Music of the Spheres Haven S1E03 Harmony

Previously on Haven! We re-revisit the who-are-you questions in Audrey and Nathan's standoff from the pilot, yes, thank you, the anvil is large in hindsight of season 3. (The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.) Nathan's Trouble, Duke being trouble, Audrey talking about the Troubles, Marian's weather control, poor Bobby's dream control, Audrey and Nathan talking about her job offer and the Troubles at the end of last episode. Just in case we wanted to track the progression of things that are metaplot related, and by the way, notice how they slipped Duke in there as if to remind us of who he is? Only he's the only supposedly non-Troubled Havenite sandwiched between a whole lot of Troubled people. Emphasis on supposedly. Say it with me, now: Oh You Fuckers. Even though we don't have a clear category to stick Duke in just yet, he's presented as vanilla human right up until the discovery of the Crocker boxes.

Several establishing overhead shots of Haven later (and why not, a) the town is as much a character as any person and b) godDAMN is the South Shore a gorgeous filming location), we come to... a psychiatric facility. Oh goodie. Those of us who are King fans can guess this episode might involve the inmates being less permanently insane than suspected, and/or a less-than-sane caretaker for whatever reason. There's graffiti on the sign which we can't (yet) make out, and we're quickly taken inside. This is obviously a former residence turned into a care facility, which rather than the haunted house effect makes it far more pleasant than many care facilities. Two professional caretakers and one husband? friend? probably husband, the way he talks to the woman at the piano, and because they're the odd ones out and the first ones focused on we can guess that they'll be the epicenter of the episode. Also, hey, this is the first mixed-race couple on Haven. We wouldn't necessarily mention it, except it's still a rarer phenomenon on our screens than it should be, and Haven has what's at this point a definite habit of it. The woman is trying to compose and upset that she can't get the notes right. I've had days like that. A third professional comes over to check that she's not getting too violent for her husband to handle, and a couple brief focuses on the other two patients in the room (both appear to have some form of catatonia, also one doc and two nurses to three patients is an incredibly high ratio) and it's into the kitchen with the male nurse! Work banter is standard (not to mention accurate, heavy psych meds can do a real number on your innards) and takes them out of sight long enough for Something To Happen, presaged by a CRASH and a BANG, although not an unusual amount of alarm. They work at a long term psych facility, they're used to strange things happening. What maybe they're not used to is their boss rather than a patient standing with a tray of spilled/broken meds clenching and unclenching his fists. Which is why the doofus guy goes to help clean up and gets yelled at and then tossed into a wall for contaminating everything, by a boss who is clearly no longer in possession of all his faculties. Well then. Also, ow. Also, we mentioned it a fair bit in s3 but this guy still looks like he's supposed to be the stand-in for King.

We'll leave the other nurse exclaiming in shock and go down to the harbor, where Nathan and Audrey are engaging in some nice, light coworker banter. First about the local cop cases she's taken on since at least de facto taking the Chief up on his offer of a job, lots of teasing about a cat lady and an angry fisherman. We're not sure that it is de facto and not de jure until Nathan cracks a line about the life of a local cop and Audrey says, yeah, but she's only on loan. Maybe she left Agent Fuck You a message, maybe she's just allowed as how she's got x weeks of vacation saved up and she'll stay that long and see what comes of it. Nathan's sure she'll stay! So are we. We're sure for narrative convenience reasons. Nathan, why are you so sure? Audrey would like to know, too. The line he gives her is that the easiest way to find out what happened to her mother (you lying liar with your hands in your pockets and your squinting too-stoic face) is to be a local cop. He does mean be, too, in the sense that if Audrey states her intention to stay in Haven people are more likely to open up to her. Which is true on the surface level of small town that they've been talking about as well as the underneath level of, she has to stay in order to help fix the Troubles and once she commits to that people will start telling her things. And that makes me wonder if the older generation(s) have some kind of agreement that as Audrey begins to understand who and what she is, they'll start sharing information with her, which Nathan has at least a glimmer of a clue on. No, she's not ready to drop the case and he knows it, that was a deliberate goad, Nathan. That wasn't nice. She redirects to mention the Troubles, albeit it with a degree of circumlocution that says she's not wholly comfortable referring to it as an entire phenomenon yet. Nathan, by contrast, will crack terrible jokes reminiscent, actually, of Arla-as-Tommy from s3 (or, I suppose that's vice versa), about the cases being more Troubling. Face touching, self-soothing gestures even though he can't feel them anymore, presumably developed in the 27 years between cycles and not fallen out of yet, as he says they'll see more of those soon and then completely changes the subject again. Lighter things! Like the fourth grade class watching Audrey collect many cats into one box. Getting the truth out of anyone in this damn town is a lot like cat herding. We'll call it good practice. Further attack and riposte will have to wait, because hey, it's our first clip of Laverne calling Nathan hon over the radio! Aww. Hi Laverne! There's a disturbance up at the Freddie, which must be the psych facility, and they need to go. Audrey would like to know what a Freddie is.

Turns out a Freddie is what happens when a local gets his name stuck on a building. Much like certain campus buildings at our alma mater are referred to in shorthand and we still refuse to call them the "new" names since rich donors renamed them. The graffiti turns out to read "come for the food. stay for the drugs!" which is just hilarious. Probably a high school prank of some kind or another. Audrey has lots of snark about Haven having a mental hospital being a grain of sand at the beach, yeah, we'll give her that. The Troubled could sure use some help from people who know how to handle odd cases. HEY AUDREY, GUESS WHAT. She also asks who Murray Frederickson is/was, which a) serves as banter to get them up onto the porch and b) serves as a fucking Glendowers joke fuck you guys oh my fuck. I am going to shake people until we get some answers about that creepyass family this coming season, see if I don't. Argh. No, in this case Frederickson declared he could breathe like a fish between cycles of the Troubles, at least that's what Nathan implies, and proceeded to die horribly in the ocean. That's... well, that's certainly a possibility, but I won't consider it the only possibility, since we don't have confirmation that it was between cycles and Nathan didn't seem to know what the Glendower Trouble was until he came face to face with it in season 2. Nor, for that matter, is it improbable that poor Frederickson saw the Glendower migration either to or from Haven and went batshit insane as a result. No matter the case, this is still a fucking Glendower reference and I want explanations. Again. Still. Anyway, no time to dwell on that, things are crashing through windows and the female nurse is very glad to see them! As you would be if you weren't one of the orderlies there to manage the potentially violent patients. And there's at least one other orderly, some more patients than we saw before, okay, yes, this is a pretty decent sized asylum. Nathan calls Laverne for backup and an ambulance as poor wossname from earlier comes crashing through the window, no, Nathan, I'm afraid the inmates have not taken over the asylum. That's Doc Lucassi in the window, and he looks about as batshit as Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Roll credits!

After we get back, orderlies are getting the rest of the patients out while our trusty cops go in to try and handle the doctor. Nathan would like to know why they're sneaking up on the doctor with guns drawn like it's any other kind of hostage/violent situation, since they're not going to shoot him or go in the room where he's tossing people around like paperweights. Audrey points out that Haven lacks any protocols to deal with this, so she's falling back on her FBI training! Oh Audrey. We already know that's going to go only so far, but since step one is talk to the suspect and, basically, figure out his mental state, she gets a quick lesson in no, this guy is not talking to you. Lucassi is currently pretty much the Hulk, only not big and green and unstoppable. Audrey recites the terms as if from the FBI handbook, which they probably are, and Nathan translates into plain-folk-ese with this "you have got to be shitting me" look. No, she's not shitting you, you're supposed to at least be able to say you tried when you get up there in court, Nathan. Never mind that this isn't going to court. Lucassi's at least capable of stringing words together in complete sentences, though totally out of control as far as his actions go. So, plan B! No taser that'd reach that far, which is true, tasers are a pretty close-range weapon. But this is a mental facility, which means drugs on hand! I severely question keeping ether in a glass-fronted cabinet in a common space but SURE WHATEVER, the narrative says so and it lets Audrey be badass and clever. And we're all about badass, clever Audrey around here. Nathan still thinks she's crazy, but he seems to be coming around to maybe it's the good kind of crazy. Normally I'd take issue with flinging glass bottles at a suspect you don't want to injure badly, but there's already so much debris, glass and wood and plastic and probably some other stuff in there, that it's not going to make much difference once he hits the floor. Three (drink!) bottles of ether later and Doc Lucassi will now fall over go boom. No, wait, the boom was earlier. I'm also impressed that they managed that such that they didn't get hit by the ether fumes, though admittedly it was a good 10-20 feet and they probably got out of there pretty quick.

Back out on the lawn, backup has arrived and is tending to the orderly, Nathan's giving orders to dispatch on the phone, AJ to take samples and Millikin to check the security cameras for anything salvageable and now I'll be rolling around under the desk laughing at the namedrop. Thank you. Oh you guys. I love this show. Audrey, meanwhile, has been helping the head nurse (for so she seems to be) take a head count on the patients. Three of them are missing! Gee, I wonder which three! Nurse says that the doc might be intense but is normally harmless, and worries that the three patients might be equally violent, not to mention less aware of their surroundings and probably less inhibited. Well, shit. Audrey questions the theory that it was a drug spill, and Nathan deflects, I think more in order to distract the nurse than to distract Audrey, with a quip about he's seen worse, he went to college. Which may also reveal some mild discomfort with her big-city FBI training and vocabulary. Oh Nathan. Well, Audrey's thinking Troubles, even if she's still not willing to call them that yet! And yes, she does like the weird, she's just not prepared to admit that either, so banter and bickering it is down to the truck, which has more of an edge to it than we're used to in our more settled Nathan-and-Audrey dynamic. Still feeling each other out, still testing how far they can push, and Audrey pushes back. Mostly in defense rather than offense, though. And further banter about whether she's here for the Troubles or for her maybe-mother will have to wait, because Laverne's on the radio again about some prowlers who are taking clothes off laundry lines. Why yes, I think that's a clue, you have found it!

In the backyard of a distraught woman are more clues! In the form of our previously-catatonic men, now laughing and joking and one of them playing on the trampoline with the son. Awwwww. That's adorable-creepy-weird! In true Haven style. Nathan and Audrey think so too, as they holster their weapons and get that matched "oh what the fuck now" expression we're already coming to know and love. Meanwhile, Ray just came home with a bottle of wine and senses something off. Something off happens to be his wife who we last saw beating on the piano until it did her bidding and not at all coherent or speaking clearly. And here she is in the kitchen, frowning at the fridge and making a shopping list! And scolding her husband about the contents of his fridge not helping his cholesterol, which, yeah, he's probably let a lot go on the self-care front because he's so worried about Lily. He's also standing there dumbfounded not sure how the fuck to react to this. Oh honey. Yeah, I wouldn't know how to say "you've been locked inside your head for [months/years] and I never thought I was going to see the woman I love again" either. Especially not knowing if this is temporary or permanent or what. Though he does have the sense not to lie to her when she asks if she was in the hospital or something, and both of them are ignoring the bigger questions for a moment of being adorable and couple-y, Extra bonus good guy points go to Ray for not initiating the kiss and not pushing at all when she curls up into his arms and oh god this is so cute. You two stop that, I need to go brush my teeth. It's worse, of course, because we know it won't last, and the music tells us so.

Back over to Freddie's, where the staff is picking up and Nathan and Audrey have brought their two patients back. The younger is still playing basketball and cracking jokes with Nathan, while the older one turns out to be a florist. Well, a former florist. Still and nonetheless, and the only reason, the plucked-string minor iteration of AudSarLu's theme informs us, that we're getting this is so he can have a moment of remembering something. Something about the woman in the picture, one assumes! Gerber daisies, snapdragons, and orchids, and on the third one (of course) he falls back into the catatonia we first met him in. We'll put a pin in that to come back to at the end of the ep, because that's when I get to play flower meaning games woo. This is, by the way, a harder acting job than it looks, to go from animated relatively neurotypical behavior to completely catatonic, and both of them pull it off pretty well. No, sorry Audrey, Nathan's busy catching his patient, and behind him Doc Lucassi's being wheeled out, which means, if they're back to catatonia-land... yep, the doc's all normal again! As normal as he gets. As normal as anyone non-Troubled gets in Haven, which is probably making something of an assumption but until proven otherwise we'll go with it. It's not like Lucassi hasn't been under plenty of stressors in the last season to make his Trouble pop out, if he had one. Nathan and Audrey share one of the what the fuck Haven looks we're coming to know and love, and yes, Lucassi thinks he's fine. If he remembers anything about what he did he's not admitting to it, and under the circumstances I wouldn't either. It's a polite fiction that allows everyone to get on with their duties, and right now that's more important than anyone's freakout over what the doctor did. Audrey checks with Nathan, one of the few times she does this out of a genuine lack of knowing what to do, and this time he'll play more knowledgeable about the Troubles and say yes, it's probably safe. With a look. Because that's how these two roll. There's a quiet implication in Audrey's directions to the EMTs of "don't go anywhere just in case we need you again," but the more important question at least for the audience is, what the fuck happened to the patients? Lucassi gives us the clinical rundown, they're stage three catatonics (which doesn't actually mean much in current clinical parlance as far as I can tell; they'd be subclassed under stupor-type catatonia, but it sounds good for the TV) and Mr. Sparry the florist hasn't moved or spoken in 16 years. Well, at least it wasn't 27. If it were, I'd be looking at them severely cross-eyed. (As it is, I'm doing the math and thinking that might line up with Nathan's meteor shower with Hannah Driscoll, which is another form of interesting correlation.) We get a rundown of external perceptions of Lucassi's behavior and the hypothesis that maybe the spill made them better but him worse, yeah, that's not a bad working hypothesis. It doesn't account for all of it, but it works for now. Lucassi admits he's somewhat obsessive about cleanliness, yes, poor guy. Mild OCD is either a very good or a very bad trait in a psychiatrist, and the line's probably very thin. He does sound like he's got drugs that he's working on testing, which is. Interesting. And not at all FDA-compliant. Nathan gives us the straight line to end the scene on the ominous note of Lily still being out there and she can be extremely violent. Oh yay. So what we saw in the opening scene was just a small outburst for her.

We come back from ad break to the doc, Audrey, and Nathan coming up to the McBreen house while Lucassi gives us a brief rundown on Lily's disorder. Grand mal obsessive type, similar to PTSD only worse. Okay, that's a bit odd but not the oddest comorbidity I've heard of, and a quick run around Google indicates that the epileptic disorder probably came first and the OCD was triggered by it. And yes, obsession with music, trying to compose, hypergraphia would all be traits associated with that. I'm not as sure about the PTSD comparison, although it does sort of fit the media depiction of severe PTSD, which might be what Lucassi and/or the writers are leaning on here. Regardless, it's something that's possible outside of the Troubles and poor, poor Lily. I know what struggling with composition is like. It is not fun. Now that I've satisfied my curiosity about that and winced over Lily, here comes Ray with a bag of groceries, something green and leafy conspicuously poking out the top. Oh honey. The cops and doc aren't here for any good reason, and Audrey has a terrible suspicion that she's not voicing until they get proof. Which they get as soon as Ray invites them in, that's a massive, horrible mess of everything in his home and now he's angry and afraid. With good reason. Poor guy. She'll be anywhere with a piano, which probably does narrow it down in a town the size of Haven; not a ton of publicly accessible places would have one and Lily might or might not be aware of any privately owned pianos. Assuming, of course, that she doesn't catch sight of one through a window, but narrative convenience says that's unlikely unless we need to be introduced to someone else. Anyway, Nathan's all gung ho about going to find her and nobody's saying "before she hurts anyone" but that's exactly what they mean. Except Audrey has a thought! They should find out if the medicine is what was causing the behavioral changes, and if it's not then they're dealing with a Trouble. Which she is also not saying. There's a lot of things not being said in this room right now. Nathan doesn't sound entirely happy about that, because either it involves testing psych patients who can't give consent or Lucassi who's known to be violent if his behavior changes in the same way. Which speaks to Audrey's conviction that this is a Trouble, really; she's reckless but not prone to putting herself in situations she can't control. I suppose she could get a taser from the car and arrange to be in proximity to use it if necessary? At any rate, yes, they'll split the party and the doc and Audrey will hie away to the lab while Nathan and Ray go looking for his wife.

Ray is increasingly upset; by now he seems convinced that his wife's reverted to her previous condition and probably is blaming himself for letting her out of his sight, oh honey. I can't say he's entirely wrong to blame himself, but if he's not used to Haven being Haven and we know he was discombobulated by her sudden reappearance, yeah, it's a perfectly normal reaction. All of it is. Nathan's trying to ask questions about Lily, with the caveat of how Lily-before correlates to Lily-now, and Ray really does not want to talk about that. Even though it would be useful. Nathan, because he's very fluent in Stoic Man Dialect, goes for the expedient route of saying his name a couple times, with varying degrees of gentle please-talk-to-me either as subtext or text. And now we get down to it, Lily loved composing and she had a big contract with a music exec and he was happy to encourage her perfectionism, they were driving up to her favorite spot to work and there was an accident. He frames it as his fault, too excited, though at this point in time who the fuck knows how much of this is accurate. What we do know is that they ended up in the river and once Ray made it out it took him another eight minutes to haul Lily out of the car, and though she could have ended up brain-dead she is, instead... stuck like this. And he blames himself, no telling how accurate to events that is, because in a situation like that there aren't very many options for how the survivor who stays whole deals with it, and even fewer of them healthy. Oh honey. Well, that explains why he keeps coming to the Freddie no matter what else he's got going on, and why he's punishing himself by not keeping good food around. Poor both of them, really.

After that little revelation we move on over to the lab at the Freddie, where Lucassi and Audrey are setting up for the experiment with the drugs. Apparently what he really wants to cure is Alzheimer's, which makes... absolutely no sense to be giving to catatonics and a person with grand mal/obsessive disorders, but this is Haven and mad science is not the strangest thing we've seen. There's a nice little look down and away when Audrey shakes her head, not admitting that she has no relatives and that she thinks of it as a strength, because she can tell Lucassi wouldn't thank her for it. It's a nice tiny bit of background character building, too, and goes some way to explaining his own moderately obsessive behavior. And then we get into talk about a measurable delta (that's change) in wattage, because we're flesh and electricity and maybe a soul, cue discussion of souls and who believes in what. Aheh. Aheh heh heh. I'm ignoring the misguided discussion of scientists believing the earth was flat, because no, fucking hell, can we get a moratorium on that folktale? But the larger point here is a brief discussion about the nature of souls and how they may or may not exist. In front of Audrey. Excuse me while I go bang my head into the wall a few times. For variety, doncha know. Lucassi would like those safety goggles, which is a blatant ploy to lock her out of the lab in order to protect her in case he goes violent again and I rather like him for that. Especially since if it made her go violent (and they don't know what effects if any it would have on Audrey, if it were the drugs), they would be two violent people in close proximity and one of them trained as a federal agent. With a gun. Yeah, let's not go there for so many reasons. The music swells! The music... dies down. Because it's not the drugs, you guys, and yes, doc, something's different from the last time. Audrey's eyes fall on the security camera and we know what's coming next in that part of the investigation!

Only we're back over to the Shiny Scupper, which I think we (almost?) never see again in this show, probably because Duke picks up the Gull in the next ep and that becomes the main watering hole for everyone. Speaking of Duke, my, that's a big plastic fish you've got there. Nathan's first question isn't entirely belligerent despite the cop tone of voice, but when Duke responds with his customary snark he gets crankier. Boys. I'm going to get you rulers. Nathan looks more like he wants to question Duke's aesthetics than the legality of his giant plastic... fish, not that Duke's reading that clearly. Or if he is he's taking it the absolute worst way, which is something both of them are entirely too good at doing. No, Duke, I question your taste too, you're going to use that to decorate the boat? Ew. I guess if it's hollow you could use it for a smuggling spot, somehow. Still and nonetheless. Duke's calling Nathan Nate here a fair amount, which he does when he's most on edge and annoyed at Nathan's constant presence in his life. Heh. And there's a second where Nathan looks like he's going to try and interfere with Duke putting the damn plastic swordfish in his car and seems to remember that he's got more important things to do. The dismissive wave is probably what gets Duke's hackles up, though. SIGH, BOYS. This entire scene is one long stream of "put it away" coupled with "would you fucking spell it out for those of us without a 30+ year history?" Duke does sound somewhat genuine in his outrage that Nathan's the one who gets to harass him, but he doesn't expect it to go much of anywhere. Except Nathan sounds almost hesitant in his assertion that Duke's a lowlife criminal, which is enough to get Duke to go more on the attack. Poor Ray does not want to be anywhere near these two and their dick-waving contest and he's going to check inside. I do not blame you one bit. Duke doesn't know everyone in town, or if he knows who Ray McBreen is he's not admitting to it (as you wouldn't in front of a cop if you were a smuggler and knew someone in a business capacity), but he can guess that Ray isn't a cop purely by his stance. He is that kind of smart and has those instincts by necessity of his line of work, so this is just an excuse to bring up Audrey as a wedge to shove between them. Now, there's two things going on here with the not-a-real-boy comment. One is the obvious, that Nathan can't feel touch, that he's a bit wooden in his affect, so on and so forth. The other, though, comes with the gesture of the nose, and remember that Pinocchio's got longer whenever he lied? Well. There's a clear implication here that Nathan's a liar and has been lying about something important; I would guess about the Colorado Kid stuff and possibly-probably about having a glimmer of an idea who Lucy Ripley really is, what the Troubles are, something along those lines. It's impossible to say how much, but there's definitely some lying going on somewhere that Duke either doesn't approve of or is more than willing to use as leverage against Nathan. Mostly the latter right now, I think, though it does set them as two sides of the same coin, in a way: Nathan the upstanding citizen who's hiding something Audrey should really know, and Duke the disreputable scoundrel who uses lies as a means of self-protection and expects nobody to believe him. Plus, of course, Duke has things he doesn't know about himself because his father (and the entirety of the older generation fuck you guys) has kept that secret. Interestingly, they're shooting Nathan in the sinister position here, making him not so much the unblemished good guy as he might like us to believe he is. I doubt that makes Duke the one in the right, but it does make him the one on the right, for purposes of this scene. And we still have NO actual data on what they were not-talking about here. Guesses, but no data. Rarr. Nathan manages to keep himself from reacting very much, but there's two flinches, one after "real boy" and one after "the things you've done," and goddammit you two speak plainly. Free and open exchange of histories! Goddammit. Alas, no, Ray's found Lily which probably keeps Duke from getting decked and he clearly knows how to read Nathan, because he's awfully satisfied with himself as he tells "Nate" to have a nice day and saunters back to the car.

Back at the station, Audrey and Lucassi are running over the footage! We see it. They don't see it yet, because they're so focused on the spill. Then they rewind and hey, that's William picking up a basketball before the spill. The way the doc describes it, too, it's like he "felt something"? Honey, that'd be the Trouble activating on all of you. So we get the reveal and Audrey not saying Troubles out loud in front of the doc no really, but thinking it really hard. Which means it's time for her to check in with Nathan! Something invisible isn't a bad assessment, though I will note for those of you playing along at home, pun intended, that the piano's in a corner that's only barely visible from that camera and maybe you should get a fuller picture of the room? Yes? Well, she's got a theory about gas or virus or "something weird," which is what she's willing to call the Troubles as yet, and her explanation of how they determined this is cut short by the announcement that they found Lily. Who is, as we cut back and forth between both sides of the phone conversation, clearly back to how she was when we first saw her. Ouch. Ray quickly adopts his customary mannerisms around her while Nathan ruefully conveys the data to Audrey. And then he'll try to play a little alongside her, because watching her not be able to come up with a simple melodic resolution has to be painful. Hey, there's the quiet little motif of "something Troubled this way comes"! Only instead of seeing the Trouble flip like a switch, we get a scene change and a flip over the town of Audrey and Lucassi in transit. The Scupper is really rather TOO quiet when they get there to start, and oh, look, there's a handful of people running around the immediate vicinity causing property damage and... uh. Moving cars, pulling doors off hinges, that is a helluva lot of increased strength. That's an awfully odd particular effect of the Trouble, but okay. Inside, the place is a catastrophe of a mess and Nathan is standing with his back to them and, um. Has a lighter. Ew. Oh you poor bastard, is this what you would do to yourself with all inhibitions removed and driven insane? Oh honey. Audrey's face says oh-honey, too, but he's not out to attack her or Lucassi, just to get her out of his way.

A little while later, Laverne informs us that they've rounded up everyone but Nathan and they're back to theorizing what the fuck is causing this. Contagion? No, it's a person, not a thing, Lucassi is a good scientist and should feel good. And with that I suspect him of being more aware of Haven's Troubles than he's admitted so far, though Audrey jumps to Lily rather than Ray, and both of them are a common denominator, you guys. Well, she's a bit more worried about Nathan right now. With good reason, as it turns out, since his car's down at the marina and we know what that means even if Audrey doesn't. At, specifically, to the Cape Rouge, where a very shirtless and tan Duke is shifting some cargo as Nathan enters stage left and is duly batshit. All loose-limbed and bouncy in the way of the very young or the very uninhibited, and Duke starts to try and muster a verbal defense before realizing that's, uh, probably not going to do him any good right now. Even if he's not sure what's wrong, clearly something is, and hey, Duke has a specific tone of voice for dealing with the crazies! As we might expect from a smuggler who probably has talked his fair share of newbies down from first time criminal jitters. Nathan would like to know what the sun feels like oh honey. (Interesting, too, that with this particular form of insanity comes not remembering back a couple years ago when he could feel. Probably because that hurts too much. Duke tries for placating, which only delays the inevitable massive punch to the jaw in favor of some property damage. Ow. This whole scene is shot rather terrifyingly like an abusive relationship, yes, that kind, casting Duke in the role of abuse victim or possibly Nathan in the role of victim pushed a bridge too far. Hard to say, with as little data as we've got both right now and still, on their history. Though it's safe to say that at least a part of what Nathan's elliptically referencing is the fact that he blames Duke for his Trouble coming back, that fight on the boat where they whaled on each other until Nathan realized he wasn't feeling the hits. Yeah. Audrey gets there just in time to keep Nathan from choking Duke into unconsciousness and/or death, or possibly in time to keep Duke from reaching for deadly force (entirely possible given the number of guns he has stowed on that boat) and she is not happy about tasering her partner or finding him trying to choke the local Han Solo wannabe. Duke would like an apology or an explanation or both, by preference, and he's getting maybe half an explanation and no apology. Her "are you okay" is probably actually intended to be a question of, did the taser manage to shock you back into being yourself, which it hasn't and it ends up coming out as more concerned than clinical. Which is fair, considering the amount of damage he could've done to himself without realizing it in this state. Hey, you know where they are? On a boat! You know what a boat has? Lots of rope. That's the only logical leap, beyond the sheer difficulty of moving someone who can't feel pain and is incredibly belligerent, that I can make for her deciding that Duke should keep Nathan there. Duke would like something, anything but that, and I do think his "I knew that" is a reference to the Troubles and realizing that Nathan's been affected, though Audrey doesn't take it as such. Audrey, honey, you're going to have to get in the habit of assuming everyone here knows more than you and is keeping it a secret. Duke has some very valid questions about contagion and worrying about his sanity, to say nothing of the wisdom of keeping Nathan who may eventually come back to his senses on his boat. Yeah, Nathan's not gonna thank anyone for that. But these are largely token protests, in a lot of respects Duke simply can't believe that anyone is asking him to do the right thing, to help where everyone assumes he's just a crook, and I think it's as much that flabbergasted shock that gets him to agree as anything Audrey says about coming through for her. I do feel sympathy for him, though, that was a nice day. Antagonizing Nathan aside, though I suspect for Duke that's a sport right now, but he'll do it.

Audrey has an idea, now that she's off the boat, that she'd like to run past Lucassi, who's the only sane person with an investigative bent remaining to her. I mean, I guess she could go to the chief, but who the fuck would do that after the way he's been treating her? Yeah. But hey, another common denominator, Lily was playing both at the bar and at the Freddie when things went all to hell, so that's a starting point! I will even grant that right now there's absolutely no data on if Ray was playing at either place, so it's valid that they're focusing on Lily rather than Ray. Besides, at this point you find one, you find the other and all the information comes tumbling out.

Duke has decided on chains rather than rope. I cannot argue with this, given Nathan's utter lack of concern for his personal well-being right now (honey, infected cuts and burns can still KILL YOU even if you can't feel pain, moron), as evidenced by the sporadic and ineffectual tugging at them that he's doing. Ropes probably would have given way, even in that position of crap for leverage, with the super-strength plus inability to feel pain. I don't think I've mentioned here, but jesus fucking hell Lucas Bryant. Because there's a sense of the stoicism under there still, or the struggling to maintain it, and there's the white-eyed batshit fury that he's got right now, and the realization that he is, in some respects, essentially Bruce Banner (I'm always angry) is just... ow. (Bonus points for the probably-abusive biological father, the emotionally unavailable foster father, and the probably-dead mother.) Duke's treating Nathan more or less like the very violent child he is right now, or trying to, with the whole timeout and genuine shock and concern. He's trying to mask it with fascination at seeing Nathan lose his cool like this, and he's not doing a bad job right up until the tone of voice on "the hell happened to you." Because that's worry. Actual worry, not just for himself but about Nathan. Who tries to bite him. I'd laugh if this scene weren't so wince-inducing. Duke tries to cover the worry by jabbing at Nathan's soft places about being special, not being able to be hurt (have we mentioned the not at all hilarious reversal of the shitty and untrue rhyme of sticks and stones? because REALLY NOW), which gets Nathan into lashing-out mode. I'd say he should have known that was going to happen, right up along with the interrupting and keeping Duke from talking by rattling his chains like some parody of Marley? But this isn't a Nathan Duke knows very well. This is a Nathan who will continue the theme of terrible things Duke does in the vein of using people, and now I'm almost positive what the writers had in mind for this scene was the setup for how Nathan's Trouble came back this cycle. Remember, Duke used Nathan to lend respectability to a smuggling operation when the Coast Guard caught up with him? Yeah. I don't know if using people is the only thing Duke does, but it's certainly a thing he does, at this point in time. Hell, by the way he reacts like his own buttons have been pushed (and remembering that we've never heard Duke's side of that story), maybe he did intend to try and bury the hatchet not in Nathan's back, and the Coast Guard was an unexpected complication that he used all the tools at his disposal to handle. We don't know, though it sounds horribly plausible, doesn't it. Especially as terrible as these two are at communicating. Duke looks chagrined the second he's hauled off and hit Nathan, though, which only emphasizes the fact that this was a button-mashing session, not a calculated attempt to get Nathan to shut up. And with that, Duke looks like he's going off to find somewhere else to be, since it seems unlikely that Nathan can get free of those chains without one hell of a racket. Smart move. Way better than sitting around and gouging each other in the soft underbelly.

Audrey, meanwhile, has found no sign of Ray or Lily at their home, or so we assume since she's back at the Freddie. Looking for them on the boat, oh hey, there's no reason for them to be talking about the McBreen family washing up on Haven back in Ray's granddaddy's day unless that's going to be relevant later. Which it will be! Lucassi is off to see what he as a local can find out since the Caprice isn't in any of the local/usual marinas, and whoops, Audrey, you have a phone call. A rather exasperated and probably heartsore Duke would like her to please come take Nathan off his hands. No, because he woke up and is himself again. And looks pissed and confused. A quick pan over to the marina where Duke docks, and Nathan's having some coffee or tea or something else soothing in a mug. Maybe doctored, given the day he's had. No indication whether Audrey or Duke was the one to provide it, though I kind of suspect she bullied both boys into acquiring hot, soothing drinks once she got there. Nathan is rueful and quiet, and not willing to admit that he remembers everything. That was a blatant lie, evading her gaze and answering too quickly and rocking back and forth and thousand-yard stare. Oh honey. She'll give him the out, though, working the case rather than pushing him to deal with his massive, MASSIVE issues. No, he doesn't think it's Lily, and Audrey, if you would give the man a chance to process what happened to him a little more he'd tell you. Ahem. He thinks it's Ray, because he remembers Ray sitting down to play after Lily started, which is a pretty decent indicator, as last thing he remembers from being sane, that Ray's the one who did this.

Speaking of our pair of confused musicians, let's pan over to where they're packing the boat in what looks like a dry-dock yard of some variety. Lily's worried she caused this somehow, because this time she saw what happened to the men in the bar. Well... no. And this, in the third episode (DRINK. CHUG.) is the first time we see someone admit even tacitly that they're aware of what their Trouble does when it affects other people/their environment. (Nathan, as Duke has said, is special.) After the fact, so probably Ray wasn't aware that he was capable before it happened, but he put two and two together remarkably quickly. I also suspect that he only put it together after the second incident, because while he's desperate to get his wife back, whole and healthy, he doesn't strike me as the kind of person who wishes that on anyone else. Even temporarily. He seems to have an idea, but we're to the Big Reveal cuts back and forth, so Audrey and Nathan talk through exactly the line of thought I just spelled out, and now they need to figure out a plan! Ray has a plan. Ray's plan seems to be reassuring his wife that he doesn't want to hurt people while hauling out a bunch of dime-store musical instruments from a paper bag. The music suggests this isn't as ominous as it seems, though it's not exactly good either. More, this could go either way. More to the point, Ray's plan looks like it involves living on the boat and playing Lily music whenever she needs him to, and I have just one question about this. How is he planning to sleep? Does the duration of effect increase with duration of time he plays music?

But, alright, on over to the Cape Rouge we go again, tra la lally. Duke knows where the boat is! Duke knows ALL things relating to boats, secret hiding spots, smuggling, etc., etc., etc. (If you didn't hear that last part in full choral voice, go watch The King And I and be enlightened.) He will tell them if they let him come with, and Audrey tries the tell us or I'll arrest you schtick again. I cannot blame him for being fed up with it. I'd be fed up with it by now, too. I'm sure Audrey thinks she's protecting a civilian, but Duke hasn't considered himself a civilian of any kind in a long time, and he's sick of being treated like an idiot. A child, I suppose he might have to grant, given his proclivity for hiding behind that facade, but he's not stupid and he'd like Audrey to quit acting like he is. He'll even point out that he's put up with Nathan assaulting him and destroying property on his boat, though he doesn't quite get to rattle off the full list of charges. Because Nathan, for all his faults, will damn well take responsibility for what he did, even under temporary insanity. And things like this are why we love him even when we want to shake him for being an ass in oh so many other ways. Plus, he goes for the distant and formal "Mr. Crocker," according Duke respect in, I think, the first way that comes to mind. At which point everyone on this boat knows Nathan remembers exactly what he did and hates himself just that bit more for it. Okay, a lot bit more for it. Duke is remarkably gentle, for him, in deferring that, coming close to look him in the eyes and that's as much forgiveness as either of them is capable of giving the other right now. Oh boys. Not Duke's style, and he won't address Nathan as an officer but will instead call him Nathan. Not Nate, because he wants to be sure he's being taken seriously. Audrey forestalls whatever exciting bonding moment they might have had by asking why the hell he wants to come, and the flippant answer is knee-jerk, not the one he means to give, I think. Duke's too practiced at that. The second answer is closer to the mark but still not the whole truth, as we know from the reveal of Simon Crocker's box o' memorabilia as well as his ghostly (and ghastly) discussions with his son at the end of s2. Duke has to find out if the Troubles have returned fully to Haven, has to know so he can fulfill his promise to his father, and suddenly you know what I wonder? I wonder if Nathan's Trouble coming back in that fistfight is what prompted Duke to realize he needs to set down stakes in Haven again. Which lends a whole 'nother level of fucked-up-ness to the dynamics between the two of them.

On the Caprice, Lily's back to scribbling on the paper sack, trying to get the notes down before they go, oh honey. It is a mostly deserted shipyard so I can mostly forgive Ray for not looking around, since the area effect on this (whaaaat) is line of hearing and he's playing pretty quietly. Not quietly enough, with Lucassi looking for them and coming right up on the boat. He gets Lily back, the doc gets confirmation that someone is causing this, and we get further confirmation that whatever this Trouble does to the clinically sane, it doesn't appear to significantly impair their ability to comprehend data. In fact, it seems more and more as though it removes all inhibitions, and that's it. That's more than enough, as we close on Lily's scream and cut over to the terrible threesome just entering the shipyard. Duke's arguing to be allowed into the place where trained people with guns and possibly some violently insane people are hanging out, and while we know in hindsight that he has the skills to handle that, some of those are only learned over the course of three seasons and I do not blame Audrey one bit for making him stay put. Plus, frankly, having someone a ways out and thus hopefully out of earshot of the Caprice means they've got backup, just in case. Not that Duke's accustomed to thinking of himself like that, or thinking of anyone else like that, really. Duke: Not Currently A Team Player. Audrey and Nathan have a brief discussion about the very thing we were curious about not too long ago: namely, what's the duration on Ray's Trouble, and what changes it? The people at the Freddie were affected twice as long as those at the Scupper, and since we saw Ray playing both times my only guess is that the more people are present, the shorter the duration. Now Nathan wishes for that SWAT team, since they don't have the time or the peace and quiet to come up with this idea. Speaking of lack of peace and quiet, here comes Lily running up and while she looks fairly cogent, neither of them are taking any chances.

It's some several hours later, passage of time shown by the voiceover summary and the sun setting to full dark as they drive back from the marina where the Caprice was docked to the Freddie. They've got Lily as a ready-made barometer of whether or not the Trouble's worn off and Lucassi has Ray as a ready-made guinea pig. One of these things seems better for everyone than the other. Duke puts up a token protest outside the Freddie about keeping an eye on Lily, which everyone admits is a token protest and Audrey sounds awfully maternal when giving orders sometimes. There's some standard cop discussion, or as standard as we get for dealing with the Troubles, about how Lucassi's primary motivation is helping (in this case, fixing) his patients so of course he's back here. Audrey is mildly shocked at Nathan checking his clip and putting in a fresh one, but as he points out Lucassi is currently absolutely batshit and they have no way of controlling him for sure. The ether trick might not work a second time. Audrey has hope that Ray can somehow help Lucassi's patients! Oh Audrey. Honey, it would be kinder not to say that kind of thing around Nathan, who's still in all kinds of pain from his own stint with this Trouble. Though he's doing a very good job of suppressing it in order to do his job. Hey, that noise sounds ominously like a bonesaw. That can't be good. And yes, in fact, it appears that Lucassi's decided the surest route to solving how Ray does what he does is cutting up his brain and using it for, I dunno, gelcaps or something. Logical followthrough on a person's obsessions is not the hallmark of this Trouble. It's hard to tell, but it looks like he might have already started when Nathan kicks the door in (though later there's no patch of bandages or gauze on Ray's head, so maybe not) and regardless they're going to be very very careful around the doctor waving a scalpel in everyone's general direction. My, that's a very convenient crash cart! Audrey sees it as she engages her talk-the-Troubled-person-down voice (though Lucassi's not Troubled himself right now it's the same general principle and a Trouble's affecting him, so, y'know, makes sense) and now Nathan sees it along with her intention. Aww, you two. I'm not quite sure how he sees it, but we don't have as good an angle on what's in his line of sight as we do on Audrey's line of sight. Lucassi rambles on manically for awhile and then gets shock paddles to the back, everyone's safe, Nathan has a wry comment about her getting good at that and whoops, that's pretty much an admission that he remembers. Audrey's not making a big deal of it, though that's Nathan's oh-shit-I-slipped face. Oh honey. She's got FBI training. She knows how not to say a WORD about things traumatized coworkers don't want to talk about for as long as necessary.

Lily and Ray get their touching reunion, only to be forestalled by her realization that she's changing back. That's. Interesting, that by now she knows what the symptoms of it feel like. Poor woman. Nathan and Audrey listen quietly and warily while she tells Ray that he is not to use his Trouble on her again, she refuses to risk his life or other people's lives for this. He doesn't care, they can get a cabin, they can go somewhere and be secluded, and really neither one of them is in the wrong here. Which really sucks. Lily tries to get him to promise he won't, Ray won't make that promise and I think she knows that he's deliberately not making it, and then she sings to him as she changes back. Oh honeys. This whole scene is heartbreaking to watch even though we know, with several minutes left in the ep, that someone's going to come up with a clever solution to the problem. Audrey's body language says she is damn well going to find a way and Nathan's going to help her. Nathan looks awful resigned to helping her, too. After the ad break, we come back to the Freddie where Audrey's in comfort the witness/victim position while Nathan and Lucassi look on. This is in some respects the first we see how deep her compassion and empathy for the Troubled and their loved ones runs, how thoroughly this is affecting her. There is a problem. She is law enforcement. She should be able to fix it. Or so I imagine her thought process runs right now, since she doesn't have the burden of knowing she's Haven's messiah figure. Yet. Nathan asks how it all started, and this time he doesn't mean Lily, he means Ray's Trouble, which is a word they're still not using around Ray or Lucassi. Well, he did used to play instruments before the accident, but afterwards he gave it up, didn't have the heart for it, hey presto, it's a clear delineation between stressor and Trouble kicking in. Audrey asks about the boat and his grandfather, and I think she must even now suspect that it's bloodline related somehow, with Marian Caldwell. Or at least she wants more data before making a decision, not that I think she's doing more than running on instinct. Apparently Grandpa McBreen warned him away from music. Ray, honey, I do not think he "knew," I think he was affected by the same damn Trouble. Audrey might guess that too, but she's thinking more of solutions to the problem of helping Lily, not risking Ray singing or playing something where other people can hear him, and she'd like to propose a boat on the ocean! (I would, by the way, like to bring up something we've been avoiding for awhile. How does this Trouble work on less obvious mental illnesses? Chronic things like depression, bipolar, anxiety. I know the ones here were chosen for the dramatic improvement aspect, but what the fuck how does it WORK on things that don't involve a radical personality/mental capacity change.) Lucassi sounds like he's going to protest and try to keep Ray for studying, which doesn't surprise anyone here, right? Reasserting control over what hurt you using your primary paradigm? Yeah. But Audrey would like to remind us all of his humanity, a theme that will become increasingly louder and more important, that the Troubled are still human, they love and hate and laugh and cry and feel and are capable of both great good and great evil. Sometimes AudSarLu gets there in time to remind them of this. Sometimes she doesn't. And in the face of that passion and belief, the reminder that he's working for the benefit of individuals as well as humanity - and it's not a very big frying pan to the forebrain, either - Lucassi relents.

So now it's just to Lily's room, which is papered over on the walls with failed attempts to regain the music, nice set design there, and we'll take it as written that everyone else put earplugs in/went well beyond earshot/something similar while Ray played his harmonica. I would've liked it a little more if they'd had time to get in the marital discussion of "but I told you not to!" "but I have a solution and the nice FBI agent thinks it's a good one, she came up with it!" or some interaction between Audrey and Lily, something. Alas, not so much. Nor did we get time for the discussion that he's taking the florist and William on the boat too. That's a damn small boat for four people, you guys, but okay fine. Narrative convenience handwaves my logic, which happens every so often in TV shows and I have the strangest points at which logic (and logistics) rear their ugly head. They sneak out of the Freddie, we pan down to the dock the next morning where they're packing up the boat with Audrey's help, and no, she is nothing like a natural sailor. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning; red sky at night, sailor's delight. I learned that when I was tiny and I grew up in a landlocked town. Throughout the getaway scene Audrey is very much being Audrey Parker rather than Special Agent Audrey Parker, or trying to be, since she doesn't have much else to go on. But the reason she's here is so our florist can apologize for gaping at her like a schoolboy when he first saw her, because she looks like someone he knew once! He doesn't remember names, but he remembers flowers and faces. I will refrain from making more than one Blodwyn flower-faced joke. So, daisies (specifically Gerber daisies, he said before), snapdragons, and orchids. I don't actually know flower language, but the internet does, and triangulating on a number of sources I can tell you what that means! Daisies are for innocence, purity, hope and loyalty and all those similar sorts of things. Gerbers are specifically for cheerfulness. In Hamlet, for a flip side, daisies are for dissembling. I don't think I need to explain how any of these qualities are relevant to AudSarLu or to Haven, do I? Snapdragons are most often given in the negative as presumption, which AudSarLu does have to have in spades and I wouldn't consider a negative given Haven's weirdness. In the positive, they connote to graciousness and strength, which is another pair of qualities AudSarLu has to have. And orchids are feminine beauty and refinement, which, well, duh. I want to know who the fuck bought those for her, or if she bought them and let the florist pick out which ones were most appropriate, or what. Goddammit. Audrey would like more data too, though she gets rough confirmation on 1983 as a date and a first name. Hi, Lucy!

Yeah, I'd be standing out there thinking and brooding for awhile after that, too. Duke's down there, probably because it's the docks and Duke does make a living at sea, for whatever value of a living and at sea you want to give those, the Cape Rouge is his home base. He will now demonstrate his excellent abilities to jostle Audrey out of her overthinking everything by teasing about how she's not going to tell anyone, right? Not that they'd believe her if she did tell about how he'd helped, not that anyone's going to breathe a word about the incident between Nathan and Duke. And he looks a bit worried, yes, and like he cares already against his better judgment. Oh Duke. How long did you spend falling in love with Audrey? You poor lost boy. Their banter is awkward and ill at ease, appropriate for the little time they've known each other, but Duke's at least trying to build some rapport. Not just because having a cop in his corner is good for business, but because of that promise to Simon that we don't know about yet, pushing him to find out about the Troubles. He'll even drop the jokey rogueish thing for long enough to admit that he's glad he could help, and to ask her, of all people, for confirmation that the Troubles are back. Which is as much a test as anything, I think, to find out if she knows what they're called and that they're just getting started on the wackyass roller coaster of Haven being fucked up. That is definitely an oh-fuck look out at the boat dwindling toward the horizon he gives once Audrey wanders off, back to her car or wherever. She's not prepared to discuss the Troubles with someone known to engage in criminal activity no matter how helpful, and there's only so much of people keeping secrets from her that she's willing to tolerate, I think. I might have snapped and demanded to know why everyone wanted me to know about the Troubles without actually telling me anything useful about them, but then I am a much less patient woman than Audrey is. Besides, she wants to go tell Nathan she's got a first name before she bursts! Hey, Nathan, this whole free and open exchange of information thing, think we could get some of that? No? An admission from Audrey that she does kinda like the weird cases, Nathan prodding her about wanting to fix them and I can't tell if he's planting the idea in her head or just commenting on what he's seen so far. Maybe both. And some more cryptic comments that may or may not be Watsonian foreshadowing as well as Doylist about fixing Nathan. Though she takes it in the spirit of banter, which is all to the good right now. We could use a little lighter fare around here right now even if I do want to smack the boys to cough up all their information and leads. And, hey, Lucassi has done the responsible cover story thing and called in the "missing" patients from the Freddie, leading us straight into the Haven traditions of hiding the extent of the Troubles from those not in the know. Nathan goes off to check it out, and we fade out with Audrey staring at the sea's horizon while the song Lily wrote plays, "I've waited a lifetime for maybe, a chance to dream." Excuse me. I have to go facedesk the poor particleboard into smithereens again.