“I’d rather stab you in the crotch than dance with you.”
“Don’t you have a blowup doll for this?”
Oh, Mara. The super-sarcastic villain of Season 5 who is always quick to cut down poor Nathan and assure him that Audrey is never coming back. Those were just two of the insults the devious dame hurled towards our hero during Thursday’s newest, “Spotlight.” And while the spotlight may literally have referred to Duke’s former female partner-in-crime whose Trouble–getting stressed led to concentrating light through her body and burning stuff and people in the vicinity–but it figuratively meant Nathan and Mara being most of the focus of Episode 3.
The knowledge that Audrey is still alive and buried behind Mara’s psyche had Nathan trucking her off to the family cottage (after some help from Duke) hidden far in the Maine woods away from the police and The Guard who were looking for them both. My initial thought that we would be treated to some kind of an exorcism were in fact mentioned by Mara, but Nathan was just content to sit and mostly let his captive sound off. The mental chess match seemed to go in Mara’s favour when she used her feminine wiles–and Audrey’s memories of the two getting jiggy–to tease Nathan. There was some heavy smooching (it never got to X-rated), just enough to tease Audrey out, who begged Nathan not to give up and to treat Mara as if she was Audrey. It would give her the strength to fight the interloper.
That was working like a charm until Duke showed up to tell Nathan that Dwight and The Guard were on their trail. And then things, story-wise, veered off a bit. Duke–who I think shaved his locks as a final goodbye to Jennifer–started coughing up blood. Mara’s prognosis? Duke was so packed with accumulated Troubles that he was about to explode. She, of course, could help by removing some smaller, less destructive Troubles from him in order to let off some of the pressure inside. The fact Duke and Nathan believed her and cottoned to her plan befuddled me a bit. Why would they trust someone who has brought nothing but pain and sorry to Haven since she set foot in it? Clearly Mara has an ulterior motive, but I guess desperate times call for just such measures. It just rang a little false for me, especially after the emotional butt-kicking Nathan has been handed so far this season.
Haven airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on Showcase.
