Haven 3x04
As a reward for finishing some stuff, I actually got to watch some more TV! So I caught up on Haven...
Oh, everyone is in such a dark place, painfully fractured from one another and from their own senses of self...I love it.
*coff* I know, I know, I'm a mean person. It isn't that I want my favorite characters to suffer all the time! But I was talking to
marycrawford yesterday about how the disruptions between Audrey, Duke, and Nathan aren't silly TV problems ('I saw him talking lovingly to someone else who I'm jealous of even though little do I know that that's his sister!'). I think their problems grow perfectly naturally out of their personalities and characterizations, and the events and circumstances that have been affecting and shaping them. So the problems they're having, the discomfort between them, it breaks my heart, but in that good cathartic fictional way where the suffering shows me more about them and is fascinating and entertaining. I don't agree with their choices, but I understand them.
Which includes their choices to act badly, in some cases. (...NATHAN. >:( ) Like so:
* AUDREY: I understand why Audrey has pushed both Nathan and to some extent Duke away. Especially Nathan, in the grand tradition of trying to protect him--both from her (the fear that loving him will lead to him ending up like The Colorado Kid) and from himself, the Nathan who gets all "DON'T TELL ME I CAN'T FIX THIS; I CAN FIX THIS." (hi, truck as metaphor!). I mean, the instant he hears about the Hunter, he starts in on his Fixing thought process at her, which I think was the last thing she wanted right then (for her sake as well as his).
It seems like she has no hope of changing events and preventing her disappearance, which makes sense, since she knows it's happened right on schedule at least twice before. So even though it hurts her, and the others too, she's disconnecting, distancing herself, and pouring herself into the one thing she knows she can change: people's Troubles. It was heartbreaking to hear her in that first scene with Claire in this episode, obsessing on how many Troubled people there still are to help. It's the one thing she thinks she exists for.
And oh, that scene where she's trying to tell Nathan to be careful, and she takes his arm and then instantly lets go, what a perfect and awkward and painful moment.
(And re: my above reference to TV problems--I adored the part last ep where Audrey tells Nathan the secret about the Hunter. There wasn't the old 'let me keep this secret nonsensically all season to build useless frustration' thing. Instead, she had to interrupt his sweet ordinary behavior with this terrible and inexplicable news, and we see the season's breakage really begin. It was an amazing scene!)
* DUKE: I understand why Duke is getting up in Audrey and Nathan's faces, appointing himself the ridealong partner. For one thing, as he tells Audrey, he's frankly doing it to get a rise out of Nathan. ("We put out an A. P. B. :) "). It's always been that way, since we met them--the more suspicious and reluctant and angry Nathan gets, the more Duke likes to tease him, push him, test him. And it's not something they can't come back from--they have before.
But more importantly, as Duke tells Audrey at the end, Duke's doing this to demonstrate to her that he's his own person and makes his own choices, that he does do good of his own volition and doesn't just do what his blood and his legacy push him toward. He has that point to make about himself, but also underneath I think he's definitely still arguing with her about her apparent passive acceptance of her own destiny. She doesn't seem to be fighting the disappearance at all, and Duke disagrees with that (little does he know how much this puts him in tune with Nathan. Or does he know?).
* NATHAN: I understand why Nathan is such a total mess. *g* I definitely think he's behaving poorly, but I do understand why. There's his disappointment over his loss of that momentary hope of getting closer to Audrey, of course. But worse, there's her directly pushing him away, no longer confiding in him, and when he repeatedly tries to get into Fix mode, saying in so many words that he wants to protect her, she lays down the law: "Well, don't." Problem is, Nathan has no other coping skills in his toolbox, so now that he can't do the one thing he always tries to do, he's spinning in circles and biting at his tail. (Or Duke, either way. *g*)
Add that to Duke working out his own issues by bugging Nathan, and Duke provides an obvious target for Nathan to vent his frustration at. Through his thwarted Fixer/Protector thing he sees Duke as the replacement confidant, the one who knows things he doesn't. And more subconsciously, Duke is the one who figured out the onset of the Hunter and told Audrey, and then Audrey pushed Nathan away--so even though it's irrational, Duke could feel here like a cause of the problem. Plus the situation from the last episode, where Nathan seems to disagree with Audrey's cold-blooded (but effective!) solution to the problem--or at least, when he confronts her about it he complains of her making that choice without talking to him about it, which comes back to his perception of being shut out of the close and mutual partnership.
He had been so 'I am a rock' for a long time, and then Audrey's appearance gradually opened him up very deeply both to her and to Duke--and then that's disrupted, the pleasant dream seemingly dashed, and he closes the clam shell back up tight in reaction to having been fool enough to let it creep open. Nathan should of course know by now that his "Duke can't be trusted" is an old song he sings to make himself feel better and more protected from being vulnerable, disappointed, or hurt. But we are the least able to see our own buttons.
There's also a deeper and even less rational part of him, I expect, that has a lot of processing to do in terms of Duke 1) having a Trouble after all, and 2) that Trouble being something that can potentially please and empower Duke at the expense of a Troubled person. It readjusts something about who Duke is, especially vis-a-vis Nathan and Nathan's image of him, but it also...how to put it. Nathan's Trouble is a big source of distress to him. And here's Duke, his former sometime-tormentor on the topic of being Troubled, who turns out to have one after all, but without the same kind of constant suffering, one that can even give him a rush. I think way down deep there's some kind of reaction to that going on in Nathan's lizard brain.
* TEAM: Anyway, due to events and also Audrey's desperate efforts to keep them (Nathan in particular) safe, the team is fractured. Audrey and Nathan the worst, I'd say, and both reacting to it in similar ways: trying like hell behind the scenes to get more information, without involving or endangering anyone else. Duke is still sticking around and acting team-like, partly I think in reaction to the fact that neither of the others are. When Audrey and Nathan are Audrey-and-Nathan, Duke has the luxury of kicking his feet and pretending to moan at being considered their auxiliary helper, but now they're not, so he really doesn't.
It's obvious that Audrey can't help but love them both, though, and even through the fracturing, she keeps speaking in terms of the team, she'll talk to Nathan inclusively about Duke and to Duke inclusively about Nathan. I'm sure it's heartbreaking, in the face of her limited time left, to see the two she'll leave behind being at each other's throats.
And as I mentioned above, Duke and Nathan don't seem to realize--or at least they aren't yet able to put it together--how much they have in common re: Audrey's impending disappearance! From the get-go, Duke was all, 'I am successfully fighting my legacy, you can/should too,' and Nathan was all, 'We'll fix this, we'll fight it'. It's Audrey who's blocking both of those attempts to respond, and Nathan and Duke are too much at odds to realize they're really on the same page.
* MISC: Nathan trying to get undercover with the Guard was frankly smokin' hot. I like Jordan--there was a tense little moment last ep, when she told Dwight to get out and he seemed cowed enough to obey. And that said a ton, given what we've seen of Dwight, before we even knew what Jordan's Trouble was.
I found it really powerful when Nathan grabbed her hand. He knows very well the intensity of never being able to feel someone else's touch, not having any hope, and then suddenly someone can touch you--and here he is able to use that, presumably very coolly. Whoah.
I also enjoyed Dave and Vince being sinister. I like our thorough awareness now that the jolly small-town-eccentrics surface really is just a skill laid over a whole deep dark box of something else.
I'm not sure what I think of Tommy yet... even though Dave and Vince are being sinister, I found myself not wanting new-character to be quite so perfectly able to kung-fu-block them at every turn. I live in fear of the New Character Sue, who is airlifted in and is suddenly and magically better than the existing characters. However, at least they all seemed to end up in a standoff with no one having the upper hand. I'll wait and see if Tommy does end up with the balanced set of weaknesses I like to see come along with strengths.
Oh, the poor people suffering for my enjoyment. *pets them* :D
Oh, everyone is in such a dark place, painfully fractured from one another and from their own senses of self...I love it.
*coff* I know, I know, I'm a mean person. It isn't that I want my favorite characters to suffer all the time! But I was talking to
marycrawford yesterday about how the disruptions between Audrey, Duke, and Nathan aren't silly TV problems ('I saw him talking lovingly to someone else who I'm jealous of even though little do I know that that's his sister!'). I think their problems grow perfectly naturally out of their personalities and characterizations, and the events and circumstances that have been affecting and shaping them. So the problems they're having, the discomfort between them, it breaks my heart, but in that good cathartic fictional way where the suffering shows me more about them and is fascinating and entertaining. I don't agree with their choices, but I understand them.
Which includes their choices to act badly, in some cases. (...NATHAN. >:( ) Like so:
* AUDREY: I understand why Audrey has pushed both Nathan and to some extent Duke away. Especially Nathan, in the grand tradition of trying to protect him--both from her (the fear that loving him will lead to him ending up like The Colorado Kid) and from himself, the Nathan who gets all "DON'T TELL ME I CAN'T FIX THIS; I CAN FIX THIS." (hi, truck as metaphor!). I mean, the instant he hears about the Hunter, he starts in on his Fixing thought process at her, which I think was the last thing she wanted right then (for her sake as well as his).
It seems like she has no hope of changing events and preventing her disappearance, which makes sense, since she knows it's happened right on schedule at least twice before. So even though it hurts her, and the others too, she's disconnecting, distancing herself, and pouring herself into the one thing she knows she can change: people's Troubles. It was heartbreaking to hear her in that first scene with Claire in this episode, obsessing on how many Troubled people there still are to help. It's the one thing she thinks she exists for.
And oh, that scene where she's trying to tell Nathan to be careful, and she takes his arm and then instantly lets go, what a perfect and awkward and painful moment.
(And re: my above reference to TV problems--I adored the part last ep where Audrey tells Nathan the secret about the Hunter. There wasn't the old 'let me keep this secret nonsensically all season to build useless frustration' thing. Instead, she had to interrupt his sweet ordinary behavior with this terrible and inexplicable news, and we see the season's breakage really begin. It was an amazing scene!)
* DUKE: I understand why Duke is getting up in Audrey and Nathan's faces, appointing himself the ridealong partner. For one thing, as he tells Audrey, he's frankly doing it to get a rise out of Nathan. ("We put out an A. P. B. :) "). It's always been that way, since we met them--the more suspicious and reluctant and angry Nathan gets, the more Duke likes to tease him, push him, test him. And it's not something they can't come back from--they have before.
But more importantly, as Duke tells Audrey at the end, Duke's doing this to demonstrate to her that he's his own person and makes his own choices, that he does do good of his own volition and doesn't just do what his blood and his legacy push him toward. He has that point to make about himself, but also underneath I think he's definitely still arguing with her about her apparent passive acceptance of her own destiny. She doesn't seem to be fighting the disappearance at all, and Duke disagrees with that (little does he know how much this puts him in tune with Nathan. Or does he know?).
* NATHAN: I understand why Nathan is such a total mess. *g* I definitely think he's behaving poorly, but I do understand why. There's his disappointment over his loss of that momentary hope of getting closer to Audrey, of course. But worse, there's her directly pushing him away, no longer confiding in him, and when he repeatedly tries to get into Fix mode, saying in so many words that he wants to protect her, she lays down the law: "Well, don't." Problem is, Nathan has no other coping skills in his toolbox, so now that he can't do the one thing he always tries to do, he's spinning in circles and biting at his tail. (Or Duke, either way. *g*)
Add that to Duke working out his own issues by bugging Nathan, and Duke provides an obvious target for Nathan to vent his frustration at. Through his thwarted Fixer/Protector thing he sees Duke as the replacement confidant, the one who knows things he doesn't. And more subconsciously, Duke is the one who figured out the onset of the Hunter and told Audrey, and then Audrey pushed Nathan away--so even though it's irrational, Duke could feel here like a cause of the problem. Plus the situation from the last episode, where Nathan seems to disagree with Audrey's cold-blooded (but effective!) solution to the problem--or at least, when he confronts her about it he complains of her making that choice without talking to him about it, which comes back to his perception of being shut out of the close and mutual partnership.
He had been so 'I am a rock' for a long time, and then Audrey's appearance gradually opened him up very deeply both to her and to Duke--and then that's disrupted, the pleasant dream seemingly dashed, and he closes the clam shell back up tight in reaction to having been fool enough to let it creep open. Nathan should of course know by now that his "Duke can't be trusted" is an old song he sings to make himself feel better and more protected from being vulnerable, disappointed, or hurt. But we are the least able to see our own buttons.
There's also a deeper and even less rational part of him, I expect, that has a lot of processing to do in terms of Duke 1) having a Trouble after all, and 2) that Trouble being something that can potentially please and empower Duke at the expense of a Troubled person. It readjusts something about who Duke is, especially vis-a-vis Nathan and Nathan's image of him, but it also...how to put it. Nathan's Trouble is a big source of distress to him. And here's Duke, his former sometime-tormentor on the topic of being Troubled, who turns out to have one after all, but without the same kind of constant suffering, one that can even give him a rush. I think way down deep there's some kind of reaction to that going on in Nathan's lizard brain.
* TEAM: Anyway, due to events and also Audrey's desperate efforts to keep them (Nathan in particular) safe, the team is fractured. Audrey and Nathan the worst, I'd say, and both reacting to it in similar ways: trying like hell behind the scenes to get more information, without involving or endangering anyone else. Duke is still sticking around and acting team-like, partly I think in reaction to the fact that neither of the others are. When Audrey and Nathan are Audrey-and-Nathan, Duke has the luxury of kicking his feet and pretending to moan at being considered their auxiliary helper, but now they're not, so he really doesn't.
It's obvious that Audrey can't help but love them both, though, and even through the fracturing, she keeps speaking in terms of the team, she'll talk to Nathan inclusively about Duke and to Duke inclusively about Nathan. I'm sure it's heartbreaking, in the face of her limited time left, to see the two she'll leave behind being at each other's throats.
And as I mentioned above, Duke and Nathan don't seem to realize--or at least they aren't yet able to put it together--how much they have in common re: Audrey's impending disappearance! From the get-go, Duke was all, 'I am successfully fighting my legacy, you can/should too,' and Nathan was all, 'We'll fix this, we'll fight it'. It's Audrey who's blocking both of those attempts to respond, and Nathan and Duke are too much at odds to realize they're really on the same page.
* MISC: Nathan trying to get undercover with the Guard was frankly smokin' hot. I like Jordan--there was a tense little moment last ep, when she told Dwight to get out and he seemed cowed enough to obey. And that said a ton, given what we've seen of Dwight, before we even knew what Jordan's Trouble was.
I found it really powerful when Nathan grabbed her hand. He knows very well the intensity of never being able to feel someone else's touch, not having any hope, and then suddenly someone can touch you--and here he is able to use that, presumably very coolly. Whoah.
I also enjoyed Dave and Vince being sinister. I like our thorough awareness now that the jolly small-town-eccentrics surface really is just a skill laid over a whole deep dark box of something else.
I'm not sure what I think of Tommy yet... even though Dave and Vince are being sinister, I found myself not wanting new-character to be quite so perfectly able to kung-fu-block them at every turn. I live in fear of the New Character Sue, who is airlifted in and is suddenly and magically better than the existing characters. However, at least they all seemed to end up in a standoff with no one having the upper hand. I'll wait and see if Tommy does end up with the balanced set of weaknesses I like to see come along with strengths.
Oh, the poor people suffering for my enjoyment. *pets them* :D