Recap / Haven S 1 E 6 Fur

T.R. Holt is walking out of Haven's hunting club to his car one night when a wolf mauls him to death.

The next day, Eleanor asks Audrey not to park in a certain area because of town traditions. Audrey complains. Nathan calls Audrey to the hunting club about the death. Nathan says that he finds hunting animals distasteful, but despite that he will investigate the death impartially. He reluctantly admits that his father is a member of the club. Audrey suspects that it wasn't a normal wolf attack. They confirm that Holt was arguing with Brad Donnelly before he left the building. Chief Wuornos insists the club will avenge their fallen brother and organizes a hunt to find and destroy the wolf, but Nathan and Audrey convince them to wait a day for them to investigate Donnelly.

They talk to a member named Tobias Gillespie, who says that fellow member Taylor Landon was around during the argument. Taylor joined the club to ease his grief after his wife died in a fire. They find Taylor skeet-shooting. He agrees to talk to Audrey after she impresses him with her marksmanship.

Donnelly tries to start the wolf-hunt early, but Nathan gets him and his followers to stand down. Taylor tells Audrey that the argument started when Donnelly almost shot Holt by accident. Audrey regroups with Nathan and they question Donnelly. He claims that he didn't shoot at Holt, and that they were best friends.

Vince and Dave ask about Holt's death for the newspaper. The Teagues suggest that Jess Minion, an animal rights activist who is rumored to be a witch is involved. Chief Wuornos dismisses this and says that the hunt will resume.

Donnelly goes to the refrigerator in his garage for a beer, but gets mauled to death by a wolf.

Nathan and Audrey talk to Donnelly's wife Suzanna, who says that Jess Minion put a curse on them and painted a witch mark on their fence. Audrey realizes the same symbol was near Holt's body. They go to Jess' farm. Jess asks why they didn't come sooner, and knows about them even though they have never met. She admits that she hates the hunting club, but that she hasn't done anything to them. She claims that the spirits of the animals that the hunters have slain are coming for them, and that it is justice. She neither admits nor denies that she's a witch, but warns that magic is everywhere and it's part of the Troubles. She says Nathan has been transformed by magic, but he's more than human rather than less. Audrey is more interested in her alibi, but Jess says that she had her car towed and they can confirm it with the AAA. As they leave, Nathan admits that he found Jess intriguing.

The hunting club has placed a $10,000 bounty on the wolf. Audrey suggests that Jess can compel animals. Nathan tries to defend her, and Audrey warns that his obvious crush on Jess is clouding his judgment. The Chief dismisses Audrey's theory and orders the two of them to join the hunt.

Taylor's mother Piper brings in Taylor's son Zach and asks him not to go on the hunt, but he insists. Nathan, Audrey, and Dave join the hunt. After wandering the woods for a while, the group comes across Jess' farm. The Chief ignores Nathan's advice not to enter. He almost shoots Jess' dog, but Nathan deflects his gun. A moose emerges from the woods and goes berserk, knocking Dave down and stomping on his leg. It is brought down by gunfire, but instead of flesh and blood, it is stuffed.

Nathan carries Dave to safety. The Chief admits to Audrey that of course he knows that the Troubles are real. The reason that he keeps denying it and being so dismissive is that he's trying to toughen Nathan up. He's afraid that Nathan won't be able to handle the Troubles on his own, and wishes that Audrey's gift of seeings things as they really are would rub off on him.

Nathan goes to Jess and asks if she's causing it, either with a curse or with her Trouble. Jess says that she doesn't have a Trouble, and that she isn't a witch. That's just a rumor by superstitious people. However, she insists that everything she said about Nathan is still true.

The officers investigate the hunting club's stuffed animals on display. One is a wolf with blood on its teeth. Eleanor examines it and finds Holt's finger in its stomach. A moose is missing, and they figure it was the one that attacked them, and that the Chief was the one who had originally killed it. They realize that the stuffed animals are targeting the hunters who killed them. Several more stuffed animals are missing, including a bear.

Dave is recovering on his porch when he and Vince are attacked by the bear. Audrey and Nathan show up and shoot it, but it is too big and the bullets don't do much damage to its body. They pour gasoline on it and light it ablaze, destroying it. They ask the Teagues to cover this up, and they agree. The Teagues say that Taylor was the taxidermist who stuffed most of the animals.

They confront Taylor, explaining what they know. Piper comes in, says her son is innocent, and orders them to leave. When they refuse, she attacks them with a knife. Nathan, Audrey, and Taylor restrain her, but the knife grazes Taylor's arm, and taxidermy sand pours out of it, much to his horror. He runs away. Piper says she can feel the animals are waking up.

As they go after them, Piper explains that she helped Taylor stuff all those animals. Her Trouble activated when the same fire that killed Taylor's wife killed him as well. She stuffed him, then wished with all her heart that he was alive again. It worked, but now the animals that she helped stuff are coming back as well.

They follow him to the hunting club, where Taylor is about to attack the stuffed animals with an axe. The officers grab him and pull him out, but Piper locks herself in. She shouts that it is her that the animals want. They all come to life and kill her. As soon as she dies, they return to normal. Taylor is of course upset over the loss of his mother.

The Teagues publish a story about rabies infecting the wolves, which the town believes. Taylor wonders if Audrey and Nathan will destroy him, but Audrey says he must live for his son. He laments that he isn't even real. Nathan cuts his hand and explains that he couldn't feel it. The two of them have a lot in common. Just because they are slightly different from regular humans, doesn't mean that they aren't human. Taylor takes this to heart and goes home to his son.

Nathan apologizes to Jess for believing the rumors that she was a witch and for accusing her of causing the incidents. He nervously asks her out and she agrees.

Eleanor examines Piper's body and finds that she was stuffed as well. Audrey says that they shouldn't tell Taylor, for he might start the cycle over again with his son. Eleanor tells her not to be upset about it, and promises to find out what she can about Lucy.

---

Tropes:

• Animal Nemesis: The club puts out a $10,000 reward for killing the wolf that mauled TR and Holt, before realizing it's more than one animal.
• Animal Wrongs Group: Subverted. Jess is a suspect because she wouldn't let the club hunt on her land; she is against hunting animals for sport and putting them on display as taxidermy. When Nathan points out that her people kill animals, too, she replies "we use them, we don't mock them." She keeps a small memorial of stones for all of the animals that were killed on her property.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Audrey calls out Nathan for considering the possibility of werewolves but rejecting the possibility that Jess Minion could be a witch.
• Body Horror: Landon is cut accidentally and starts bleeding sand.
• Bottomless Magazines: Audrey fires off four shots from a single-barrel shotgun without reloading once, or even ejecting spent brass.
• Canada Does Not Exist: Averted, Jess is explicitly Quebecois, and speaks with a pronounced French-Canadian accent.
• Deadpan Snarker: Both Nathan and Audrey get in a few good lines. Audrey tells Nathan he needs to work on his, otherwise people will think he's serious.
  Chief: That animal needs to be put down, that's it!
  Audrey: Before it teaches other wolves how to break into cars?
• Fake Wizardry: Jess knows the town thinks she's a witch and she doesn't dissuade them. However, she is self-aware that she has no actual magical powers, including being Troubled.
• Father, I Don't Want to Fight: Nathan and the Chief clash over Nathan's distaste for hunting.
• Fingore: Eleanor pulls TR's thumb out of a taxidermied wolf's stomach.
• Foreshadowing: There's a worker in Garland's office repairing a crack in the wall.
• Freakiness Shame: Landon struggles with the idea that he's "not real" because he is stuffed; Nathan provides some counterbalance by demonstrating his Feel No Pain Trouble and telling him it doesn't make him any less.
• Gas Leak Cover Up: Audrey and Nathan explicitly tell Vince and Dave to cover up what's really going on when they report it in the Herald, and the Teagues go with rabies.
• Genre Savvy: When Audrey and Nathan show up at Jess's farm, she tells them she was expecting them the previous night, as she knows she's a suspect in the murder due to her acrimonious history with the victim.
• Hollywood New England: Subverted. Eleanor tells Audrey she should try to be a local, and reassures her in "10-15 years," she'll finally be accepted. This is hilariously Truth in Television.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: The members of the Haven Hunt Club are being killed by animals they've hunted and had stuffed.
• Hunting Is Evil: Played With. It appears the episode is going this way, particularly when Nathan and the Chief clash over it. But Jess Minion being a suspect shifts the message from "hunting is wrong" to "hunting for sport is wrong," as Jess is a subsistence hunter who objects not to killing animals at all, but killing them and mounting them as trophies.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Audrey and the Chief come to blows over Garland's dismissive and harsh treatment of Nathan. Audrey tells him that Nathan is better at handling the Troubles than Garland thinks he is; the Chief is not convinced.
• Inhuman Human: Landon's mother couldn't deal with his death, so she used her Trouble to taxidermy him and bring him back to life.
• Insane Troll Logic: Eleanor scolds Audrey for parking in a no-parking zone. It isn't marked, it's just known around town as a no-parking zone due to a tragic accident that happened decades ago. Audrey asks how she, someone who has just moved to Haven, is supposed to know that. Eleanor just underlines the "no parking" she wrote on Audrey's windshield.
• Lock and Load: Exploited. Audrey goes to question Landon and finds him skeet-shooting. Badly. She gives him some tips, and he challenges her to do better. She does, not missing once, which impresses him enough to talk with her.
• Magic by Any Other Name: Jess points out that the Troubles aren't any less magical because they aren't called "magic," and that they're indistinguishable from the "witch craft" she's accused of performing.
• Magical Native American: Jess, of Mi'kmaq descent, believes in the existence of magic, even calls the Troubles such, but is not magical herself. She isn't even Troubled. She invokes the trope, though, by leaving Mi'kmaq symbols everywhere and calling them hexes, so people leave her alone.
• Meaningful Echo: The speech Nathan gives Landon about being more than his Trouble, and not less as a person is the same thing Jess told him about his own Trouble earlier in the episode.
• Mighty Lumberjack: A rare female example. Jess's Establishing Character Moment is her chopping wood while Audrey and Nathan pull into her driveway. She explains she's in Haven because she's now running her grandmother's 90-acre farm.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Dave is attacked by a brown bear he shot, which do not live in Maine. Similarly, there haven't been wolves in Maine for decades, due to overhunting.
• Mythology Gag: Jess's alibi for the second killing: her car broke down in Derry and she had it towed.
• Open Heart Dentistry: Eleanor is called in to do a necropsy on a taxidermied wolf. For reasons unknown, since it is taxidermied and found to be full of sand and rags.
• Palm Bloodletting: When Landon expresses dismay at "not being real," Nathan takes out a pocket knife and slices his palm open, to make a point about his Trouble.
• Plausible Deniability: Nathan accuses Jess of shooting at poachers (Haven Hunt Club members) on her land. Jess coyly tells him that it's hard to tell at five in the morning whether the intruder in the woods is a poacher or a burglar coming to break in.
• Running Gag: The pastries from Larissa's are too dry. The one's from Rosemary's are better. Audrey eventually tries the ones from Rosemary's when they're at a catered breakfast for the police search crew, and ends up wholeheartedly agreeing.
• Sherlock Scan: Jess gives a downplayed version when Audrey and Nathan arrive at her farm, identifying Audrey as "federal agent in exile," Nathan as "detective, son of Chief," and herself as Jess Minion "suspect du jour" before introductions can be made.
• Ship Tease: Jess is clearly attracted to Nathan, and he shows growing interest over the course of the episode.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Nathan and Audrey are spitballing ideas for a suspect, they conclude it must be someone who can command animals to do things.
    Nathan: Like an evil Doctor Dolittle.
  • Jess sheepishly admits she found the Mi'kmaq hieroglyph she's been using to scare off poachers on Wikipedia.
  • Audrey takes one look at the club's room full of trophies and remarks that taste is the final frontier.
• Smoky Gentlemen's Club: The Haven Hunt Club, where Nathan mentions most of the "shots" fired are shots of liquor while the members discuss business deals.
• Taxidermy Terror: The Trouble of the Week manifests as taxidermied animals seeking revenge on those who killed them.

---