When Haven was originally on, it was a show that had caught my attention but I had a hard time making it must watch TV for myself. It had a lot of things going for it, it was a supernatural type show with interesting powers. There was a big mystery and/or conspiracy happening. And, most importantly, it was based off of a short story by Stephen King. I watched through a chunk of it later on Netflix, but I finally came back and starting from the beginning have watched through the whole show again.

Audrey Parker is an FBI agent who is sent after a wanted man and she tracks him down to the town of Haven. When part of the road gives way on the coast, she is rescued from her car by Nathan Wuornos, a detective in the police department and someone who is “troubled” (has a special ability) where he can’t feel pain, which as some upsides and downsides. Audrey quickly figures out that there’s a lot of “troubled” people in the town and she figures out that she can help them. Not only that, with being adopted, the two journalists in the small town show her a picture of someone who looks like her mother. She decides to use some of the vacation time that she’s saved up and spend some time in Haven, helping out the police department and see what she can find out about her mother, and that might be what Agent Howard, her superior, really wanted to happen.

That, by the way, is basically the synopsis of the first episode of a five season show and it doesn’t change massively as time goes on. The first couple of seasons are a bit more episodic, but eventually you start to get bigger story arcs as Audrey, Nathan, and Duke (who is introduced in episode one as well), keep having to solve the problems and deal with the troubles. And the troubles can get out there, there’s someone who basically put their soul into the work on their house and keeping their family safe that they took control over their own house and use the mirrors to see, which is pretty horrifying. Or there’s someone with whatever they touch in with their hands, it causes it to explode. Or time travel or mermen. There are so many, and it’s almost one per episode, though we do get to go back and visit. And while we get that, they spend more time building up Audrey Parker’s past and delve into the mystery surrounding her mother and an unexplained Colorado Kid mystery. In the end, I think that they tie it up quite well, though, it ends differently than I would have expected, but it ends smartly. They are given time to wrap up the mystery and complete the full story which is really nice.

Now for a downside of the show, I think that some of the special affects haven’t aged the best, and that’s kind of to be expected. While this show had a solid budget in terms of what they were able to pull of it was still early 2010’s and that’s going to look dated now. I just kind of expect that because some of the other shows I really like from the SyFy channel has the same issue, Eureka and Warehouse 13. Another thing is the early season storytelling, I think that they have a few arcs that are being set-up that would have had great long term potential, and then they rush through them in a couple of episodes. Some of that was the product of the time, and some of that was just poorer storytelling. The issue with the storytelling like that is that you feel like you lose the payoff, but in the early 2010’s, the larger story arcs were generally secondary.

Finally, as a downside and an upside, I want to talk about the acting in this show. I would say that the acting is okay for the show. I don’t think that it’s bad and I don’t think that it’s great. With Audrey, Nathan, and Duke, though, it ends up being good on screen chemistry, it just takes a bit to get there. The early episodes, in fact I’d say through a good chunk of season 1, the acting is quite rough. Now there are some characters, Vince and Dave, the journalist brothers, played by Richard Donat and John Dunsworth who are great from the start. Eventually the acting does get better and I think that’s mainly as the chemistry on screen gets better. Plus, it’s a show where Edge and Christian from the WWE are both in it, and Edge (Aaron Copeland) playing Dwight Hendrickson actually has a big role in the show and does really well with his acting. There are other professional wrestlers who have acted, but he’s one of the best that I’ve seen besides the ones who have gone to Hollywood, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and John Cena.

So, who is this show for? I think that’s a good question, I think that the supernatural element is going to keep some people a way as it dabbles in dimensions, time travel, ghosts, and so much more that would give away a lot of the plot if I continue down that route. I would say that it probably would make sense for fans of Supernatural but maybe aligns itself closer with Locke & Key in terms of feel. Also fans of Eureka and Warehouse 13, while it’s kind of in a different genre, it definitely has some similar feel to those shows.

Overall, I really like this show. I think it suffers a tiny bit from Stephen King syndrome where the ending is a little bit out there, but they build towards that well. There are also some story elements that are just dropped in an odd way, but overall, it’s good. And I think some shows like this, Supernatural, suffer from having the world ending event at the end of every season that needs to be stopped, Haven does a good job of building up the stakes for the seasons as time goes on.

Is this a show that you watched when it came out or one that interests you now? If you’ve seen it, did you enjoy it?

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