The new season of Haven began last Thursday night, and while the idea of reviewing the episodes weekly appeals to me, I'm not sure I can actually pull it off. See, the thing is this: I work every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, which means that bloggin' time is at a minimum for me during the few days after the episodes are premiering. I didn't even find time to watch the season-opener until early Tuesday morning.
What I'm getting at is that blogging about Haven, in terms of the way the schedule falls, is not conducive to me not feeling as if it's something hanging over my head rather than something enjoyable to which to look forward.
So, will there be weekly reviews? Ehhh . . . don't know for sure yet, but I'm leaning toward no.
A few words about the season premiere seemed in order, though, so here they come in the form of screencaps with random thoughts attached to them:
The episode opens with Vickie and Gloria (the coroner, played by the redoubtable Jayne Eastwood) sitting in a gazebo, while the latter tries to comfort the baby she was left by the events of the previous season. Before long, the lighthouse collapses in a fairly good use of television CGI. The various characters who were present in the lighthouse at the end of last season find themselves mysteriously dispersed: Dwight and Duke on rocks near the shore, Vince and Dave in the woods, Nathan and Audrey Mara in a different spot in the woods, and Jennifer . . . well, Jennifer is nowhere to be found. More on that in a bit.
Pretty soon, Nathan finds out that Audrey isn't Audrey anymore.
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That, fellow King fans, is a thinny. A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed the mini-comic Haven: In the Beginning, which was included with the home-video release of the fourth season. The word "thinny" was mentioned in that comic, and my jaw dropped a bit; this, it seemed, was going beyond mere allusion to Stephen-Kingy type things and stepping into the realm of actual for-plot-purposes appropriation. In this case, of an idea integral to The Dark Tower. I wondered if that was a one-time thing or if the concept would appear in the series. It does, initially referred to as a "thin spot," but eventually named by Mara as a thinny. |
Now, in my mind there's a question as to whether the people making Haven even have the legal right to include the word "thinny" in their quasi-adaptation of The Colorado Kid. There has been some speculation that the solution to the mystery in that novel is that the nameless Colorado Kid somehow stepped from one world into another -- maybe willingly, maybe accidentally -- through a thinny, and that it killed him. But so far as I know, King has not stated that this is the case, and the word "thinny" certainly never appears in The Colorado Kid. Not from what I remember, at least; if I'm wrong, correct me with a page number.
So part of me wonders: is it okay for Haven to be doing this? Having a wink-wink reference to The Shawshank Redemption or It or whatever is one thing; incorporating something like a thinny strikes me as being outright theft. Maybe King sanctioned it; but given that he himself does not currently own the film rights to The Dark Tower, I'm not sure I thik he would have the legal right to do so. I'd love to know what Ron Howard thinks about it.
Issues of that nature aside, it's pretty cool for a piece of King lore like this to make a major appearance on television. I'm not sure the use of the thinny here fits completely with the way the concept is used in, say, Wizard and Glass; but, still, cool.
There's probably more to say than that, but I'm good calling it quits here.
As was the case more or less consistently throughout the fourth season, I'm very pleased with the direction Haven has taken. Apart from the three lead actors (Emily Rose, Lucas Bryant, and Eric Balfour), I liked very little about the first two seasons; so the fact that this has turned into a perfectly decent series is a cool thing in my book. Based on this first episode, the fifth season will continue that trajectory.
Combine that with possibly-unsanctioned explorations of the wider Stephen King multiverse, and you have a recipe for a series that is worth the time of The Truth Inside The Lie.
Whether its author can consistently find that time remains to be seen.
Mara seems to indicate that she will be displeased if I don't, so that makes a mark in the "yea" column for sure.
I need to start referring to headshots as "high speed explorations of the brain."
ReplyDeleteDefinitely sounds like this show has come quite a long way. That's cool stuff about the thinny. Could the Tick-Tock Man be next?
Wouldn't it be wild if we saw something like the fall of Gilead or Roland's revenge on Rhea or Adventures of the Tet Co. or other untold tales of the Dark Towerverse on Haven?
SOMEBODY needs to do it, that's for sure.
DeleteAgreed.
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