Friday, December 18, 2015

Simon Says Haven S2E12 Sins of the Fathers

Previously: Audrey found the original Lucy Ripley, who has not gone to the barn and had her memories erased! And… Simon Crocker was looking for AudSarLu when she was Lucy. Oh GOODIE. We will be reminded yet again of how Duke is at the center of everything going on in Haven, and lost Evi as a result. And oh look, part of that involves the Crocker boxes, now with the big version, hi Dwight you're like a big version, and killing AudSarLu. Gee. I wonder what the Rev's plans were for Duke! Let's find out on a moonlit night in Haven. We open with the Trouble, not the town's tarnished trio, which just means the Trouble's going to be inherent to them all as we learn what it is and how it works. Some Dude is asleep when Some Other Dude appears and wakes him insisting he go save a woman named Sheila who's in danger from a guy with a gun! This cannot possibly end badly! First Dude looks like he's about to tell the other guy that he's dead or something, oh yay just what we need. Yes, the guy with a gun is going to be you, honey. Arlo is meanwhile across the street with Sheila telling her to be quiet and careful and he'll keep her safe until Bill gets here. Of course you will. Vindictive ghostly bastard. This translates to mock-strangling her and Bill shooting her through the ghost. As you do. Evidently this was, as one might expect, payback for sleeping with Sheila, who was Arlo's wife. I assume he was hoping for a murder-suicide but will take one out of two.


Next morning, Duke and his truck are headed downtown at the same time as Audrey and… that looks like still a rental? Audrey when are you going to give in and buy a used cheap car. She's headed for the Herald, Duke is headed for her, it looks like after the ulp-ing at the end of last ep they haven't talked since and now things have an extra helping of Awkward. Duke's going to confront this head-on! Honey. Audrey's off to confront other people head-on, she's not upset with you, go hold her flower while she kicks the Teagues' ass. I would pay such good money for that alt-version of this scene. Alas, no, he's determined to explain that he is REALLY not going to kill her, he doesn't take assassination requests from dead as well as deadbeat dads. Audrey please stop being quite so emotionally repressed, you're going to sprain something. She does realize after the bad joke that she needs to take him a little more seriously than that, but the words "I believe you" would help here. A lot. And not leave Duke sighing at the heavens while Audrey storms into the Herald.



Thursday, December 17, 2015

In the Blood Haven S2E11 Business as Usual

Previously! Lucy Ripley, Audrey belonging to Haven, Nathan courting Audrey, Duke and the tattoo and his complete lack of answers. Evi working with the Rev and then dying! The Rev being in the middle of all of this. And then dying too! Well, I'm glad about one of those things.




Saturday, December 12, 2015

Wings of a Dove Haven S5E24 The Widening Gyre

Wings of a Dove Haven S5E24 The Widening Gyre

Any ep title they can play on-the-nose with we can do better? Ahem. (For those of you who've noticed, Cash covered this one.) (A: Though my FIRST thought was Lonesome Dove, because even MORE on the nose.) Look, anytime anyone invokes Yeats' Second Coming for TV we are going to at minimum tease and possibly mock. Do you know how many times that poem has been overused? There's an entire TV Tropes page about it. (Suffer with us!) However, if we start in earnest now we'll never stop, so: previously, on Haven! Dave took out Croatoan's ability to wipe memories and erase time, and died in the doing, breaking Vince. Dwight is cracking at the edges to the tune of Not Losing Anyone Else, Audrey flails at the barn and acquires a Howard, however briefly due to Duke fucking with the aether core and going full evil. Whether that's possession or his choice is still severely questionable! Enjoy trying to figure it out! Fuck knows we're not sure.





Friday, December 11, 2015

To Serve Man Haven S2E10 Who What Where Wendigo?

Previouslies tell us that Dwight is a bullet magnet, the poor bastard. Dwight just so you know, you can't actually protect people if you're dead or in hospital recovering from bullet wounds and/or cracked ribs. (Kevlar only goes so far.) I tease about the urges under his Trouble because of one part sympathy and two parts ow. Evi was working for the Rev! She swears it was because she wanted to help Duke find out about his past and/or protect him from the Rev, which shows a staggering degree of naivete considering her usual line of work. Also a significant attachment to Duke despite how they clash on a regular basis. And she also severely overestimates her importance to the Rev and his men, getting herself shot and killed when she assumes she's not expendable. Oh honey. You were definitely not used to people playing games this rough. Hell, Duke's not, not entirely, though he's more so than Evi was, as witness his swallowing back grief and rage to pretend like he's going to be a good little follower and find out his answers. Anyone who knows Duke, knows that revenge is probably worth more to him than answers, and that he'll take both if he can get both, but I'd say it's clear the Rev is playing all the odds. We have a last shot from last ep of the Rev versus Dwight-Audrey-Nathan, which is an interesting cluster and certainly not at all representative of Dwight standing in for Vince.


The ep proper opens with… none of Our Heroes! So we have a Trouble that's not what it seems and they're flinging us data as well as red herrings. Yay! Instead, a newscast over the radio, a trucker flossing in his rearview mirror while we hear about a brutal murder of a dental hygienist, really you guys? And oh look they've decided it's a serial killer with so far seven bodies that they know about. They even have a description! I suspect this is because the murders all happened in different jurisdictions and looked like crimes of passion; these are the kinds of things where you file all the forensics and then hope for a break in the detective footwork. Our trucker is halfway posited as the killer as he goes about his business, since he also leers and ogles all over the girl working the gas station who comes out on break. But no! Then a guy fitting the description right down to the rose tattoo walks out and is bashed into by some teenaged boy, who spills his coffee, apologizes, and runs faster. Our trucker seems to think he can go be a big damn hero with the handgun he keeps in the truck for protection. Dude. You don't even keep the fucking thing in the glovebox? It's just hanging out there? Your safety precautions suck and you should feel bad. GET YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER OH MY GOD. Well, at least we KNOW he's supposed to be a moron. Rounding the corner brings a whole lot of animal-tearing-something-to-shreds noises from the shed out back, and then we get monster-shaky-cam footage as the trucker gets shoved hard out the door by whatever was making those noises. DUN DUN DUNN.



Saturday, December 5, 2015

For The Reckless Ones Haven S5E23 Blind Spot

Previously on Haven: I miss William. How the fuck did that happen. Is this some magical Colin Ferguson shit? 'cause it kinda seems like it. Croatoan is going to kill and eat everyone, William sez, but then he disappears off into the void and possibly for home because he's… tired of murder? Sleepy kitten done thinking of nothing but murder all day? At any rate, Nathan came back with the crystal, Dave went into his mind palace to try and defeat Croatoan and succeeded in (we think and hope) getting rid of the timey-wimey bullshit memory wiping (DONNA NOBLE FOREVER FUCK YOU ahem oops did that slip out? That was my outside voice, wasn't it.), and also died, wrecking Vince. Croatoan is now out of Dave's body but whether or not he's genuinely lost this ability AND why he's still hanging out being a creepyass mist rather than taking a form asap we do not (yet) know. Suspect lots of things! Don't know. Also Dave used his internal IMing system to inform Vince and Dwight that Croatoan's coming for Audrey. I am sure that's not the only thing he's dropped by for.





Friday, December 4, 2015

Toxic Masculinity S2E09 Lockdown

Previously on Haven! Nathan's getting ousted by the Rev, Audrey's getting courted by Chris Brody, and Duke's getting manipulated by Evi. So at least someone's getting made happier by the machinations in everyone's life!





Saturday, November 28, 2015

I Must Live While Others Die Haven S5E22 A Matter Of Time

Everyone stop for awhile to groan over the double pun in the ep title with us, while we go over the previouslies. Yes? Yes. Previously, Hayley or Hayley's Trouble are the key to saving Haven by way of making a thinny whee. Vince was a complete fucking idiot who thought the best plan was to discuss plans for saving Dave from Croatoan IN FRONT OF HIM WHEN HE KNEW DAVE WAS POSSESSED. I'm pretty sure that one never got fully erased from his memory, is what I'm saying, and even if it did, the body on the floor should be a big fucking clue. Nathan coming back from the void is crucial, which will be fun since William's there too and Hayley refuses to use her power for the purposes of eventually getting rid of it. Kid. Have you seriously never read Harry Potter? Splinching is a thing. You don't want that thing.

Nathan does not want this boulder or this void air or whatever in the void is making him sick, but there's a lot of shit Nathan doesn't want and bulls his way through despite that. Because Nathan. Also I question the wisdom of sending in the guy who can't feel things to a place that's that toxic to humans. While it may lengthen the time he can stand being in there, if there's any kind of nerve irritation/pain that goes along with it, it means that he doesn't notice how bad it is until, say, shortness of breath and blurry vision come into play. William shall taunt him a second time! Free me and I'll help you, yadda yadda, nobody believes you, William. Though he's not wrong about Nathan doing poorly. William babbling about all the terrible things Mara's going to do is definitely like provocation! A lot of provocation, since Nathan starts shouting about how Mara's not coming back and ALSO no seriously NOT COMING BACK SHE'S DEAD YOU MORON. DECEASED. KICKED THE BUCKET. SHE IS AN EX-MARA. Ahem. I will allow as how this is enough passion and Nathan is fucked up enough that it definitely registers as true. Or Nathan believing it's true hard enough that he's got some kind of alternate proof, even if William looks utterly stricken by that idea. He's not wrong, either, there's not really anything he knows of that could do that. That's in Haven. So now they have new and interesting information to exchange and negotiate from. Such as negotiation can happen when the only thing William was living for (as far as he's ever said) is now gone.