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S05.E24: The Widening Gyre


MarkHB

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For a brief moment, I thought they were actually going to give Mara a motive. But... no. Croatoan, yes, but not Mara. So, why...? Oh, I don't care.

Other than that, the biggest flaw in this season 5 episode is that it was a season 5 episode.

That and it was a rip off from Fringe (good call, I wouldn't have picked that but so true).

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Yeah...EB really struggled with this episode and the whole "speak in gravelly voice to show evilness!" Ugh. Of course, Nathan's newfound jolly optimism was annoying as well. I normally love their scenes together, but I felt like that were interpreting their scenes differently. It seemed like they were actors in two different productions of the same play.

 

The ER and WS scenes though were excruciatingly bad. ER struggles when she's with good actors, like LB and EB, but put her with the Shat and it was terrible. He's chewing scenery; she's totally lost and unable to convey a single emotion. And yeah, it was totally Fringe, subtracting out the sweetness and regret of Walter Bishop. Yes, leaving Mara without motive was a terrible story choice. 

 

Haven has been showing reruns of S1-3 and there are some really great episodes. What's going on now does not follow from what was happening then.

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There have been way too many dragging episodes like this in the past 2 seasons. Too much talking from all characters.  Haven now seems to be about Mara's family (Characters we didn't invest 4 seasons in) and they still will not tell us what exactly they are and where they come from? It is extremely hard to believe why the characters just accept vague descriptions of 'other worlds' etc instead of simply asking where exactly do you come from? It's very bad writing.

 

It seems loving Mara/Audrey has very destructive consequences (Croatoan, William and Nathan all did questionable things to 'save' her). Speaking of William, will we ever find out what the connection between him and Mara was? It's odd that Dad has the same healing powers William had.

 

Haven has been showing reruns of S1-3 and there are some really great episodes. What's going on now does not follow from what was happening then.

That's my biggest issue with the show now. It's so different now, I really don't expect answers for some of the S1-S3 mysteries now, the focus seems to have completely shifted.

Glad they revealed that Howard used to 'a person' or whatever they are before he became the Barn Guard. The child that Mara gave the horrible Trouble from the comic book, was he ever named?

So I guess the aether in the blood thing will pose problems with the new Barn for Audrey. Will she have to leave or will she fall sick again and die?

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Well, that episode… existed.

What's going on now does not follow from what was happening then.

It's so different now, I really don't expect answers for some of the S1-S3 mysteries now, the focus seems to have completely shifted.

This show is so far from where it started that I don't even know what to say anymore. I mean, they try to touch back on earlier story threads, mentioning the Colorado Kid and the Barn and all, but all it does is show how far off track they've become. In trying to sum up my thoughts on how this is shaping up, all I can say is remember that old chestnut, Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Well, in Haven-world, that would go something like this:

 

Why did the chicken cross the road? Well there's this barn, but it's not just any barn, it's a Special Barn, and some of the other chickens are special, too, but the first chicken is the specialist of them all, and there's this other chicken that guards the Special Barn, and the Specialest Chicken of Them All falls in love with this other special chicken, and one of their chicken friends is supposed to kill the other chickens, and there's a group of special chickens who have banded together to protect all of the special chickens, and then a shapeshifting chicken that hates the Specialest Chicken because we say so shows up and skins other chickens to create a chicken suit to trick Specialest Chicken, and there's a meteor shower where the Specialest Chicken is supposed to vanish to save all of the other chickens, and Twu Wuv Chicken kills the Barn-guarding chicken, and then the Specialest Chicken loses her memory and thinks she's some other chicken, and her special chicken friends have to help her remember who she is, and then she turns into Evil Chicken and constantly fiddles with her feathers in an attempt to be dissimilar from Specialest Chicken, and then another Magic Chicken shows up and turns Evil Chicken back into Specialest Chicken, and then Evil Black Smoke Chicken appears and kills Magic Chicken, and then Specialest Chicken and Twu Wuv Chicken have to save the day by letting everyone other than themselves die horribly, and what is this road you're all asking about, how the hell should we know why they crossed it? Specialest Chicken and Twu Wuv Chicken live happily ever after, what more do you people want?

 

...

 

And I just put more time and effort into my snark than the writers have put into the show in years.

 

In good news, looks like they're burning off the final two eps next week one after another. So by next week at this time we'll all be out of our misery!

Edited by Maelstrom
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Oh dear ....that was just boring. So much talking. Even the scenes with Nathan & Duke (which, in my Duke-adoring slash/friendship/shipping heart, should always be great) were lacking any real tension - seen it all before with Nathan trying to reach Audrey in Mara.

I'm sad.

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William Shatner is no John Noble and Emily Rose is no Joshua Jackson. It was a poor man's take on Fringe. *sigh*

While I love the Shat in certain roles - this is not one of them. It requires a certain gravitas to pull off the evil, and Shatner doesn't have that. He does have the supersized ego part of it, though. I had the same thoughts about Fringe while I was watching.

 

Since Audrey is no longer immune to the troubles (iirc, that went away when Mara did) does she still have aether in her? I was waiting for her to say, hey guess what, I don't have that specialness anymore. She did work with the aether - but so did her mother who didn't have it in her blood.

 

It was pretty tedious, all in all. I did like Vince becoming the new Howard, even if it was predictable. Come to think about it, that's about the only thing I liked in this episode. Nothing really happens...it's mostly talky talky.

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AFAIK, Audrey is still immune to the "original" troubles; she's only vulnerable to troubles which came from Duke's explosion (which, in turn, he is immune to). Come to think of it, that almost calls for a Mexican standoff between them, doesn't it?

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Haven has been showing reruns of S1-3 and there are some really great episodes. What's going on now does not follow from what was happening then.

 

 

That's my biggest issue with the show now. It's so different now, I really don't expect answers for some of the S1-S3 mysteries now, the focus seems to have completely shifted.

 

 

This show is so far from where it started that I don't even know what to say anymore. I mean, they try to touch back on earlier story threads, mentioning the Colorado Kid and the Barn and all, but all it does is show how far off track they've become.

 

Yep. It's definitely not the same show. And the answers they're providing for what happened in the first half of the show don't match at all. Very poor storytelling - very poor indeed.

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Oh my gosh is sudrey going to die. Croatoan said thd aether is a part of her (her dna) that it changed her bad saved her life. So if the new barn sucks the aether out of her, will she survive it?

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Ok i have to take a minute and stick up for the show. In reality it has not strayed. The creaters said they always had the series mapped out and who audrey would be. They always new how it would end. And as for frige (one of the sci fi shows ever) they completely threw the procedural aspects aside for the mythos of the show while i think haven has done a pretty good job of still incorporating the mystery of the week. It really is not a different show but rather i would say too much of the mystery has been revealed and the answers we have been given are not the ones we expected. Maybe we saw the show heading in a different direction than the creators did. As far as mara's motive it was made clear that it was to defy her oeople. She wanted to prove that they were for killing her dad

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I disagree, this is about execution not intention. If they had to completely throw out characterisation and continuity to make their original plan work, then it was their original plan that should have changed. The show is now flat, boring and contrived.

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I feel like Sci Fi (or whatever they're calling themselves now) can't wait to get this show off their schedule. First running a new ep on a holiday and now next wk the 2 last eps back to back. And it's hard to believe that this was the producers plan all along. What Blackberry said about the characters. And honestly, at this point I don't care if they kill off Audrey. Maybe Nathan and Duke can ride off into the sunset instead. It's heartbreaking to see the show end this way.

 

An aside, I saw Gloria in a made for tv movie on Lifetime of all places and she played Mrs. Santa Claus. She was her typical Gloria self only with the sarcasm toned down, making her the funniest, most cynical Mrs. Claus I've ever seen. The movie was a load of sap, but "Gloria" made it worth watching. Note: the movie isn't listed in the IMDB, but if you want to catch it it's called Last Chance for Christmas.

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Gloria has been fun, but I think Eleanor would have been a deeper and more interesting character. I imagine that in the finale everyone is going to have to give up someone they love, Dwight will give up his daughter, Nathan will give up Audrey, blah blah blah. Audrey already lost her mother. Vince has already lost Dave...and Duke? Well, he's lost his wife and his girlfriend already. I really think they missed the boat but shorting the older generation by not bringing back Simon, Duke's mother, the Chief, Nathan's mother, Max Hansen, Eleanor, Julia's father, all along with Lucy.

I am interested in all of that. Not Shatner, William, RoboMara....

Dammit. I wanted so much more.

Edited by BlackberryJam
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