Haven: Love Machine

This week’s Trouble turns out to be pretty straightforward: the machines that handyman Louis fixes are jealous when he starts paying attention to a woman, Marsha, so they begin to attack people and end up even attacking Louis himself. Of course, the cause isn’t so obvious at the beginning, and Audrey and Nathan first assume that there’s a person either consciously or subconsciously controlling the machines. Since the problems start at the marina, they first suspect a union organizer or the vaguely evil marina owner, and then Louis himself. Once the ice rink’s zamboni attacks Marsha, though, and Louis manages to stop it by giving it attention, they realize what’s going on, and Louis agrees to just concentrate on machines going forward, rather than trying to have relationships with people. This resolution is really much sadder than the Trouble of the Week resolutions tend to be, but I suppose it makes sense that, much as they try, Audrey and Nathan can’t always make things into sunshine and daffodils for everyone in town.

Meanwhile, the Audreys are still trying to figure themselves out. By now, they’ve concluded that Audrey has Audrey 2.0’s memories, not vice versa, and Audrey 2.0 has never heard of Lucy Ripley. Audrey is starting to suspect that she might be Lucy Ripley: she suddenly realizes that she can play the piano, and says “Nathan, Audrey Parker never learned how to play the piano. Maybe Lucy Ripley did.” They’re also looking into renting an apartment from Duke; when Evie shows up wanting the apartment and Duke tells her the Audreys got there first, she’s not exactly thrilled.

They find the coordinates of a location written in the vampire book they found last episode, and Audrey 2.0 blackmails Duke into taking her to investigate. (More on the blackmail later.) On the way, she tells Duke that she’s in a relationship with someone named Brad; she thinks Audrey doesn’t have a corresponding Brad because Audrey 2.0 met Brad after Audrey arrived in Haven. Audrey 2.0 leaves Duke at the boat and goes to the exact location herself, and when she comes back she pulls a gun on Duke. He quickly figures out that her memory has somehow been wiped. He takes her back to Haven. where Audrey starts to tell her about herself and they have this fairly adorable exchange:

A2: “I’m sorry. I don’t remember any of that.”
A1: “That’s okay, because I do.”
A2: “How?”
A1: “You’re my friend. We’re like sisters.”
A2: “And what is your name?”
A1: “My name … it’s – it’s also Audrey. It’s going to be okay.”

Also adorable: Duke and Nathan sit and listen to this and smile. Audrey is obviously telling Audrey 2.0 the version of events that will make sense to an outsider, but at the same time, it’s clear to everyone that she means what she says about being Audrey 2.0’s friend. Duke comments that “It’s like the day we found the Colorado Kid. None of us remember anything.” Then, big softie that he is, he tracks down Brad to take care of Audrey 2.0 until they can get her memories back. When Brad shows up, it seems that he’s the only person Audrey 2.0 can actually remember. He takes her home, and our original Audrey goes home to the new apartment, where she places a windchime in the location suggested by Audrey 2.0 and plays the piano some more. (I wish my apartment came with a piano!)

About that supposed blackmail: Audrey 2.0 convinces Duke to ferry her to the mysterious location by showing him an FBI file, and he justifies his actions to Evie by telling her that the file contains the details of some awful past crime, and that Audrey 2.0 will make it go away if he helps her. When he gets back, instead of telling Evie that Audrey 2.0’s memory was wiped, he tells her that everything went fine and that he got the file and destroyed it. And then, of course, Evie produces the file, having stolen it from Audrey 2.0’s car. She says Duke lied about what was in the file, and she’s clearly mad at him. We never find out exactly what the file is, but at the end of the episode, we see Duke looking moody and leafing through it, and it seems to contain some sort of map as well as a drawing of the mysterious symbol.

Throughout all this, Nathan continues to be completely supportive – perhaps blindly supportive – of his original Audrey. After Audrey 2.0’s memory is wiped, he goes with Audrey to the location of the coordinates, promising that he’ll help her figure out what happens. Whatever was there is now gone, and his response is “So, we keep looking.” The plotline involving his father’s death continues to simmer along as well. When they’re discussing her new apartment, Audrey says, “Speaking of, when are you going to move into your dad’s office?” and Nathan insists “We weren’t speaking of that.” But by the end of the episode we see him sitting at his dad’s desk reading through the townspeople’s concerns.

The previews for this episode made it look silly – boats attacking people! – but it actually wound up being one of the more serious episodes. No one got a happily ever after this week; the most that could be hoped for was survival and some measure of peace. And I liked it, both because I tend to like fairly bleak things and because episodes like this are a good reminder of just how high the stakes are in Haven.

Photo Courtesy of Syfy