Haven: Season 1
Jan. 13th, 2011 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreI watched the first episode of Haven when it first came out, really liked it, and then got completely distracted by something else.
Audrey Parker is an FBI agent who goes to Haven, Maine on a routine case that ends up being connected to a 25-year-old mystery, the death of the “Colorado Kid“, and ends up taking a leave of absence and working with the Haven police when she discovers a woman who looks exactly like her was in Haven 25 years early, and is connected to the unsolved “Colorado Kid” case. In Haven, she discovers that many residents appear to have special abilities called “The Troubles”, including her friend/partner in the police department, Nathan, who can’t feel anything (he calls it “idiopathic neuropathy”) and that there’s a supernatural mystery tied to the “Colorado Kid” case.
Incidentally, I really like how Nathan’s not being able to physically feel anything isn’t treated like something that makes him tougher or more badass, like abilities like that usually are, but as a hindrance. He doesn’t know he’s bleeding, severely or otherwise, if he can’t see the blood, he doesn’t know when metal is heated so much that it burns you unless he’s told it is, etc. It doesn’t make him hard to hurt, it just makes getting hurt be more dangerous to him.
The first few episodes are bogged down some by a rather forced implied triangle between Nathan, Audrey, and the local bad boy, Duke (who is ok when working with Nathan and Audrey, but rather annoying otherwise) but that is thankfully dropped pretty quickly, and by the show suffering from Only One Woman Syndrome. We get some recurring characters about midseason, and then what looks to be another regular in Julia. As Julia treats the smarmy, self-righteous criminal (Duke) like a smarmy, self-righteous criminal, fandom naturally hates her, based on my exploring some comms. (Well, there are other reasons, only one of which is an issue for me, but that seems to be the main one.)
Anyway, I have basically decided that Audrey is grown up FBI Jubilee. If Jubilee were white. She’s snarky and direct and doesn’t shut her mouth if you annoy her, and her MO is to obnoxiously goad people into revealing themselves. By the time she did this to use one of the Troubles’s powers against him I realizing who she reminded me of, and when she beat a Baddie Of The Week by being unpredictable, I decided that nothing would convince me that the writers weren’t 80s-90s era Jubilee fans. Also, while I never cared about the “Bo’s Mother” plot in Lost Girl (aside from if a certain character was related to her) I like it a lot here? I think because with Bo, it was like she never cared, and then suddenly she was obsessed, whereas Audrey has always wondered about her parents.
I sometimes wonder if the writers really completely know where they’re going with it, but I love the small town supernatural stuff and the way the Troubles seem to play out like family curses, and I suspect Audrey/Audrey’s mother is/are being set up for a mythic savior/heroine role, all of which I approve of. Especially when snarky women are involved. It doesn't always resolve things the way you'd expect, and there were a couple times when I went "gosh, show, can't we just have a Villain Of The Week?" but it's pretty fun, and I like the mythology.
A bit for spoilers:
So, I suspected fairly early on that Audrey probably wasn’t who she thought she was? She had the FBI agent thing going, but never had any examples or previous cases or any mention of things from before she came to Haven, and it stood out to me even before Nathan made a big deal of her isolation. And I figured there probably was an actual FBI agent named Audrey Parker, but I wasn’t quite prepared for her to show up with Audrey’s exactly dialogue from the pilot.
Regarding Audrey/Lucy, I think that there’s a cyclical element to her where The Troubles flare up every quarter of a century or so, and Audrey/Lucy “fixes” things and then leaves, and I also think that in between, most people either forget the Troubles completely, or decide they’re a silly urban myth and then start remembering things once they flare up. (Like how Julia was all “The Troubles? That silly superstition?” when she first showed up after a decade or so away, and then totally accepting after her first episode when she’d realized they were real, then knew all sorts of family things/possible history once she’d been back in town a few weeks, though I think there was also some research involved there.)
I can’t decide, though, what happens to her in between. Part of me says time travel, part of me says she gets “rebooted” to a baby/little girl and then returns/is summoned when she’s an adult, and part of me thinks she’s in a kind of stasis and then activated with a knew identity when needed. But really, I don’t care, as long as she doesn’t end up her own mother. Or Nathan’s. Because do any of us really want to think about Audrey/Lucy having sex with Max?
PS: If you see “snaky” anywhere and wonder why, it’s because stupid autocorrect thinks “snarky” is a typo.
Audrey Parker is an FBI agent who goes to Haven, Maine on a routine case that ends up being connected to a 25-year-old mystery, the death of the “Colorado Kid“, and ends up taking a leave of absence and working with the Haven police when she discovers a woman who looks exactly like her was in Haven 25 years early, and is connected to the unsolved “Colorado Kid” case. In Haven, she discovers that many residents appear to have special abilities called “The Troubles”, including her friend/partner in the police department, Nathan, who can’t feel anything (he calls it “idiopathic neuropathy”) and that there’s a supernatural mystery tied to the “Colorado Kid” case.
Incidentally, I really like how Nathan’s not being able to physically feel anything isn’t treated like something that makes him tougher or more badass, like abilities like that usually are, but as a hindrance. He doesn’t know he’s bleeding, severely or otherwise, if he can’t see the blood, he doesn’t know when metal is heated so much that it burns you unless he’s told it is, etc. It doesn’t make him hard to hurt, it just makes getting hurt be more dangerous to him.
The first few episodes are bogged down some by a rather forced implied triangle between Nathan, Audrey, and the local bad boy, Duke (who is ok when working with Nathan and Audrey, but rather annoying otherwise) but that is thankfully dropped pretty quickly, and by the show suffering from Only One Woman Syndrome. We get some recurring characters about midseason, and then what looks to be another regular in Julia. As Julia treats the smarmy, self-righteous criminal (Duke) like a smarmy, self-righteous criminal, fandom naturally hates her, based on my exploring some comms. (Well, there are other reasons, only one of which is an issue for me, but that seems to be the main one.)
Anyway, I have basically decided that Audrey is grown up FBI Jubilee. If Jubilee were white. She’s snarky and direct and doesn’t shut her mouth if you annoy her, and her MO is to obnoxiously goad people into revealing themselves. By the time she did this to use one of the Troubles’s powers against him I realizing who she reminded me of, and when she beat a Baddie Of The Week by being unpredictable, I decided that nothing would convince me that the writers weren’t 80s-90s era Jubilee fans. Also, while I never cared about the “Bo’s Mother” plot in Lost Girl (aside from if a certain character was related to her) I like it a lot here? I think because with Bo, it was like she never cared, and then suddenly she was obsessed, whereas Audrey has always wondered about her parents.
I sometimes wonder if the writers really completely know where they’re going with it, but I love the small town supernatural stuff and the way the Troubles seem to play out like family curses, and I suspect Audrey/Audrey’s mother is/are being set up for a mythic savior/heroine role, all of which I approve of. Especially when snarky women are involved. It doesn't always resolve things the way you'd expect, and there were a couple times when I went "gosh, show, can't we just have a Villain Of The Week?" but it's pretty fun, and I like the mythology.
A bit for spoilers:
So, I suspected fairly early on that Audrey probably wasn’t who she thought she was? She had the FBI agent thing going, but never had any examples or previous cases or any mention of things from before she came to Haven, and it stood out to me even before Nathan made a big deal of her isolation. And I figured there probably was an actual FBI agent named Audrey Parker, but I wasn’t quite prepared for her to show up with Audrey’s exactly dialogue from the pilot.
Regarding Audrey/Lucy, I think that there’s a cyclical element to her where The Troubles flare up every quarter of a century or so, and Audrey/Lucy “fixes” things and then leaves, and I also think that in between, most people either forget the Troubles completely, or decide they’re a silly urban myth and then start remembering things once they flare up. (Like how Julia was all “The Troubles? That silly superstition?” when she first showed up after a decade or so away, and then totally accepting after her first episode when she’d realized they were real, then knew all sorts of family things/possible history once she’d been back in town a few weeks, though I think there was also some research involved there.)
I can’t decide, though, what happens to her in between. Part of me says time travel, part of me says she gets “rebooted” to a baby/little girl and then returns/is summoned when she’s an adult, and part of me thinks she’s in a kind of stasis and then activated with a knew identity when needed. But really, I don’t care, as long as she doesn’t end up her own mother. Or Nathan’s. Because do any of us really want to think about Audrey/Lucy having sex with Max?
PS: If you see “snaky” anywhere and wonder why, it’s because stupid autocorrect thinks “snarky” is a typo.