Haven: Ain't No Sunshine by Heather M

This week’s Haven, “Ain't No Sunshine” treads into territory previously charted by genre shows like The X-Files ("Soft Light") and Friday the 13th the Series ("Shadow Boxer"). A phantom shadow "dark man” is wreaking all manner of havoc on personnel associated with a clinic where an overwhelming number of cancer patients have died. The case itself is fairly straightforward – a doctor and nurse were conspiring to keep back cancer meds to resell them and pocket the profits. The survivors of the patients put that together, and the grieving husband of one of the victims finds that his shadow can skip out for killing sprees to avenge their deaths. The episode wraps up with the man confined alone to a darkened house. Not as tragic as it sounds because he’s blind.

The bigger story involves Jess and Nathan. Jess works at the clinic and puts herself in harm’s way when she noses around the home of the blind man, realizes his wife had too many leftover pills and pockets them to show Nathan, bringing the shadow after her. This is pretty inconvenient because she and Nathan have started dating in earnest. He’s hesitant to move the relationship forward, despite his outward interest, and Audrey finally goads a TMI confession out of him that he’s been abstinent since his condition developed so he doesn’t know whether he can actually have sex with Jess. Audrey tells him to share that with Jess, and through the power of red wine and Jess's insistence that he never look away from her, things look pretty promising until Audrey interrupts because the dark man has descended on the police station, trapping her with Vince and Dave.

After Jess is attacked (stabbed but surviving), she decides she can’t stay in Haven and goes home to Montreal. Nathan is upset but understanding. He and Audrey have a heart to heart about finally having a friend they can count on in each other. She’s been walled off because of her upbringing and the job; he’s been walled off because of his physical inability to feel. When Audrey sweetly kisses him on the cheek, he touches his face, stunned at the realization that he felt it against his skin. He’s sort of dumbstruck about it as he climbs in the truck beside Audrey, and she's oblivious because she’d already turned around to get in after she kissed him.

So, we have an interesting turn with Audrey and Nathan, but I don’t get a romance vibe there at all. I think we’re going to find out they’re related, perhaps even siblings, and that her return is driving the Troubles in the same way that her mother perhaps did (total conjecture/I’m spoiler-free). We haven’t really been told anything about Nathan’s mom, so there may be a tangent there, too. No Duke this week, which left more room for the Jess/Nathan arc. I was pleased and surprised they didn’t kill her, and that the door’s open for her to come back into Nathan’s life later. Solid effort all around

No episode this week. New episodes return on the 10th. You can catch up on Syfy.com and Hulu.com.