Everyone takes a second to grasp that Audrey now thinks
she’s Lexi (I would say she doesn’t remember who she is, but then she wasn’t
really Audrey either) and Jordan decides to hold people at gun point and tell
Lexie to shoot Nathan.
Of course, I have to question whether Nathan counts as
her true love given she can’t remember him, but Jordan doesn’t exactly do the
long term planning thing. Duke points this out and Jordan decides she’ll just
shoot people for funsies until Dave yells at Vince to control his trigger-happy
Guard and Duke punches one of them – getting blood on his skin. He yells at
Nathan to run while he unleashes his silver-eyed wrath on the guard.
The Guard catch him, Dave makes some more cryptic statements
which we never seem to get the answer to and the Guard prepares to kill Nathan
– an Lexie fires her gun and threatens to shoot them if they shoot Nathan (or
cheekbones, as she calls him) including one bullet at Jordan’s feet (Jordan
decides she can’t stop Audrey – really? Did she forget Lexie is immune to
Troubles?) Duke tries to end the tension by telling Vince he knows how to end
the Troubles.
Back to Vince’s office and Jordan wants to magically turn
Lexie back into Audrey (not doable – Vince said they tried that once) or find
the Barn (it’s gone) – Jordan keeps making noise without actually coming up
with any viable plan, basically resting on “kill Nathan and hope” until Vince
finally ends the argument and agrees that the Troubles are destroying the Town
– and to call Dwight.
Audrey is with Nathan, examining his cut (actually making
it hurt with her touch that, of course, turns off Troubles). Audrey gives
Nathan a quick run down on who Lexi is before Vince collects them – to take
them to a crime scene. Tell me you’re not interrupting this meta for a Trouble
of the Week!
And Duke’s big plan? To arrange for Lexi to fall in love with Nathan – so then killing him is bound to work (assuming that even works without the barn) which means spending time with her solving the Troubles; since Audrey always solves the Troubles regardless of which incarnation she is. Nathan isn’t a big fan of this plan.
The Trouble is some guy, Josh, who lost his ever loving
mind and attacked someone for no reason, now locked in a back room. The guy
rants about “trusting her” then cuts his own throat. Messy. Welcome to Haven,
Lexi!
They talk to Katie friend of the deceased Josh and she
tells them her boyfriend Tyler is also in hospital after randomly driving his
car into a brick wall – the police interviews are extra fun since, of course,
most of the force thinks Audrey is a detective and they’re trying to cover that
up. Duke is also not happy that Nathan is making not attempt to get close to
Lexie
To the hospital to speak to Tyler, paralysed from his car
crash, who says, before his crash, that Katie gave him a funny look which
controlled his body. Audrey also helps herself to a 2 second brain scan just in
case, Duke keeps playing awkward gangly cupid and Audrey asks the burning
question – why stay in Haven anyway? I wish I knew Audrey.
And all theories about Katie go out the window when she
whispers to her police escort “it worked again” and “I had this coming” before
stepping out into traffic. We knew she was a red herring, far too early in the
episode – Haven is nothing if not painfully predictable. Speaking of – time for
some Nathan angst and Duke and Nathan sniping.
The cover story for Lexie is that she has amnesia – I
suppose in Trouble town they’ve certainly seen stranger. And poor Jennifer
feels left out now Audrey is here taking all the attention, especially when
Duke plays the “nooo it’s far too dangerous for your delicate self!” card.
While talking over the investigation, Nathan tries to
shut Audrey out – since she’s not a detective – but she uses her bartender
insight (which is apparently a thing) point out Katie was feeling guilty. In
the true tradition of Haven she makes a flying leap of logic and decides Katie
was hooking up with Josh and cheating on Tyler – and the paralysed Tyler is
behind it all.
Back to the hospital – and Tyler’s missing, a dead man is
in his bed. CCTV shows Tyler controlling his nurse like a puppet, using the
nurse to transport his body out of the room before returning the nurse to Tyler’s
old bed and having him kill himself. But his medical chart shows the cost –
every time he possesses someone, Tyler has a seizure and his body loses some
motor-function. His body becomes more damaged each time.
Cut to Duke calling them for help – they go to him and are quickly disarmed and held at gun point. Tyler has possessed Duke. He could kill them, but it’s time for the convoluted exposition part of the episode where we confirm that all of the massive leaps of logic are actually true. He locks them up and leaves.
Meanwhile at the Grey Gull Jordan drops in on Duke’s big
brother – but just for the booze. Though Dwight arrives before she does
anything unfortunate – which is pretty much expected with Jordan. Dwight takes
her to his research cavern to show they’ve confirmed that Lexie needs to kill
Nathan – and Jordan decides to go for the path of most murder and decides that
Audrey causes the Troubles – that the Troubles are really all just her Trouble;
so Duke, with his Trouble ending power, should just kill her! See, take 1, add
1 and get 8 million!
Y’know, Jordan’s whole “kill people and see if it works”
research method is of… limited utility. Especially since she’s just trying
random guesses then wanting to murder someone to see if it’s right – but then,
leaps of logic are common in Haven.
Duke arrives at the Gull and meets Wade and decides to brainstorm with Wade about a Troubled person (wait wait wait, Wade knows of the Troubles? Really? I thought he was still in the dark? Which was why Duke couldn’t get him to leave?), his big question – how would a person with a Possession Trouble be able to stay in one of the bodies he’s possessed (Tyler wants to stay in Duke). Wade suggests killing his original body (possible – except Duke killing a Troubled person would end their Trouble and stop the possession…). Wade realises all too late that Duke is possessed. Duke/Tyler hits him and tries to get the location of the safe from him when Jennifer drives up.
She wants to go back to Boston, Tyler picks up on the subtext (“talk me out of it and say you love me!”) belatedly and invites her to leave with him – and kisses her. Except that’s a bit much for the short duration of their relationship. Still she’s whisked off her feet and goes with him.
Nathan and Audrey have some not-so-quality time together
while Nathan learns how different Lexie is from the Audrey he knew; and he
doesn’t really like Lexie and offends her by saying he wishes she wasn’t there,
he wants Audrey back. Accurate but not easy to hear. Audrey picks the lock,
releasing them.
Duke and Jennifer arrives at the hospital and Jennifer clues in that this isn’t the real Duke – so rather awesomely stabs him in the leg with a pen and steals his gun. Duke runs to the hospital and Jennifer quickly fills in Nathan and Lexie, Wade calling Nathan to add his own revelation about killing Tyler’s body. Lexie is also told that she has Trouble immunity.
Learning this, Lexie insists on going in alone since
Tyler/Duke has objects belonging to Nathan and Jennifer so can use them to
possess either of them. After some argument and Lexie insisting that this is
what she is meant to do, Nathan gives her a gun and she goes in.
She finds Tyler’s body clutching Duke’s drink ticket (the
object he uses to possess Duke) - and
Tyler/Duke. She tries to raise doubt in killing his body actually letting him
switch bodies – but Tyler would rather take the risk given the motor damage his
body has suffered (also Duke’s body is majorly yummy – so, bonus). Tyler/Duke
asks Lexie if she’s really willing to die for Duke… she isn’t, she steps aside.
Ok that was a revelation – guess Lexie is a bit edgier than Audrey
Tyler/Duke slams a hammer into Tyler’s body – and Duke’s
Trouble kicks in. And what I predicated happens – Tyler dies and with him his
Trouble, restoring Duke. Duke explains things to Audrey.
Back to the police station and Nathan acknowledges that
Lexie is good with the Troubles even if she isn’t Audrey – though Lexie thinks
she just got lucky (she did, to be fair), but Nathan notes she went in, she
tried which matters. She also guesses that Nathan and Audrey were involved
Duke goes to the Gull for some brother angst – Wade still
wants to know the family curse and Duke convinced Jennifer to stay – living in
his boat. And remembers that he kissed her and she kissed him back. And Jordan
lurks around looking to speak to Wade. Ugh, so she’s going to trigger Wade’s
Trouble and get him to murder Lexie? Can we just kill Jordan please?
And Lexie moves back into Audrey’s old flat. And Duke
confronts her about just standing aside and letting Tyler kill his old body and
take Duke’s. Lexie claims fear but Duke doesn’t buy that, she’s been too brave
– he thinks she knew about his curse; Audrey would have known. Audrey curses,
turns and hugs him and admits that, yes, it’s her.
Wait… what? Has she been pretending to be Lexie to protect Nathan?
I’m glad for that revelation at the end since it may fast
forward things a little; another few weeks of them teaching Lexie all about the
Troubles and I may be pulling my hair out. Haven has a problem with pacing.
Ever since season 1 it has been a problem – weeks pass with only a slight
advancement of any kind of meta, if any.
And I’m finding this worse now because Haven is getting really formulaic. A Trouble happens, the team shows up, everyone gasps. They find a suspect, that person is then proven innocent or dies (therefore proving their innocence) then a tiny clue will cause Audrey or Nathan to make a VAST UNSUPPORTED LEAP OF LOGIC and that will turn out to be magically true. They’ll find the Troubled person, they will – whether malicious villain or confused victim – happily exposition their Trouble at great and convoluted length and then the credits role. Throw in some mysterious Teagues, Jordan wanting to kill someone (for various random reasons) and you have a Haven episode.
It’s getting a little stale. And it’s not even a
repeatable formula that can have interesting twists because that BIG LEAP OF
LOGIC ruins even the kind of repetitiveness you get in, say, a murder mystery –
because that clever “how do they figure that out?” part is missing
We’re also 5 episodes in with no sign of any POC
inclusion, which may even be a good thing after the half-assed jobs of the last
3 seasons. We’re 5 episodes and 3 seasons in with nary a GBLT person. And with
Audrey being Lexie we now have 2 confused, lost women (Lexie and Jennifer) and
one who wants to just kill people randomly until the Troubles go away (Jordan).
