out in Colorado with Audrey and might yet know something about the Colorado Kid. I am, by the way, at this point going to use "chameleon" as shorthand for "something related to that Trouble but not the same, which we don't know enough about yet to know how it works." Duke is on the phone presumably grabbing sunset time from the harbormaster or someone similar, while Tommy talks Audrey out of starting a massive manhunt for Noelle. On the one hand, he's right that they don't want to deal with the entire PD knowing about a resurrection Trouble. On the other hand, it's purely self-serving and gives him a smaller pool of people to keep track of. Sigh.
We pause our cop crew (now with bonus serial killer) to visit with the Teagues. The first part of this scene confirms what we already suspected: that Vince and Dave know exactly who the Colorado Kid is, or was. Or at least, they know as much as Audrey and Duke discovered: his name, and that he was Sarah's son. Notably, neither of them seem to differentiate much between Audrey and her other incarnations. Probably that's partly a function of how at least one of them (Vince) is still in love with her and partly a function of having seen, now, at least three incarnations of AudSarLu turn up and being able to track the similarities. Dave nudges Vince about no, you're not thinking this through and it looks to me like that phrase finally sets Vince to thinking in an older mindset. A more profiler sort of mindset than we've ever seen from him before now, which to me reads as ex-mil, ex-spy, something of that nature. Vince, what the hell did you do in WWII? (K: Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare?) (A: Pardon me, I need to go cackle awhile.) Assuming it happened in Haven-verse at all like it happened here. And assuming that he's not much MUCH older than that, which is always possible; we already know the characters are older than the actors portraying them since they were in at least their mid-20s if not early 30s when Sarah showed up in 1956. So. They begin to dig around beyond what was in that cabinet, and really, boys, you should have noticed that awhile ago. I know you're smarter than that, even if you've been busy and stressed.
We'll leave them to tear the Herald apart while we spy on Noelle's boyfriend going to rescue her. GOOD paramedic boyfriend. Can has cookie. Audrey plans to follow him! Which is a good plan. Letting him through the roadblocks is also a good plan and here's where Tommy falls down. As much as he doesn't want Joseph getting through to Noelle, if they're going to be following the damn car and he gets shot by a cop at a roadblock, Audrey's going to wonder what the fuck is going on. It's a measure of how panicked Tommy is that he doesn't think this through, especially since... okay, digression time. What we've seen out of the Bolt Gun murders so far as a pattern of behavior indicates, if you're the kind of person to watch WAY too much Criminal Minds, that the killer is either devolving rapidly OR there are two killers. The kind of person who can plan an abduction and hide a body in with another Trouble causing bodies to pop up all over the place is not the same kind of person who kills in broad daylight in front of cameras. I know we've said this before, but it bears repeating as we watch Tommy devolve over the course of this episode. Because despite all the ways he falls apart, he never ever ever does things in public. Nor does he directly admit to killing any of the BGK victims. He has better sense than that, even with what I think we can presume is an urge to kill anyone in his way (there are so many OTHER ways he could've taken them out), which to me indicates that either his Trouble causes something on the order of split personality or there's still a second killer out there. This is a case, unfortunately, of time will tell. But something doesn't add up here, and Tommy's personality, his ability to masquerade as a cop for about a month, is more in keeping with the earlier abduction and murders than the recent ones. Given all that, if Tommy's the first BGK killer, this inability to think through all the ramifications is definitely a measure of devolvement.
Digression over! Credits over, too, which means it's off to a random abandoned house with Joseph and his medical kit and no explanation of how he got through the roadblocks. Oh well. I'll survive for the sake of narrative expediency. Joseph, honey, you need better zanshin. By which I mean any at all. I have to assume it's luck rather than skill that leads Tommy to the top of the basement stairs and looking down, and by that I mean more narrative expediency. Audrey and Duke are still sufficiently traumatized by Nathan's death that whatever else they may think of Tommy's behavior they're setting it aside in the hopes of getting this dealt with. Guys, that's kind of a bad idea, I'm just saying. Duke gets put on potential-fugitive watching detail while Audrey goes to check the upstairs and Tommy goes to commit another murder. I'm not sure but I think part of Duke's hard look is directed at Tommy as he goes downstairs; then again he probably can't quite believe anyone would be that brazen. Kill his friend and then continue on as part of the murder-resurrection investigation? That takes brass balls. Which, I hate to break it to you Duke, many serial killers have. Tommy approaches Noelle with the same saunter he's approached just about every other damn thing so far, just to emphasize how killing someone under the very noses of the people he's trying to hide from is all in a day's work for him. Not quite, he's shifting his weight a bit much so some of that's bravado, but this isn't abnormal for him. He stops long enough to check that Noelle's injuries are sufficient to have bled out from, which is sensible, and then he wakes her up before he kills her, because he's a sociopathic fucker who wants to see the fear and pain. Can I bite his liver out yet? Please? Yes, that's right, you're the police. Of course. I was forgetting that because you are a CREEPY FUCKING SERIAL KILLER, my mistake, I'm terribly soothed. I'm sure Noelle is too. He's damn lucky he doesn't pick up any defensive wounds from this, that she's weak enough not to scratch him in her struggling.
One ad break and establishing pan over the house later, somehow Tommy got them down and Noelle into the trunk with Nathan. The same trunk, I might add, that contained that body at the end of The Farmer (which I still suspect was the original Tommy Bowen), just for some added parallels. When I finish twitching in my chair Audrey's noticed the matching scar on Noelle's forehead and dug out some documents. Tommy, your "there's no way to bring back the chief, right?" is a little too hopeful. Numbnuts. Ah yes, there's a sister, and Troubles do run in families, but Moira doesn't have it. Yet. I'm definitely intrigued by Tommy's "you can do that?" here, which seems to me more like surprise that Audrey knows it's something she can do than that she can do it at all. The photo of the sisters looks like it was taken shortly before the car accident that changed everything, at a rough guess, since Noelle looks about 7-8 and Moira's in her pre-teens or a young teenager. Duke, to absolutely nobody's surprise, makes the connection that they'll be staying at houses that are marked as having residents on vacation. Because yes, perfect hiding spot. (Someday I want to know ALL ABOUT Duke's childhood, since his dad died when he was 7 and we have no idea who raised him until he aged out of the system. Hard to say if it's something the writers overlooked and never went back to address because they were embarrassed, or if it Will Be Important Later.) Splitting up! Yes, Audrey, do put the more suspicious of the two of you with the serial killer. That's the best idea. I snicker at the look on Tommy's face over her taking his car with the bolt gun still in the trunk, and we move along.
To a hole in the ground just about big enough to hold Grady's dismantled skeleton and any personal effects in a foot locker. Not much of a grave, but it'll do. (K: Given that it says PFC Grady would have been in the military for maybe a year or less, maybe a little more if he was busted back down to that at some point, which means Dwight was probably his commanding officer.) (A: Assuming they were actually in a unit together, which at this point is an assumption I'm comfortable making.) All of the tattoos we can see initially are Adam Copeland's, by the way. And god this scene is such fanservice; though the shirtlessness does tell us a few things. One, that Dwight regularly wears his dogtags (not a surprise); two, that he has a bunch of tattoos that could conceivably be military-related (also not a surprise); three, that one of those tattoos covers the usual location for the Guard maze tattoo. Four (or should that be 3a?) comes after the phone call where Audrey sends Dwight off to babysit the paramedic boyfriend. And this is why we love Dwight, because he doesn't ask questions about what's wrong when Audrey's obviously too upset to discuss it. Just goes and does his job after filling in Grady's grave. (Also, if you watched the Guard/Dwight videos on Youtube, they got at least ONE of the GSW scars right, the one on his left shoulder. Which might be something that's Copeland's too, since I'm not seeing clear scars for the left abdomen and right shoulder, and yes, I'm looking. I have a pulse, don't I?) HELLO giant back piece of a Guard tattoo. That's an odd placement, which could have a few different meanings. One, Dwight doesn't feel the need to have a convenient, easily covered/easy to reveal tat for the Guard. He's an awfully distinctive guy, after all. Two is that it's some kind of rank marking, whether that's actually being high up in the organization or whether that's being sideways in the organization is up for grabs. And three is that maybe he did have the forearm tat, but when he left the Guard he got the back piece done as a... reminder of some sort? Which is a bit more sentimental/self-flagellating than I'd expect out of Dwight, but given that he left the Guard after his daughter died I wouldn't count it out. People do odd things out of grief. Plus, as Kitty points out, other shows have had a theme of tats left on to remember that "all that shit's behind me now." Dwight, I still want ALL YOUR SECRETS, dammit.
Alas, no, but we get something just as good! Jordan and Audrey talking, with Audrey on Nathan's Sooper Sekrit Guard cell phone. Jordan is duly worried, because she's had something to tell Nathan for awhile and he won't pick up his phone, and Audrey gives her the absolute truth of everything that's going on. Just... not the whole truth. Little hard to speak with someone when they're dead, it turns out. Especially with the gravedigger Trouble gone out of Haven. At any rate, it's a bad set of lies and Jordan knows it, which means she's going to turn that locator on. Yeah, I wasn't even a little bit surprised when that happened. Audrey goes off to interview Joseph about the sisters' Trouble, so she can learn how it works. It makes a nice bit of exposition in case anyone missed/forgot about it in part 1, and it's a useful scene to show us what a near-outsider thinks of the sisters and their horribly co-dependent bond. I mean, this is damn near Winchester level bad. Oh look! This Will Be Important Later, with everyone having been ejected from the vehicle. At this point Kitty and I called two possibilities: one that their dad had saved both of them and subsequently died of his injuries, and two that Noelle had to make a choice as to which family member to save and then spent the next 27 years keeping it a secret. Oh sisters. So dysfunctional.
Speaking of dysfunctional sibling pairs, back at the Herald they really rather did tear that place apart. Both Vince and Dave seem to ascribe to the piles theory of organization, aka "I know exactly what pile that piece of paper is in and NOBODY ELSE DOES." Which is actually pretty effective for keeping things secret while hiding them in plain sight, so long as you're not dealing with people who break into your office and rummage through your stuff. Those carefully laid out piles are, however, rather disrupted and I can't imagine this is doing anything good for their already shaky mental state. They're down to checking each other's work and checking odd places under their desk drawers and the like. But wait! Vince found something. One of those keys is a copy and Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, that's just sloppy. You always take the copy of the key WITH you and leave them the old one. Or if you're really not sure the copy's good, you take both, check, and break back in later to swap them out. (You will all be amazed at my restraint in not making copy jokes.) It's the little details that get you every time. So to the fishing shack they go!
(One of the writers noted on Twitter that this is about as close to a real-time episode as they've gotten, and the way they shot it certainly has that feel. Admittedly some of it's compressed, since they start with over two hours to sunset, but mostly they're taking out travel time and/or unnecessary bits of exposition. I have a love-hate relationship with these kinds of eps, because I often feel compelled to sort out the real-time bits for parallels, but here I'm going to try and be good and not tangent too wildly.)
Voiceover of Audrey either leaving Duke a message or calling him and speaking for a couple seconds. As with so many things in this show, This Will Be Important Later. The door's open! Hi Moira's stuff. Moira, please don't try and shoot Audrey, that would be very unfortunate. And oh good, she's just trying to escape. Badly, but she's trying! This is one of the few times Audrey fires her gun without provocation from a suspect, and though it's deliberately high and wide it's intended to freak Moira the hell out. Which it does! Moira's very hunched and tense and almost Gollum-ish in this scene, she's probably got half an idea that Noelle's hurt and more than half an idea that she's not getting out of this cleanly. Which leads to some babbling on her part, nobody was supposed to stay dead, this was supposed to be quick and easy, so on and so forth. (This leads me to question, okay, why did you kill your first extortion vic in broad daylight? She had to know that would get the cops out. But anyway.) Audrey's confused because she wasn't actually here for the whole case and all her thoughts are on Nathan right now (well, and maybe a little on Cogan), so yay miscommunication leading to an understanding of what the fuck is going on. Audrey's questioning tone on "we have an eyewitness" speaks more to having a horrible suspicion that she doesn't want confirmed more than not actually knowing who could have done it. If Noelle didn't do it (and Moira's a really bad liar) and if Moira didn't do it, then that leaves only one person with a gun hanging around. Speaking of which, I wonder if Tommy planted a gun on Noelle, because I sure didn't see one in that basement with her. Or he made up some excuse about dropping it as she ran and they'll have to go back and look. Moira tries to bargain for her and her sister getting out of town, which I think she knows isn't going to work but she has to try, and Audrey is so not in the mood. Personalizes Nathan by saying his name, which she responds to as well as to the pain and fear of being cuffed to a chair. Audrey stays disbelieving for... not very long, actually, but longer than she might if she were in full possession of her faculties and capable of putting the pieces together. Once Moira starts talking about things that she has no way of knowing unless she saw what she said she saw, though, that tears it and, well, that's gonna do some interesting things to the rest of this ep. Poor Audrey and her look of horrified realization.
Which means it's time to call Duke and hope his smuggling instincts can get him through this without tipping Tommy off. That'd be a safer assumption if he weren't thoroughly broken up by the last 24 hours. To his credit, he does a good job of keeping his facial expression blank throughout the phone call, but then falls down when Tommy questions the length of the phone call. That's a lousy excuse and now we're all going to be knowledgeable about this! Yay! No, wait, the other thing. Just for shits and giggles, let's run down what everyone knows or is guessing. Duke knows that Tommy's the BGK and that the house is empty, so he's trying to get a gun off Tommy for self-defense. I'm a bit confused by that, actually. Duke has guns every damn place on his boat and in the Gull, I don't see why he doesn't go back and grab one of the guns he must have in his truck. Unless he just wants to see Tommy's reaction for personal confirmation, which would make sense since Tommy already suspects something hinky's going on. Tommy suspects that Duke knows he's the BGK and that Audrey has Moira, who may have seen something and be talking. At least, that's the set of assumptions I'd be making. You know, if I were a psychopathic serial killer with an AudSarLu fixation. The other way Duke could have played that, I think, would've been to send Tommy inside without asking for a weapon and then gone and gotten a damn weapon. But the way this ends up is awfully badass, so, moving on.
Jordan! Hi Jordan! You're not falling for that bullshit at all. And as much as I still don't completely trust her motives, at this point I believe that she feels quite a bit for Nathan, above and beyond his usefulness to her. By the end of this ep I'll even buy that they're all more or less working toward the same goals, but their methods differ drastically. Audrey, after not very much pushing, shows Jordan the bodies in the trunk; I guess Jordan's behavior has finally convinced her that she can be trusted. Or the circumstances have convinced her that she has no choice. Both the hard set of her jaw when she asks who did this and the hope on Jordan's face when Audrey talks about bringing Nathan back are just heartbreaking. I wonder if she has some other person/people in mind for that kind of a Trouble, though obviously Nathan is her priority right now. At any rate! Now that Jordan's caught up it's time for everyone to be knowledgeable at each other some more, but we the audience need to hear Audrey actually say what she plans to do to Moira.
Speaking of being knowledgeable, Duke's going for an axe so that he has some kind of protection against Tommy. Also, probably not coincidentally, it's a bladed weapon which will allow him to get a touch of Tommy's blood pretty fast should they get in a fight. For a second we think Tommy's going to shoot him right then and there, but no, he's going to give Duke an unloaded gun instead! Aww, you shouldn't have. And, heh, "screw regulations" is far more in keeping with Tommy's supposed normal attitude to being a cop, especially a cop in Haven, so Duke knows this about-face is even more suspicious. And now he knows Tommy knows, and Tommy knows he knows, and please don't make me enact Lion in Winter over here, that's supposed to stay on the Grimm side of the blog. We see Duke put the axe down and look at the gun warily and I would bet you quite a lot that as familiar with firearms as he is, he can tell loaded from unloaded by weight alone. He seemed to heft it to test the weight, at any rate, and that's a very "you lying liar" look.
Meanwhile back at the empty rich people's house, Audrey tries to traumatize Moira the easy way! As much as there is an easy way for this shit. Well, that would work better if Moira loved her sister enough for it to be Trouble-triggering to see her dead body. Jordan, thank you for that lampshade. Audrey asks the obvious question, since she doesn't know for herself and it's not a question you ask even of your closest friends without good reason. "Hey, how did this weird life-altering event make you feel physically?" Yeah no. (Not unless you're Chris Brody, who would totally ask that in the name of science, if he gave a damn.) Jordan's not a close friend, which in some ways is probably a blessing for this purpose. There's not a relationship to be screwed up by the asking, and they share concern for Nathan which will keep them working together at least until he's back or all hope is lost. Jordan still looks away, doesn't want to remember it, but she answers readily enough. I really, really hope we get more scenes with these two, because two blunt and pragmatic women who know how to keep their mouths shut but won't take shit from people? Oh yes. My buttons, writers, you have found them. Hey, Duke is now a walking bloodkit! AWESOME. Only he's with Tommy and apparently we're laying all our cards on the table right now. Okay then!
I'm not sure we can call these cards on the table just yet. Maybe peeking out of sleeves. And can I just say, I haven't actually seen Southland but I'm damn impressed by Dorian Missick as an actor by now. All these tiny little nervous tics that feel much larger than they are because until now Tommy has been in control, at least when he's been on the screen. Certainly he's been capable of separating out whatever he does with the BGK murders he's responsible for from his job as a cop. Every line in this scene has at least two layers of meaning to everyone, the surface layer and the I-know-you-know layer. At a minimum. That was not a smooth transition to asking about the Colorado Kid AT ALL, but Tommy's getting desperate now. Anything Duke gives him might be useful, and he'll use Duke's nervousness about when things are going down since he probably can't expect Audrey to give him anything. Assuming he makes it out alive, too. Duke just keeps having what Audrey told him confirmed as Tommy asks more questions; you can just about see him putting the pieces together. Audrey's abductor was the (a) BGK, wanted to know about the Colorado Kid. Tommy wants to know about the Colorado Kid, and he's doing a poor job of looking casual as he asks about it. Then I have to stop and find some train tracks to scream under when Tommy says he knows the feeling of a 27-year-old cold trail. HOW OLD ARE YOU REALLY, THOMAS BOWEN WHO PROBABLY ISN'T. Gah.
He keeps pushing, of course, and Duke doesn't even bother to try another evasion, changing the subject on purpose and Tommy will call him on it now, see what comes out. I'm again amused by how our left-handed Duke is holding the gun in his right hand. If Tommy knew him better, he'd know that's a sign that Duke has another weapon on him. One he trusts more. I'm fascinated by how he rejects the appellation of "Bolt Gun Killer," saying it's "too on the nose." Which is an admission that he's killed with the bolt gun but not who he's killed with it, or how many times, or any kind of clue that would go toward motive. And then he turns it around and starts interrogating a man with a gun to his face, which if we didn't already suspect would confirm that the gun is unloaded. At this point we're back to being knowledgeable and he asks outright about the Cogans. By name. Which is interesting. Duke gives him the absolute truth of dad's dead, mom has Alzheimer's, which makes the ensuing lie easier for Tommy to believe. And he clearly does believe it, by that expression of "noooo!" on his face. So there's a lot from just that tic to pick apart. (Thank you, Dorian Missick.) The simplest explanation is that he's realized Duke's implication that that avenue of information is closed, but that doesn't fit, quite. Because this is personal to him, the Kid is personal, and so it seems at least as likely that Tommy (or whoever he is) knew the Cogans/knew Sarah and thereby the Cogans. Cared about them, maybe; maybe was related to them. But if any of that's true, what prevented him from keeping tabs on them? Additional hypothesis: what if Tommy-not-Tommy is the father? (Though I have at least one more likely candidate in mind for that.) What if Cogan is the actual BGK and Tommy's protecting him as a result? And Cogan's trying to remake his mother and oh god the amount of ew there is for this cannot be overstated. I share my headache so that I do not suffer alone. Whatever the case, Duke calls the Kid "a drifter that died almost 30 years ago," and I'm not sure which part of that Tommy's objecting to more, the drifter or the dying, but that hits a nerve or three. Unfortunately, we don't get more data. Fortunately, we get Duke being a badass! I love you Duke and your propensity for going into dangerous situations with at least one weapon you personally are certain of. Though that kind of overhead strike is not how I'd attack someone unless I was very familiar with how to fight with an axe, just try and get the blade so they run onto it. Otherwise you get, yep, disarmed. Fistfight ensues, since Duke manages to also disarm Tommy, and then I'm fairly certain that palmstrike is on purpose to get a nosebleed and test a theory. Duke will now take a moment to stare and go "oh shit" over the fact that Tommy's Troubled, yes, we guessed that ages ago, thank you Captain Obvious. I glee a bit over Tommy being thrown into a wall and then wince because I would like Duke and Nathan not to both die and be resurrected on the same day. And then I glee more because I approve this use of Jordan's Trouble so hard. I would love to have been a fly on the wall for the rest of that conversation with her and Audrey. "Oh, that's not a problem, I'll just sneak up on him and taser him into compliance." Duke, you don't have to get the gun oh dammit. Tommy gets away, Duke has a moment of fuck that hurt, and Jordan looks abashed. Though it's probably a bit better for her than people trying to go all macho and shake it off, since he's clearly not blaming her. Just being Duke about it all. No, they can't go chasing after Tommy just yet, also Jordan is clearly not used to dealing with truly dangerous people. At least not the kind she doesn't trust. Leaving the keys in is a rookie move.
Back to the house where Audrey is laying Nathan's body out on the floor and Moira is giving us some exposition on the family Trouble. Nothing we didn't already get last ep, or couldn't have gathered from current information, but the bitterness goes to point up how little she cared for Noelle. And yet family ties, filial loyalty, would have kept her from truly abandoning her sister. God she's fucked up. They both are, but Moira so much more so than her baby sister. Audrey's beginning to put some of the pieces together at this point, but before she can get all threatening bad cop we have to visit our other dysfunctional siblings some more.
No, they would never make those editing choices on purpose. Of course not. And I have a bridge to sell you. By the way, the last time we saw Vince and Dave fishing onscreen was in Ball and Chain, when they caught the man with the Guard tattoo. The first instance of it we saw. Thanks. So much. I needed that headache right now. Dave thinks they were last out there over a year ago, which doesn't fit with the last time they were fishing but could fit with the last time they were out there for Haven Trouble-related business. Over a year would be, at a guess, preparing for AudSarLu's return, refreshing their memories, figuring out what it is they need to do/say/plan for as the Troubles come back. It would also fit with them having noticed that the more subtle, more personal, less wide-scale damaging Troubles are creeping back (Nathan's, Dwight's) and that it's time to get ready. And hey look, it's hanging open! Though I'm not sure if that's meant to imply that Tommy didn't lock up behind himself or (more likely, given events a little later) that he's still there. Which begs the question of why he's come back there now, since he's had awhile to search. My best guess is that it's a good hiding spot and he still hasn't found anything useful there, so he's making a last-ditch effort before going to ground. The Teagues brought guns! Of course they did.
Audrey's watching the sun out the window like a woman about to walk the widow's deck of a house or something. And then she has an idea, or more likely she decides it's time to act on an idea she had awhile ago. If the family Trouble triggers when they watch someone they love die, then Moira needs to watch someone she loves die. Only she's so broken and narcissistic that Audrey's going to have to shoot her. Gutshot, probably. I don't believe Audrey's going to do this, Kitty doesn't believe it, hell, even Moira's unconvinced. But I think Audrey's convinced herself that she can be that kind of person if it's what's necessary to save Nathan, whether that's to convince Moira she'll really do it or whether that's to actually shoot her. Classic spy tactic, you are who you pretend to be. Luckily, Duke and Jordan show up before she can do anything but get off another warning shot. Duke would like to know what's going on, with that look that says he doesn't like any of this at all, not what it's doing to Audrey nor the part where Nathan's still dead, but they'll pause the threats of a slow and painful death long enough to get a blood test. Aww! Good labkit Duke! Yeah, I'd probably freak out if a guy came at me with a knife, even if I knew they needed me alive. Because augh. And, heh, whatever logical leaps about that gunshot Duke has or hasn't made, he goes for a nonlethal injury rather than stabbing Moira in the gut, which would be another way to tell and presumably would activate her Trouble. Because Duke Doesn't Kill People, not when he doesn't have to, dammit. Audrey looks back at Nathan on the doom-laden pronouncement, obviously gathering strength/reminding herself of why she has to do this, and...
...we go back to the Teagues! That's a very nice fishing shack, which they can of course afford, with the ubiquitous hashtag on the side. There's not a great deal to this scene, for all that it moves the plot along. Oh look a boat, oh look where's the captain, oh look right behind you. Thank you, serial killer/horror tropes. About the only thing I would like to note is that I'm going to punch Tommy's smug face in for the line about "came out here lookin for some kind of Trouble." Because fuck you, that's why. Vince and Dave have pretty good poker faces but Tommy's just spent most of the afternoon and early evening being all knowledgeable, plus they have lots of tasty knowledges in their thinkmeats. As long as he doesn't go all Hannibal Lecter on them, I'm just saying.
A longer look at the clock as we come back to the house, reminding us that not only is Nathan's time running out but so is Audrey's. Yeah, we see what you guys did there. Audrey's really not bluffing this time. No really! She means it! Duke thinks there's enough of a chance that she does, or that pretending she does could trigger Moira's Trouble, that he leans over to stop her. About as gently and tentatively as Duke gets, because there's a gun up against Moira and it doesn't take that much pressure on a trigger for it to go off. But then Moira cracks and starts talking about the night of the accident, which she's obviously been chewing on for 27 years, and then we find the inconsistency! And Audrey realizes the Awful Troof, and yeah, that's right around the brainpan in a fairly unprotected part of the skull. That would totally kill a young girl. Might kill an adult. The about-face on this is a bit sudden, but given that Moira's been living with this belief for nearly 30 years and set herself up as the big sister protector and yes, been a horrible abusive bully on top of that I'll let it pass. Also because Claudia Black is fucking amazing. Her atonement, as demanded by the narrative, will of course be to try and save both Nathan and Noelle at the cost of her own life, because that is exactly how these things work. Sigh. I want to wrap everyone up and hug them right now. As I expected, Audrey's confession of love comes while Nathan's still dead. As I did not expect, she makes it in front of Jordan and Duke, which hits both of them hard in similar ways and goddammit ow. Jordan looks like she can't decide whether to stay or go but she has to know if Nathan's going to come back so she stays, and Duke looks over half-hurt that she's never said that to him and half-glad that she's finally goddamn ADMITTED IT. And then! And then! He goes all white-eyed and doesn't kill anyone in front of Jordan. That's one I want to see what she has to say/does in response. Because oh man, if the Crocker line and the Guard start working together fuck everyone who stands in their way. She and Audrey have nearly identical expressions of happiness, Audrey's is just that bit deeper, probably for their longer friendship. Duke breathes a sigh of relief and what's that? That's a casual touch between the women as Audrey lets Jordan take her turn at Nathan's side. Now, there's no obvious skin-to-skin contact but given that both their hands are bare and given the extent to which they're both highly emotional I'd be a bit surprised if Jordan had the control not to brush skin. So for now I will take that as the proof we were looking for that Jordan's Trouble doesn't work on Audrey, either, and it's a nice, quiet little moment. I also really love how there's no jealousy; Audrey had her chance with Nathan and gave it up and she'll cede the place of romantic partner to Jordan now. Duke's smile over at Audrey has a hint both of pride and of companionship, because that's exactly what he's done for her. The emotional dynamics in this room are making my head swim, can I just say? And then we have the requisite death scene with the sisters, and while I can sort of accept Noelle not wanting to cause survivor's guilt I have some issues with her keeping that a secret for this long. You guys are the dysfunctionalest. I mean, even worse than the Teagues, and that's saying something. (K: This is bordering on worse than the Winchesters, the gold standard.) Nathan interrupts his reunion with Jordan because oh right, that guy, the one who killed him. Where the fuck is he. Well, that'll require a bit of detective work.
It does take all night, and into the next morning, by the nice little passage of time sequence. The Teagues have been tortured all night with some truly crude methods. And Tommy has good memories of the fishing shack. Leading me back around to who the fuck are you, Tommy. Dave, I agree, but now is a bad time to push the psycho bastard. I am, for once, fond of as well as baring my teeth at the brothers for talking about getting to kill Tommy. (Last time Vince made threats like that was to Max Hansen.) Though amusingly, Vince's "oh is it?" in response to Dave's "no, it's my turn" is more fond/mock-innocent. At least, amusingly since they're not actually giggling so I don't have to dive under my desk into the bunker and not come out. Despite my distaste for torture scenes, especially ones as mismanaged as this one is (seriously, Tommy, I expect more smarts out of you), this tells us some interesting things. Both the Teagues have killed before. Both of them enjoyed it, or at least are pretending to for Tommy's benefit, though I'd lay good odds Vince did and subsequent odds that the way he and Dave interact means Dave does too. They imply heavily without stating outright that if someone has wronged them both sufficiently to warrant death, they trade off. This is part bravado but not entirely. Both of them have been tortured or in massive, prolonged amounts of pain before, because they wince more when the other person's getting hit than when they do. And they're a fuck of a lot sturdier than men their age should be, because those hits should be breaking bone. Ooh, and now we get down to it. Tommy wants to know where the Kid is. He also wants to know where the barn is, which implies that the Kid and the barn are at least connected and possibly that the Kid's located there. (Bonus point: wherever the Frankenaudrey is located could be a barn. Could also be a basement of an abandoned house, could be a warehouse. But barn is up there for possibilities. I don't know if it's THE barn, but it's worth mentioning briefly.) Certainly the barn could have swallowed Cogan up and refused to spit him back out again. Mm, tastes like AudSarLu. The Teagues exchange a "how the fuck does he know about THAT" look, to which I can only say a-fucking-men. I really, really wish we knew why Tommy wants to go to the barn. The fuck is IN that place, other than probably the key to everything. Augh. Vince will give him what he knows at this point, though, because what he knows is unlikely to help Tommy. At all. Yes, do, try and control the various supernatural events in Haven, that'll work out so well for you. He starts to demand more answers, probably something along the lines of how he can recognize when the barn's coming, but rescue has arrived!
Nathan, please stop looking that good in a t-shirt and hoodie, it's distracting. Ahem. Standard rush to the shack and hey, he was smart and duct-taped their mouths shut rather than either just run or try and play the hostage game. Yes, Dave, I do think they know it's Tommy if they managed to get out to your place. And that is the fakiest fake death I ever did see. Well, that's not over, even if Audrey thinks it is. Certainly it might be over for her purposes, because Tommy's smart enough to go to ground, change his name, not use credit cards, probably change his face since he seems able to do that... so. She's right to be upset, even if I'm quite certain that was either a very fake death or a very deliberate suicide-by-cop in order to keep anyone else from getting the information in his head. I would like to reiterate one of Audrey's statements from s2: I am SO TIRED of all the fucking secrets in this fucking town. Well, she said it without swearing, but I don't have to get by the censors.
Back to the Gull, still the same day because Moira's in the back of the car. And apparently the sisters can do basically a feedback loop thing, but Moira died after sundown (albeit barely) so she won't wake until the following sundown. Dwight's taking them off to somewhere outside Haven that I think even Audrey doesn't know about (wise move there), which is interesting considering he's supposedly no longer working for the Guard. But we've seen him take people off to safer places before, so maybe his work is much more peripheral these days. Plus, the Guard tends to bring people to Haven, not take them out of it. At any rate, Dwight and Noelle and Joseph and Moira's body all head out in the truck, and the way Audrey says they can come back when the Troubles are over is somewhat more authoritative than we've seen her be with Troubled people. She's settling into her authority in Haven more, and unlike the end of s2, seems to be managing to do so in a way that won't risk her job or her partnerships with others. Duke is strumming a ukelele and throwing a welcome-back-from-the-dead party for Nathan and I will be over here melting. Oh boys. Of course it's Taco Tuesday. It's always Taco Tuesday. (K: At least it was in the groundhog day episode.) (A: I was just assuming people would get that, but sure, we'll go with spelling it out. :P) Audrey tries to have a discussion about Colorado, though not with very much force. Just, this is a thing that happened and they haven't had time or inclination to really talk about it and maybe they should? I'd tend to say now is not the time, given the revelations and trauma of the past 48 hours or so and lack of sleep, and Duke... well, probably would agree with me if it were spelled out like that, but right now all he knows is that he and Audrey are still friends, Nathan's alive, and there's not much more time before Audrey goes and he doesn't plan to ruin it by throwing an adolescent lovesick fit. Not that he says that last part in words, but you can pretty much see his thought process there. Things worked out! And after he saw how she acted at the house, letting Jordan take her place at Nathan's side, I think he's got a better idea that she's pushing people away because she can't bear to have a romantic relationship that she knows will be taken away from her soon. And maybe that that's not something he really wants, either, even if he does plan to fight her supposed destiny. Oh everyone. I swear this is one of the only shows in which everyone being a relatively responsible adult who cares about the people in their lives can break my heart this much.
Enter Claire to break the tension! Because that's what Claire is for. I kind of think she has a habit of coming over and dispelling awkward/fraught moments like that out of some bad college experiences, actually. Or something similar. It's the kind of rile the guy up and run him off tactic that comes from having a history yourself of, or friends who were, hassled or worse at parties. It works beautifully, too! Claire was just fooling, probably because she enjoys riling Duke. (It's so easy.) I'm not sure why Audrey walks away if she's not upset, since she's walking toward people, but okay, sure. And then she just comes out with it, because there's no real good way to tell your shrink that you had a son two incarnations ago and have no idea where he is or if he's really still alive. She can't even say the word lover, at this point, probably because she feels kind of stupid for having thought it in the first place. Yes, Audrey, there are several different kinds of love. Claire's immediate reaction, and she gets good shrink cookies for this (but not my damn Thin Mints), is to clear her schedule. But no! Audrey plans to spend every waking minute that's not helping the Troubled looking for her son. Now it's Nathan's turn to run Claire off and at this point if I were Audrey I'd be all "fine, if you want to have private conversations with me here are my damn office hours and my rates." But I'm bitchy like that. Audrey isn't quite prepared to deal with Nathan either, so she evades his question about Colorado, right after telling Claire the truth. Well, I can see that, given how Nathan's been acting, though he abruptly has gotten less assholish these last few scenes. Tommy's body may never be recovered, I hold up the jar, and Audrey speaks for all of us when she gripes about more questions than answers. And then they conveniently list the questions for us! Not all of them, because apparently Vince and Dave haven't been forthcoming about all of what Tommy wanted to know, but the sky is blue, water is wet, the Teagues keep secrets. Film at 11. I'm pretty sure that Audrey's "everything" about Colorado involves her ill-considered kiss with Duke, which I'm not at all sure she needs to tell him. Nathan would like to go somewhere and talk, when suddenly behind him appears a Jordan! Audrey won't... well, a couple things. She won't take him away from Jordan, not when they seem to be happy together, and she won't let him back in that far in a way that might lead to romantic feelings again, and on top of all that if there's still a game running relative to the Guard and getting data (though there might not be, with Tommy out of the picture) she doesn't want to muck that up, either. And so, no. Nathan goes off with Jordan with only a couple lingering glances after Audrey, and Audrey goes to brood out by the porch railing.
Enter Vince! It looks to me like he came and found her almost as soon as he got checked over at the hospital, or at least I'd be a bit surprised if he'd spent much time at the party after the day and night he'd just had. He gives about the most honest answer I've heard to a dumbass question like "how are you" just post-torture. Thank you, Vince. And now we get a bit of exposition what his intentions toward Audrey have been since her return to Haven, most of which we knew but the delivery makes me think that he and/or Dave tried to tell one of her other incarnations all about what was going on and lost her trust completely as a result. Or something else horrible happened that he blames himself for, probably from telling her too much too soon. It makes his actions more understandable but I still kinda want to yell at him until he starts talking. And giving actual information, which you'll note for all his talk about being sorry he fails to do yet again. He describes Sarah as tough and independent, and the look on his face says to me that he's still in love with her. His words after that indicate that he doesn't see that much difference between Audrey and Sarah and Lucy, and until we get the time travel ep next week I'm not sure how much of that's true and how much is wishful thinking from Vince wanting Sarah back. It would make sense that any woman dropped into the middle of Haven's Troubles would need to be tough and independent, that's only a part of what makes a person who they are. Moving on, Vince nods to confirm that he knew about Sarah being Cogan's mother (still question if that was biological, because she seems to stay for 6 months or less and that's not what I'd call a normal gestational period) and Audrey asks the obvious question. Vince starts with a usual dodge, I think he has reason to believe he could be the father which means he slept with Sarah at least once which I will now not think about too hard. But that's interrupted by the barn returning on the island, which causes his eyes to go all wide and kind of sad and Audrey to turn and look where there's... no longer any barn, of course. He demurs with "everything's just how it's supposed to be," which I'm sure is what he thinks is the truth. Just not the whole truth. Audrey gives him her patented "I know you're not telling me everything look," but I think she's guessed that there's something going on with him related to her imminent departure, and she's trying to be nice to the guy who just got tortured. She enters the party on his arm in a manner I am sure they would never duplicate in next week's episode. Roll credits.
Next week on Haven: Duke goes back in time! To which his response seems to mostly be "FUCKING HAVEN" and "I need a drink." (K: So say we all, Duke. So say we all.) Nathan goes after him! Sarah apparently exists even though the promo says 1955 and our math and previous episodes say 1956. I will be deeply curious to know how that apparent contradiction gets resolved. Time paradoxes! Cue me and Kitty breaking into Pirates of Penzance. Also Agent Howard, the oblique fucker, and a bullet going for Audrey's head in slo-mo! Yeah, somehow I just don't believe she's going to die. I can't think why.
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