Five Moments of Goodness from Haven “The New Girl” 

Good God, y’all. Have you watched it twice? You have to watch it twice. Go rewatch it now that you’ve seen the ending and revived. Really. Go watch it again. I’ll wait. Done? Okay, then. Right?? OMG, Emily Rose.

I LOVE this show. That’s not news to anybody who’s read our Haven coverage since season one (and thank you very much if you have). I wasn’t sure at all where this arc was going to take us, but my immediate takeaway was that if Lucas Bryant and Emily Rose are in the same scenes, even if Rose isn’t playing Audrey, I can get down with it. Because I missed them last season with an almost physical ache.

And now that we know TPTB (and writer Brian Millikin) are EVIL, we have a delicious new wrinkle. And Emily Rose and Lucas Bryant and Eric Balfour win everything ever all the time.

Here are the Moments of Goodness from “The New Girl.”

Dwight Shows Jordan the Bunker

I love Kate Kelton, and I keep waiting for us to get a scene as fragile as the ones she had last season where we understood what Jordan’s Trouble had meant to her quality of life. This season, Jordan’s just been set to rage the whole time. Dwight finally pulled her aside, when she didn’t get her way with a dead Nathan, to show her that he and the Teagues really have been working on a solution. He throws open the door to a bunker and the walls and tables are lined with photos and charts and maps trying to find an answer. It’s not perfect, but it makes her realize they’re not all just feeding her a line. I’m not sure what’s up with her going after Brother Crocker, but if she can be happy maybe it’ll take some of her edge off, and let Kelton really shine.

Duke Has a Plan

Bryant and Balfour promised us we would see a new side of the Duke/Nathan dynamic and they haven’t disappointed. When everybody realizes they have a Lexie and not an Audrey, he fast talks his way into suggesting that maybe if they just give Lexie time to fall in love with Nathan and then she kills him, it will all be OK. Then he tells Nathan that plan and Nathan doesn’t exactly argue because it means he’ll get to live for a while, but he emphatically tells Duke “I am in love with Audrey” and I stopped breathing for a minute because he actually said it out loud in front of God and everybody. Duke’s all well and good with that but suggests they ride it out, and then he hilariously keeps goading Nathan to be nice to Lexie and talking up Nathan to her.

Duke Tells Jennifer Not to Leave

Jennifer quickly feels like an interloper and gets ready to head back home, especially now that she’s “normal” again. When she tells Duke she’s leaving and he instead kisses her and suggests they run away together, she’s suspect. It’s only when he calls her “babe” that she realizes she’s not talking to Duke, but this week’s Troubled person, who has body-hopped to Duke. Later when we get Duke back, he goes to see her and he asks her to stay. He says there an extra room on the boat and she’s welcome there now that Lexie will be back in Audrey’s room. They talk about the kiss and then kind of skate past it.

Nathan and Lexie

In the opening scene, Lexie fires a warning shot at the Guard to protect Nathan and coins him “Cheekbones,” which becomes a bit of a running joke, along with butchering the pronunciation of Wuornos. At the station, after Nathan is knocked in the head by the Guard and while Duke negotiates, Lexie tries to patch Nathan’s head and he tells her it doesn’t hurt. She prattles on that she doesn’t like being locked up and Nathan quizzes her a little on how she got out of the barn. He asks if she was helped by Agent Howard, and she says no, it as a man named William and he told her she could help people. She tells him she’s a bartender, not a cop. Throughout the episode there are cute tics where she’s handed a radio and gun because they don’t want to tell people she isn’t Audrey.

When Duke isn’t Duke, he shoves Nathan and Lexie into a hospital freezer and while they’re trapped, Lexie is chatty about needing a drink or drugs, and then when she can pick a lock and Nathan suggests she’s been arrested, she corrects him that she had a boyfriend into bondage. When he’s undeterred that she’s a wild child and suggests maybe they grab pancakes, she laughs and faux wretches. So she’s doing a full-court press that she is NOT our Audrey. Earlier in the episode, she declares Audrey’s wardrobe, which Jennifer has helpfully fetched, as “50 shades of beige.”

When Nathan really watches her, not seeing anything he recognizes, she catches him and asks him if he’s getting a good look. Then she’s up in his face reminding him she’s not Audrey. He stands up and says yes, he knows that, she is a completely different person and he doesn’t want her, he wants her to be Audrey again. That rattles her a bit and he apologizes that it’s a terrible thing to say but that’s how he feels. Then the moment passes when she pops the lock and they’re off to find Duke.

When saving Duke means putting Lexie in harm’s way, Nathan doesn’t want to do it but she rationalizes with him that she can’t be turned, and it’s why she’s here, after all. And she correctly points out that if he was turned and killed her, then what. So he lets her go.

Later at the station, she returns the insult from the freezer when she picks up a picture of Audrey and Nathan and tells him she’s heard the whispers that they had something. She suggestively asks him if they knocked boots and made sweet love and he tears up a bit as he takes the picture away from her and says only that it’s complicated. She realizes she’s hit a nerve now and she tears up as well when she answers “I’m guessing with you it really is complicated,” and he tells her she’s right.

Duke Confronts Lexie

Lexie is instrumental in getting Duke back and she orchestrates letting infected Duke kill the owner of the Trouble with an axe, which shorts out the Trouble when the blood lands on Duke (don’t overthink it). Later, Duke comes to talk to her at the Gull and she makes a couple of digs about the place and asks if she lived there because she was broke. He tells her she owes him six months rent and she really laughs at that.

Then Duke turns serious and tells her she took a gamble that worked. She fidgets with her hair and says she didn’t really know what she was doing, she was scared. He calls bullsh-t that nothing she’s done–from jumping through the door to going down to the basement to help him–has been based on fear. She walks past Duke and he turns so we see both their faces as he looks at her back. He tells her she wouldn’t know how to short-circuit the Trouble but Audrey Parker would. “Isn’t that right, Audrey?” he asks. Lexie’s face changes a bit and she sucks in and then, “Dammit, Duke.” She turns to face him and then leaps at him in a hug and says “Yeah. It’s me.” He hugs her back, not quite registering that he correctly called her bluff. SO GOOD.

So we do have Audrey back. Sneaky!! Which is why you have to rewatch and realize Emily Rose was playing Audrey playing Lexie. We can assume the larger agenda is that Audrey doesn’t want anyone to know because it endangers Nathan but Nathan BETTER find out soon. Because the alternative will kill me.

Did Nathan feel Lexie’s touch and not think anything of it because that’s just the way it goes with whomever is in the body? I haven’t seen “Sarah” in a while but I’m rattling my brain as to whether anything was explicitly said about it (sex aside, I’m talking about actually feeling her touch–we’ve seen Nathan have sex otherwise and we can assume he was sleeping with Jordan at some point, right?).

I loved the blocking on the scenes with Nathan and Audrey and the way he kept watching her, really searching for anything that was Audrey, and then he still missed it because she was masterful at masking herself. And I wonder if part of that was because he’d also met Sarah. I’d like to see if in the ongoing ruse Vince picks up on it. And now I wonder, too, if Audrey remembers everything about all her pasts and not just Audrey.

These are the reasons I had to sleep on it before writing about it.

We’re five episodes in and all cylinders are firing and we have our core trio back. I think I love that most of all. At the end of the day, Nathan, Audrey, and Duke are Haven for me. I’ve missed them as a team and I’m so glad the band is back together.