Previously on Haven: a whole bucketful of Crocker and Jordan issues, along with some Nathan and Audrey issues for good measure. The previouslies continue to impress us with their ability to explain - no, there is too much, let them sum up - in a minute or less anywhere from one to three seasons (depending on the character) of character and plot arc. And to hit all the highlights that point the way to someone's obvious arc without quite drawing a neon sign over their heads. (Most of the time, that happens organically anyway.) (Someday someone should have the Trouble of reading mytharcs over people's heads in neon signs. No, we're not punchy at all why do you ask.) Also the big reveal at the end of last ep, which while spoilery if you skipped it for whatever reason (why would you do a silly thing like that?) is pretty crucial knowledge going into this one.
This week on Haven, we woke up and all of it was still true and we were still sad, so now it's time to go to work coping the way we cope best. Analysis to the nth degree! We'll say upfront, by the way, that it's the mark of a truly astounding cast, crew, and writers' room that we can see these arcs coming, hope like hell that they're not going where we expect them to, watch them go where we expect them to, and have them still be moving and fulfilling rather than hackneyed and trite. That's a goddamn hard balance to walk when you're working with the really old themes and myths, and Haven's only getting better at it. Still, we don't open with mytharc of the main characters, at least not on the face of it. We open with the Trouble of the week! Some poor guy walking out of a store, possibly the travel agency and possibly one down from it, scowling at his cell phone before staring at the digital display ad in the travel agency window in similar and growing horror. We get a couple angles that make us think we're seeing things from his POV, but clearly we're not, because I can't think of a thing that's that horrifying about a couple nights in Cabo. So we have sideways reference to the ep title, and the poor now-dead guy in the street indicating that whatever this Trouble is, it's going to be crucially integral to the weekly dose of metaplot, on account of its placement in the episode.
From there we go to the Gull, or more accurately to Audrey's apartment, sometime that morning. Duke brought coffee! I'm guessing this is only Audrey's second day back in Haven, but it could be later than that. There's a nice callback to the pilot where Duke tried to guess how Audrey took her coffee and failed, passing it off as a joke, so those of us who've been watching for ages know that of course she doesn't like milk in her coffee. It's not milk, it's Bailey's! Which, considering that Audrey's had some reason to doubt Duke's identity as much as he has hers, makes for a nice bit of dual comforting without actually Talking About It. Something they're both excellent at! In this case, though, there's not a ton to talk about that doesn't get into heavier feelings that would potentially leave them, maybe not wrecked emotionally? But less functional than they need to be to deal with the Troubles. Besides, Duke would like some answers to the tune of, so she's really Audrey, right? But she plays Lexie, how does that work? Underneath that, the question of, Audrey's never been that good a liar or an actress before, how did she manage to con him (and Nathan, but Duke's the con artist, he should've seen through it) for even a day? Audrey says two very Lexie-like things at the start of this conversation, actually, though Duke doesn't call her on the Lexie-rhymes-with-sexy one. She also has some fairly Lexie-ish mannerisms, the fingers to the temple and the way she taps her chest, to say nothing of the wardrobe which, while leaning toward the more neutral colors, is still far tighter and more revealing than anything Audrey would wear. Skin and sex, as a woman, is a valid form of armor too, just not one Audrey's ever been comfortable with or inclined to pull out, and here she looks completely at ease with her sartorial choices. As we suspected, she remembers Lexie, she still has little bits and pieces of Lexie's mannerisms, but she also has all of Audrey's memories and feelings too. And we continue to suspect that there's more Lexie about her, more of a brashness and willingness to kick over the status quo, than she's going to admit to either of the boys until such time as they're more used to it. Because they want Audrey back, and they want to believe there's nothing different about her, and even if she tried to ditch all of Lexie's behaviors she'd still be changed by her time in the bar/n with William, what she learned there, what happened at the end of last season, and what Nathan asked her to do the first time he saw her this season. So no, she's not going to admit how much of Lexie she's carrying around, but I think it's plenty clear that it's at least a little more than Duke's willing to process right now.
Oh, hey, that's the sound of a truck pulling up outside. That is never a good sign. They don't have any time to talk over the whys and wherefores of this incredibly bad decision and bad plan, and Audrey's first instinct is to keep the guy who wants to commit suicide by her hand from finding out that she's herself. While we can't say we blame her for that instinct, it plays straight into the Bad Idea Bear that roams around Haven going "Never tell anyone anything keep everything secret and mysterious and definitely don't communicate that always ends badly!" Maybe that's someone's Trouble and nobody knows it. (K: Maybe that's the Teagues Trouble.) (A: Or Dave has a bear suit oh god bad thoughts bad thoughts need Bailey's with my caffeine intake.) Stupid Bad Idea Bear. Duke is still in shock that Audrey's back and in automatic do whatever Audrey wants mode, which leads to everyone acting on instinct and promises that probably aren't the best idea in the world either. But he promises not to tell Nathan, Audrey is so upset by the thought of Nathan trying to force her to carry out this idiotic plan that she's pacing/fidgeting - another Lexie tendency, Audrey usually goes stiller the more upset she is, and here comes Nathan! We hear doors and footsteps, or at least we're meant to think Duke does, as he points out quite rightly that no matter how depressed and suicidal Nathan is, he's going to figure it out. Of course he is. He's not always stupid in that way, and now that both of them know keeping the secret from Nathan is going to be damn near impossible, and in short, Audrey, you are cared about, which is Duke code for loved, by two men, one of whom knows that he needs to shut up now. Because he's giving too much away, and because he's trying very hard a) not to make Audrey feel pressured by his love and b) to get over her, or at least to move on in some way, since she's chosen Nathan. (We still insist that a threesome fixes everything, but our biases are large and obvious.) Okay, so now the goal is to keep Audrey away from Nathan while she, what, gets her cover identity on straight again? That'll just thrill the Guard right down to their murderous toes. No, Duke will deal with the Guard, he's used to being hated by them but he's also, I think, getting used to being feared by them as well. This is not actually a good thing, but it's a thing they can use right now, and it's a rapid-formed plan intended to keep Nathan safe for just one more day. Oh everyone. Poor Haven is lurching along from catastrophe to catastrophe like a drunk looking for the nearest pub at this point, and it's taking everyone and grinding them down to their finest instincts: protect the people they care about at any cost. Or in some cases, end the Troubles at any cost. These are not congruent goals, so far as we know right now, questions about who, specifically, has to be loved and then killed aside.
Ah, here's Nathan! Possibly nervous about walking into Audrey's apartment after this long, and the hair-twirling is such a nice touch. I don't think we've mentioned that, but it is: not a Lexie mannerism, but the mannerism of someone completely unused to having long hair and not sure what to do with it. Using it to emphasize femininity rather than hard-bitten FBI agent, too! As with most real behaviors, it serves at least two purposes. Nathan's at least making something of an effort to be civil with "Lexie," though he's both nervous and sad that he no longer knows things about her that he used to take for granted and now he's bringing coffee for himself and Duke but not her. Oh honey. Oh everyone. Duke looks awkward as only a rather tall, awkward man can make himself look lurking in the background there, and Laudrey comes out with "I like it spiked." Sigh. Audrey, you're showing through your share of the awkward, do better at shoving your game face back on. She's got a weird balance of Lexie and Audrey traits through this whole scene, standing with hips cocked is definitely a Lexie trait, but her speech patterns are blatantly Audrey-trying-to-be-someone-else, too crisp and clean, too little accent. Although it's nice to have the immediate feedback on, see, this is why lying is a bad option, guys. Cue torrents of babbling about how Lexie has to go fill out Audrey's paperwork down at the station so she can get paid and pay rent and Duke's not running a charity here and would you guys stop looking everywhere but at Nathan (Duke, dammit, you do not suck this much as a liar!) and babbling too much even if you established that as something of a Lexie trait? She's a bit ditzy, she's not dumb, stop making oh why do I bother. Nathan's cop instincts are aroused, but Duke takes over the misdirection by saying he's come on the callout with Nathan! Aww, boys. It's true, Nathan will need someone to watch his back, even if the need for that is created by Audrey's presence in Haven while not working a case with Nathan. And Duke's an experienced hand at dealing with Troubled cases, and we've taken Dwight out of the picture to Cleaves Mills for some mess there. I'm betting that indicates the Troubles are spreading geographically. Could be worse, though! Could be Derry. (Nothing good ever comes out of Derry.) It's a long, long ways from the guy who insisted he was staying out of things back in first season. One last worried look between Duke and Audrey as he heads out to the case, and we break from the bad idea bear. Oh everyone.
Over to the Cape Rouge! Where Duke most certainly is not and will not be for awhile, and given that he just invited Jennifer to stay in the spare room there I wonder where the fuck she's off to this episode. At least Dwight got the line reference! Not that we don't understand why they couldn't be in here, there's just too much to cover, but I wish we had some more immediate explanation for why she's not on the boat. Or maybe she is and she's hiding from the creepy scary people! (No, she's not, but lord knows I would hide and spy and report back if I were her.) Yes, Jordan and Wade, you are definitely the creepy scary people right now. Especially you, Wade. Nice note of levity, with Jordan commenting on Duke's interior decorating skills. Dude, if you had tiny living quarters like that, you would learn or you'd be rather cranky. Besides, it was also his office for awhile, and comfort and beauty are all things that help people relax and help Duke make better deals. Anyway. Wade seems to think they're there for sex. Um. Wade? You are seriously fucked up, can I just say? You barely know this woman, you know what her Trouble is based on what she says, and you assume that she's asked (apparently) you to take her somewhere private that you shouldn't be for sex? Nice to know he's so easily led around by the little head. Unsurprising, given his other addictive tendencies, and Jordan you should stop seducing him, because these are the same cues and tells she gave to Nathan last season. Not that Wade knows that. For that matter, this is a similar tactic that Nathan used on her last season, which means this might be her way of taking back that control that she lost there, not that Wade knows that either. Wade, stop pushing her buttons by trying to get her to make out with you anyway, she's not going to, you won't like it, and she'll feel horrible. You jackass. Inquiring minds would like to know what, exactly, she did say to get him to bring her to the boat, but the important part is that they're here, Wade's done a thing to prove he's willing to go against his brother and likes Jordan more, and we will now proceed with further seduction! This time not of the sexual variety but of the you're-special variety, which is at least as heady to someone like Wade. Someone who has magnificent stacks of daddy issues, who feels that he was never the special one, never the chosen one, Esau to Duke's Jacob (and how much do we want to bet that that's intentional and Doylist? A LOT, is the answer), always the one who was powerless. Never chosen. So of course this gets Wade's attention. Even more so when Jordan's promising him that she thinks she knows how to end the Troubles for good, that he could be part of the solution. I don't know that Wade's ever been told he could be part of the solution because of something inherent to who he is ever before, emphasis deliberate. Jordan this is a bad idea, look at how he lights up. A bad idea! Dammit. Though half of the creepy from Wade is coming from lighting and makeup making him look more skeletal, not from what Camargo's doing with his face. Except for the hungry look when he hears that he can have his real power that Duke's been keeping from him. That's all Camargo being creepy. Duke? This is why we said you needed to sit down and try to talk to him like you actually gave a damn. Before THIS HAPPENED.
Over to the crime scene oh hi Vickie! Haven't seen her in awhile. She's the ME's intern, apparently? And the ME is no longer Lucassi, who ran off in the middle of the night and took the neighbor's cats with him. Inquiring minds dug around IMDB and found no indication that Christopher Shore got a new job, so hopefully these are all guns on the mantel that will go off in some form or fashion later. Especially the one about Lucassi; it seems likely that Vickie is there to remind us of continuity, that Haven is a small community and those who are Troubled a smaller group within that, and that they're working together to keep those who aren't Troubled safe from becoming collateral damage. She is, for those who don't remember, the girl with the sympathetic magic of drawings Trouble who got blackmailed into using it to draw people for one Captain Richards, who eventually died due to his portrait sketch being submerged in water. Accidentally, though I wouldn't bet on the boys working too too hard to get it out, and I don't think we did when we did that ep over the summer. At any rate, Gloria is the new ME! The new old ME, predating Eleanor Carr, even, and reminding us not a little of her as well. Maybe an Eleanor who got to go off and drink/smoke away the Troubles rather than being killed by a chameleon. We like her quite a bit! Including her willingness to call Duke on his bullshit and then move on. Also including the level-headed but cranky assessment of the way this Trouble is manifesting, what they know, what they don't. What she can tell them is that Seth Hughes walked out the bakery and got rigor mortis! Complete with snark about technical terms. I'd love to know what Vickie does do if she doesn't do the paperwork. Isn't paperwork 90% of what interns are for? Coverup established with the ease of someone slipping back into old habits that she doesn't like very much but knows far too well, oh, Gloria's going to be fun. Tell us she knows things! Better yet, tell us she's willing to share! Because working with Garland means she was in for the last round of Troubles, which is becoming more and more crucial to our understanding of this season, as you will see and hear to shrieks of fuck you Vince you fucking fucker in a little while! Rafferty comes over to fill them in about the witnesses, who say Hughes kept looking at his phone, alright then. Phones! We know, of course, that he also kept looking at the sign on the travel agency, but witnesses are notoriously unreliable, they probably had a chance to talk before the cops got there, and they have no reason to be looking as closely as we do. So! They'll check on the phone and start typical Haven procedures for this.
Meanwhile Jordan is in a particular part of town that Vince thinks is too dangerous for her to be in. We would love to know what the fuck part of town THAT is, aside from right on the coast. Though right on the coast is generally a good indication of lower income/impoverished neighborhoods, likewise right on the banks of a river. Places prone to flooding and maybe not so good at putting up dikes and things, places other people don't want to live. Still, that doesn't mean it's a high-crime neighborhood necessarily. It also seems to be that Jordan's here because Vince is here, possibly? Or for some other reason that they both would have for coming here, but if it's not a typical Guard stronghold then why the fuck is she there? Probably, yes, to start shit with Vince, even if she's not entirely clear that that's what she's doing. Jordan's descending spiral of depression and PTSD would indicate that she's not making well-planned decisions anymore. Our assessment of whether or not they've ever been well thought through aside, she's now acting on instinct and emotion, and that's never a good place to be. She's also showing skin again, a none-too-subtle threat, though less of one than the way she was bared to the shoulders at the end of last ep. Let's assume for the sake of argument that she's following or anticipating Vince, wants him out of the way for her plan to activate Wade and get him to kill Audrey Lexie to work. I'd like to know where Dave is in all of this; we noticed when the credits came up that this is the first episode in which we've had only one Teagues all episode. No, really, Dave, what are you doing. Where are you. What do you want. WHO are you. (Not sorry.) Vince tries to go all Master of the Guard on her, but it comes out more as an angry and worried father, which is interesting. We haven't had much of that attitude out of Vince toward Jordan before now. Is it just now sinking in, Vince, that she's a very, very disturbed person who need sympathy and support more than she needs discipline and control? Because it's rather too late for that. It seems that he suspects what her plan to deal with the Troubles is, probably because word's gotten back to him that she's hanging out with Wade. And because Dwight isn't dumb and would tell the Teagues about what happened when he took Jordan down to their MurderBunker. (Still want one.) And all of this is implicit rather than explicit, because characters can do things without having it be on camera! Yay! So, yes, Vince is pulling the I'm older and know better card, which is not actually gonna work anymore, dude, assuming it ever did. It really doesn't work with Jordan, who's still suffering from the betrayal of learning that Vince was the leader of the Guard last season and that he wants to just keep the cycle going. Jordan, in the middle of this cycle, does not want to think about going through this again, and who can blame her? Worse because right now there are people who will do what they can for a beautiful woman, who don't act like they're afraid to touch her as long as she's not baring skin at them. In 27 years, Jordan will be a woman of a certain age, and that's the point at which you start becoming invisible as a person who can be touched and dear god she's so fucked up both by our society's fucked up standards of femininity and by her Trouble. A perfect storm of suck and hate. But moving on, Vince says that in his experience and based on his knowledge, having Lexie fall in love with Nathan and killing him is the best way to end the Troubles. Only he can't get his mouth around the words "kill Nathan." Vince? You (are) fucked up, too. He spells out that he knows what she's planning, at which point we can see her coming to some conclusions about what she needs to do. And they're not pretty conclusions, either. I would just note, Jordan, that Audrey had no idea what Nathan was doing. He fucked up and used you and made you fall in love with him and lied to you all on his own. I'm just saying. Though it does give us more context for why she's so furious with all three of them, because from the outside they tend to look like a smoothly functioning unit that knows everything about each other. This is, of course, the opposite of true in many cases, and Nathan's decision to go seduce Jordan is one of them. Technically you should be pissed off at Vince, too, since he sent Nathan to you, Jordan. Not that she knows that for sure, it seems like. But Vince is sure that the Troubles aren't AudSarLuLex's Trouble, and that killing her won't end them. That's the expression of a man still half in love with her, or at least with the idea of her, who's taking that assumption on blind faith because he doesn't want her death to be the true solution. And Jordan knows it, by the way she wants this conversation to be over now please and thank you. Jordan's idea of saying please and thank you comes with an ungloved hand to the throat, and oh honey. You are so, so fucked up in so many ways, and nobody's actually in your corner. They're in the corner of ending the Troubles without thinking about what the Troubles have meant to Jordan, and frankly, it's not surprising that everyone else banding around their small groups of people they're willing to protect and not making room for her in any of them leads to her being selfish and taking reckless actions like this one. We'll trust that it takes a good deal more than a human taser to the throat to kill Vince, and roll credits.
When we're done twitching and muttering about Donat appearing solo in the opening credits, Rafferty presents the contents of the victim's bag or what have you to Nathan. School brochures, it looks like! Several of them, indicating that he was passing them out rather than taking one home to look at with his kid. It's Stillwater school, which does not make me any less twitchy, and apparently going by Rafferty's description of what happened with her about her kid it's a school for specifically unTroubled families. Apart from all the various precedents that say this is a horrible thing that won't possibly end well, there's a big flaw in this plan, that being that not everyone always knows they're going to turn up Troubled. Are they going to screen all the janitors and teachers and administrative staff, too? Feed everyone Prozium so they don't get upset in case they might activate? This is a stupid plan. To go with everyone else's stupid plan! She's not interested for her own son, but Nathan is interested if only because he remembers what happened with the Rev, and he knows what happens when you divide a town like that. Blood, anger, and bad things. Duke rightly points out that people used to be able to expect that the Troubles would end eventually, and they'd all be able to go back to normal for twenty, nearly thirty years. The barn's demise changed all that, and even if not so many people know the facts of why, this is uncharted territory for Haven. And I use that term deliberately. So, Vickie comes up now with the phone, hey! Nathan's still distracted by something, by his issues with what's going on now? By remembering what happened with the Rev last time and that Audrey killed him? Either way, it's distracting him enough that he doesn't take the phone and interact with Vickie with his usual professionalism; Duke is all too aware that he's not a cop and also this Trouble of the week seems to be creeping him out a little. Notice how he keeps his back to Vickie and the phone almost the whole time. Duke being Duke? Or is this a subtle way of showing us that he remembers the last time statues and living humans changed places, so to speak?
Across town, someone named Tater is being called over to the scene, or at least a scene. Detectives need assistance! We know it's the scene Nathan and Duke are at because it's too late in the episode to introduce whatever Dwight is working on at Cleaves Mills. He was, apparently, taking a statement about a robbery that happened at an electronics store, and the store owner or manager giving the statement objects to him taking off to go deal with someone else's crime scene, probably one of those crime scenes. Further underscoring the rift between the Troubled and the unTroubled here! Just the fact that they're spending this much time on the guy alone indicates that he's probably the Troubled Guy of the Week, but wait! What's that lurking behind a display? It's Wade! Come here Wade, let me shake some sense into you. He's all sinister and not quite hunched but definitely slouching towards something bad, and walking out with a couple of recording devices. Mouth pinched, eyes hooded and lowered half the time, he's definitely looking more sinister than all the previous episodes we've seen him in where he stood straight and had a more clear expression. Despite his increasing bitterness and resentment, apparently he's still honest enough to pay for the recording devices. Wade, you are a bundle of contradictions, and not in the fun or nice way.
Tater's over at the crime scene! Consulting with Maine Cellular about the state of the phone, really, for this they called him over here? I'm going to be generous and say they also called him over to help canvas the area. Even though that seemed to be done by the time he got there. Okay, I give up, I have no idea why Tater's over there except to link the Troubled person to the next victim, i.e. Tater. Apparently there aren't enough officers in Haven. Nathan sends him back to the station to pull what he can off the SIM card, see who the last calls were, which isn't an unreasonable guess at this point in time. Maybe the Troubled person reached him through the phone? Ginger could do the same thing. (Burned, 3x10). Hey, speaking of that lack of officers Haven has, here's Rafferty again with the news that Seth was getting supplies for a meeting for families to commit to sending their kids to Stillwater. That's a nice callback to Business as Usual 2x11 where the Trouble was triggered by a list and a secret meeting for Troubled people, that time, rather than people who wanted to be separate from the Troubled. Here the list is less material to the investigation but it's a good reference and a good temporary red herring, as well as adding to the mountain of parallels back to second season. Duke remembers second season! He does think it's a bit excessive that someone might have killed Seth to stop the meeting, but Nathan also remembers second season, and specifically the Rev. Who Duke might well want to forget, considering the Rev wanted to make Duke his own personal hit squad. Actually, that might come in relevant to our speculations later, so let's pin the Rev to the wall for now and move on to Tater, who is not moving on. Who is, in fact, sitting on his running motorcycle. Hey, Tater, get a move on, would you? What are you even doing? Well, dying, as I said in chat when we watched this. Yep, as soon as our intrepid heroes walk around to get a look at his face, he's stoned. Dead stoned. When we get back from commercial Duke turns off the bike very quietly and deliberately, keeping conscious control of his movements the way some people do when they're freaked out. Especially if they don't know what's going to leap up and bite them in the ass. Duke also points out that the phone was off, so there was no way he could have gotten a text message, and I say you guys are too fixated on text messages. It's not like there's any probative information that says there was a text message connection, maybe it works line of sight and the guy was staring at his phone because the killer texted him a threat? No, what I'm really saying is that there are too many shared factors between the two deaths to blame the text messages, but Nathan does point out that the digital wossis control panel on the bike also gets texts, so it's still possible. Duke wonders if this is a hit on a cop, since if someone was sending deadly stoning texts to the cop's bike that would have to be on purpose. That's one theory of the crime, at least? No evidence, though. Conclusions, stop jumping to them. Nathan tells Rafferty to get on the horn and tell everyone to stop using their phones, presumably just in case, and they head back to the truck.
As Duke's phone rings. Duke is definitely more creeped out by this Trouble than usual, what with the hand flailing and the stuttering. Nathan, too, is worried about him, with the way he turns to face him and is completely intent on him. And that's an interesting thing to note about Nathan, too, this episode. Without Dwight here to take the lead either for Watsonian or Doylist reasons, Nathan is stepping up and being more calm, more steady, his grief and trauma behaviors more muted than he has been the first five episodes. I'm personally going with both Watsonian and Doylist reasons, Nathan's generally a lot better at functioning within grief when he has people depending on him and no one else to step up and take charge, or at least no one else he sees as capable of doing so. Dwight's gone, now he has to investigate. Which means he's more capable of putting away and leaving away his self-focused emotions and behaviors, which means when Duke is in apparent danger given what little they do know, he worries about Duke. it also means some hilarious faces as Duke and Nathan both try to look at the phone without looking at the phone. No, it's not a text, it's a phone call from a fishing buddy. Or rather, a "fishing" buddy, as Nathan is more likely to believe. Given that Duke hasn't been in town for six months and since he got back, hasn't been shown to at all be involved in his import-export shenanigans that's a hell of a lie, but it's also one Nathan's used to associating with him. So, sure, why not, he'll meet Nathan at the car (meaning they only took one car? That's. Interesting.) and take the phone call. There's a little Rosemary's Pastries sign down to the left of the screen, too, nice touch of continuity from Haven's set crew. It's also a nice touch that Nathan doesn't even say anything about Duke's import-export shenanigans, just goes on to the car.
It turns out Duke's "fishing" buddy is Laudrey, who Duke updates quickly on the situation. Laudrey being Laudrey, she wants to get her butt down and help them, but Duke vetos that with some force, considering that Laudrey just that morning said she didn't want Nathan to know. It's hard to keep track of who's aiming for what outcome here, I think because neither of them is entirely sure what the plan should be or what they're doing. Laudrey wants to get her butt down there on an emotional level to protect Nathan, never mind that on a longer-term and more calculating level she needs to stay away from him to keep her cover in place. Duke wants her to stay away from Nathan to buy them more time, I think, and there's information she can run down at the station for them anyway. And if the Guard finds out that Nathan and Lexie aren't together and falling in love, well, it's not like there's ever been a point when the Guard didn't want him dead. Yeah, this still sounds like a massively bad plan. Duke acknowledges that all the plans are bad by calling this their very best bad plan! Oh Duke. We love you and your self-aware self. He starts reading off the details of the victims and the circumstances of their deaths and AUGH IT'S THE ICE TRUCK KILLER. No, wait, it's just Wade Crocker. No, wait, that's not any better. It's really telling of how far off the rails Wade is going that we're looking at Camargo's expressions and seeing a fair bit of Brian Moser in there. In that case, Camargo was playing a sociopath hiding behind a normal person, in this case there's less of the disguise there? Wade Crocker is a normal person, albeit a fairly fucked up normal person. Which is also normal. It's a very ordinary thing to have abandonment issues, daddy issues, inadequacy issues, and an addictive personality. It's just that Wade also happens to have a bloodline that allows him to feel powerful and strong by killing people, which is ... okay, I'm not helping the case for differences between him and Biney, am I. No, the difference is that Brian Moser never had a moral code, a line in the sand that said thou shalt not kill. Wade Crocker had that moral code, or at least the generic one most people were raised with. But Wade Crocker also has a mountain of issues, all of them pushing him to fill that need for acceptance and importance, and if he can't do that by asking nicely (see also: conversations with Duke and almost everyone shunning him and not telling him things) he'll do it by taking. The killing is almost secondary. At any rate, needs that must be fulfilled, so Wade slouches through the police station and over to the front desk for an excuse to be there legitimately, also known as a form for a fireworks permit. Exaggerated facial expressions show deception, he's reacting artificially so the reactions are somewhat more exaggerated, and still with the hooded eyes and lighting him/making him up so that he looks more creepy than he has in previous episodes. Camargo, for your next trick, can you please star in a rom-com or something else benign? The uniform doesn't notice, of course, he just wants the bureaucracy to go away. Like you do in Haven, which is a town that probably loathes paperwork on principle at this point. He looks around, wanders around slow and with no large movements, the living embodiment of walk purposefully with a clipboard and no one will question you. Audrey looks somewhat disturbed as she hangs up the phone, not because she's seen Wade though, presumably because a friend of hers has died and she couldn't stop it. Oh, now she'll look disturbed because she's seeing Wade! He's in Nathan's office! No, Wade, you should not be in there, fuck the fuck off. Wade's all smiles and apologies, none of which do anything for his face, and she tries to steer him to the waiting area. He's not going there very fast. Instead he's engaging her in conversation, introducing himself, clipboard in both hands which is, of course, relevant in a second. Oddly, his facial tension does ease up somewhat, seeing her; the introduction and at least some of the friendliness is genuine. Not only that, but he hasn't been fed the line about her being Audrey still, which seems to startle her for a moment. Still, he's not supposed to be there, so waiting area it is. She gives a quick glance around to see if it's clear, then goes into the room, herself. For what, we don't get to see yet, because the camera will now close in on the pen Wade left behind just so we know it's sinister. Dun dun DUNNNNNN. Wade Crocker what the fuck is up with you and surveillance equipment. Were you a spy in a previous life?
We move onto Duke and Nathan investigating the case some more, they seem to have arrived at Stillwater School and here comes another attempt to pull Laudrey onto the case, which Duke passes off with half-truths. Though I'll grant him that were she really a newbie, this would be a dangerous one as well, since they have no idea how it's being transmitted. At least last case they got a good idea of what was going on to start with, even if they couldn't exactly prevent it. The pitch and tension in his voice isn't very indicative of being truthful, though. Duke, you are so lucky Nathan doesn't pick up on these sorts of things very well. At least not now when he's still distracted by the whole dying to end the Troubles thing. And now we finally get the line reference to Jennifer that we've been waiting for, she's gone to pick up her stuff? And/or pack up her stuff, so, she's back in Boston, is the implication and speaking of newbies. Duke guesses she's back in Boston, anyway, he says with the sort of tone of a teenager being asked if he like-likes a girl. Duke, you are not fooling anyone. Least of all Nathan, oddly, who hasn't shown much ability to perceive and process information outside his personal bubble until this episode. Duke makes an attempt at deflecting Nathan's question, to which Nathan replies that he remembers what Duke said outside the barn that afternoon. About Audrey. And in case we hadn't picked up on the dynamic between the two of them, three of them if you count the absent Audrey, here comes the romance/Audrey music! Or at least the music of emotional scenes between the leads, whether or not it's direct romance. It's telling, and it might even be the first time that a Duke and Nathan scene of emotional intimacy gets this music. They're certainly being shot like intimates, let's not forget Ball and Chain (1x05) where Nathan was shot like the lovelorn forbidden lover outside the door of the Gull, even all the way back then. Whichever direction you want to take it, romantic friendship, eventual romance with sexual relationship, platonic friendship with deep emotional connection, there's something big and now much more healthy and steady between these two. Which is what we come around to, as Nathan gives Duke the take-care-of-her-when-I'm-gone speech. Duke doesn't like that speech. He also doesn't like keeping secrets about Audrey from Nathan, or keeping secrets from people he loves in general (which says some interesting things about his relationship with Wade), so he starts to tell Nathan, but Nathan interrupts. Because he's Nathan, because he expects certain things from Duke, right now one of those things is that Duke will object to his plan to get Lexie to fall in love with him and kill him yet again. Not an unreasonable expectation! And he goes on to remind Duke that Audrey is gone as we all bang our heads on the irony that just appeared. This is also telling, in and of itself, that Nathan is perfectly fine with getting Lexie to fall in love with him so she can kill him. Which is a sadistic thing to do. But also that he doesn't expect to fall in love with Lexie, because he was in love with Audrey. And he drags Duke into that category as well. The upshot of all of this, Wuornos, you is one messed up guy, too. At least moderately decent, but messed up.
Back to the case at hand, talking to the principal of Stillwater! Who is very defensive about his Trouble-free school, maybe a little too defensive? Though Seth's death is a pretty good point and a way to make his case. He also won't cough up names, but he does say the people attending the meeting should be arriving pretty soon, so. He looks at his watch, which is currently functioning as a countdown timer and tells him nothing. Then he looks at his phone. Then he frowns. Duke wonders if it's a text, but no, every digital readout the principal sees is just counting down. When we do get a glimpse of his phone, too, as he leans over to check the computer readout, it's off. But from his point of view? Counting down. Because he's an extremely helpful victim he will count off the last five seconds for us before he turns to stone. So much for the evil text message theory of the crime? Nathan tells Duke not to touch him sort of absently, and Duke's expression and voice in response are really priceless. Oh, hey, Rafferty. Nathan tells her to hold the crime scene, send any parents who show up to the meeting home, he might need her to stay a while. Conveniently, that's fine, since her son's tennis match was cancelled on account of a broken scoreboard. Apparently it won't stop counting down. Oops. Also, that is a damn quick turnaround for a Trouble. Almost like as soon as the principal keeled over the next one started. HMM. On over to the coach the boys pelt, this time without asking the slightest question (that we can see) about where Laudrey is and shouldn't she be pulled in on the case. No time for that, now. We get at first only Nathan and Duke's perspective of the mysteriously malfunctioning scoreboard while the coach babbles annoyances about budget cuts and standard, banal, trivial things. Just to underline the fact that life goes on as best it can in Haven, despite the Troubles. In fact the coach doesn't know anything about any schools that aren't in their sports league! To add a little stereotyping in, and he's only vaguely getting the glimmer of an idea that something's wrong. Haven's not very big, we know that much, so the fact that Nathan's phone has 9 minutes and change left on it is a good indication that the countdown on this Trouble starts around 15 or 20 minutes. Which is more than we had to start with! Oh, and the video camera and boombox will chime in (oh my god that's an actual boombox that plays CDs I feel old, at least it's not the kind you put mix tapes into and hoist onto your shoulder to play Peter Gabriel outside a girl's window?) with the countdown. Yes, coach, you're fucked. Yes, Nathan and Duke know you're fucked. Yes, they're going to try whatever they can to save your ass anyway, because that's what they do even though this seems an awful lot like an accelerated version of the Ring: once you see it, you're doomed.
Speaking of doom, Jordan's gonna open a barn door. Because that always ends so well on Haven. This barn really is a barn, however, with a Vince inside duct-taped to a chair. The way he tests his bonds is desultory at best, the rest of the decor looks like it used to be a chicken coop, maybe? It's not big enough for a full harvesting type of barn, this is definitely sort of in between barn and shed for utility purposes. There's even a pile of lobster traps that have seen better days, no idea what that's about. Now there's a desk in there, the only chair the one Vince is taped to. Interesting. Looks like maybe it got converted to storage space for old furniture. I don't think this is located right above the MurderBunker (though if the boys' MurderBunker turns out to be under a barn we reserve the right to fling dead fish at them because REALLY), primarily because if it were Dave and Dwight would be able to find them easily, and I doubt Jordan wants that. Also in the category of do not want, Vince will not take your water, Jordan, even if it's got a straw in it and even if he doesn't think you're the type to poison it. It's defiance for its own sake, not because he expects it to change anything. Opening with "you're making a terrible mistake" isn't really anything other than the same empty refrain you've been using all season, Vince, what else you got for us? She's going to keep you here and out of the way until she can end the Troubles by killing AudSarLuLex, unless you have a really persuasive argument otherwise.
Well, he thinks he does! This would be the part where we started swearing at the screen last night, and we didn't stop for a good couple hours after the ep ended and then we woke back up and started all over again. Vince clearly knows that this isn't about a power play, this is about Jordan's personal issues, so he has to approach her on the human level. Something he's not used to doing except maybe with Dave and Audrey, on rare occasions. But Jordan's also gotten broken enough that she can't keep her usual tough-girl attitude up (and massive, massive props to both Kate Kelton and Richard Donat for making this transition feel natural; it's been coming for awhile but the jolt of realizing how broken they both are still comes as exactly that when they let their defenses down this ep), so she looks wrecked when she turns around. So we start back in 1981! Two years before Lucy appeared in Haven according to all the records we know of, and in June, Vince and his friend (WHICH friend, Vince, you've never appeared to have very many of them) were umpiring a Little League game (which, what, means he was friends with James Garrick back from 1x12 who we knew to be a Little League umpire at some point in the 80s? Or did Simon Crocker umpire which is just scary.) and the pitcher threw his arm out. Literally. Which sounds like a fucked up variation on Nathan's Trouble or possibly Nix's. Some kind of body horror, anyway, and happening to a kid, and no wonder it scarred Vince up one side and down the other just to start with. Vince and probably Simon, because as he continues it sounds an awful lot like that was the friend who was at the game with him. It also sounds like whatever the Teagues did and didn't know about the Troubles, they were somehow unprepared for them to show up again. Maybe they didn't pay as much attention in Sarah's day? Maybe they hoped that the stories were wrong, since that was likely the first round of Troubles they'd been alive for, and that Sarah wouldn't come back and the Troubles would stay gone. This also emphasizes that AudSarLuLex does not bring the Troubles with her when she comes, they start without her and she reaches Haven according to this arcane and esoteric 27 year cycle, but why things get started without her we don't know. Maybe to remind the town how much they need her, so they're predisposed to loving her when she comes to their rescue? Maybe something else entirely; the point is, the Troubles are not her Trouble. Which Vince at least does Jordan the courtesy of not spelling out in very small words for her to understand, and probably has more of an effect that way. Besides, it's not like we're getting any chance to breathe here, because he goes on to talk about his wife (!) and her painful horrific Trouble (!!) and how he tried to save her from it in the only way he had available to him: Simon Crocker, his friend (!!!). Oh, and he activated Simon with his own blood, which is a nice bit of by-now-unnecessary confirmation. (VINCE TEAGUES WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR TROUBLE WE DEMAND TO KNOW YOU SECRETIVE FUCK.) (There, I feel better now. Marginally.) Between leader of the Guard and the fucking magical tattoo, no, there was no way that there wasn't a Teagues Trouble, whatever Dave professed back in Real Estate (3x06) last year about how they're not like those other people. Maybe so, Dave, but I'm quite certain you're Troubled, troubled, disturbed, and possibly deranged.
Let's break this down in several parts. Vince married after Sarah. Badly, it sounds like, since he was still holding a massive torch for Sarah, but that does explain perhaps some of his lack of readiness for the Troubles' return in '81. The amount of denial and forcing yourself to move on from what might have been the love of your life involved in starting a new relationship, even given nearly three decades in which to do so, would have primed him for trying to put everything from Sarah's day behind him. His wife was Troubled, which is only moderately surprising in that we've seen an awful lot of couples with just one half Troubled. That said, the Teagues are an exception to a lot of common occurrences in Haven, and they seem to know more about the Troubles than just about anyone else, and whatever the Teagues Trouble is it doesn't seem to be one of the obvious outwardly destructive ones, so it's not surprising that Vince would marry another Troubled person. Someone who would understand some measure of what he's been through. And either he didn't know or he cheerfully swam in De Nile about the extent of her Trouble, or maybe he thought he could fix it. Maybe he thought not!Sarah would fix it when she came back, but it sounds an awful lot like the Troubles ran about as rampant as they got after Audrey went into the barn, certainly that's the conclusion Vince wants Jordan to draw. Hard to say for sure if it was really that bad or if it just seemed so to people who'd had time to get complacent about the Troubles. And, finally, Simon and Vince were friends before Simon's Trouble became such an addiction that he had to be put down. Like a rabid dog. Not to put too fine a point on it. Vince is also doing his damnedest in this scene to hide his emotions, delivering the story in something between a flat monotone and the storyteller's natural cadence: he's detached, this happened to someone who wasn't him, certainly to someone who isn't who he is now. Separating it out like that might help you tell it, Vince, but it's not doing a bit of good for our assessment of your utter fucked-up-ed-ness. Jordan, by sharp and stark contrast, looks by turns intrigued (finally! some data! we know the feeling) and sympathetic and shocked and horrified, as the reveals mount up. So Vince knew about the Crocker Trouble by then, presumably either because of family history or because Sarah told him when she went to find the Teagues after killing Roy in self-defense. Lord knows she wasn't as close-mouthed and careful with her information back then, which, by the way, speaks to a certain continuity of character development that not even the barn can erase. Maybe because Simon told him, having found his father's old journals? We don't have enough data to say for certain that they were that close, but if they were the kind of close where Simon allowed Vince to do that to him and then ask him to kill Vince's father-in-law (making this, by the by, not a gender-linked Trouble), then it would stand to reason. Horrifying thought for you of the episode: Vince and Dave were in their 20s or 30s when Sarah turned up, and Simon was just a boy who abruptly lost a father figure of any kind. Assuming he came back to Haven while he was still a boy, I'm seeing a pair of paternal figures in his past. Who might not have sucked at being father/uncle figures at the time! Yeah, enjoy that thought, we'll be in our bunker twitching. It does, however, explain quite a bit about Dave's attitude towards Duke, Simon's attitude towards the Troubles, and even tangentially Vince's attitude towards Nathan.
We'll also just remind you all that Vince is going out of his way not to say his wife's name, and while maybe that's out of some degree of guilt that's also a massive indication to us that we do know who she is and/or have met her. And we're going to continue to point our fingers straight at Eleanor Carr, who always had a somewhat fractious relationship with the Teagues and particularly with Vince, and who by all indications was a single mother, and whose daughter Julia has the same goddamn fucking disappearing-reappearing tattoo that Vince does. And who knew more about the Troubles than most other people in Haven yet for whatever reason never showed a single sign of being Troubled herself. Not just the Troubles, but the cycle of them. And who had their same fucking attitude of I have secrets and I'm not telling you until I think you're ready for them. It would also explain Julia and Duke being friends even more than kids together in a small town, if their fathers Simon Crocker and Vince Teagues were close friends. So. Given all of that, we've got two more big pieces of data to go over. The first is his "nobody knows that," followed by a pause that could indicate that nobody knows how Simon got activated or that nobody knows that he asked Simon to kill daddy-in-law-probably-Carr or both. I'm leaning toward the former, because I would bet that someone figured out the latter at some point. Either Vince's wife, or Dave, or one of the other members of his wife's family, or hell, even Lucy. Someone knew, because you don't just take a Trouble away from a family and manage to keep it a secret when everyone in that family who's predisposed to the Trouble is on edge about getting it. But Vince is an inveterate liar even now and doesn't know how to stop making himself ambiguous even assuming he wants to right now. (Which is a big assumption, considering he's trying to manipulate the fuck out of Jordan not to do this thing.) And then we get the revelation that Vince and Lucy had to hunt down Simon Crocker "years" later; if our timeline is actually accurate about two years after that, which is a nice length of time for the addiction to take full hold and turn Simon Crocker from someone who probably had massive daddy issues but could have been friends with a more stable Vince to someone with zero stability and every belief that he had to keep killing people to save them from the Troubles. So, essentially, from Duke to Wade. And again, assuming an accurate timeline, Simon was killed a week before James Cogan, making him not a candidate for that murder. We think. We're side-eying our timelines severely because they keep fucking with the datasets, but they also seem to know what they're doing. This, along with the revelation that they tried to make someone be Sarah again (and Lucy the only known candidate for that), goes even further to explaining Lucy's attitude toward the Teagues: she's got one fuck of a mess to clean up and a lot of it is their fault. To say nothing of the ways in which they damaged her personally. It also doesn't at all answer the question of who, if anyone, was part of the love triangle in her day, though we may eye Garland just on principle. (Right age, right job title, right set of parallels…) And on top of that it explains why Lucy and Duke were together on the beach that day. She'd just killed his father, who had become a psychopathic parody of a person, so of course she felt guilt. If she knew about James Cogan (and there's every reason to believe she did, she knew James long enough to tell both him and the original Lucy Ripley about the alternative solution to the Troubles, and if Vince and Dave tried to make her be Sarah they'd have gone for the thing with the deepest emotional ties after their own, and what other than a child?) then she might have transferred some of the maternal tendencies she was unsure about to Duke himself. Guilt and shame and desire to fix your fuckups are all extremely powerful motivators. Vince's conclusion from this is not about the ways in which the Troubles work but that in doing what he did, trying to save his wife, he became more of a monster than she would have and a worse monster than Simon did. We can't tell him he's wrong, either, but telling Jordan that she'll become a monster if she does this? Not helping, Vince. She already thinks of herself as monstrous due to her Trouble. Note, finally, that she leaves herself largely bare, as much as we've ever seen her, in the black tank top but gloves. So she can touch Vince deliberately without harming him, but he can't get free and try to grab her even as she stalks out, putting substantial distance between them before grabbing her jacket.
Now that our brains are complete mush, let's set them to Sleazy Spin. Hi Wade. How very not nice to see you again. Jordan's come to check on her other pet project, and apparently the reason the boys were in Nathan's truck is because Wade lo-jacked Duke's car. HEY. You really are a shit, Wade. I'm just saying. He's also continuing to deteriorate, he delivers the information that yes, he's got the audio-equipped spy pens in the station, one in Nathan's office and one in the bullpen, and did she know that virtual stakeouts were boring? Delivered with the expression and intonation of a petulant teenager. Wade's bored, he wants to play! Ew. Ew ew ew excuse us while we dive for some steel wool and a shower. It's one of the great tragedies of TV that for a man as attractive as Camargo is, he perpetually plays characters that make us want to run screaming in the opposite direction. And then shoot him in the face. And then run some more. Ew. Jordan is both so desperate for this to work and so desperate to be touched that she's playing along, though honey? I would be really concerned by the fact that he's picked up a pair of gloves at some point, because that means he can touch you now. Most people don't wander around Haven with gloves just in case they want to touch the human taser. Evidencing once again that Wade is a creepy fucker whose plans all have multiple possibilities, and for a man who's supposedly attracted to Jordan and wanting to sleep with her his face is very still and cold. Calculating. He's using her as much as she's using him, because he doesn't want the sex, he wants the power. Which just reminds me of the fact that rape is about power, not sex, and now I wonder just how bad he's triggering Jordan and how much she's stomping on it, because oh honey. For all his pouting about Lexie being on camera and that not being as fun as seducing Jordan, it's all leading to this moment of asking how he can end the Troubles. For the second time! She gives him another piece of the puzzle, Jordan, he's not a dog even if he is acting like a horndog, he's as turned on by the prospect of power as he is by the prospect of sex augh. Extra bonus creepy points for the fact that, for a man who'd been cuckolded for not being attentive to his wife, being attractive both sexually and in other ways of power to another woman is probably very tempting. One wonders what his wife was like, and if that's one reason Jordan found him as easy a mark as he she did. She is not, however, mistaking easy for a license to be careless and give Wade even remotely all of it, telling him how to activate his Trouble and that getting blood on him will make him supernaturally strong is not the same as explaining that killing someone will end that family's Trouble for good. Hey look, a distraction! It's that guy from the store that was robbed again, pissed off that nobody came back to take his statement and what does he have to do to get a little help around here? I can't blame him.
Time for some judicious cutting back and forth between the station and Jordan and Wade watching the feeds. Laudrey's cleared away all the phones, computers, Duke explains that it's everything with a digital readout. The boys are clearly running on vague theories and a whole lot of hope, because they don't know who's the Troubled person causing this and they don't know how it works and, in conclusion, they know they're fucked but it's not in them to just sit around and do nothing. Which is why we love Duke and Nathan even when they're being kind of stupid. Hey, Laudrey can see the countdown too! That doesn't seem good, though it is eminently predictable. She's immune but knowledgeable, which means she gets to sit there and know the poor coach's time is ending and she can't do anything for insufficient data. I can only imagine how much she's kicking herself for not getting on this case from the outset and damn the consequences if Nathan realizes who she is. Oh Audrey. Oh everyone. And then the thermometer starts over from 16! Tick-tick-tock, guys. No, it's not Duke, it's Nathan's turn to be hit by the curse of some statuary-esque type of Trouble. Besides which, it conveniently puts Nathan in danger with a time limit that will force Audrey to make decisions! Sometimes we seriously wonder if the Troubles as a whole are sentient, or if there's some sentient force affecting the outcome, because the Doylist explanations are a little too neat. The barn doesn't count anymore on account of being all imploded. We could blame William! We like blaming William. And we haven't heard Duke call Nathan "Nate" in awhile, and hardly ever in that scared tone. 'scuse us, trollface coming through. After the ad break, Laudrey cuts Nathan's counting out loud short, thank you for that but your Audrey is showing through. A lot. They try to trace it geographically, who have they been in contact with aside from, you know, all the victims. Who did the vics all have in common, guys? Also, ouch, Nathan, that was uncalled for and harsh and you don't need to be such a dick about the fact that you miss Audrey. You were doing okay without her. Not intentionally harsh given that it's a fairly mild tone of voice, but definitely thoughtless. Over in the surveillance boat of all things currently skeevy, Wade doesn't so much sound sympathetic as sound like he's going through the motions of being sympathetic so he can play hero. We've heard him sound sympathetic before, as recently as last episode, and his voice was a lot more even and with a normal cadence as opposed to now, when it's a touch deeper and much slower and more drawling. Tellingly, Jordan did respond to the genuine gesture of sympathy, whereas now she's back to being focused on the camera and the case and what's going on in the police station. She asks him to rewind it to focus on, well, hey, hi Paul. We were there for that! But we weren't there for what we're seeing on camera now; as Paul's led past the wall clock the wall clock trembles for a second. Like it's going into countdown, in fact. I have no idea how specifically that ties into his Trouble, but then again it's hard to define specifically what Paul's Trouble is, and since it's time and countdown related, hell, we'll go with it. It's as good as a neon arrow pointing to him going "That's the Troubled guy, fix him!" Or, you know, stab him, if you're a Crocker and you're into that sort of thing.
Back over to the police station they're still trying to figure this out, who and how and why and, since it's Haven, whether or not it's on purpose. Duke stays stuck on the school aspect for another second or two before Nathan yanks them off to figure out where the coach was before he got whammied and if that coordinates with where Nathan was before where he got whammied. Couple of locations, nothing significant, but wait! Video camera? Yes, Laudrey, he said video camera. Nathan's dismissive of the video camera as weapon idea, but that's not what caught her attention. The electronics are the common thread, and as Laudrey points out, not by what they are but by where they all come from: the electronics shop that was robbed earlier that day. Paul's store was robbed, Tater left in the middle of taking his statement which only exacerbated the helpless feeling from the robbery, then Nathan seemed to dismiss him as well, causing him to be next on the list. The coach and, likely, the other two men got caught in the crossfire as well, at a guess. At least it's hard to believe that Seth was the original robber, though that does make me wonder if there's another statue sitting around somewhere that no one's found yet. At any rate, Duke will now go tearassing off after Paul in the hopes of actually catching him, while for Nathan the penny is slowly falling to the floor now that Laudrey's slipped up and called Tatum Tater. A personal name that she could have heard in passing since no one seems to have called him by his actual name, but they haven't been in proximity all day and Lexie's only been in town a few days. Laudrey moves right along after a second or two of widening eyes to convey the "oh shit" of the moment, apparently Paul had to stay still and count to a thousand, which could take about fifteen minutes. We're not going to experiment and be sure. And that's the kind of thing that causes a Trouble, right? Only by now even Nathan can hear the Audrey in her voice, there's no hesitation, no bawdy humor, the only thing Laudrey is managing to fake at all decently is the lack of knowledge of how the Troubles work, and that's a very generous value of decent. Nathan's figured it out by now. It takes him a second of staring as both his and Audrey's eyes get wider and wider. Audrey is the first name he calls on, because that name is attached to the emotional turmoil, but Parker is the second name when he wants confirmation and explanations and, I think at this point, he wants that teamwork back. He wants his partner back so they can save Haven, or at least he's in that mindset more than he is in the mindset of needing to kill himself to atone for whichever it is he's atoning for today. Audrey's just given up pretending, by now. It's the reunion hug a lot of fans have been waiting for! Pay no attention to the trollface behind the curtain. Nathan is not quite as pissed as I expected, though there is definitely a Tone to his voice when he wants to know why she didn't tell him. For the very simple reason that people wanted her to kill him, Nathan, duh. Yes, that includes you. Don't sound so surprised. Not quite enough time to point that out, though, because Duke will come in and let everyone know the Paul has left the building, and then proceed to increase the awkwardness in the room by 267%. Thanks for that. Yes, Nathan now knows, and Duke knew before you Nathan, as you so cleverly have figured out, and if you weren't as target-fixed as Jordan with your head firmly wedged up your ass you would have figured it out, too. Audrey will remind them all that they don't have time for this, for all the good it does, and go on looking for Paul while Duke and Nathan fight and the trollface wanders by again. Extra bonus now-kiss points for Duke admitting to wanting Nathan to live more than he wants to stop the Troubles by killing Nathan. One of these days someone is going to point out that killing Nathan isn't as sure a thing as they all want it to be and if they do and the Troubles don't end, everyone's going to feel even worse than they do now. And then we will die of shock. At any rate. Paul's at his store nearby, and they need to get their butts moving if they want to save Nathan.
Over to the electronics shop, then! Paul is nowhere to be seen, but what's this? A Wild Jordan appears? And she's got a gun, how nice. Guns for everyone. Laudrey tries pulling the Lexie act on Jordan again but she's still more Audrey than Lexie, and Jordan heard it all through the bug Wade planted anyway. Jordan being Jordan and also desperate, she's completely disregarding how Audrey lied to and deceived the Guard and, well, everyone for the past few (two? more? we'd love to know!) days and is mono-focused on Audrey needs to kill Nathan and end the Troubles now plskthnxbai. Laudrey will try one more time to refuse and pretend to be Lexie. Honey, she just said she bugged the station and your office, that's really not going to work. I mean, if by 'work' you mean it got Jordan upset enough that Nathan and Duke could both point guns at her without getting shot, then yes, it worked like a charm, but it's not convincing anyone. The Lexie disguise is falling apart rather fast. (Can we have Dwight in on the secret next? Please oh please?) Audrey tries to talk Jordan into giving them Paul, but the problem with that is that Jordan literally does not care if she lives or dies at this point, as long as the Troubles end. If that means bringing Nathan down to the wire and getting herself shot so Audrey understands the seriousness of the situation, then so be it. She wants Audrey to kill Nathan, she wants that to end the Troubles, she doesn't care how it happens. So, basically, what we have all this season is an underlying theme similar to that of the second season finale Sins of the Fathers 2x12. All we're missing is Nathan running himself onto a knife he's forcing Audrey to hold. This isn't a coincidence, but we're missing so many pieces of the AudSarLuLex-and-the-Crockers puzzle that it's not even worth chewing on at this point.
Back from commercial we have a nice standoff going here, Nathan looking down at the thermometer and watching it hit four minutes and let's all take a good look at our info screens, iTunes screens, however you measure the progress on your episode watching. Because it's always fun when they fit a countdown into end-result realtime! So, four minutes left, and Nathan is back on that tired old song and dance again, Nathan, what the fuck makes you think this is going to work any better now than it did the last five times? Though we'll grant that there's a great deal of trust in Duke he's showing right now, again, as he assumes Duke can handle Jordan all on his lonesome. Oh boys. And it's subtle and consistent characterization. Audrey has some damn good arguments, too, but she'll make them later. Right now her biggest argument is that they have already done quite a number of impossible things, and this is just one more of those things, and can we stop this countdown Trouble already? While she's looking for Paul, Wade will turn up and make everything worse! Hi Wade! Whose first question is where's the Troubled guy, that'd be so much more reassuring if Jordan hadn't told you what she did. He doesn't look entirely like he's about to go psycho! Which Camargo is fully capable of. Nathan would like to know what the fuck is going on. Duke would really like to know what the fuck is going on. And Jordan would like Wade to go the fuck away, as though you could just turn him off with the push of a button now that you've dangled everything he ever wanted in front of him. Thank you, Jordan, you've now done the exact same thing to Wade that Nathan did to you. I'm not even kidding on this one, Nathan seduced Jordan to get information and connections out of her for his own benefit, then dropped her like a hot potato the second it became inconvenient for him. Not quite so abruptly as Jordan's doing right now, but that plotline developed over a handful of episodes, whereas this one developed over one and a couple of minutes of the previous episode. Add to that, Wade already has deep-seated abandonment issues from his father, who he apparently knew little enough about, and his wife, and trust issues with Duke not telling him anything "for his own good" and thus not treating him as an equal, and is it any wonder that Wade goes off like a firecracker in a munitions depot? Really? Not to say that everything he did is excused or condoned, but this is a predictable result from a series of really poor decisions, you guys. Jordan and Duke, you especially. Duke seems surprised that Wade is helping Jordan, which I will grant, but when Wade immediately goes into how this is him learning the Crocker family secret, Duke, seriously. That was your cue to put down the gun and drag your brother out of the store for a little palaver, say thankya. No? No. He's just going to tell his brother, again, what he does and doesn't want without ever explaining why. I'd get pissed off at that kind of seemingly arbitrary and dickish behavior even without all the abandonment/inadequacy complexes. And Wade's complexes would put the military-industrial complex to shame. But no, we're not explaining anything to Wade now, we're going to attempt to dismiss him like a genie back into his bottle, and with about as much success. It's telling that Wade's main focus is that Troubled people dying gives him power, but, no, no one wants that. No one, in fact, cares about that, or is showing any sign of caring about that, though it should raise some alarm bells in Duke. Jordan is still monofocused as ever, now that she's back to the original plan of ending the Troubles the backup plan might as well not have existed. Which includes Wade. Who is now closing his eyes and clenching his jaw shut like he should have seen this coming. Go eat worms, Wade. Audrey continues to try to find Paul, which results in Jordan attempting to threaten her with the gun. Jordan, everyone knows you're not going to shoot Nathan or Audrey, give it up. Surprisingly, this time, Jordan does. She lowers the gun, which Duke takes from her, and then Audrey does manage to find Paul with two minutes and change left.
Wade takes a couple of steps towards Paul, moving slowly. I don't think in this instance because he's not sure what he's going to do, he's not moving like he means to hesitate over killing the man. More like he's not sure of the situation, so he's going to move slowly and quietly till he figures out how all of the moving pieces fit. Duke intercepts him, of course, and Wade isn't having it. He wants what he believes Duke had all along, power, for the most part. Though also respect and belonging and people who won't go away. In this case, though, the route to that is through a Troubled person's blood, so, that's fun. And because Duke is still in his way, still not explaining everything, still not bringing Wade into a circle of trust (not that Wade's doing anything to earn it right now) Wade blames him for... it's hard to say. The camera swings back and forth between them, possibly literally and certainly giving that impression of being on a literal swing going back and forth, just to emphasize the push-pull motion between these two. Wade doesn't pick up on, though we do and find it wearily amusing, Duke admitting to already being damned. That hangs a nice lampshade on one interpretation of the Troubles in general, and, okay, yes, the Crocker Trouble in particular, thank you Duke. He still has no idea how to talk to his brother, so after being told for the umpeenth time that his younger brother is doing all of this for his own good, Wade just turns and walks out. That's right, Wade, just keep right on walking. It's better that way.
Over behind the counter Audrey is getting Paul up to speed, or she would be if she had lead with "you have a Trouble" rather than "you have a problem." Paul knows he has a problem, he has a lot of problems right now, more than he wants to deal with and he is happy to share. Paul, shut up and let the woman talk. After a couple seconds of unnecessary blather Audrey does manage to get out that he's Troubled, which seems to get through. He also, thankfully, doesn't seem to have any feelings one way or another on the Troubled because he doesn't bother denying it with the usual sort of vehemence we're used to seeing from that crowd, he's just surprised and it has trouble penetrating the mountain of crap heaped on him today. Poor bastard. She explains in slightly more words than she needs to how Paul's Trouble works, tells him Nathan has two minutes. A little less by the episode, but that's only if they're real-timing it. Jordan chimes in with the helpful information that if Paul leaves the clock on Nathan, Audrey will have to kill him and then they're all cured. I have so many problems with your two base assumptions there, Jordan. I agree with Duke, shut the hell up. Though I also agree with Nathan, Jordan's not being actively malicious so much as she just wants the Troubles to end really really badly. And she's not taking direct aggressive action, so let's not shoot her. Which, in the end, might also be what she wants. She certainly looks like she's about to curl up on the floor and die in response to that statement, possibly she's also realized that Nathan, for all his faults, is on her side insofar as ending the Troubles goes. She's definitely having a number of realizations this scene and none of them are good for her. Outside in his Range Rover, Wade looks like he's going to curl up in the bottom of a bottle. Or hip flask, as the case may be. You know how we keep saying he has an addictive personality? Yeah. The fact that he's gone from drinking and partying in semi-public to drinking alone in his car (and any thoughts we had that he might have been sober last ep? GONE) is a clear indication that he's been getting quietly and steadily worse.
One minute and ten! I'm looking at my own countdown clock and that's roughly accurate. Audrey runs down the list of people affected, how they got their countdown clock because they were slowing him down from addressing the robbery? Getting back what was taken? What was stolen, anyway? A bracelet, as it turns out, just in time for the camera to give us a good look at a picture on his desktop, a picture that turns out to be a woman named Ellie who is "just a friend." Um, no, honey. You don't get this upset over not being able to give someone a birthday present that you Trouble out and kill four people over "just a friend." Duke, the local expert on being unable to spit things out, is the one to stick the lampshade on the guy's head, and Audrey lacks the time to finesse this. Between her and Duke pretty much grabbing the guy and swinging him around to the phone and forcing him to dial, this is far, far more desperate and even violent than they've ever been in the series. Goes right along with Nathan's desperate and violent solution to the Troubles, and Jordan's! This entire season so far has been a series of escalations. Nathan continues to try to pressure Audrey into killing him, Audrey continues to ignore him in favor of pressuring Paul into asking her to coffee. Love will save the day, or so the Crocker Box says, but everyone's desperately trying to force it to do so right now, which just seems like an incredibly bad idea. Miraculously, it does work, though I somewhat question the semi-skeeviness of the Nice Guy who just needs to get up the guts to ask a woman out instead of hoping she'll notice something. Because ew. Then again, this ep is also full of people being manipulative/insecure/unstable jackasses when it comes to romance and sexuality, and we have absolutely no data other than a picture and a ten second phone call on the relationship between Paul and Ellie. There's also the fact that once he did ask the initial question and then froze up on the specifics, she supplied them pretty eagerly and certainly going by her voice. And, hey, you know what? Yes, that was about four minutes from when Nathan said they had that much time left. So go go Haven cast and crew for a very tense four minutes of real-time Troubled drama! Paul looks much more relaxed and happy. Wade, by contrast, looks much more desperate and drunk. Paul goes to lock up and here comes the scene we were all cringing at in the previews, Wade shivving Paul in the guts. Ouch. Duke is, predictably, horrified. Jordan is also horrified, to which I say Jordan you have been thinking this of Duke for a season, how did you not see it in Wade. Because target-fixed, that's how. Wade smears the blood in a straight line across his palm, which I suppose is better than cutting into his palm the way most people seem to do with that gesture and, oh hello silver-eyes. Everyone's jaw is dropped at that, except Duke, who seems to be bracing himself for combat. Wade's live, everyone! It's a live Wade!
Jordan is the first to recover, scooting out of the combat zone to call Paul an ambulance, which in five words tells us how far she's come in that scene alone. Wade is now in a position to kill Audrey and at least try to end the Troubles that way, assuming Jordan still believes that's a possibility, but not one word in that direction, nor in the direction of confirming to Wade that Audrey is Audrey and not Lexie, which he may or may not have registered through the bloodlust. Nathan's right there and there are many guns in the room, but not one word in that direction either. In the space of the last five minutes, Jordan's priorities have shifted from get Audrey to kill Nathan above pretty much everything else, to taking care of the injured and other more compassionate goals. It's the first glimpse we've had in a long time of the Jordan we saw in the first couple episodes of her appearance, anyone remember that? Someone who could smile, chat, who could interact with people, who didn't react to everything with hostility or wariness at best. There are a number of factors that likely went into this transformation, starting with Vince's story about himself and Simon Crocker and ending with Audrey and Duke fighting so visibly and hard to help this one person. And then to have all of that undone by Wade Crocker, who has repeatedly said just now that it's about power for him, it's about the gifts he should have. The contrast is pretty stark, especially when part of Vince's story involved, however briefly, covering Simon Crocker's descent from a guy who could be someone's good friend to a homicidal power-mad lunatic. Wade's certainly following in his father's footsteps now! Extra bonus horrific points because now she has become Vince, she's the one who pushed Wade towards this and she made the new Crocker monster, which Duke clearly never was and never intends to be (see also the man absorbed four people's worth of Troubled blood and didn't twitch). Whatever else Jordan thinks of Vince, I doubt she wants to end up like him. Wade? Well, Duke attempts to confront him with you stabbed a person, but Wade's all about the fact that Duke's not the only special Crocker in town anymore, nyah nyah nyah. Wade, you need therapy. You need so much therapy. I can't even begin to list the ways in which you need therapy, come back, Claire! We miss you! Wait, no, you're dead. It's also interesting that he thinks he can end the Troubles, which he is clearly at this point only doing for the prestige value being the savior of an entire town would give him. And since he's walking away from Audrey rather than trying to shiv her, either he has something else in mind or he's not entirely sure how he's going to go about it. Or he's mindful of the fact that Nathan and Duke are both armed and if he shanked Audrey he probably wouldn't live to do his victory lap. I mean, there's that to consider, too. Also worth noting is how determined Nathan is not to let a Crocker that's behaving like every boogeyman stereotype of the Crockers get away, and how readily he assents to Duke saying, no, this is my brother, let me try. Further evidence of trust, though in this case we'll point out that Duke's been doing a remarkably shitty job with his brother to this point (not that Nathan's fully informed on that front) and in fact they tend to work best together when one of them's around to keep the more emotionally invested one from doing really stupid shit. Duke, honey, I know you've gotten accustomed to the fact that that's Nathan lately, but right now? IT'S YOU.
Back over at the barn that is not That Darn Barn, Jordan drags herself in and cuts Vince free. Equal odds, I'd say, whether he knows Wade is activated from that exhausted look on her face, because trying to control a live and homicidal Crocker would exhaust anyone, or whether he knows because the Teagues Trouble has something to do with being a genius locus I have no idea. Though the Teagues bloodline being the genius locus of the town would explain, in a way, how they own half of Haven. Jordan admits that Wade is live, that she couldn't stop it, that she now sees what she's turned into as a result of living in this town. I'd argue that she's been the one making the choices, but being in Haven damn well doesn't help one cultivate a strong sense of mental health and encourage good decision making. Getting out of Haven might well be the best decision she's made in a while. We'd feel better about it if her voice didn't have a weary, resigned, defeated tone, like she doesn't care if she's leaving Haven on her own power or with a tag around her toe. Let us all now note that though Jordan's untaped Vince most of the way and Vince untaped what was left (and that was a really shitty tape job, too), he's not actually moving out of that chair. As, you know, one might expect of a person who's been tased and kidnapped and when the person who did it is still presenting a visible threat. No, wait, you know what I want to know, how the fuck did someone as slight as Jordan get someone as large as Vince into that goddamn barn by herself, preferably without shocking him until his heart stopped. He is getting up there, you know. Never mind. Jordan's pressing question is what happened to his wife after, well. After. Possibly because she's now thinking of her relationship with Nathan, who seems to have been at least in her mind her closest friend and the one person whose judgement mattered and whose relationship she wanted to protect. For a while, anyway, remember last season? I know a lot of you have been hitting up the profile, it's all in there. Vince tells her, continuing the parallel, that his wife found out what he'd done, hated him for it, and left him. Yeah, Nathan was pretty torqued off at Jordan for a while there, but breaking from Vince's generation and the previous seems to be what this generation does; Nathan doesn't hate her for it the way Vince's nameless wife (*ahemEleanorahem*) does. Or did. Still, let's just hammer the parallel home, shall we, with Vince's musing that some couples are never meant to be. Are you thinking of your wife, Vince, or of Sarah? And Jordan looks upwards and thinks aloud how some couples are, and we really don't have to stretch far to arrive at the conclusion that she's thinking of Nathan and Audrey. Who just now saved two people in front of her. Who stopped a Trouble, who might continue to. Who have, apparently, instilled at least some sliver of new hope in her, or alternate hope, or the notion that there is not only one way to fix things. She's not ready to admit that she accepts Nathan and Audrey as a couple to Vince, yet, but she's thinking it. And she's going to leave Haven, she does tell him. She needs a new start. Vince, well. Vince doesn't argue or even say anything, at all, just watches her go. Vince, what is that expression on your face. Are you pondering what we're pondering? (I think so, Dave, but what if the chicken won't wear the nylons?)
Let's visit that fated couple, then. Neither of them can control their faces, Nathan less so than Audrey, when he walks in and she's behind the desk and she really is Audrey and every little thing's gonna be all right. Cue reggae music. Well, no, cue silly partner jokes, Paul will be okay, Ellie might come visit him, Audrey thinks that just the phone call and getting over his frozen-in-headlights fear of rejection will fix his Trouble. We'll sure as fuck hope so, and wonder about previous iterations of this Trouble. What, did they have auditory hallucinations of the countdown instead? Or did all the analog clocks do it too, or what? Which gives some creepy meaning to countdown to midnight, since analog clocks were still pretty common back during the Cold War era, I'd bet you dollars to pancakes that's what they counted down to in Lucy's day. Also that's a rather familiar-to-us book on Native American myths and folklore (okay, it says American Indian, which rather dates it) on Audrey's desk. I do not believe that is an accident, and while I think the last place I saw it was in my anthro advisor's office, Kitty apparently used to own it. It is thus One Of Those Texts, and probably full of useful information which we will kick ourselves for not having ready access to, since that suggests some direction toward the origin of the Troubles. Maybe? We hope, anyway. Nathan and Audrey's bantering about the phone company commercial is a little bit awkward, a little bit forced, working their way back to a new normal. Nathan brought lampshades, though! Audrey did too, aw, it's a lampshade exchange! You guys can just put them in that corner over there with the sign saying Where The Fuck Is Duke, on account of he just disappears off-camera when he's supposedly going to chase down his brother. To the tune of I missed you/I know you. Audrey would like an answer to the really obvious question of why are you glad she's back, Nathan. Because her being back means a) the Troubles haven't ended and b) you think you're going to die. So what earthly sense does this make. Nathan will proceed to be thick and in love! He just wants her back, he doesn't care what happens to him, he's only learned to care about what happened to the town as a result of having his nose rubbed in it like a bad puppy because before, frankly, he was off hiding from what he'd done. It's not that his empathy's broken per se, it's just really skewed and his life's awfully fucked up right now. Oh, hey, it's communication! Excuse us, we need to take a second to fall out of our chairs in a dead faint. Nathan wants to know if she's mad at him, even though he's visibly and almost gleefully happy that she's there to be mad at him and, well, yes, she is, but there's no point in dwelling on it now, they need to find another way to end the Troubles. Or so her body language seems to be saying until Nathan pushes. Yes, you idiot. Audrey is upset that Nathan took her choices away from her, remember that thing we said we were going to yell at him about later? This is it. that somehow her walking into a barn and losing her memories of him is in his head equivalent to him dying for good and always. And it's a hard call to make, is it better to have her back in 27 years slightly different? Is it better to declare that it's time to end this whole bullshit cycle? Because if that were Nathan's main motivation I would be 100% behind him even with all the damage that causes people. But it's not, and Audrey knows it and calls him on it. He couldn't let her go, and she can't kill him in cold blood, and now she's insisting that he keep her secret. (Guys? Jordan? Guys? What, did Vince call up offscreen and say "oh Jordan won't be a problem she's leaving"? Sigh. Too many balls for them to keep in the air, I think.) Because screw your deal with the Guard, Nathan, and screw your theory that you get to go off and commit suicide-by-Audrey. If she has to pull the trigger, she does love him, and that makes it her decision whether or not she ends the Troubles that way. Right now? She has loudly and repeatedly said that she will not do it this way, and since her other option's been removed, she needs to hunt for some new ones, stat. Right this very second what she needs is to run away from this heavy emotional conversation and not let Nathan argue with her about whose decision it is, which is probably for the best, for once. Let him sit there gaping like a stunned fish that she said actual words (along with the rest of the audience) and he can figure out how to approach things from here on out without them grating on each other's open wounds.
Oh, hey, open wounds. Jordan's like one big one, and this is the same graveyard she had her date with Nathan at back in Real Estate (3x06). (Note the episode number here. I do not think this is a coincidence.) In Wade's battlewagon which at the angle they're shooting it looks vaguely like a truck. Augh. Jordan, you're not here to say goodbye, your voice is too smooth and formal, you're here to see what happens when you stick yourself in a car with Wade, if he'll do the job for you or if you have to do it yourself. Dammit, Jordan. Wade's still the creepiest creeper around, he'd like to celebrate his new talent! With that rubber glove that oh god twitch can be used for so much more than sex and it's starting to look a hell of a lot like a Dexter callback. Jordan, get out of the car. Jordan is not getting out of the car, she's turning down Wade's advances. I'm not sure there's a way to do that at this point that wouldn't result in him escalating, but the way she's dismissive of it as a possibility will definitely get him to want to reassert his power. Power over her, in this case. One addictive vice denied him, he'd like to know how to end the Troubles! For good! Third time asking, everybody drink, fuck knows Wade has been. And now Jordan's stripping away the power she tried to give him by saying that she believes she was wrong, she doesn't think he can. No shit, Sherlock. We've only been saying this the last couple-three eps. But now it's sunk in on a visceral level, that Audrey needs to be the one to do it and she is as much the linchpin of this whole shebang as everyone's been making out. Maybe it's even sunk in that that's a heavy and unfair burden to ask anyone to carry? Hard to say, since Jordan's giving Wade so little here and Wade is leaping to the conclusion that she's just like everyone else, she never meant to tell him, she always was using him and never viewed him as a full partner. And he's not wrong in his conclusions, though considering what an unstable creepy fucker he is I wouldn't want him as my partner either. He's also dismissing her apologies as meaningless, though she doesn't read it that way, I don't think. In no small part due to the fact that he's reaching out and touching her and no matter what she intends, that kind of small kindness is and has always been her weakest point. I'm not sure she's even listening to the scary, scary words coming out of his mouth right now, that he's finally realized what his purpose in life is and the high of Troubled blood. Ew, Wade, you psychopath. Ew. Oh, and he would like more of that high now please and thank you, with a slice across Jordan's thigh, though that's tactical as well, giving him the super-strength to hold her down when she tries to escape. Too late, and too little by far, and generally pro forma rather than a real attempt, particularly that unsurprised and defeated tone when she's swearing at him. No, she might not have known exactly what was going to happen when she let herself be shut in a car with Wade Crocker, but she had a damn good idea and I'm betting she had hopes. Never quite suicidal enough to do it herself, but definitely enough to put herself in the worst possible situation and hope things would take the predictable and likeliest course. She refuses to tell him the plan right up to the end, at which point both the fury and the psychopathy of Troubled blood addiction takes hold and she gets stabbed as he agrees that she is, in fact, a monster. And being done being a monster, by Wade's standards, means you die now, no chance for redemption. Well fuck you too Mr Biney Crocker. Camargo is apparently capable of the truly creepy thing where he rolls his eyes back in his heads and flutters his lashes and we can see a bit of the whites of his eyes still? That's disturbing. (More so in context, but, okay, the first person I met who could do that was my husband. NOT OKAY BAD TOUCH.) Ahem. Wade has his high, and Jordan has her out, though not the one we all hoped for. Just the one we all expected. Oh honey. At least she got her own back, just a little, by not coughing up the information he wanted.
Next week on Haven: this was not all a hideous dream from which we'll wake up. Someone else is having really kinky dreams in which Nathan is naked and Audrey is a naughty schoolteacher, though! Um. That's quite a lot disturbing, actually, and apparently people are dying in their sleep. Jennifer's back! Dwight's back! Oh, it looks like this is a Trouble where everyone's dreams happen to them in reality, I wonder who's doing THAT. Dwight's dream, of course, is that he gets shot by a gun. Dwight I swear to god if you die I will get Moira or Noelle to resurrect you so I can smack your dumb self all over town. I also swear that if we do not get MORE FUCKING ANSWERS out of the fucking Teagues I'm going to hunt down Donat and Dunsworth and start asking pointed questions at cons and then analyze their reactions in front of them to see which way they jump. Argh. (No I won't. I don't have the airfare. BUT I'LL THINK ABOUT IT A LOT.)
Man, I am six hundred percent behind all of Nathan's somewhat phenomenal flawery as far as the arc that started in season 3 and continued into this one goes, buuut it is worth pointing out that it was the lady in question who originally said if she goes into the barn, "Audrey dies." (In her campfireside chat with Howard, if I recall this correctly.) So even if that is Nathan self-centering again, that is almost certainly also the fate Audrey believed she was choosing.
ReplyDeleteWhoa...let us all not get on the "Nathan is a self-centred jerk" bandwagon here! I wonder why no one else hasn't pointed out the obvious to our beloved citizens of Haven..? SaLuAuLex....and whomever else the hell she's been going into the barn has not solved a damn thing in Haven. Not a one. So, at what point was SOMEONE going to do something DIFFERENT?! I don't mean some half-hearted, one-time attempt to blow up the barn; but REALLY do something different? Sure, Nathan shooting Howard was the act of a desperate man in love, doing something desperate to save the woman he loved. No, he wasn't thinking about the town, but Nathan has been helping and caring about Haven and all the little Havenites "long before Blondie came to town." as Duke so rightly pointed out. Nathan is flawed, they are ALL flawed, but I do not love the Nathan-is-hated-it-is-all-his-fault feelings flowing through Haven now. Like Dave pointed out, they have been using SaLuAuLex as a "band-aid" for gawd knows how long now. It is time to do something different and not keep "using that poor girl." Nathan was a needed catalyst for change. JMO.
ReplyDeleteNow this last thing ties in with the timeline that has been referenced here: The Teagues are going to be HUGE when it comes to revelations this season. HUGE. Haven needs more Dave, and not just because I am John Dunsworth's biggest fan. I'm telling you, within the ying and yang which is the Brothers Teague, Dave is the one you want to be friends with. I agree with our author here...Vince is fucked up. Not that Dave isn't, but I firmly believe that Dave is the lesser of two evils here. However, I digress to my timeline points: Garland. There is much more than the "age, job description, etc..." to go by in thinking that Garland was part of some Lucy triangle. THE FREAKING RINGS! The MATCHING, very much looking like WEDDING BAND rings! Hello?! This needs to be addressed...soon. TWO: Timeline. I am glad someone pointed out that Dave and Vince appear to be in their 20's when Sarah came to town. In the episode "Sarah" we also see that Garland is a CHILD. He appears to be maybe 7. When Garland dies, Dave comments that they've known Garland for 60 years. It is a lot more probable that Simon and Garland are close in age (like Nathan and Duke) and that Vince and Dave were friends with them...but like the author pointed out, kind of an "uncle" thing. If you notice, Vince and Dave seem to have their own favourites where Nathan and Duke are concerned. Finally ( so far) am I the only one that thinks the love for Sarah that Vince and Dave feel isn't necessarily ROMANTIC love? Think about that one for a minute or two...