Previously on Haven! We're deep enough into this season that none of the scenes come from prior seasons, which is also a pretty good indication that this ep will involve some repercussions for what's gone before. Audrey's hiding who she really is from everyone but Duke and Nathan, who know her too well to let her get away with that shit for long. Duke and Wade suck at being functional family members, no surprise there, Jordan has Plans which backfire most horribly both in terms of her personal realizations and in terms of ending up dead. Oh, and Wade is completely off the fucking rails. Seriously, the more we look at this the more this is a weirdly steep escalation for someone who appeared to be a bit sleazy but not serial killer levels of bad guy before.
We open up at the Gull, where Duke is leaving, probably the morning after the events of last ep going by the coffee and general quietude of the bar, yet another message for Wade. By his tone of voice I'm guessing this is at least the third message he's left, if not more. Uh, Duke? When you asked Nathan to let you handle it, we were all hoping it was going to involve tracking your brother down, smacking him over the head, and explaining that he knows how addictive this is and he will help but Wade is going to detox. A wasn't actually joking on Twitter when she mentioned throwing him in an oubliette to get clean. I prefer a knife to the face, but I acknowledge the problematic nature of that solution especially as coming from Duke. Hem hem. (A: I also clearly need to rewatch Labyrinth if my go-to is an oubliette and not a jail cell, but details. Can we blame Camargo for playing Jareth levels if not styles of psychotic?) (K: Yes, yes we can indeed. Bonus points for pathological levels of need for validation.) Goddammit, Duke. You're going to hear that a lot this recapalypse, so you might as well get used to it at the outset. Jennifer provides a welcome distraction from Duke's inability to face up to what needs to be done, in the form of interview nerves, aww! She's applied for a job at the Herald. Not aww at all. More like GOOD MAYBE YOU CAN CHEW ANSWERS OUT OF THEM. Especially since this is a clear parallel to Stephanie McCann of the original novella. Jennifer's not too nervous or she'd be babbling more, but she does want some reassurance that she looks normal, not crazy, not hearing voices. Sweetie, this is Haven, that'd practically be an asset. Duke doesn't frame it that way, but we can kind of see him thinking it despite that. Besides, yes, she has big city experience, they should totally and obviously hire her to work on their small town newspaper and is anyone else having flashbacks to Audrey getting hired on at the beginning of the show? This is a quicker move for Jennifer than it was for Audrey, but then they have less ability to hide the Troubles from an outsider now, and there is no fucking way that all these parallels are a coincidence. Just wait until we get to the Herald scenes with her and start really swearing.
Speaking of swearing, hi Wade you fucker. Murderous fucker. Creepy murderous fucker. I can keep adding adjectives but oh hey he's going for cleaning supplies. Gee. I wonder why. Jennifer books it the hell out of there, both because interview and because interview is a convenient reason not to get in the middle of the brothers Crocker being aggressive dicks to each other. I can't blame her. I wouldn't want to be in the middle of them either, in ANY sense. Not even like that. Not enough rubber gloves in the WORLD. Wade does look tired and a little out of it, like you do when you just spent the last several hours on a Trouble-induced high and dragging the body of your first victim out somewhere that it can't be readily found. He must have, he's an addict and stupid in many ways, but at some point in his life Wade learned all about the importance of not getting caught. He's also a pretty terrible liar, though in ways that demonstrate that he has some conscience left: inability to meet Duke's eyes, looking away and down and shrugging and generally overselling the innocence act. He knows he done wrong and fucked up. He just can't face the repercussions of his actions, because all he has room to think about is "more blood." And ways to lie about how there's soda in his car, which is delivered smoothly enough that I'm sure he came up with it before he ever walked onto the back deck. The rest, though, he's still overselling. The words or the headshaking would be enough, both plus the puppy eyes of please believe me please don't sell me out? Yeah, you are guilty as all fuck, and Duke knows it, he just doesn't want to admit to any of it. Out of a sense of guilt-ridden responsibility, he caused this by diving into the barn/not telling Wade at the outset/not doing more to get him out of town/not maintaining a healthy relationship with his brother all these years, take your pick. And also out of a sense, I'm betting, that this is the only family he does have left and he'd like not to lose it. Duke, I'm sorry, but you already have in all the ways that matter. Telling Nathan and Audrey you'll fix it and trying to get Wade out of town is not a solution. Sigh. I will even grant that Duke has a great deal of sympathy and empathy for what Wade's going through, they're the only two alive who actually know how bad this addiction is and of course Duke wants to believe his brother can shake it. If Wade can control it, then that gives Duke more hope for his own ability to control his. If Wade can't, then Duke has to confront the very real possibility of turning into their father, instead of just the theoretical one he's been thinking of all these months. Oh honey. This is gonna suck so bad. Wade argues that yes, he messed up, with the sort of flattened affect suggestive of "I'm sorry I didn't clean up the dogshit behind me" instead of "I nearly killed one person that you know of and killed at least one more that you don't." (Remember, there are three bodies in the water later on, and we only see two of Wade's murders.) And he'll leave town once he figures out where to go. Go to Derry, Wade. I'm sure the things that live there will stab you in the face for Duke. No? No, of course not, he wants to stay near a ready supply of Troubled blood. And he definitely does not want help cleaning up his car, complete with a distraction for Duke that points the way to the Trouble of the week! It's Freddy the barfly sleeping on a stack of Haven Heralds. This Will Be Important Later.
Freddy gets his ass tossed in a holding cell for purposes of sobering up, Audrey plays Lexie at him with a comment about Jager shots (and not jaeger shots, self, no matter how much the fic where everyone in Haven gets to be a jaeger pilot would be hilariously awesome), and Nathan disapproves all over the place. Nathan. Quit being a dick. No, he will not quit being a dick, he thinks she's laying on the Lexie a bit thick, which I will grant is possible but better that than what she ends up doing later. We can see Audrey thinking that maybe Lexie isn't her, but neither was Sarah, really, Nathan, what the fuck did you think was going to happen when she found that out? And didn't have time to process it? She has a son, by him, fathered on another version of her, yes she's going to have issues with this. Even boundless compassion and understanding have their limits. Nathan thinks this is all beside the point, they need to eventually suck it up and admit that killing him is the correct way out of it (though to his credit he's not saying it out loud for a change) and he doesn't understand. You two. I'm gonna lock you in a jail cell until you sit your asses down and talk through this shit. Not the jail cell with a now-very-dead-and-shredded Freddy, though Audrey seems to think that hashing it out in front of the drunk guy would've been an option! If not for the whole Trouble problem. That really needs to stop happening long enough for them to think instead of reacting. And it's so not going to.
Roll credits. Credits which include the two creepy guys from the bar/n. Uh-HUH. Hey, you know what Dave was saying about other things crossing over too? THIS WOULD BE THOSE CHICKENS. That is not a chicken on the autopsy table except in the most metaphorical sense. (We have a theory that this is more punishment, thank you so much for being cryptic about that last season Agent Fuck You, but we don't have much more than this episode to go on as regards that.) How apropos that Freddy got all clawed to hell by an unseen monster! Better than the chainsaw in its own way, sorry, Zuckermans. Laudrey is notably not running for the sink and frankly those gouges, while nasty, aren't all that bad. Gloria, what are you playing at. Do you already suspect? Because I really think she does before Audrey gives away the homeworld this time around. Nathan has snark. Nathan, I know you're having a lot of issues these days, and it's a good thing that Audrey has a lot of tolerance for you with them, because I might have hauled off and punched you by now. The upshot is, hello Vicky, that none of the supposed claw or bite marks left trace evidence, and animal attacks are supposed to be messy. Hair, saliva, something. Oh, and Freddy's clothes weren't torn up at all. Why, it smells an awful lot like a Trouble! We get initial estimate that it's a bear, but Audrey wants a mold of the bite marks to see if they can get at what supposedly caused this, not necessarily because it'll give them anything to go on as far as a wild animal roaming the station but it'll tell them something about the direction the Trouble is taking. Maybe? Hopefully. We're just glad that the family from Fur left town, as far as we know, or allowed themselves to be torn to shreds, and that Landon Taylor probably doesn't know that his Trouble works on people. We hope. Because augh creepy. Cue jokes about CSI Miami, Audrey you need some shades to say that with. Indoors. I mean really. Gloria's not buying it, and what Nathan's missing in his panicking is that Gloria wasn't buying it from the outset. Gloria, what the fuck do you know. Inquiring minds, since she worked with Garland, probably knew Lucy Ripley, there's all kinds of reasons for questioning her motives and her knowledge base right now and no answers. Including whether or not she has the Guard tattoo. Still and more to the point, Wade and Jordan both know she's really Audrey and that's dangerous, and he's not wrong but they're also not communicating as easily as they used to. Not that this is surprising, considering, but the old Nathan would have assumed that Audrey would check up on Jordan as soon as possible and preferably covered by the chaos of some other case. Like the guy in the hospital with the stab wound, say! We'll just wave a tiny trollface on the horizon for their mutual unshakeable faith that Duke's capable of handling his brother on his own. Because oh you guys.
Speaking of Jordan, Dwight's back and on that case! Also the Trouble of the week case, but we see him worrying over where Jordan could be as he gets out of his battlewagon (and seriously what is it with police chiefs and battlewagons? is that the only thing Dwight and Renard can fit in?), she's left her car somewhere and if she were really leaving town why would she do that? Well, she wouldn't. The usually unflappable Dwight is flapped enough to snap at Stan about yes he's left Jordan messages. I still want to know all of their backstory, stat, because it continues to scream close former friendship or possibly something more. But Dwight's not here about Jordan, and he should be talking to the other Crocker brother about that anyway, he's here to talk to Duke about Freddy! Giving his full name, which shows an interesting form of respect for the dead, probably something he picked up from the military. Duke's ability to dissemble continues to fall apart, by the way, his usual joking about how all the stuff being imported/exported/whatever is legal and has all the correct paperwork filed rings hollow and flat. Okay, a Trouble of the week Duke can do! If he weren't busy worrying about his brother he'd be more enthusiastic, but he's worried and we get just the edge of his relief that Wade hasn't done something else that Duke can't help him with this time. Turns out Freddy always wanted a flatscreen in the Gull for watching nature programs on grizzlies! Ah, so it's the sort of Trouble where what you dream happens to you in the really real world. Yeah, we know how to deal with this. It's called lucid dreaming, and it takes a reasonable amount of training to master if you're not naturally inclined to it. Well shit. We're also getting a nice look at a part of the coastline beyond Duke and Dwight that we don't, normally, and I'm pretty sure that's close to Wade's dumping ground. We'll keep an eye out when we come up to that scene. Dwight spares a moment to ask about Jordan, has Duke seen her, she was hanging around with Wade, what's the deal there. Duke continues to lose his ability to prevaricate and I have to say I kind of miss that about him, though it's really for the best. Shifting his shoulders, ducking his head to meet Dwight's eyes from under those long, long lashes (oh wait was that my outside voice?) and Dwight clearly knows Duke's hiding something, he's just not sure what. Plus he can't really argue with how Jordan felt about Crockers. That one's a matter of public record. Plus all Duke has to go on right now are suspicions that he's refusing to follow up on because he doesn't want them to be true. Duke, sticking your head in the sand, while giving all your fangirls a nice view of your ass (again), will not actually aid in fixing the problem. Problems. Any of them. Sigh.
Speaking of heads in sand and refusal to share data, let's go over to the Herald! That won't be a recipe for teeth-grinding irritation at the creepy brothers or anything. I will note the Est. 1684 date just because I'm a paranoid fucker like that, and that that's twelve cycles and a bit back, emphasis on the "and a bit," it is not a multiple of 27. Small fucking favors, grateful, etc. Here comes Jennifer looking, frankly, like someone's idea of the Catholic schoolgirl updated to a more modern version, kneesocks and all. Sigh. And she'll have a Moment with Kandyse McClure (look, I remembered not to call her Dualla, be amazed), who will be playing the part of Significant Guest Star And Therefore Troubled this week. Sometimes they just don't even try to pretend otherwise. She works for the Herald delivering the papers, it is so cute that they still do hard copy distribution like this, I haven't touched a hard copy newspaper practically since I was in high school running mine. (For a value of me that = A, for the record, as we're both working our way through these.) It's a very cute girls moment of being nervous about a job interview, and the response is delivered in such a way as being intended to be a joke to set Jennifer at ease. It… doesn't actually help, except in that it sets up the hilarious physical comedy of the next scene. Which we will need given that we're going to be swearing at the Teagues. As per usual. Hi, Dave, where were you while your brother was shut in a barn? Vince is jittering over how they haven't had a Girl Friday (in those very words, I give him so much side-eye, who was your LAST one, Vince? was it Sarah? Lucy? Eleanor? all of which I doubt in varying measures, but still, inquiring minds) in a long time and people will know that something's up if they hire her now. Vince. I have news for you. Your cover, such as it ever was in this town? Is blown. Maybe not as completely and utterly blown as it could be, but you'd need neon lights and a skywriter to make it any worse. Dave continues the trend of being more stable and more confident and points out that they need to know how she's connected to the barn, that being the operative goal here. The rest is just a handy cover for hiring her. And interviewing her. They want to know aaaall about Jennifer Mason! We are the opposite of surprised. We are facedesking and sighing. And giggling at the glasses on, glasses off. I want to see outtakes from this scene like burning. Dave in particular but both of them to an extent do a pretty good job of playing the harmless avuncular types again, which just makes me more certain they know or suspect something about Jennifer that they're not saying outright. Because why would they do anything useful like that. Jennifer! Was adopted, lost her father in a car crash as a teenager and her mother about five years ago to unspecified causes (given her age, that could range from cancer to suicide to another accident) and it's interesting, isn't it, that despite her previous inability to conceal her emotions she doesn't appear to have much in the way of emotional attachment to what should be somewhat traumatic memories. Much like Lexie's lack of emotional attachment to the memory of her boyfriend in the bar/n, in fact, I'm going to keep listing these off because they keep piling the fuck up. Oh, and let's not forget that Audrey was never adopted, but was a foster. Jennifer's adoption seems to have been a more positive experience with the system, or at least her memories of it, a nice stable upbringing that led her to never be arrested and always have a good credit score! Oh honey. You're so cute when you're nervous. Their first assignment for her is to run a background check on herself. Guys, that is tactless and graceless, particularly when you're confronted with a person who just admitted she was adopted. You don't know if that was an open or closed adoption, you don't know if she's sought her birth parents and if so, if there was any kind of bad feeling or circumstance involved, that's a DICK MOVE. Still, she agrees to it as being the only apparent way she's getting this job, and it will serve to prove to them that she can separate her personal feelings from said job, a trait that Dave at least tries to cultivate where possible and one that everyone in this damn town is sorely in need of.
Duke's personal feelings can best be summed up by cutting up steaks for his brother and pretending really hard he's not thinking about Wade slicing up people. Or about whether or not he'll ever slice up people. There's nothing to indicate that this is a dream at the outset except that Duke hasn't shown any signs as yet of being willing to cough up this much data immediately. No date, a last supper and he wants to show Wade their father's diaries? Yeah, I'm not buying it from right there. There was shouting at the screen last night. And then he papercuts himself on the diary! Um. Duke's not usually that careless, especially when it might involve his blood. (Though according to writer Twitters that actually did happen to poor Balfour.) But Wade is pretty much that murderous and addicted right now, Duke, your subconscious isn't lying to you there. Fortunately he wakes up, like normal people do when they're not dead-drunk, before the killing blow can land in the dream. Unfortunately he's still got that slash on his arm to deal with. But first things first, Duke needs to call Audrey even before he bandages himself up to let her know that he thinks he knows what's going on! And it's night. Oh goodie.
Nighttime is also when all good serial killers come out to stalk and hunt their prey, and even if Wade Crocker is doing this for reasons totally different to Biney's, it's having the same effect. Dead people, dead women because they're easier for him to lure and overpower at the outset and because Wade has, yes, given us lots of indications that he's got some lingering misogyny issues. The poor girl says she never does this, this being go off with a guy she just met at a bar to a place alone in the woods that he swears lights up with fireflies. Uh-huh. I mean, if I were doing that I'd recognize that as a "let's go have sex line," and I think she does too, but Haven hasn't always been this much of a horror movie. Not to the extent where even the civilians had to engage in hypervigilance 24-7 because there might be a creepy Crocker in the woods waiting to stab you. Wade seems to have justified this whole thing to himself, at least on the surface of it, as saving people from their Troubles, and really that's about the only way he could manage to do it. We are pretty plainly meant to see Simon in him, though this is a way, way faster devolution than we had any reason to expect. This is a day? 36 hours at most between activation and murdering multiple people for shits and giggles and being desperately addicted to the rush of it, not two years between first murder and last rites. Poor pretty blonde dies and we don't even get to know what her Trouble is, just that Wade's already associated his Trouble with sexual pleasure. Because that's always what you want out of a spree serial killer.
Meanwhile we get the naked Nathan scene, for which we are alternately duly grateful and hiding under the desk from our embarrassment squick. This time, with the call from Duke and the fact that Nathan is naked in the station, we can be pretty sure it's a dream sequence. For small favors, etc. Emily Rose manages to do a good job of combining surprised partner with potential love interest in this first expression, and then we switch from naked and embarrassed to naked and embarrassed and there's a test today. Oh look, it's all of the standard anxiety dreams piling up on each other! Now complete with turning the station into a temporary classroom and a hilariously placed globe. At least the chairs aren't completely tiny meant for little kids style, just the insanely uncomfortable bare plastic ones. Ouch. I hope they gave Lucas Bryant a cushion or briefs for that bit. This dream!Audrey has a very odd combination of characteristics: Sarah's accent with a vague English modification to it, Lucy's locket, Lexie's hair, the neutral black and white colors Audrey tends to prefer, all of which combine with naughty schoolmarm get up. Oh Nathan. Your subconscious is apparently a kinky fucker. Also the relevant question is which of the three incarnations of AudSarLuLex that you've met do you love? Or none? Or all? Well, yes. It's very relevant not just to his anxious sleeping brain but to what he does out in the real world and how his actions impact Audrey. Laudrey. Also Duke. Also every Troubled person out there, assuming he can persuade her somehow to kill him. So, yes, when one of the Zuckermans said last night on Twitter that it's a major theme of the show, they weren't kidding around. On the other hand, the only way Nathan's subconscious can get through to him right now is through sex, apparently. Nathan, stop thinking with your little head, that's part of what has you in trouble (pun intended) with Audrey right now. There's some amazing comedy in the latter part of this, from Emily Rose's smirking amusement to Lucas Bryant managing to waver between really turned on and really nervous and really confused, as dream!Nathan slowly seems to comprehend that it is a dream. Mainly because he shouldn't feel the whack from the ruler under normal circumstances, as far as we know his contact with Audrey needs to be skin to skin for her immunity to take hold of his Trouble. (Yes, yes, we know, but if we made all the jokes we were thinking of we'd be here all day.) And the initial blow of the paddle… wakes him up, at which point we pause to SQUEE WILDLY about finally getting a look at Nathan's house. Where he sleeps on the couch? Oh Nathan. Couch, coffee table covered in books, some of them standard novel-sized and some of them standard coffee-table sized. Lots of neutrals, though with an overall warming effect. Flatscreen TV in the background, couple lamps, eastern exposure by the sun coming in through the gauze curtains and indicative of the fact that he may use the sun as an alarm clock when he passes out on the couch. Though he's also down to shirt and underwear, apparently. Landscape painting above the mantel, small bookcase to the left, a couple photos of assorted people at least one of whom I think is Garland, I think the other is Nathan and Audrey over on the little bookcase. No decoupage that I can spot. (Sketchy 1x07) Nothing really notable about it, except that Nathan seems to sleep on the couch more often than not. And has handy cushions around for concealing his morning wood. Yeah, you take care of that real quick, though you'd think the mention of the morgue would be a mood-killer.
On over to the morgue they go! Laudrey will lay out the theory of the case for us, connecting Duke's injury with Freddy and his bear shows and his bear-like injuries. Note however that she doesn't say what Duke dreamed about that got him injured, which may be because we already know it and she mentioned it to Nathan earlier, or it may be because Duke's insecurities aren't relevant to the case at hand per se and she doesn't want to worry Nathan or, and I consider this the most likely, Duke hasn't told her. Because what am communication and Duke has suddenly gone from the most stable and communicative person in the healthiest relationships with everyone to a closed-mouthed secret-keeping messed up little twerp faster than you can say Fucking Crockers. Really, no one but Jennifer and very maybe Audrey is acquitting themselves well with the sharing of important information, listening, and being a stable partner in any relationship on this show. I'd add Dwight to the mix but Dwight isn't very much holding up an end of any relationship, even with Jordan. Can we add this onto ongoing themes of Haven? Considering our current theory of the triggering event for the entire Troubles-and-AudSarLuLex cycle is infidelity and betrayal, yes, yes we can. Anyway. Nathan offers further evidence that this is a solid working theory of the Trouble at hand. The bruise on his hand, not the one that may currently be forming on his ass. Much to the disappointment of certain fangirls I can say no more. Audrey is normal levels of curious as to how that happened and what he was dreaming about, though I'm sure it feels invasive to Nathan, who buttons up even more and scurries off to talk to the coroner at the nearest opportunity. Oh Nathan. So we have Dwight, Intern Vickie, and Glorious Gloria giving us a nightmare victim with a bee sting phobia and a lethal case of bee sting reactions, without the bee toxins or the stingers. The second nightmare victim AUGH TEETH FALLING OUT DREAM WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME. I've had that dream, teeth and roots and chunks of gums. Anecdotal evidence and vague memories of science articles tell me that this is a common anxiety dream, and Nathan and Gloria's reactions indicate as much. Also given the number of blood vessels in the mouth, yeah, I can totally see someone bleeding out or at least enough to die of shock from it. And now victim number one! Again, which Audrey questions. No, this is victim number one in a different series, this is the victim Wade was going all stereotypical serial killer on the other night! Arguably multiple penetrative wounds isn't an uncommon fear for young women either and could conceivably be from a nightmare, except these nightmares haven't been carrying over into the real world via physical evidence, and she has a knife point lodged in her breastbone. Let's all note while Audrey is behaving way more like Audrey than Lexie that she's also dressed more like Audrey, if somewhat with Lexie's hairstyle still. Yeah, no, she's not going to be able to keep this up for long. It turns out Wade left her out in the open in an alley by the marina, because when it comes to serial killing Wade is still kind of inexperienced and also his addiction is fucking with his mind. Now that her business is concluded exit Gloria, stage left, with intentions declared of a golf game, and we swing back to a quietly very upset Dwight with his arms still folded tightly over his vest and a deeply worried look on his face. Oh Dwight. He'll take the serial killer who seems to be killing his people, not that he says the latter part but we can take it as given, and Nathan and Lexie will take the Trouble of the week. Note that he also says Lexie despite Audrey having all but officially thrown off the disguise for now. We suspect that as far as Dwight's concerned, Audrey hasn't officially said she's Audrey, so she's Lexie until he can no longer pretend otherwise. Whether that comes because the Guard forces his hand or because the Troubles are getting too powerful to avoid trying to stop it with Nathan's death, I don't know.
Speaking of the serial killer, though, hello Wade! Requisite request for Camargo to stop playing fucking serial killers on TV goes here. I mean, yes, we know he's played numerous variety of roles in theatre, but a lot of his more generally available video work seems to be homicidal people. A nice rom-com! A romantic hero, in the more classical sense? Anything? Probably not. Maybe one of these days we'll get up to Broadway. Duke's got his arm bandaged up and checks that Wade got his message about not going to sleep. (Continuing the theme of flags, by the way, those are Tibetan prayer flags strung across the entry to the galley. Nice character continuity, there.) Although Wade sounds dismissive of the dying in his sleep problem he also sounds exhausted, which indicates he's at least taking Duke's advice seriously enough to follow it. Duke's scrubbing his face and covering his mouth with his hand and generally otherwise displaying signs of anxiety in the background. Duke, you're lucky Wade has his back to you, you are incapable of controlling your face right now. Though, really, Wade is incapable of controlling his everything, so at least Duke has that over him. With the microexpressions of swallowing and licking his lips, he's definitely trying and most likely failing to control something. And what is Wade doing while he's quietly dying inside? Well, he's been gutting a fish! Wade, I've been around gutted fish before, if you'd been doing that Duke would have smelled it already. No, his cover story is he's been fishing instead of sleeping (fishing being so much more INTERESTING than sleeping, of course) and, Wade, you're talking about fish in the singular. That is a singularly ungutted fish. If you'd said "gutting fish" then yes, maybe that was one in the series you hadn't gotten to yet, but a fish? No. Your story has more holes in it than a fishing net and could you please sound a little more like you're not hiding something when Duke brings up Jordan? She left town is a reasonable response, but the halfway to Costa Rica part is not. Nor is the part where you justify the chipped knife with the fish gutting, again with the exaggerated expressions and head-bobbing and the overselling. Really, Duke knows what he's been up to, he just lacks the physical evidence to prove it right now and so he's desperately paddling while not calling his friends who have access to morgues and places with bodies that might have knife points in them. Like we just saw. Ahem. Duke. Please? No? No. Wade goes off to shower by way of escaping the conversation where he has to keep lying, and if I were feeling charitable I'd suggest that that's because he feels guilty about lying to his brother even as he knows he has to to protect his addiction. I'm not feeling that charitable, but I put the theory out there anyway. No, Duke, none of those fish are gutted. You didn't really expect that they would be, did you? Duke does at least find a fishing license which gives him a location for where Wade has allegedly been fishing. (And what we can only assume is a badly mangled DOB on that paperwork, because there is no way Wade Crocker is younger than we are, between older brother and Camargo. Maybe that was supposed to be a 6?) Assuming he didn't pick those up at a market to provide his cover story.
One panover later we get a stack of papers dropping to the tune that the Haven soundtrack tells me is "Paper Brothers." I both love Syfy and the Haven composer Shawn Pierce for giving me this information and hate them a little because now I will twitch whenever I hear that tune. Anyway, Vince and Dave are in the back offices this time, and that stack of papers is almost as tall as her forearm. Dave sounds disappointed? underwhelmed? Irritated by the prospect of going through all that paper? (I'd be ecstatic, I love data, but we all knew that.) but Vince does a better job of sounding enthusiastic and impressed. Thankfully we get no glasses gag keeping up, that was definitely a one-off. They pull on reading glasses, well, Vince does, and get to it, and Jennifer warns them that it's boring and implicitly ordinary, but there was one thing she couldn't find: her birth parents. It turns out the records were sealed and she still can't find them by other means, so if they don't want to hire her she'd understand. Dave's "oh, you've got the job" is so suspicious I'm surprised it doesn't have a neon sign blinking "LIAR" above his head. Not that he's lying about that, but oh so many other things. One of the most annoying part about the Teagues, speaking of that, is that they lie and dissemble and use only the most convenient parts of the truth so often that it's hard to get a read on what their deception tells are apart from the generic ones. Grr. Still, that's definitely surprise and being caught off guard (no pun intended) Vince shows when Jennifer asks when she can start. Tomorrow? Tomorrow's good! Now would Jennifer please leave so they can dig through her files. Which it does take her a second to pick up on, but she does turn and go after that. Neither of the Teagues are patient, so they immediately start a grab fight more reminiscent of twelve year olds over the folders. Jennifer turns back just in time to see this, not that the Teagues are paying enough attention to their surroundings to notice her noticing them. She finds it as weird as we do. Okay, no, she finds it weird, we find it significant. And kind of morbidly hilarious in that it's totally reminiscent of me and A when we get a new stack of information. All I can say is, that better not be on purpose. (It probably isn't.) (But it better not.)
(No, it probably isn't.)
Over at Haven Joe's and everyone has coffee! Duke got everyone coffee and made sure Nathan's was lukewarm so he wouldn't get burned, awww. We do really appreciate these little touches that show both consistency and character development, emotional connections. Particularly since Duke seems a little awkward about showing that kind of attention to Nathan even though it's very much heartfelt. Oh boys. Ignore the trollface peeking over the fence. Audrey leads the investigation with an out-loud summation of what they're doing for the benefit of the viewing audience, because surely Nathan and Duke are aware that she's going over their actions for the last 48 to find the common thread where they ran into the Trouble of the week. See what I did there? Duke's list of what he did today is hilarious and strongly indicative of Duke's personality: 'bit of lunch' is distinctive regional phrasing, we can all be amused that he picked up on Nathan's nickname of Cheekbones (at least we don't have any other candidates for who Cheekbones might be), writing on-the-hour times with a single 0 is also a localized tic albeit one I'm not familiar with. That one might be specific to a particular category of people rather than a geographical tic. How we know this is Wade's breakfast vegan sausages rather than, say, Jennifer's or something Duke mistakenly picked up at the store I don't know. And why the hell does Wade eat vegan sausage, anyway? Because he's a terrible yuppie gone wrong? Which just goes to American Psycho places and headaches involving chainsaws and drugs. Duke is apparently a Gemini with Aquarius rising, that's a lot of air sign. That also somewhat fits with Duke, the Aquarius for some of his more unconventional traits and the Gemini for the duality, dual personality, two lives aspect. (A: DUKE CROCKER, ladies and gentlemen.) Not to mention that at a rough guess and with little astrology background, we can hypothesize that that combination would give him something of a Jekyll and Hyde complex. Which, well. The Crocker fucking family, ladies and gentlemen. The upshot of this, though, isn't the astrology but the newspaper. Duke checked his horoscope in the paper, Freddy was asleep on a stack of papers, the bee sting guy had a paper by his bedside. No, this isn't the Teagues Trouble, it's too much of a one-off for that, though we could kind of see them having this kind of cerebral, psychic type of Trouble anyway. The narrative is wrong for it, though. Duke doesn't have the benefit of knowing he's in a narrative so he immediately leaps to pointing the finger at Vince and Dave, complete with hand gestures. Then Nathan remembers that he got the paper off Dwight's desk. Well, shit. Dwight's a bullet magnet who's been through at least a couple of traumatic experiences related to that, no points for guessing what his nightmare will be even if you haven't seen the preview for this episode.
Over to Dwight perched on the edge of one of the desks in the station, flipping through files while the paper sits on the desk. Lurking. That station is far too empty for the daytime and Dwight has his vest off, so we can safely assume it's a dream. The headlines on the Herald, by the way, are something about record rainfall and Prank Ends in Signs Overboard. I sympathize on the record rainfall but have no idea about the other. The file Dwight is flipping through is Jordan's, oh honey. Honeys. Both of you. She has a missing person's report now, whether that's because enough time has lapsed or because it's his dream, hard to say, and he's got several calls on her wireless record marked with highlighter and "Wade Crocker" scribbled on them. Hey, look who's in the station! Dream station. Way station. Wade just walks by, the way people do when they're meant to be shadowy dream figures only there enough to catch the dreamer's attention, which he does. Him and the gun shoved in his belt, which is more proof of the dream state because we have ample evidence that Wade prefers the up close and personal and bloody of a knife. Dwight tries to call him back, but instead of Wade coming around the corner we have a floating gun. Well, shit. Not the first but the second gunshot wakes him up. This is not good. Dwight pulls open his vest and, yes, he's been shot twice, and that's thankfully Nathan on the phone. Not even bothering with anything but "I fell asleep and I got shot," because Dwight is now The Best, sorry, Duke, you no longer have the right to that title. Thankfully it seems they get to him just in time, because our next shot is a flyover of the hospital followed by Dwight in a hospital bed. Thank god. Audrey also makes sure that the doctor knows about the danger of dreaming, which she does. Let us now all stop to note that Dwight's in the same 4012 hospital room that Tyler was in (The New Girl 4x05) and wonder what the hell is up with episode 4x12. Anyway, Dwight's immediate safety having been established, the next step is to find Vince and Dave. Duke will stay behind and get Dwight sandwiches or something! Because ... Dwight is so very in need of human assistance and contact being unconscious in his hospital bed? That's a lameass excuse, Duke, and you are really lucky Audrey and Nathan are more concerned with this Trouble that's keeping everyone awake right now. Given the timeline on going without sleep, I'd say they have another 12-24 hours of investigating time before people start either falling asleep or taking micronaps whether or not they want to, and falling prey to the Trouble of the Week. So, understandably, they're concerned. Duke is concerned that his brother is a serial killer and oh, hey, that missing person's report does exist in the meatworld after all. Pictures of Sonya, pictures of the knife tip they dug out of Sonya! Yep, Duke, your brother is a serial killer. Now be a good Duke and go tell the cops. Yes? No? No. He's going to handle this investigation all on his own.
Which at the moment means going down to Wade's dump-- er, fishing ground. Yeah, fishing ground, that's it. And checking out the boat Wade's been renting, more specifically checking out its GPS to see where he's been du-- fishing. And also bribing the DNR guy minding the docks and doing the rentals not to say anything about the fact that Duke's been asking. The utter lack of surprise indicates that Duke's well known to this guy, and indeed we are not surprised by any of this. That does look similar to the spit of land in the scene with Dwight and Duke earlier, though insufficient of a zoom-out to confirm. There are at least three bodies in the water, all of them wrapped in plastic and weighted and none of them deep enough to be very well hidden at all, one of them plainly enough Jordan with the tattoo and the black gloves that we all know, Wade, you suck. You suck at being a serial killer, too. I can't confirm what we're all thinking, that this is a quiet but giant Dexter shout-out, but it certainly looks that way. Or possibly American Psycho as mentioned above, with the vegan breakfast sausages. And the clear plastic.
A flyover takes us to Nathan and Audrey holding a Herald wrapped in plastic (I don't think that's going to protect you, guys) and talking to the Teagues. Vince's assurances that they are not the source of this Trouble is somewhat more reassuring, as much as the Teagues can be, than Dave's insistence that they have never put out a Troubled paper. Vince can speak with authority that their Trouble isn't this one, Dave, are you sure? Can you account for all of your employees and who they might have let into the paper? Do you know all of their lineages and Troubles? I think not. Audrey is playing with her hair again, both in an attempt to be Lexie and because this really is a new tic she's picked up with suddenly having longer hair, like when you get a fair bit lopped off but in reverse. Anything new about this issue? No. Could there be a Troubled photo in there? No, and stop saying shit like that Audrey, Vince has totally made you. Him and his Flagg face. Laudrey attempts to blame Nathan for this, complete with poking him in the head which gives Nathan a pained smile, but Vince and his toothy smile and his chuckle say nope, he's made her. That is a truly un-fucking-nerving smile Donat has. Augh. Nathan's the one to peg the delivery person and, yes, they're all on the same route. Carrie Benson's route, though we do look over those other names for significance. And where is she now? Delivering the afternoon edition, of course. Oh yay. As we leave the Teagues, who look more concerned than usual (and at a guess because they know the state of Carrie Benson's Trouble and that it's not supposed to take this form, so what the hell) we get a shot of Audrey patting Dave's shoulder as they leave. This is not a coincidence. We don't understand the significance of it until later, but it's sufficiently out of character enough for us to wonder at the time what was going on, It could be an attempt at a Lexie trait, but Dave doesn't seem to notice enough for it to be necessary for her to sell her cover. Later context makes it clear at least somewhat. Which then leaves us with the question of, apart from the bar/n, how is AudSarLuLex tied to Heckle and Jekyll? Hopefully we will find out later.
Meanwhile, they have a paper to stop from being delivered. Sure, Carrie knows about the Troubles, she even knows she's Troubled, she says as Audrey stops her from putting the papers in the dispenser bin. And really, she's still not even trying to be Lexie at this point, though it's less urgent since Nathan's in on the secret and Carrie never knew Audrey. Anyway, it turns out that she's known about her Trouble, that the women in her family (sex-linked again? This time to women? That's interesting.) have had this Trouble forever, and she does describe the symptoms of the Trouble we've observed over the course of the episode. But she doesn't know of and insists it isn't possible that her Trouble has changed to go viral. Well, it's happened, and it still amuses me that people who live in Haven and know its secrets use the word 'impossible' now. I mean, I get why, but really. To her credit, her first question once they tell her what's going on is how do they stop it. I really, really like this Troubled person and I hope she doesn't die. Well, assuming Carrie Benson is Patient Zero for this Trouble, if they cure her, rules of sympathetic magic should indicate that everyone else is cured as well. Granted, the rules of sympathetic magic are more like guidelines, but it's worth a shot. And this Troubled person comes with extensive knowledge of the history of her family's Trouble! Awesome!
Back over at the Gull and this time in Audrey's apartment, the solution to this Trouble is indeed lucid dreaming. In the Benson family's dreams there are dark places, and you can either go into them and stand a high chance of dying as you confront your fears or you can avoid them for the rest of your life. Both are coping mechanisms, one somewhat less likely to leave you functional than the other, but, coping mechanism. While they figure this out, the police (specifically Stan and Rebecca? really? she's Rebecca now?) are blasting Haven with sirens and air horns, which is one way of keeping people awake! So, she has to go into the dark place now and confront her fear and come out victorious. Which fits with the emotional component we've seen in previous Troubles. Two days ago (which makes tomorrow the third day! Drink!) she got mugged on her route, and they knocked her down and threatened to kill her if she told the police. Yep, that'd do it for triggering a Trouble, but did that send this one into overdrive? It's a bit unprecedented, which sends us shrieking later on about the dark men from the bar/n and those fuckers and how did they do it. Audrey asks if she still wants to do this, and Carrie Benson continues to prove herself also The Best by saying she's not going to let any more people die because of her. So, we're keeping her, right? And Audrey will be sitting up right there next to her, so it's time to go to sleep.
Over at some bar that seems to only be called Bar, Wade is taking some dude home! I can't even begin to find words for the ideas this is putting in my head and none of them are relevant to Haven so I'm not even going to try, the relevant thing is that Wade is using the Guard tattoo like a safe to eat flag. Sadly, Duke shows up to spoil Wade's fun. We can take Duke's ability to send the guy scrambling as both a sign of Duke's reputation among the Guard and a sign of how pissed off Duke is. More of how pissed Duke is because he's actually telling Wade that he knows everything, and proving it. Yes, because that's something you want a serial killer to know before you've captured and immobilized him, how much you know about his murders. Exactly right. Except not. Wade has the pinched mouth and rapid delivery of someone who's offering excuses more out of petulance or internal turmoil respectively than because he actually believes what he's saying. Duke tries to remind him that they don't have a gift, they have a curse. The curse of the blood-driven psychos. That it's called a Trouble for a reason and they're Troubled just like everyone else, except Wade doesn't want to be like everyone else. The narrative that Wade has constructed in his mind, different from the one encompassing the people of Haven, is that he's the hero saving everyone from their Troubles, and that doesn't work if he's one of the everyone. In that respect, actually, I do still pity him. I will pity him for needing that so desperately right as I shove the knife between his eyes, because seriously, Wade. You need to go away now. Duke tries to explain to him that turning into a killer is a curse, not a gift, but Wade's most concerned about not getting turned in to the cops. I don't even think that has anything to do with his guilt or his freedom in general, or his job, or his life. I believe that has to do with him not wanting the restrictions put on his movements that jail would bring, and therefore being deprived of Troubled blood. Duke doesn't know what he's going to do yet (REALLY? SERIOUSLY?) but he feels that the deaths of everyone are on his conscience, because he told Nathan and Audrey that he'd take care of Wade, and this is the result. Yes, he said Audrey, although to be fair Wade saw the surveillance footage and knew that one already. Still, it reminds Wade that Audrey is not supposed to be there, Lexie is, and that's a secret Duke's keeping from the rest of the Guard and the town. Having seen Jordan react to learning that, Wade can then extrapolate that the Guard would react similarly and therefore this is something he can hold over Duke. Yay. Some of the facial tension dissipating as he finds this way to at least buy some time. Not much, though. Threatening Duke with the Guard, not just with the Guard coming to get rid of the Crockers but also to make Audrey kill Nathan, which gets a blink out of Duke, one blink only. Slight swallow, slight increase in facial tension. That's the threat, there, not the Guard coming for them. Wade relaxes slightly, just enough to swallow and turn back to his truck and thereby turn his back on Duke so Duke can pistol-whip him into unconsciousness. This is going to suck any which way you slice it but, also, looking back on it, this conversation may well be the point at which Wade internalizes and more fully understands, if not what he's doing, then how Duke sees their family Trouble. More than anything Duke's told him thus far. This will come back to bite everyone in the ass later, of course, because this is the season of things coming back to bite people in the ass. Not in the fun way.
Over at the Gull Carrie is dreaming about her walk through the woods. In a white dress, because Reasons and Conventions, and they're really not sparing the symbolism here. White dress, innocence, woods, scary dark places, often scary dark forbidden places, insert half a dozen academic papers here. Preferably all the Jungian ones. Audrey's voiceover tells her not to be afraid, that she's with her, but you know what? So are two other guys. Hoshit, it's Heckle and Jekyll! Honestly, with the caveat that I've never met the guy and thus have no real bead on his in-person cues, if I ever ran into Robert Maillet in the woods I'd probably run the other way too. The guy is literally almost 7 feet tall, blocky, and fairly fucking intimidating looking. The other guy not so much, but having mugged her once already that's enough to inspire quite a bit of fear in poor Carrie. As per usual, her nightmare immobilizes her in place once she's surrounded by them. It's not going well, also as per usual; even when trained in lucid dreaming it can take a little while for sense and reason to overcome fear, as it can in the waking world. And it doesn't necessarily seem like Carrie's very practiced at lucid dreaming, though she certainly knows what it is and how to do it. We go back and forth between Audrey and Carrie, in time for Audrey to see the bruise forming where Maillet's thug character hits her. Clearly, this is not going well.
It's evening over at the Herald and Jennifer seems to think she's been summoned to come up with a cover story to explain the dreaming Trouble, which she approaches with her usual bounce and glee. I question this a little bit as someone who rather likes her reporters to be infused with a certain amount of drive to tell the truth, but that is entirely a personal bias which I will now duly label; it's entirely within character for Jennifer and Emma Lahana pulls it off with aplomb. And that's not why the Teagues have called her here anyway. They're here because they found something in her background check and Vince put away Flagg's teeth and his denim jacket. That's creepy. And I'm not at all sure that's not coincidence since it's been well established that the Haven writers are Stephen King fans and Dark Tower specifically. The man who arranged her adoption AUGH IT'S THE BARNVATAR HELLO AGENT FUCK YOU. In this case he's a Child Services agent and his first name is fucking Byron. Really? Seriously? We'll note that in that case it keeps to the same meter as all of AudSarLuLex's names, though frankly we have no reason to believe Howard ever existed under the name he gives out. Let's also note that Jennifer's DOB is given as 27 June 1984, which is also the actress's birthday but may have been kept in because that puts her date of conception into 1983 shortly before Lucy Ripley disappeared. Again, this might be coincidence or convenience. Or it might be significant. We don't know! As usual. Isn't it great? Dave describes the barnvatar as someone very important to them who brought Audrey to Haven and was supposed to take her away again, but he was killed. That's. Interesting. Both the phrasing and in light of the fact that he's the one who was freaking out about the door being opened, what do you know, Dave. Come here so I can bite the secrets out of your throat. Howard, yes, is one of the voices Jennifer heard in the barn, but that doesn't explain the potato, in this case the adoption. Vince, apparently, has every intention of finding out, though. Good. Tell us when you do. I'll be over here munching on your brother's throat I mean answers. Our theories at this point range from the original AudSarLu's sister (time-trapped and stuck in the barn) to James' daughter (possibly by another woman, in keeping with the betrayal/deception/potential infidelity themes and given that Arla would surely have held a grandchild over Audrey's head last season had she known) to Lucy Ripley's daughter. Insufficient data, and isn't that a fucking refrain you didn't want to hear this deep into the season.
Back with Carrie, the big guy hit her hard enough to split her lip and/or make her cut her mouth on her teeth because now she's bleeding. And terrified. Audrey keeps talking her through it and now we have more of a sense that Carrie is getting more control over her dream because she answers Audrey back, even if that answer is scared and helpless. Deep breaths and speaking the words, because there are always words. In this case words are I'm not afraid of the dark, and I'm not afraid of you. People, especially women, of a certain age will remember that once upon a time those words were you have no power over me, but this works too. The nightmare and its denizens snap out just as Maillet's thug is about to punch her in the face and, wait, what's he doing? Reaching out to touch her back? Why is he doing that, do you think? We can't ask him because now she's in a more comforting, daylight-lit woods and now she's waking up. Cured! Nathan seems to be cured, too. Or at least he's having a much better dream. Ahem. Let's just leave him to that, shall we?
Back over to the Cape Rouge, where Jennifer is coming home after being up with Vince and Dave all night. That does not sound like a good time to me. She seems to have enjoyed it, though! And Duke's not there, wherever he is, he's left Wade locked in what might be the bathroom, or a closet of some kind. Sadly, owing to Duke's newfound habit of not telling anyone fucking anything, Jennifer has no idea that it'll be a bad idea to let Wade out! For all she knows Wade is kind of creepy but basically okay, certainly not someone to lock in bath closets. We wish that were still the case, but alas no. As Wade now proves to us and her, he's still very much off the rails and right now in dire need of a fix. Which he will get by, um. Cutting her neck and drinking her blood? Not only is that an unusually sexualized turn of violence for Haven, that's awfully vampiric. Is this some sort of message about the Crocker Trouble? I would not be surprised. Fortunately before Wade can go full on Dracula on Jennifer Duke arrives to stop him and knock him into the stairs. And take Jennifer's hand by way of comfort and also get some of her blood onto him. Much as that doesn't seem to be deliberate, it's awfully useful when supercharged Wade comes charging at him. Duke makes a last plea attempt, half a plea and half a command, for Wade to control it. And I know we all were furious with Wade at this point and wanted him to die, but let me just say that open and near-serene look on his face coupled with phrases like "I don't think I can [control it]" and "I know [you'll kill me]" suggests that Wade entirely intended for Duke to kill him. Even better, for a given value of better, let's all go back and look at Wade's face when Duke yells at him about their Trouble being a curse and not a gift. Let's all take a moment to appreciate that Wade genuinely does love his brother (remember the start of the season? remember how Wade immediately rushed to call for help when he realized Duke was possessed?) and has a somewhat warped and authoritative idea of helping him. And let us all take a moment to appreciate that Wade knows that if a Crocker kills a Troubled person, he kills the Trouble as well. I hereby submit that Wade not only intended to kill himself, but also to take away Duke's curse, as he referred to his victims earlier in the episode as people he had helped. Oh Wade. You needed so, so much attention and therapy, plus detox time in a small box of some sort, and you never were going to get it. He's got good aim, at least. That's likely a direct heart shot, and death soon following. Which we can tell because instead of staying silver with Wade's blood on his hands, Duke's eyes fade back to brown. Duke could possibly look more shocked and scared but Balfour would have to really work at it.
Back at the hospital and the next day, Dwight was discharged? Did his wounds heal overnight or something, with being cured of the dream Trouble? Because that's a hell of a turnaround time for two gunshot wounds to the chest. Fucking Rangers and their overblown ideas of their immortality. They're not there for Dwight, anyway, they're there to check on Carrie, who thanks them for helping and is so sorry she caused all this and shakes their hands, giving Audrey a good view of her back. And the handprint on it. So that's what skeevy guy was doing! You little shit, you caused this escalation, didn't you. The questions now are, how the fuck and why the fuck. Yes, the fucks are mandatory. How the fuck, specifically referring to what are they, are they of the bar/n or of the same lineage group that involves AudSarLuLex and the Crockers, only in reverse? Exacerbating a Trouble is a bit like the reverse of curing a Trouble, does that mean they're linked to or descended from the person who originally caused the curse? Extrapolating even further and getting into wild speculation time, does that make them the other lineage, the lineage to whom AudSarLuLex was originally married and who was then cuckolded with William Crocker, etc? For those of you just now joining us, our origin theory on the Troubles involves a love triangle owing to the subtle but constant theme of Audrey and being caught between two men, and has since been developed into William-in-the-Bar/n is William Crocker, the one who she had the affair with, given that the Crocker descendants seem to have a touch of her Trouble/Trouble-taking-away ability. Which means that until this point we didn't have a suspect or a likely descendant of the cuckolded bloodline. And now we do! Since they seem able to instigate or exacerbate Troubles, or one of them does anyway. Why the fuck, well, that's the easy question to answer, someone's being punished for killing Howard. At a very rough guess. We also, apart from everyone else, guess that they're going to re-inflict the Crocker Trouble on Duke, but that's entirely for meta/Doylist reasons and that assumes that the Crocker Trouble is far too useful to let slip entirely from the narrative just yet. Anyway. Back to the episode at hand, Audrey is once again the only person who can see the handprint, indicating that it's related to the bar/n and/or the Troubles. All Carrie remembers, though, is a weird sensation back there right before she passed out. They'll need to ID the men who attacked her, and personally I think they should bring in a sketch artist (Vince! Bring in Vince! For bonus watching his reaction!) but she needs to go get some more tests. Possibly head scans. So, that can wait until after. I'm not entirely sure Carrie will live through those tests, but that may be my paranoia talking. Nathan and Audrey debate what the mark was and how it worked for a bit, with Nathan taking the role of the arbitrary skeptic. Nathan, honey, you had your Trouble taken from you by a guy whose Trouble allowed himself to steal Troubles. (Fear and Loathing 2x02) This isn't that much of a stretch. Also, as Audrey points out, what if it's all changing? The situation they've found themselves in is kind of unprecedented. For record-keeping, the number on Carrie's room is 307, but apart from 3x07 being Magic Hour Part 1 and the start of Audrey's trip to Colorado I'm not seeing too much significance here. This episode is 4x07, but again, not entirely sure this is a meaningful number.
Over in the Cape Rouge Duke is covering Wade's face, having apparently wrapped him in a tarp of some kind. Oh honey. That about describes the look on Jennifer's face, too, oh honey, She, too, saw the suicidal intent in Wade right before he ran himself onto Duke's knife. Also the homicidal intent. It's not helping very much, though, especially not when she flinches back when he reaches to touch her cut. The blood, it does nothing for him. His Trouble is well and truly gone. Balfour really delivers a masterful and tearful performance here; Duke doesn't want anyone to know about any of this. Not Audrey or Nathan, not anyone. He told them he would take care of Wade, and this isn't what he wanted to happen, he sees this as a failure of his promise. Not just the people Wade killed but the fact that he killed Wade, too. Jennifer tries to tell him that he's not his brother, which would work better without the flinching. Duke, honey, that could as likely be because she's seen how much being all silver-eyed upsets you. But yes, it's possible it's also because of the violence around Duke lately. And now both of them are holding back tears as she promises not to tell anyone, and the chemistry between Eric Balfour and Emma Lahana is just as strong when they're raking themselves and each other over the emotional coals as when they were being romantic. Oh kiddos. Oh everyone.
Speaking of oh kiddos. Nathan's theoretically dropping Audrey off at her apartment, but what he really wants is to discuss that handprint, the escalation of Carrie Benson's Trouble, and how it's all freaking him right the fuck out. That last part is subtext. They have to do something. And by do something Audrey rightly assumes he means her killing him. Which she is not going to do, all right? Oh, let's all go dig ourselves in deeper, because it's fun to emotionally savage each other over and over again! Instead of seizing upon the part where it's his fault that the Troubles are neverending now and he has to die to make that right, she grabs onto the part where Nathan has a knee-jerk hateful reaction to Lexie. And, okay, rightfully calls him out on sleeping with Sarah, because if Nathan's going to make distinctions between incarnations of AudSarLuLex, it's unfair and contradictory to do it for one but not the other. They are all a part of the same woman, and Nathan's giving off mixed signals about whether or not he's fully accepted that. Not that he'll clarify that at this point because he's busy jamming his foot into his mouth over how no one gets how hard this has been for him. For him? Is Audrey's reaction and both of ours. He's not the one who got to think he was crazy for hearing an interdimensional bar/n, had to jump out of said interdimensional barn and through a dimension door, has to wrangle his Trouble-crazed brother, has had to cope with people he loves dying because of his Trouble, and so on. I could name a lot of people this past season has been hard on! And it's not just about you, Nathan. That said, yes, it's at least half a problem of phrasing because no, the past several days haven't been easy on him either, and if he'd said it in a way that indicated a less self-centered point of view, that might have gone over better. But he didn't, he chose to deliver the "how hard this has been for me" to the person having massive, massive identity issues. Not to mention the weight of being the person everyone looks to to fix the Troubles. And again, his reply isn't about her, though he's getting warmer? It's about their relationship. You know, that could be a serious help to both of them if they'd just stop talking at cross purposes and learn to listen for five goddamn minutes. Mostly Nathan, but also Audrey, somewhat. He can't seem to understand that neither of them is thinking clearly, Audrey is on the verge of tears, she can't unclench from her pain enough to attempt to offer him what she can instead of reminding them that they can't be Audrey and Nathan anymore, which would likely go over better and incite Nathan to fucking listen somewhat. It's all very believable, emotionally devastating, and still infuriating in the sense that we can see where they're miscommunicating and can't fix it. So, fine. Nathan gives up on trying to fix it, they just work together, he'll storm out now and go have a revelation on the balcony. So at least there's that? The revelation in question! It's not about who Audrey is, or at least, not about which identity she's wearing is what he means by "who you are," thank god. We understand this from context but sometimes it's important to spell it out. And it's not about what she is, it's about her, and he loves her. Saying it in words, hooray! And thereby becoming the fixed point which she needs so she can stop spinning and stay still. In ballet it's called spotting, fixing your eyes upon one point as you spin very fast around, so you don't get dizzy, so you don't fall over. Nathan is now making himself her fixed point, and it helps. Duke did a fair bit of that last season, but for very obvious and understandable reasons he's not so capable of it now, so it's got to be Nathan's turn.
Not only does it help, it seems to be attracting the attention of Heckle and Jekyll, who are creeping on them from a ridge in sight of the Gull. I'm not entirely sure of the context behind that look, but that's very much a "Here we go" and "Now we have to do [this other bad thing] type of look." Also a look of, well, fuck. Which is exactly what we said.
Next week! A crushing Trouble! Vince calling Nathan out on lying to everyone! Audrey and Nathan in bed at last, and a thousand shippers rejoiced! Duke punching Nathan! or it looks like Nathan from the back, you know that's not going to do anything, right? Duke calling Nathan out on not going through with it! And what looks like Nathan and Audrey saying a final good-bye right up to her putting a gun at what looks like Nathan's chest (or at least Nathan's shirt) and pulling the trigger. This ought to make for an interesting episode.
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