A lot is being written lately about watching TV online instead of on an actual television. I watch shows online fairly regularly, and for me, it’s always a much more intimate experience as a viewer because I’m sitting close to the screen, laptop on my lap. The only downside is that I like closed captioning. I’m a dialogue gal that way. And while some shows (thanks, Human Target!) are cc’d online, the vast majority are not, which sucks for folks who genuinely need the captions. I watched Haven on Hulu (without captions) this week and may take to rewatching episodes this way. It’s such a visually pretty show. This week’s Trouble du jour, not so much with the pretty.
The episode, funnily enough titled “Sketchy,” centers on folks of rather sketchy repute falling to harm in extremely violent ways. The first, a Wall Street investor, crumples up into a ball on a docked boat after all of his extremity bones break at 90-degree angles. The second victim, a shady real estate broker, is literally shredded. The third victim, Jimmy, isn’t sketchy, just wrong place, wrong time, and his facial features start to disappear while Audrey and Nathan interview him. Thankfully Eleanor knocks him out with a handy morphine drip while the investigation continues. It’s not long before Audrey and Nathan figure out that the injuries are the result of actions being performed on sketches of the men.
It turns out that Vicky, who works on the boat with Jimmy (her fiance) and her dad, Alec, is an artist. She realized her ability when Richards, the captain of the boat, crumpled a sketch and caused the death of the seal in the drawing. Alec is into Richards for gambling debts, so Richards has blackmailed Vicky into providing sketches of his business clients for leverage to collect other outstanding debts with the promise that he'll forgive Alec's debts, and then things get ugly. Richards kidnaps Alec, steals all of Vicky's sketches, and is essentially holding the whole town hostage via a sketch she did from an overlook.
Audrey wrangles Duke to help and he gets onto the boat under the guise of a wine deal, rescues Alec, and takes down Richards by punching his sketch (after handily picking the safe where the the drawings were stashed). Richards dies when a scuffle on the dock sends his sketch into the water and Nathan can’t retrieve it. Audrey gives the sketches to Eleanor for safe keeping and fiance Jimmy gets his features back.
On the domestic front, Jess comes to the station under the guise of reporting a prowler with ridiculous features and when Nathan completely misses that she’s hitting on him, Audrey very loudly clues him in. [Sidebar: Jess invites him to a venison dinner because she shot a deer and when Audrey calls her on that being opposite her philosophy toward the animals last week, she gets a quippy answer, so that's a character reversal.] Later, Jess helps on their case when they ask her to stand by with a tranquilizer gun during Jimmy's interview (before they have ID'd Vicky). When the interview goes south, Nathan balks at getting involved with her because it's too dangerous. After the case is wrapped up, he turns up at her door for a “security review” with a bottle of wine behind his back, although I couldn’t tell if it was one of the 68 Chateau Latours from Duke.
Duke and Audrey continue their banter, and at one point he slips a comment about Audrey being Haven’s finest ass (and Nathan, too but a different kind of ass) and I’m not totally clear on why she laughed vs. letting him have it. It came off sort of skeevy instead of teasing. At the end of the episode, Audrey hangs out at his restaurant draining martinis to thank him for his help, and the way Duke asks if they are happy martinis or sad martinis redeems the ass comment.
Audrey continues her bonding with Eleanor and expresses her exasperation with the Troubles and wanting to kick them in ass while also wanting to get the hell out of Haven but seemingly being unable to do either. She has a cute scene with Nathan when their investigation leads them to an art store where we found out Nathan’s into decoupage and Audrey profiles him that because he can’t feel, his sense of sight is stronger (after he explains what the decoupage does to enrich the colors of the images). We also get Audrey doing her best over-the-top bad cop when she tries to rile each suspect into a rage to trigger their suspected ability, which while funny, could have gone either way if she'd been successful.
In all, this was a solid outing but I sort of guessed at things as we went along even though I was unspoiled. I liked that the episode’s title was a double entendre but I think it also tipped the plot early. It did feel more on track with the actual timeline of the show, in terms of Audrey trying to navigate her partnership with Nathan and friendship with Eleanor, and whatever she has with Duke. I think if this show was on pay cable, she and Duke would be FWBs. I’m glad they’re not. I like that they haven’t really defined what the energy is there. I think Duke is a good guy trying to pass himself off as more bad ass than he actually is, which works.
There's another new episode this Friday (thank you, Syfy). You can watch this week’s episode again on Syfy during the week and now on Hulu or Syfy.com. Another bonus of watching online – you actually get to hear all of Shawn Pierce’s moody score over the end credits.
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