Like a car left outside on a cold New England day, Haven took a while to warm up. But the last two episodes were truly enjoyable -- creepy when they were meant to be creepy, funny when they were meant to be funny. In case you're not familiar with it, Haven is a Syfy show based on Steven King's "The Colorado Kid" (a story I haven't read, for fear of spoilers). It's the story of small Maine town where people exhibit strange and often uncontrollably violent powers, told in a series of murder mysteries investigated by local cop Nathan and FBI-import Audrey. The highlights of each show are often the appearance of re-occurring quirky, small town characters such as the coroner Eleanor and the two brothers who run the newspaper, Vince and Dave.
The show does have some problems to work out, still. The writers need to give us more of the town's history and the origin of "The Troubles" in drips and drabs each episode; it's the town's supernatural bent, not each particular murder mystery, that's intriguing. Also, we were promised an "arc" in the pilot: namely, the mystery of Audrey's mother and her connection to Haven. These clues also need to be doled out more often. The writers of Haven seem to be under the impression that the way to maintain viewers' interest is to pose questions and then not answer them, in a sort of "Lost for Dummies" approach. In fact, Lost did something more complicated: each large mystery was broken into several smaller questions, and every time a question was answered, a new one was raised. That is what should be happening on Haven.
But I have hope. And I'm actually looking forward to Syfy Friday tonight!
No comments:
Post a Comment