Previously, on Haven. Jess Minion was not a witch, but she did rather cast a spell on Nathan. Audrey shipped it hard. She also was looking for her alleged mother with Eleanor! And the Troubles were back, and Nathan wondered, possibly with some foreshadowing, if they wouldn't go away this time. Meteor shower at the season three finale, I'm looking at you.
So! Given that there doesn't seem to be any particular focus to the previouslies, we look to the opener to find our Trouble/plot point of the week. It starts with a man staggering drunkenly? tiredly? No, definitely drunkenly down a half-lit street at night. And by half-lit I mean half of it looks well-lit, which would bother me except Haven doesn't seem like the type of town that gets much in the way of crime, and so doesn't worry much about the night time lighting. Or at least, doesn't get much in the way of ordinary crime. Our drunken friend is likely a few hours off work, which seems to be some form of medical work by that white lab coat. It could be something else, but Haven doesn't seem to have many white lab coat wearers that aren't medical professionals. And he's tottering from light to shadow, as the lighting tells us, on the way to his car? Does he live around here? We don't know and aren't going to find out just yet. There's a shadow on the ground that we may or may not be meant to take as his. I think we're not meant to be sure. It's definitely not his, I'd say, because the angle's wrong both from the base of the thing casting the shadow and from the angle of movement of the shadow/thing casting the shadow. Our drunken medical friend leans up against a lamppost to get his bearings and the shadow up and solidifies itself against a very brightly lit white wall. With a red light gleaming in the upper left hand background. Just in case we didn't know something sinister was going on! Thanks, guys. The lighting here is very stark, though, making everything shades of black-ish (very dark blue, dark gray of the asphalt) and white-ish (pale blue, pale cream), so that red stands out. Something punches the medical guy in the face! As we pull back we see it's the shadow, which hits him again! Circles around and keeps hitting him as the music jangles loudly in the background, discordant piano meaning something untoward and violent is going on. Eventually the shadow gets tired of hitting him and runs him through with a shadow sword. Why a sword? Who knows. But as with the punches, the sword itself interacts with the man's body as though it were solid, meaning he really does get run through and fall to the pavement choking and bleeding, to die alone in the middle of the street. Fucking Haven.
A couple much more pleasant flyovers in Fucking Haven brings us to after sunrise, Jess coming down her driveway in her nightshirt and robe to pick up her paper (Hello, Haven Herald!) and catch sight of Nathan sitting on a bench, alone, with coffee. Oh Nathan. Jess looks like she's having that exact same reaction. He got her a coffee! He even remembers how she takes it! Oh Nathan. I have words for that kind of adorable but they mostly come out at the sort of pitch only a dolphin or a dog can hear. Apparently her coffee is nonfat almond mocha latte with a dusting of cinnamon. Apart from the nonfat that sounds like a non-coffee tasting coffee, which I might actually even drink. If it's not right she doesn't say anything, and she's definitely pleased that he tried. Have I mentioned the adorable? And she knows how he generally takes his coffee too, except that today he's trying her coffee. Or trying to try it. She settles down next to him and points out, rather vigorously, that he could have come inside. With her. To spend the night. Nathan. Nathan points out that then they wouldn't have had coffee, and with the kind of wide-eyed eager exuberance we really don't see from him much lately. Not since he became chief, anyway. Jess kindly laughs at him a bit, not quite calling him on his dodging the invitation, and delivers a much more direct invitation instead. Which he does accept! They're so cute. And so busted, as Nathan's phone rings. Jess guesses (correctly) that it's Audrey and heads back up to the house to get ready for her day, and Nathan's day begins with the usual homicide. Because fucking Haven.
Over by the crime scene they get out of Nathan's truck and Audrey thanks him for picking her up, since her car wouldn't start. And he offers her his coffee, which she immediately comments upon. Another very subtle sign that Audrey is the girl for him, I think! Because it surprises her that Nathan's drinking it, which in itself isn't that odd considering she works with him, they likely get coffee together often, she'd know what he orders. But also noteworthy because she doesn't comment that it's delicious or that he's suddenly developed good (by her) taste, just a startled exclamation. Nathan calls it dessert. Bless you, Nathan. Audrey immediately pegs it for Jess's influence and, again, seems to find them both as adorable as we do, while the stringed instruments start up, the sounds of Haven being cute. Audrey deduces that Nathan didn't spend the night because he brought her (Jess) coffee in the morning, and teases him for not spending the night. And this is what makes the fact that there is even a hint of a love triangle bearable, because everyone involved clearly wishes for the other's happiness. Jess makes Nathan happy, or seems to at the moment, so Audrey is all for that. Nathan isn't interested in discussing his relationships right now anyway, so he turns it back on Audrey by poking her about who else would she have called to get a ride, anyway. (And here we see the usefulness of the line about the stalled car in the morning!) Any friends? She doesn't think she's been here long enough to have made friends! Which is her defensive way of saying she doesn't think she's made any. Honestly, I think Eleanor would have helped out if she'd called her, but Audrey doesn't seem to be thinking about that. Another exchange/change of topic in which Audrey says to just say if he doesn't want to talk about Jess. Even if it wouldn't work. So Nathan turns it back onto her lack of friends, too. At the time this is a hilarious piece of dialogue, both of them going back and forth between subjects they don't want to talk about but aren't sensitive enough to snap over. In hindsight after the third season, knowing that she doesn't have friends she remembers that she was close enough to to be able to call in extremis, and this is because she isn't actually from Boston and all her memories are a lie? Yeah. That's depressing.
One flyover takes us to the Hessberg Center and Audrey still insisting she has friends. Nathan's still apparently apologizing, he's just discombobulated by "this whole thing with Jess." Which seems to make Audrey immediately a) forgive him and b) ship it more. And we're back around to Audrey and friends, which she just doesn't have time to make, really. Some ribbing about Nathan giving her advice on small talk doesn't change the subject, either. It's enough to drive Audrey to make friends with the kind of false and forceful cheer that makes people back away going "uhhh...", which is, indeed, what happens. Oh Audrey.
So. In what appears to be the director's office, Audrey and Nathan go through the standard series of questions: any enemies, any problems, any signs that Bill wasn't doing his job properly or was abusing anyone, etc. For this scenario Audrey's the good cop and Nathan's the not so good cop, I guess, reminding the director that they'll be interviewing patients and other staff as well, and are they going to find anything to contradict her glowing report of the victim? No? She offers up the Dark Man, which makes absolutely no sense to anyone. Including me? Though it's possible she's offering them the suspect or explanation the patients will come up with by way of forewarning. It's a bit of an odd transition, is all. The director explains that the patients believe and talk about a Dark Man who they believe is responsible for patient deaths. There's a bit of a difference, I think, between someone finally succumbing to illness, and someone being shivved? Yeah, this whole conversation seems only slightly more awkward than usual for Haven scripts, not so much in terms of delivery or even specific word choice, but in terms of transition. The subject change seems forced.
At any rate. Over to a therapy session with Jess and her people. The second or third sentence of the woman gives us a good idea of what's going on: it's a grief support group, or something like it. Audrey wants to go over and stick around, not, as Nathan first surmises, to say hi to Jess. Which means that his relationship with Jess really is on his mind and pulling at his thinking. But because Audrey believes they could get a better idea of what's going on at the hospital. Either that or she's a better liar than Nathan is. The next person to speak is a man named Thornton, whose deceased loved one is his wife Sarabeth. And who happens to be blind, which Will Be Significant Later. He regrets how he treated her, and wishes she could have been married to the quieter, gentler man he is now. This will also Be Significant Later? Most likely. Cut to after the meeting for efficiency, and a moment of Jess and Nathan being all awkward turtle at each other. Mostly Nathan. Audrey can't watch this and changes the subject swiftly to the dead Mr. Rand, since she's reasonably sure Jess will give an honest opinion rather than trying to speak well of the dead. But before she can say anything the survivors, or at least a handful of them, interrupt to talk about the Dark Man some more. Again, transitions? Where are they? (Though I do approve of them referring to Nathan as "Jess's policeman," hee.) So, all right, Nathan is willing to at least seem like he's humoring them and possibly to investigate the Dark Man as a suspect because, again, fucking Haven. But there's no evidence, and they take the survivors' contact information for follow-up that they don't believe will actually happen.
Over at the police station, Audrey and Nathan are going over the nothing they have. No evidence of a Dark Man, no enemies, no suspects, no evidence directing them to a suspect, no nothing. But they do have another awkward Audrey-getting-names-wrong moment, which is heading out of the realm of funny and into the realm of farce. Ooh, and now they have dinner! Courtesy of Jess, which prompts Audrey to exuberate in the direction of "marry her already!" And then half-apologize for making it awkward. And then Jess dips a toe into the murky pool of locker room talk by referring to not yet getting to second base. And then she apologizes for making it even more awkward as the women giggle and Nathan looks cornered. Poor Nathan. See, Audrey? You have a friend! Because this is exactly the sort of shit my girlfriends and I do. Ahem. Jess brought Chinese food and comments that this what she has to do if she wants to see him at night, which brings Audrey to quip that she ought to keep Nathan more often, which only underscores my point about see Audrey you have friends. It's just that you don't recognize the behavior as friendship behavior. Which also says incredibly sad things about her. Normal conversation ensues for a bit, of the 'how was your day, dear' sort. Audrey finds the survivors group sadder than the nowhere they're getting on the murder case of the nurse, leading Jess to offer that she's been trying to wean them off the Dark Man notion for weeks. Nathan is worried about the Dark Man, or at least about something to do with the center even if neither of the women are, and tries to get Jess to take a few days off. Yeah, that's not going to work, but it does get both of them to say he's adorable. Cute is the word they use. Also Audrey's shipping it again. Jess will let them get back to work now, darn, and Audrey just gives Nathan her best trollface. Meanwhile, now that we've covered most everyone's attitudes to the Dark Man, this seems like a decent point to interject that this is where A and I both started shrieking about how if they bring Flagg in we were going to flip our shit. Because The Dark Man, going all the way back to Stephen King's doorstopper The Stand, is another name for recurring villain Randall Flagg, or just Flagg. Hey, remember that opening credits bit with the old village notice saying something about Revered Flagg and wytches? Yeah, I thought so. The Dark Man, the Walkin' Dude, I'm still expecting him to show up in or around Haven at some point. Thus far, though, they've only touched on the themes of the recurring King character by having there be an evil preacher, a Dark Man, and so on. If Flagg ever does show up, though, you may rest assured that we will not write a blog entry for that episode consisting of the word 'fuck' repeated and varied 10,000 times. Even though we may want to. (A: We could probably even do it and have it be grammatically correct. I'm just saying.)
In another house in Haven the director is attempting to distract herself from her nurse's death by planning a vacation trip somewhere with her husband. Long term live in boyfriend? Very close brother who lives with her and okay, yeah, no, the casual cheek kiss indicates a more romantic relationship. He'll order dinner while she continues to flip through travel brochures, evidently without regard for cost. While intriguing and due to the strictures of narrative, indicative of something shady, that's about as non-probative as the kiss. She could have come into the money from anywhere. France is the first brochure she picks up, possibly because she speaks at least conversational French (due to being near Canada? Or just Jess?). And meanwhile the shadow person is sneaking up behind her to draw his sword and run her through in mid cheesy French dialogue. Thank you, shadow person. Sort of. She's shocked to be dying. Like you would when you're stabbed from behind when you thought you had your back to a wall. Nathan and Audrey are puzzled, because how the fuck did someone get behind her and the couch and into the wall and run her through with a sword? Directional pattern fits, so either someone went to a great deal of trouble to fake a directional pattern in both victim and couch, or someone stabbed her through the couch and the wall. It's Haven. We'll go with the latter. Audrey's name confusion has devolved into farce, although given that we've seen very little of this guy she misnames she might be forgiven, if shoehorning his name in there weren't a silly idea to begin with. And both she and Nathan are now treating the Dark Man, or a similarly eldritch entity, as a viable suspect. As shown by Nathan addressing the cause of death and what it says about the perpetrator's psychology. So. Bringing in alleged witnesses to discuss the Dark Man! There follows an interrogation montage wherein they get all kinds of near-comedically different descriptions, united only in the fact that the Dark Man is, well. Dark. And carries a sword. No, a bat. Something. Sword fits with the wounds, at least? Nathan sums up the conflicting descriptions with wry resigantion as we go to...
The Haven Herald! Your source for all information historical, spiritual, ecumenical, and Haven-weird. Vince and Dave are sniping at each other, this time over drawing vs photography. There's some information to be gleaned from this, Dave considers Vince to be a "tortured soul" and by his tone more in the sense of overgrown goth wannabe than anything noble or literal. What? It's Haven, there could be literal tortured souls. And Vince considers Dave to be soulless, which could also be literal in Haven. And both of these statements underscore Vince as the emotional one and Dave as the coldly rational one, yet again. And now Audrey and Nathan! She needs to check their archives. Dave sits down to do it for her, Audrey sort of nudges him out of the chair to do it herself. Bit of a power dynamic, power struggle going on there? Though Dave's "of course" smacks of more long-term and/or intimate knowledge than he should have since Audrey is a relative newcomer to the town, and we all know what that's about by now, don't we? For those of you just coming in because you've just started the series, it's because Dave knows her of old. Spoilers? So, Audrey searches for Dark Man. And there follows a display of race issues that is both surprisingly tactful and reflecting real life ... shall we say, attitudes? That's a good, neutral word. Maine, especially rural Maine, is not known for its racial diversity. Especially not in 1959, when the article was written. Vince and Dave are audibly embarrassed by the discovery, reflecting that attitudes have changed since the fifties. Also, the article itself isn't derogatory but more commenting on the newness of having a black person in the town, and referring more to the man's trade than the color of his skin. Reflecting current attitudes, Nathan and Audrey are a little more "really?" It's a commentary that not a lot of other specfic shows I've seen make, both explaining and highlighting the lack of racial diversity in the cast and in the area population. Anyway, Nathan moves past the 50 year old article (still grimacing) and onto the folkloric Dark Man, but neither Vince nor Dave have anything for them. That's a very deliberate phrasing there, because I don't believe Vince's regretful face, and Dave is only marginally better. All right, Audrey's moving on to deaths at the center, having not yet learned to recognize when the creepy boys are hiding things. But she will. Oh yes, she will. One flyover later and Audrey and Nathan are leaving the Herald with nothing more than a handful of Hessberg center patients who "died before their time." Whatever that means, but the commonality of description is starting to sink in. Nathan is the first one to speculate that patients are being murdered, out loud anyway, and Audrey quickly chimes in. Either in agreement or because she's stealing his idea, which leaves him a bit nonplussed. Poor Nathan. All of the patients who supposedly died early died of cancer, which means there was no autopsy conducted, but it's possible that the most recent deaths might be able to tell them something if they can get an exhumation order? Conveniently, one of those dead patients is a judge's child! Nathan grabs his theory back in this tug of war of the minds, as Audrey comments how unpopular this is going to make them. Pretty much, yeah. Most people don't like their loved ones being dug up again, especially not on anything stronger than a maybe.
Once they're in the truck, though, Audrey remembers that Nathan was going to meet Jess that night. She ships them so hard she even offers to do the paperwork for him, which as we all know is a sign of true devotion. Nathan keeps trying to squirrel out of it until she flat out accuses him of not wanting to go see Jess. Which isn't entirely true either, and Audrey keeps pushing, to the point where Nathan looks severely annoyed. And maybe a little bit hurt. He turns off the truck again, says something oblique about not knowing if he can "make it happen," and it still takes Audrey a second or two and a glare from Nathan to get it. Audrey, honey, are you having a slow day or something? Particularly since she goes from that to it being his first time, what? no. No, Audrey. Just, no. But he hasn't been with anyone since the Troubles hit again, and that makes things incredibly complicated. At which point Audrey throws away the Idiot Ball and points out that he should just tell Jess, talk about it with her. Best idea is best, really. Audrey reiterates her offer to take care of the paperwork if Nathan goes takes care of his other thing. Which means Audrey is late at the office still doing paperwork when the grieving survivors come in to yell at her for exhuming their loved ones. She's a bit surprised, she just faxed over the paperwork but, really. If one of the survivors group is the judge she was trying to get the signature of, it's entirely possible the judge told them. Audrey attempts to pacify them with, well, the truth, that if their loved ones died from foul play this is the only way to find that out. It pacifies them somewhat, but they're still angry that she did it in secret. Well, I would be, too.
Over at Jess's place they're sharing a glass of wine, at least partly because Nathan is tenser than a very tense thing. Despite or perhaps because of her pointing this out, Nathan finally coughs up what's bothering him. Oh honey. Which is almost exactly what she says. Emboldened by the lack of rejection (again, oh Nathan) this leads him to skirt the edge of oversharing, not to mention the bringing up ex girlfriends? Except it's high school girlfriends, which is marginally safer. And by the sound of it this is also Nathan using past memory of tactile intimacy to bring up at least the internal sensation of physical intimacy, which isn't a bad idea, really. Jess's solution is to engage Nathan in ... other ways? Tangential ways? It's working, or at least it certainly looks as though it is, and we'll leave them at that.
Back at the police station, Audrey, are you still finishing up paperwork? You poor thing. Dave and Vince have come to pay her a visit! You poor, poor thing. They want her to settle their photography vs drawing debate, which is likely just an excuse to talk and interact with her some more. And, of course, see which one is still her favorite (I'm betting on still Vince, no matter how much I complain about how creepy it is he still seems to have a deeper rapport with her.) There's some more wheedling, Vince promises it'll only take a minute and he can paint from a photo (and memory. Vince. You lying liar.) and meanwhile the shadow is creeping along the station floor. This isn't good, you guys. Guys? No, none of them are noticing the moving shadow, or if they are it's being subsumed in their own shadows moving as they move. So she poses for them, including Dave's comment about "just stand there and be Audrey" which gives me quite a bit of groaning. Dave. Considering Audrey's the third AudSarLu they've known oh never mind. A couple of photos later and now Audrey does notice the weirdly moving shadow. Good girl. She puts it together in words so we can hear the link between description and shadow, and Dave immediately starts, well. Attacking it with the flash bulb. Let's all sit here now and question whether or not at least Dave knows what's going on here, okay? Either that or he's being a bad liar again. He didn't even wait for Audrey to think of it and tell him to do that, he just started snapping. Meanwhile Vince is bemused by the moving shadow, or pretending to be. And there's the bat, as Audrey moves them all back. Okay then! You can't have a shadow without light, Audrey reasons, correctly as it happens, so she gets them all to turn out the in-show lights. I say in-show lights because we still need some light to see our actors moving around, so we'll suspend our disbelief over the lamp and pretend it's full dark, or dark enough to diffuse the shadow. They all back into corners on the idea that the shadow can't move from one cluster of shadows to the other, yes? No. Not so much. It crosses the light from one cluster of shadows to another with ease. Oops.
And, yeah, when we come back from commercial Nathan seems to have worked out his problem pretty well. Ahem. Except, sadly, that phone call really is Audrey with a life or death situation, and, phooey. At least they can both be pretty sure, given that Audrey ships it like FedEx, that it really is a life or death situation and not her calling to mess with them. Next thing we all know Nathan's opening a door and his arm is sneaking in to turn off the light. You don't have to whisper, Nathan, it's just light and not sound. And put down the gun. The soundtrack provides us with a very whispery sort of malevolent sound, sort of like someone dialed back a shriek, nice counterpoint to the visuals there. Oh, Nathan's going to shoot out a light. Okay, now you can put your gun away. Well, as Audrey says, now they know what the Dark Man is. Once Dave's film gets developed, because of course he shoots on film, they can get a picture of the shadow. Really? Really. Audrey, did you not just say that shadows change shape? This is not going to do you much good, unless you want a sequential series of images of maybe a quarter of the events that night. Sigh. Also Nathan's still buttoning his shirt. Hee. Audrey apologizes for interrupting him and Jess. Right before she pries. No, she's happy for him, and it's cute, and they're both happy that he's happy.
The next day Jess is over at ... somewhere. The center? Thornton's house? Reading Romeo and Juliet to him, which is rather sweet if a very odd choice of play. Ah, it was his wife's favorite. Well, that makes sense. They talk a bit about his wife's death, how quickly she was gone, and then Jess excuses herself to the kitchen for water, indicating that this scene's not quite done. Over to the police station! Audrey's leaning over Eleanor and poking at the autopsy reports, but Eleanor says they all died of cancer. The thing that's suspicious isn't what's there, it's what's not there: chemotherapy drugs. Ah-hah. Double ah-hah because now we're going back to the kitchen where Jess is discovering pill bottles that, to her, don't look right. Meanwhile at the station, heh, they found the murder weapon. They're also finding that the flashes erase part of the shadow, which is interesting. And what does all of this have to do with the center? Hard to say. What would be the motive to kill cancer patients, and then with the shadow people? It doesn't take that long for them to reach the conclusion that the dead workers were stealing cancer drugs. And coming out of the kitchen Jess gently calls Thornton on not throwing away the now unneeded medication. It seems these medications were for the side effects of chemo, which explains the full pill bottles, since she never had any. Since she wasn't getting chemo. Not that Thornton knows that right now, but he will. She gives him some of the pill bottles and pockets the rest, clearly having her suspicions as she leaves. And back at the station Audrey and Nathan confirm their suspicions with Rand and Wilson's financials. Tsk. That explains two of the attacks, at least, but not Audrey. Jess calls up Nathan to tell him about her suspicions, like a good cop's girlfriend. None of the patients were taking their side effects medication, not taking their chemo would explain why they were dying prematurely, etc, Nathan will now freak out and go over to her house just in case the shadow is coming after her now that she knows. Not a bad idea, because Thornton has just now discovered that there are some bottles missing, and it's either him, Menchie, or the nameless person who told them that Audrey was exhuming their loved ones' remains. We're going to go with Thornton. Jess is clever, she senses someone's in the house with her even if she can't see them, and she calls Nathan while he sirens up the driveway. At least Nathan has the sense to knock the window glass out with his gun rather than his fist when she screams? Open the door, guns drawn, it's cop reflex but I don't know what they think those guns are going to do. Jess is on the floor, not skewered through the middle so at least there's that, but when we come back from commercial the ambulance is in the driveway. And Nathan's pissed.
Audrey tries to talk sense into him. It's not hard to figure out by whose medications those are, who knew she took the pills, who targeted her because of it, but she doesn't want Nathan chasing after Thornton in the state that he's in. He won't be dissuaded. He is pissed. She does get him to give up his gun at least, which isn't unreasonable as a gun won't do anything against the shadow and they should be able to take down the untrained Thornton pretty easily, especially since Thornton's shown no inclination to use firearms while blind, either.
Over at the Hessberg center Thornton is talking to a friend, and Audrey and Nathan are lurking in the background discussing him. Nathan blames the cane for being the sword. Sword-cane, makes sense to me. Then Audrey notes that Thornton doesn't have a shadow, despite everyone else in the room having one. Yeah, I'd say that qualifies him for the shadow caster. Someone passes right in front of Thornton and the light source, too, further emphasizing the lack of shadow. Audrey manages to talk Nathan down into talking to Thornton in a dark room, which will protect them and not tip off Thornton in case he knows what he's doing and doesn't expect them to know. So they do, get Thornton away and into a darkened room and Nathan straight off accuses him of knowing who the Dark Man is. Which is marginally better than accusing him outright of being the Dark Man, but only by a very slim margin. Audrey takes the position of believing that Thornton doesn't know what his shadow's doing, Nathan takes the position that he knows damn well and he is the Dark Man on purpose. I will now take a moment to note that shadow throwing is actually one of the powers of our dear friend Flagg, the former Stephen King Dark Man. Thornton is no Flagg, though. And Audrey seems to know this as she browbeats Nathan into backing her play. Which is to tell Thornton that they have the people who murdered his wife by withholding her cancer drugs at the station, give his anger a focus, and then ... fake an interrogation by talking to thin air. Well, to a pair of target dummies. Bright lights, so that their shadows are all vivid and starkly outlined.
Back at the center Nathan has told Thornton everything about suspecting he's the Dark Man, he's been sending his shadow to kill people, etc. Thornton, well. He's having a hard time believing it. As we all would, were we told that our shadow was a murderer. Nathan, still furious, tells him he saw the shadow go after Audrey, which Thornton relates to his anger at the exhumations; he's starting to believe. He then describes the anger, the rage he felt when his wife died and then how he felt it simply lift away, which we and he now can associate with the shadow made of anger separating itself from him. And here's the dangerous part; though Thornton may not have been aware of what he was doing, he's not in the least bit regretful of killing the two workers at the center who stole the drugs. He says they had it coming, and this clearly alarms and upsets Nathan. Nathan throws the attack on Jess at Thornton and, again, we see that he clearly had no idea what his shadow is doing, because he seems genuinely upset to hear that Jess is among the attacked. And we're back to denial, a common reaction to being told that their Trouble is hurting someone, denial that these attacks are connected to him. In a way, his phrasing when he says he's not upset that the others died is the same denial, because he says he's not upset that they died rather than he's not upset that he killed them. This is the first major sign of fear and regret, though, at what he's capable of. And then we skip straight through bargaining to acceptance as Thornton pieces together how his anger at Jess for allegedly stealing the drugs may have caused the shadow to attack her. Ya think? It's apparently a very short leap from there to suicide, to asking Nathan to kill him and stop all of this. Whether that's because he heard whispers down the family line about their shadow powers, or lingering grief over the loss of his wife, it's not clear. Nathan sounds entirely too willing to entertain that notion. We know he won't, but he still sounds willing to think about it.
Back from commercial, Audrey is still practicing her small talk as she fake interrogates the two target dummies. Oh, hey, there's the shadow. And, yes, attacking it with the lights does cause it to go away. And that confirms that Thornton is the one who's casting the shadow as it comes back and settles behind him. Thornton expects Nathan to kill him. Nathan visibly wants to, though that seems to be more anger talking than any sense that it would be expedient to do so. Turning off the lights does make it go away, though. And so.
We don't get to see what the solution is quite yet. Nathan has to go be romantic at Jess first, who has a sad look on her face. And a suitcase. She's moving back to Montreal. Well, she says going at first, and Nathan holds out hope that it's just going as in on holiday, but no. Going as in, for good. The taxi rolls up as she tells him she can't be there, not with the Troubles, which are and will always be around him. Hell, he's Troubled, so that's very true. She can barely look at him too, her kiss goodbye is quick, she rushes around him to the taxi (and we get a good glimpse of scar tissue, so nice continuity there) and then she's gone. It must hurt more than our stoic woobie lets on, even with the faint glimpse of watery eyes right before the camera switches to a longer view. Considering that she first of all got him several steps closer to accepting himself and his Trouble, only to reject both, later. We fly past the Haven coast as Nathan stops by Thornton's house to do one last bit of business of nailing a sign to the door. With Audrey! Who is concerned because he's even more taciturn than usual. Jess, as we could guess. Audrey gives him empathy and silence for a bit, and then admission of helplessness or failure as well for solidarity and friendship. Which she does now recognize. There's some more underlying metaplot here, too, in that she never had friends (is this an attribute the barnvatar or whatever controls him selects for?) until she came to Haven. And now she has Nathan. And Nathan has her, and if he needs anything, etc. That last part is implied. And she kisses his cheek and walks around to the passenger side again and that may well unknowingly be the best gift ever, as we watch his eyes pop wide and his hand come up to his cheek. Yes, our dear Nathan can feel Audrey's touch. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? Hell, we still don't know what it all means necessarily. Eventually Nathan does pull himself back together and they drive off, and the camera pulls back and swings around to show us Thornton's blacked out house and the sign on the door that says to please leave all mail and packages on the front porch, occupant is not to be disturbed. That's, um. One way of dealing with it?
Next week we're back to the metaplot, back to Vince and Dave being excessively creepy, and back to getting tantalizing hints to things we still haven't had entirely explained. Isn't it fun?
No comments:
Post a Comment