Dave has another dream about colonial massacres, Croatoan
and deer turning to women and portals. Take more water with it, Dave. His
infected leg is still nasty – so he calls someone called Chris.
Audrey and Nathan tell Dwight the good news about Audrey
and Mara splitting. Dwight vaguely references his dead sister (who is
definitely dead) and Dr. Charlotte Cross from the CDC arrives to speak to
Dwight to help them find Dave and his weird weird leg.
To the police station where Dwight, Audrey and Nathan all
talk about the horror of a scientists investigating Haven. Duke calls in to add
their common belief that they will all be locked up like lab rats. They also
refer to a guy called Pete who is an epidemiologist and is part of the big
cover up of Haven. Charlotte has already gone to see Pete and he’s freaking out
because she’s questioning his 8 bajillion cover stories. Gloria is there to be
awesome and keep everyone sensible – their cover stories are solid, they’ve
been doing this a long time.
Of course keeping Dave away from Charlotte doesn’t work when the man shows up at the police station. But it’s all part of his plan. Charlotte interviews him and he claims it was a jellyfish sting and that he spoke to Chris Brody about it (he is the guy with the Trouble which makes everyone love him: they hope his mojo may work on Charlotte). Chris has already done some research in Charlotte’s specialties and, combined with his Trouble, he uses a weakness in her knowledge to hopefully get rid of her. He warns Dwight that Charlotte is very very good at her job and this is her only weakness – they need to get rid of her.
Which is a problem because though she does drop the
investigation she decides she’s due a holiday and to hang around Haven and mild
flirting with Dwight.
Meanwhile Audrey and Nathan are called into a Trouble
which seems to be a guy dancing in a bear costume (and some very weird children
who find this fascinating. In the world of the internet it’s going to take more
than a bear waving his arms around to fascinate). When Audrey and Nathan ask
him to leave (why?) he takes off his costume head – and there’s nothing inside.
It’s an ambulatory suit. Then he puts his head on again, takes it off and now
the suit is full of very very dead guy with a huge chunk missing out of his
skull. Ick.
Then lengths people will go to for cheap labour.
More bears presumably with their own zombies inside
appear all with their little mini crowd of fascinated Havenites – and I really
don’t believe inhabitants of Haven of all towns could ever be that bored.
Nathan and Audrey try to get rid of them because Dwight
and Charlotte are wandering down the promenade while Charlotte talks about how
cool it is she can call in military forces.
Time for something I want even less than zombie teddy
bears – Mara is washing herself behind a curtain and Duke goes down to ask
whether she’s done when she clearly clearly isn’t. She steps out from behind
the curtain fully naked and she flirts with him while he looks all conflicted
before pointing out to her that she killed Jennifer. But she denies it –
blaming it on the door and the thinnies and she’s convinced she and Duke are on
a certain “path” together. Duke makes a snarky remark about the CDC but doesn’t
clarify it.
Still she figures it out since it has happened before –
but before modern technology it was pretty easy to delay a response until after
Mara (in whatever guise) was back in the barn and the Troubles over. She points
out that Duke and Mara are the ones any government agency will be most
interested in and tries to drive a wedge between Duke and the others.
At the Gull, Dwight and Charlotte have a lobster dinner,
they discuss their military pasts, get close and then someone inconveniently
coughs and collapses at the next table. She sees him and sees he has the same
symptoms as Haven’s missing chemist (referred to earlier) and lo, they have an
outbreak. Aren’t they all super lucky Charlotte is there?
Summation where Gloria snarks “just Haven’s luck to have an outbreak while the CDC’s around” (you see that? It’s not convoluted writing, it’s luck!) and as a bonus more and more zombie bears keep showing up. Dwight also notes that stonewalling Charlotte is actually annoying because with an actual outbreak they could actually use her help.
Duke, with all his conflict from Mara, goes to find
Dwight and Charlotte digging through his dumpster – they’re working on a story
of food poisoning at the Gull to explain things; Duke sees this as pretty much
throwing him under the bus. Dwight doesn’t help by telling Duke to get out of
sight in case he drops a random Trouble – adding to Mara’s insight that his
friends consider him more weird than them and that the reason he’s on the boat
is not just to guard Mara, but to keep him out of the way as well.
He returns to the ship and Mara keeps needling him and
she makes 2 predictions based on her 500 years of experience: 1) they will
round up Troubled people and 2) Duke’s friends will sell him out.
Charlotte also thinks Gloria is incompetent because of
all the blocking she’s doing – Gloria doesn’t care, the sooner they’re rid of
her the better because the latest infected person is a Troubled germophobe who
isn’t happy about being in the hospital. He makes bubbles and he accidentally
kills himself by boiling/bubbling his IV – just as Charlotte arrives to see the
body.
She’s not happy – she wants an autopsy and Haven
quarantined.
Audrey goes investigating the Trouble and they find Eve who
has the Trouble of spawning zombie bears (it’s the same corpse in each of
them). She knew Audrey when she was Lucy and helped her the last time the
Troubles were round and Eve was a girl. It’s her dead father in his old silly
costume. Audrey also learns that Eve was sick with the same illness everyone
else has – and that Hank, her husband, is Troubled.
More investigation and Dwight and Nathan realise everyone
who is sick is also Troubled (which also suggests that the Trouble is an
infection). The stress of which is likely to set their Troubles off. And they
need rid of Charlotte – to do that they need to get all the infected away from
her.
So Dwight goers back to flirting, she feels a lot happier
about things. She does note in passing that all the sick had the same genetic
marker (she did DNA tests? Already?) but doesn’t think it’s super important.
Dwight is stunned by the results – while Dave misses it, Dwight points out she
may have found the genetic basis for the Troubles.
For added problems, Audrey can’t find the key to ending
Eve’s Zombie Bear Trouble – so calls Duke for input from Mara. Lots of snark
follows (Mara refers to Audrey as a “husk”) she pretty much says the trouble is
pretty easy – it’s prompted by loss – and if Audrey is failing she’s “lost her
mojo.” The implication being that Audrey isn’t good with Troubles – Mara is and
when she’s separated from Mara Audrey has no talent. Duke tries to reassure
her, but also takes news that they’re gathering the sick Troubled as proof they’re
“rounding up the Troubled” (uh-huh… it’s called medical care. It’s normal to
take ill people to a location to treat them. This isn’t called rounding them
up, it’s called hospital.)
Mara convinces Duke they need to act and he agrees – but acting
without her. He goes to the place the sick Troubled have and it’s a disaster –
Troubles are beginning to fire off and they struggle to contain the problems.
They realise that, with Troubled people firing off Troubles even while
unconscious, maybe the contagion Trouble is actually trying to force exposure
by sending the Troubles out of control.
Which gets worse because Charlotte arrives – she thinks
the man she saw die was murdered because he had an air bubble in the brain which
means it was injected (well, yes, through an IV he had filled with bubbles).
She angrily tells Duke and Dwight she’s quarantining the town.
Dwight chases after her while Duke gets a woman with an electricity Trouble to zap the cell phone tower. Charlotte continues walking only lots of the Guard arrive and stare at her ominously. She ducks into the Herald while Duke and Dwight argue and Dwight tases Duke…
What?! Where did that come from? Dwight says he’d rather
hand Duke over to the CDC than let them kidnap Charlotte (this is just clumsy
writing to make Mara’s predictions true). Dwight insists he is the one who
leads the town, not Nathan who is obsessed with Audrey or Duke who is obsessed
with Audrey.
Duke goes back to Mara…
Normally the whole “we’ll be locked up like lab rats” thing
does seem a little overdone in speculative fiction – but in this case I think
it has more merit simply because most of the Troubled are dangerous and pretty
much out of control.
I do kind of think it’s odd that they haven’t even got
Haven medical attention to look at Dave’s leg. It could actually be as
dangerous and virulent as Charlotte fears.
I really really don’t want to see Duke and Mara. I do not
believe for a second that Duke is that horny that he will fall for this
seduction; I do not believe for a second he can be that horny and not find a
better alternative – like ANYONE EVER. There is no reason at all Duke would
listen to Mara. There is no reason the trust that Audrey and even Nathan has
earned would be thrown out for Mara
I’m also a little frustrated by the outbreak. Not because
it keeps Charlotte around because I quite like her around – but because she was
around and investigating an actual META emergency – Dave and his manky leg, the
Thinnies etc. Instead that gets quickly handwaved and the outbreak is dragged
in instead so we can have the “ZOMG THE CDC IS HERE!” plot line without
actually having to advance the meta.
Also, when Mara/Audrey were one person, Duke had to be
convinced to leave Mara in Nathan’s hands so they could get Audrey back – he and
his fellows were very reluctant. Now he learns Mara is separate but is content
to let her remain on Duke’s boat?
And in some ways I cheered when Dwight called out Duke
and Nathan because it’s TRUE. They do care only for themselves or for Audrey –
that has been a major problem of this season and if Dwight had said that last
episode I’d cheer. But this time? This time it doesn’t feel like he’s doing his
best of Haven either (and I doubt the Guard would agree with him). This time it
looks like he’s balking because Charlotte is developing into HIS love interest
