Cut to the Core Haven S4E06 Countdown

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.

Faces Are So Cold (Person of Interest S2E11 2 Pi R)

Papa Finch is watching you. You, in this instance, being a teenage boy looking kind of shady, kind of sad, and flashing to Finch looking horrified. Well, this can't end badly! The Machine will give us some initial data on the case of the week, a kid who died on the subway tracks, the operator thinks he might've been pushed, cue ominous noises.

Oh, those ominous noises are also because we're visiting Rikers, where Reese and his bevy of patsies in suits are getting DNA cheek swabs done. The only reason I can think of for the prolonged nature of this opening is to demonstrate on camera that yes, all four had cheek swabs done and yes, all four were identically done, there's nobody random on the inside that we don't know about. Elias isn't getting in this game right now. Etc. Which I have to admit, would be a very valid concern. They go into lineup for mug shots, I question why they're all four being lined up side by side since Donnelly is saying right now that he wants them all held in isolation, but maybe that's Rikers protocol? Also I guess isolation is a nicer word than solitary. We know what you mean, Donnelly, and we know those tactics, and we know what happens to people held for prolonged periods in solitary, particularly those without the training to withstand it. (Nothing. Good. See also those experiments with the cloth mama monkey. People need people to survive and be sane, for relative definitions thereof. See also: Reese and Finch.) Anyway, Donnelly intends to make full use of his 72 hours grace period, the warden has snark about how they look like investment bankers (no, dude, you're bad at your job, Reese still looks like a fed), and Carter has a worried expression on. Which is probably less because of Donnelly's obsessive behavior and more because of Reese being in jail, but I will use my worried face over the obsessive behavior. Even before we saw this arc to the end, we were pretty sure Donnelly was gonna get dead, on account of monofocus benefits nobody. I also severely question the assessment of Reese as the most dangerous criminal he's ever chased; no matter if he thinks Reese is working for some Chinese organization, he should maybe be after whoever's pulling Reese's strings? Yes? No. The warden delivers another gripe about how this isn't Guantanamo, which probably has more to do by far with jurisdictional dick-measuring than with any concerns about the well-being of the prisoners. Without getting into long diatribes about this country's prison system, let's just say that the focus is pretty nearly never on rehabilitation or acceptance of ex-cons into society, and at worst it breeds smarter criminals. Anyway. Carter wants to know if they're going to interrogate the prisoners, but no! Donnelly has no intention of bothering with that because they have DNA from the burned out car (remember, with the NSA guy and the assassins, 1x22) and fingerprints from Carter's skills waaaay back in the pilot. Which is a very, very nice bit of continuity for them to have kept in mind.

As You Are He As You Are Me Haven S4E05 The New Girl

Previously, on Haven: Nathan loves Audrey! Nathan's going to die by Audrey's hand! Lexie's stuck between worlds! If she makes it to the other side, who will she be? Whoever she most wants to be! And then someone shouts for Audrey and that should really be our first clue right there in the previouslies. Sadly, we didn't rate it high on the list of probabilities, though we did ponder it for a bit. Although that's the beauty of a great writing team, that after this long analyzing and predicting a show they can still surprise us like this. We should note that we'll be talking about the last five seconds' spoiler throughout this episode, so if you don't want to be spoiled we recommend even more than usual that you wait to read this until after watching. Boom! Audrey's on the other side, only now she's Lexie and she has no idea what's going on. Allegedly.

Today on Haven we pick up right where we left off and Nathan is pissed. Hard to say who he's pissed at, although he himself is probably at the top of that list. Lexie is a bit sheepish and also a bit wary of what's going on. Vince has that stricken look which means he's not looking forward to getting to know a fourth version and he's sad and misses Audrey. Jordan, as it turns out, is going to be gobsmacked by this for the least amount of time, likely due to her anger admitting only a limited amount of new information into her world view. The whole part where Audrey is now Lexie and this won't work is information her desperation won't allow. So, grab the shotgun, order Lexie to shoot Nathan. Or what? Or you'll shoot him instead? You can't shoot AudSarLuLex because she has to end the Troubles, and if you shoot Nathan you might kill him and then the Troubles still won't end, and this is all without her knowing that there is no barn anymore, so really this is grandstanding and venting rage and pain. (A: Can I just mention that Lexie's accent is in the process of disappearing already? Just saying.) Duke attempts to point this out to her, but she's even less prepared to listen to him than she is to listen to Vince's lameass attempt at barking commands. We've heard him bark commands with far more authority than he's assuming here; this isn't Master of the Guard, quick to grab a gun (yes we're going to keep doing that), this is tired and heartbroken old man. Dave has more force in his voice than Vince does, even though it's all desperation.

Lawman's Put An End To My Running (Person of Interest S2E10 Shadow Box)

You are, as usual, being watched.

This week's number appears to be a young and frightened woman, but the initial photo gives us nothing more than that. The initial recording gives us a little more; the young woman is talking to her parents, so we know they're still alive and they're important to her. She talks about how she always tried to be good and keep to the rules, and the order of these tells us that while she conflates the two, she does make a distinction between lawful and good and puts good above lawful. As do most characters we're supposed to root for in shows like this. And now, she says, she's going to break them in a big way. The whole tenor of this recording indicates that she doesn't believe she's going to be coming back from this bout of rule-breaking, or at least that she's obviously not going to have an opportunity to explain herself to her parents, whose opinion she values. While we're listening to this, a man walks into a motorcycle shop, smashes the glass top of the case, takes the keys to the one he wants, and drives off. The whole thing takes less than thirty seconds, but it's still a brazen robbery. We don't know who this man is (though it's most likely a man going by the movement and shape of the body) or how this connects to the young woman who's in trouble. Or even if it does.

Other Worlds Than These Haven S4E04 Lost And Found

Previously on Haven: we are still in deep admiration of whoever's doing these previouslies. As much as we think they could use the extra minute or so of screen time to cram in more of the story, because of how serialized we've gone this season, we also have to admit that the summaries are necessary for people who are either not as fannish as we are or are coming to the show for the first time. This time, we have a fair chunk of the Nathan-and-Audrey love story, though with heavy emphasis on Nathan's side of things - he is, after all, the one who remembers right now. Maybe not forever, we've seen plenty of shots of AudSarLuLex in more Audrey-like clothes, but that could also be because those are the clothes left in Audrey's apartment which fit Lexie. Yes, we're here to bring you all of the worst possible interpretations. And yet you love us anyway for some reason. We also confirmed that the bar/n is, yes, That Darn Barn, and AudSarLuLex is somehow protecting herself by imagining the bar aspect. William? We don't know yet. Isn't it great? But she has to get out because it's still dying, so way-hey for the Dark Tower references this ep. You can expect a lot of swearing and a lot of DT in-universe slang to crop up. Hey, be grateful we don't write the whole recaplysis in Franglais, with A off to the De Temps Antan concert last night. Or turn all our swearing into Québécois patois.

Congratulations, It's A Novel

Kitty's not going to write this because she has issues about self-promotion on this blog. I, on the other hand, am fucking shameless when it comes to shilling out her work, and after the way we've both been working like dogs Hellhounds for the last several months, y'all deserve to know why we've been distracted and, among other things, really really glad for a show that allows us to build up any backlog whatsoever. (Which is gone now and we have to build it back up again, but that's a different story.)

The thing is, there's this novel. A braided anthology! Called Black Ice, or the mold, or fucking mold, or any number of other things you may have seen us call it on Twitter. I happen to think it's fucking awesome noir urban fantasy, with PIs, Hellhounds, Sidhe, wee fae, necromancers, and at least one kickass heroine who's none of the above.

But I'm biased, 'cause I edited the everloving crap out of this anthology. You can find Kitty's original fiction here, with the Black Ice universe stuff clearly marked, and try a couple flash fiction pieces before buying anything. Or you can go here and buy the dime novel (released as a teaser two weeks ago) and the anthology, out today!

Us? We're going to have a well-earned drink before we end up diving into this weekend's Haven.

Fight to be Free (Person of Interest S2E09 C.O.D)

Our number this week is a man working a blue-collar looking job of some kind, and we see him leaning on a car only through a telephoto lens, and then Reese looking over his shoulder. That is singularly uninformative. The tough-guy look could be for any number of reasons, and frankly it mostly resembles a "fuck off and don't bother me" attitude rather than an "I'm going to rip your throat out" attitude. So! The Machine has something to show us. When does the Machine not have something to show us. A stereotypical Russian accent asking his cabbie to pull over and wait for him at the park, no questions asked, he tears a short stack of $100s in half and this is his security against the cabbie taking off. Sure, okay, we'll go with that. Only we never see the Russian come back, we barely can tell from the glimpse we get of him that the cabbie is the number shown in the credits (though we can safely extrapolate that), and now it's the next morning.