The quite little town of Haven, in Maine looks peaceful,
but it has troubles or, more accurately, Troubles. The Troubles happened a long
time ago, people with special abilities, abilities they couldn’t always control
that could cause considerable havoc. Audrey Parker, an FBI agent, arrives in
town to track down a fugitive working with the Haven PD and quickly gets
embroiled in investigating the Troubles – which have returned. Her job as an
FBI agent falls away as she becomes more and more intrigued by the town and
helping the Troubled people deal with their Afflictions. And she finds a
picture of a woman who looks just like her – Lucy Ripley, quite possibly the
orphan Audrey’s mother.
When setting up a new show, like Haven, you need to
establish the premise and the world. This means many of the earlier episodes
will be used to introduce exactly what is going on and who is who. We introduce
the primary cast: Audrey. Nathan, the son of the police chief, he’s Troubled
and cannot feel anything, though he still suffers the injuries. He broods
around and is Audrey’s main police partner. Duke, the casual, rogue – a
smuggler and nefarious ne’er do well who takes a shine to Audrey and is always
there to lend a (grudging) hand. The police chief, who holds the town together
through the Troubles and tries to shape Nathan to replace him, leading to their
very rocky relation. And Vince and Dave Teague, 2 old men who run the paper –
and keep the town’s secrets, perhaps all too well. On the less friendly side we
have the Reverend Driskall, a religious fanatic who considers all the Troubled
to be cursed.
And the rest is used to show is used to display the
powers people have and Audrey and Nathan, (occasionally helped by Duke) solve
the many problems – from a woman who can control the weather, to a kid who can
manifest his dreams, animate taxidermy animals, a woman who drains life force
and has babies, dangerous art, murderous shadows and many more. There are a lot
of very unique ideas and concepts. And many of the episodes serve to develop
the characters and integrate Audrey further into Haven… but most of them don’t
really advance anything. They’re Trouble of the Week, each is introduced,
investigated and solved in the same episode, with very little else covered. You
can probably skip from episode 5 to episode 9 or even 10 and not appreciably miss much.
And then we get to the last few episodes and wow does it
open up. Really open up. Duke is
informed by a psychic that a man with a special tattoo will kill him and
discovers that the tattoo is very commonplace around Haven – which remains his
driving motivation well into next season. The police chief reveals he is
Troubled and some of the town’s secrets, though dies before he can pass on any
more knowledge. Nathan finds out he is adopted and briefly meets his father,
Audrey discovers she is immune to the various Troubles – including Nathan being
able to feel her touch. But, above all, Audrey learns that she isn’t Lucy
Ripley’s daughter – she is Lucy Ripley, somehow unaging and with a completely
false set of memories – which also means her boss is also fake – and plotting
with the police chief. And those memories belong to Real!Audrey, FBI agent, who
shows up in Haven wanting answers. And we see a whole new side to the Teagues
It was a massive acceleration of the plot. I was ready to
almost give up on the show, I wasn’t bored but I wasn’t intrigued. It was a
mild amusement but nothing was being developed – but then at the end of the
season we have these major meta milestones that suddenly whet my appetite for
the next season. It was so very slow – and then we have a massive dump of plot
hooks, character development and secret reveals that drag me fully and eagerly
back into the show.
One thing that felt flat to me (until the very end of the
season) was Audrey’s motivation. While we learn she doesn’t have much of a
social or family life, we do know she is a successful FBI agent. She has a
career. She’s also based out of big cities and, we can assume, she is more used
to an urban setting. For her to suddenly drop everything to hang around Haven
based on, what, personal curiosity and a photograph of a woman who could
possibly be her mother? It seems pretty thin. Especially considering how easily
she integrates with the local police force even before she’s been in town long
enough to have enough ties to be that invested. She’s also shockingly
believing, from the very beginning she’s willing to look for supernatural
explanations and rarely, if ever, even begins to consider natural ones. Apart
from that she’s a good character, she bounces off Nathan and Duke well, she has
some layers and is generally a fun watch.
This show does have some excellent characters. Not just
Audrey, but Nathan and Duke both fit their roles ideally, both being appealing
characters in their own right while being so very different from each other.
The characters I’ve most got my eyes on are Vince and Dave Teague, so many
secrets and in the end Vince, bumbling, gentle Vince, pulled out a shocking
amount of menace. I think I want to know his secrets more than I want to know
Audrey’s!
Inclusion wise this show is absolutely appalling. POC
appear as odd tokens at best (including a Black female nanny, uh-huh) and none
of the regular cast are POC. Single episode bit parts are the norm. There are
no GBLT characters. We have disabled characters – but that includes mentally
ill characters who are magically cured by music which infects other people with
insanity (and then go on a sailing tour, isolating them from the town) and a
blind man who is locked away to control his murderous shadow. There are also very few women in the cast
beyond Audrey. The few recurring female characters either die (the
pathologist), disappear (Julia, the pathologist’s daughter) or leave (Jess,
Nathan’s love interest with the oddest accent I’ve ever heard – do Quebecois
actually sound like that?). The other women are primarily bit parts – and
include the woman who drains men’s lives by sleeping with them and then
producing babies with the life force. The main cast is nearly entirely male.
Based on most of the series I’m inclined to mark the
series low – too much Trouble of the Week, too many secrets, too little reveal,
too much build up, not enough conclusion, not enough development. But the last
few episodes in the season really pick it up and do a lot towards redeeming the
show and making it something I was happy to watch for a second season.
