#i always start out trying to summarise to write fewer words

[cookiedoughmeagain]

Haven DVD Commentaries - 2.12, Sins of the Fathers

First of two commentaries, this one with Sam Ernst and Jim Dunn, writers of this episode (and creators and executive producers of the series). I can’t reliably tell their voices apart, so there is not much info on who is saying what, though where I’ve quoted stuff I have tried to show when the speaker changes. The quotes aren’t necessarily exactly word for word. Feel free to ask questions if something doesn’t make sense :)

They start off by saying that they’re recording this commentary a couple of months after the episode aired and in that time they’ve been to comic con and talked to fans and so they have the benefit of feedback on the episode and the whole season.

“We have a lot to say about the finale because there is a lot of mythology in this episode,” and “what was tricky about the finale is that we always have a curse of the week, and what we’ve struggled to do in both of the finales (Sam and Jim wrote the finale for season one too), is that we always have a real affliction show up.” “But it needs to be something simple, that you can get in a heart beat, so that we aren’t spending a lot of time explaining what’s going on, you can just easily follow along while we have all the other things going on with our characters.” So for example the curse of the week for the season one finale was the Chief although it didn’t just feature in that episode, but for this episode the curse is something that’s completely independent. And they decided to have ghosts because they needed those characters to provide some of the back story in an organic way.

They refer to Laura having a board up in the office for two months taking notes before they started writing this episode; “What if we brought people back from the dead?” “Are they zombies or ghosts?” “Are they tangible or intangible?” and how they were really attracted to being able to bring back people we would otherwise never see; people who have already been killed e.g. the Rev. Being able to bring him back “just seemed like gold.”

They talk about Duke and how he was in the first scene of the first episode of the season, talking with the Rev. on the steps of the church, and how they “rewrote that scene about 70 badillion times” but how it ended up where it started; different words but the same ideas where there i.e. establishing an arc for Duke, “Why is he part of this story?” But at that point they hadn’t thought of bringing Simon back in the finale. “We just knew that his father was important, we knew why his father was important, but we didn’t know how we were going to bring that back. But we set it up in the beginning.”

As we see Audrey knock the coffee cup from Dave’s hand, they talk about how they went through various different versions of the coffee cup being smashed or not, “We put it back in, we took it back out,” looking for a way to underline how emphatic she feels in this moment. There was some concern that it might be a bit melodramatic and it wasn’t included in the final version of the script. But it was discussed again on set when they were filming and Emily Rose really liked the idea, as did the director for the episode and so they used it. “And this scene, from the very first time they shot it to the 19th take was awesome. And Emily Rose kills it. I think she in this episode is at the top of her game with this character on this show.”

And they talk about Vince and Dave too, as “such great characters and around the office, Sam and I take some flak for being Vince and Dave, but there’s this thing about them; you know they know stuff. And in this season we’ve explored more and opened more doors to how much they know.”

There is a reference to “we did some interesting things on twitter with that,” and as Vince is giving Audrey the ring, “we wrote this whole twitter story that went to the reveal of this ring. And that ring was chosen for a very specific reason, which I will not reveal now, but it’s not an accident that it’s that ring.”

“Putting Audrey in with these guys it’s reminiscent of the finale from season one where we had the confrontation between Vince and Nathan’s father in the street, where there’s a hint that there’s something going on with these guys that’s bigger than we’re aware of.”

And they also refer to the actors behind Vince and Dave in that scene as “awesome.”

The fact that the Crocker box of weapons includes a throwing star bugs them, “Who kills people with throwing stars?”

And as we see Simon Crocker, “This is my man-crush because that of course is Helo from Battlestar Galatica.” “We were very excited when that opportunity came up,” to cast him. “And for us there was no discussion; he never auditioned, it was perfect.”

And they mention the weird moment they realised they needed to cast someone roughly Duke’s age, because “he died, in front of Duke, at a certain age.” And then “there’s an interest parrallel because here’s the guy who died, facing roughly the same crisis at the same point in his life that Duke is facing.” But at that point there were some concerns about who they might cast because they need it to be someone with “gravitas” which they would have if it was someone older with grey hair or whatever (“a tough guy, maybe a Tom Selleck”) but that “wouldn’t make sense. And we run into that a lot on the show, which is we have a certain thing that makes sense in the rules and the story of the show, but then people are looking for a more visceral reaction.” and how “That’s the thing with genre shows; there’s the internal logic that doesn’t always match what you’d expect.”

As Nathan is about to ask Audrey out to dinner, “This is great; this is Lucas Bryant at the height of his powers. Here he is, he’s trying to express himself with the least amount of dialogue in telling Audrey ‘I want this to go further’. And this scene is so great, because what’s on the page is so minimal, and they didn’t need anything more.” There’s a pause in the commentary as they listen to the scene. There’s a little “See?” in appreciation for what the actors are doing with their minimal dialogue, and then as Audrey says, “We can talk about Lucy,” There is a comment “Yeah, you can talk about Lucy and all that stuff --- with your clothes off!” And then as Nathan stumbles over his “or b-breakfast?” line, there is a comment, “That’s what I’m talking about, right there!” And they add how Lucas is “charming, goofy, hilarious, all of those things, and you just see the tip, tip, tip of that iceberg when he’s playing Nathan.” “It’s really funny; he would be perfectly comfortable in Vaudeville.”

And then at the next scene, “This is Eric getting out of bed and having a drink, which is what Duke does.” “It’s kinda awesome.” “It’s hard to imagine Eric not being Duke. There’s a lot of overlap between the two of them, although Eric is a much more straight ahead, genuine guy by a long shot.” “It’s funny because he plays characters like this … we all have our facets. But he’s really sweet and genuine and he would never do these things.”

They talk about this scene (Simon waving his hand through the whiskey glass) as being a lot fun to write because it’s all about Duke being used to Haven’s craziness “he rolls with the insanity” and yet he has huge amounts of anger towards his father because his father was such a douchebag. Although it turns out maybe he wasn’t a total douchebag, maybe he had an agenda.

As Simon and Duke argue, “The thing about Tahmoh is he’s huge, he’s muscular, he’s terrifying in person; absolutely the gentlest man.” “It’s always that way right? Like Edge.” “And the funny thing is, he’s flying in, playing a pivotal role, giving us pivotal information and he doesn’t know anything about what’s going on. So when I met him I was like ‘First of all it’s unbelievable to meet you because I’m such a fan and two, this is what’s going on.’”

“But he had to give this performance, and we didn’t put scars on him, we didn’t make him this bruiser, because that’s not who Duke is either, although they obviously both know how to handle themselves.”

As we see Audrey and Nathan walking into the graveyard they talk about how it rained on and off all day as they were filming, so it was shot in chunks in between the rain. As we see Kyle throw away his joint they comment that they weren’t allowed to show him putting the joint to his lips.”

Talking about Kyle; “I was a fan of this actor from the Tudors .. in part because of his presence on screen; his eyes just jump out at you.”  

As they look into the dug-up coffin “When we shot him, he looked like his picture. All of those facial effects are digital.” “As is the hole in the ground you just saw.”

As they’re back in station talking to the guy who spoke to his dead sister, they talk about how it was a struggle writing it to make sure that this investigative aspect of the plot didn’t step on Simon’s story and the Rev. coming back and … we really worked hard on it and I think it ultimately worked.” and then also, “In editing, some scenes got shifted around because it’s always a juggling act.”

There are comments about how the police station set has gotten bigger and bigger over time, “It’s so cool, there are so many pockets to it, everytime we write something, like somebody died in the bathroom, so they had to build a bathroom and it’s great to see this whole world.

As we see Kyle tapping down Arlo’s grave they say that while Arlo’s is a fake headstone, it is a real cemetary and all of the old graves are real and it’s “beautiful, ill-kept, on the hillside, overlooking the ocean. And those gravestones go back 300 years.”

They talk about how they had conversations about whether to see the Rev. appear, and disappear in some ghostly way, or whether to just have him walk on screen, and eventually decided it was scarier to just have him walk up and then reveal the details later.

As Simon and Duke talk in front of the field of lavender, “When we wrote this scene, I didn’t think about what the field would look like. We just wrote ‘a field’. And thanks to Nova Scotia, it’s a field of lavender and it’s gorgeous.

“Shawn Pillar is always looking for a way to make things more sci-fi-y, and sometimes we push back because we don’t need it in that moment, it’s all about the characters. Sometimes it’s an opportunity we might have missed, and this was one of those. And I’m not sure if it was Shawn, or Lee Rose the director, but one of them said, ‘Why doesn’t he just walk right through Tahmoh at the end.” There is some further discussion which establishes that maybe that idea was in the first draft and taken out because some unspecified person didn’t like it, and then a few drafts later it made it’s way back in. But also they didn’t do it (Simon walking through things) a lot in the first draft of the script, because they weren’t sure how much it would cost to do in production.  So they wanted to save it for when it really felt effective. And “having Duke’s father try to get in his way to stop him from leaving, and Duke walk through him, made the point.

As Nathan and Audrey sit practically on top of each other to look at the dead people’s records, “Another scene with the two of them being awesome. When we wrote this scene, we wrote more. And Lee Rose said ‘they can do it with less’ .” “And we were both thrilled, because we weren’t happy with all of it.” “And it’s these pauses and the awkwardness. And the fans really reacted to it and it was great. And the thing is, 25 epsiodes in, you don’t need a lot because these two have so much history.”

They’re a little unsure, but think that the cemetery we see from the air is a different one from that they filmed in.

As we see Nathan telling Audrey about how his Trouble was triggered, “So this is the big story about Duke and the foundation of Nathan’s distrust and dislike of Duke. And people are always pushing us to say what it is between these two guys, and I think one of the things I’m most proud of in this show is that they have this fully fleshed out relationship the two of them.” “It’s not a simple ‘I hate you’ or ‘I love you’ or ‘we’re best friends’“ It’s not just a male banter thing either. “I feel like these guys actually have a real, more tortured friendship, but it’s a friendship. And yet here’s this big betrayal where Duke used Nathan from the start to further his ends. And the funny thing Jim is, we haven’t really seen Duke do that on screen. We haven’t seen him be a total son of a bitch to somebody, especially Nathan. And I wonder if we need to.” And so Jim replies, “I wonder if we need to get Duke’s side of the story at some point too, because it might not be as simple as it feels to Nathan.” To which Sam replies, “Well that’s interesting.” And they mention how the first introduction to Duke we had was Nathan’s tirade about how untrustworthy he was in the first episode, but that things between them have evolved since then “they’ve been through a lot.”

As all of the ghosts walk up to Nathan and Audrey in the graveyard, “We were so happy when we figured this scene out because we figured out a curse, where Audrey’s special skill (being immune to the curses) is actually a liability. And I was amazed because I thought that when we came up with it we would have to really talk people into it, (producers, network, studio, everybody) but everybody kind of got it from the beginning.�� They figure this is an advantage of being 25 episodes in because there is enough background that people are more likely to get this stuff straight away. “I’m looking forward to writing season three because there’s just so much foundational knowledge that we don’t have to explain. Or when we explain it for the new people we can do it very efficiently.

They talk about this scene being interesting in the sense of ‘why did all these ghosts come up to them in the graveyard?’ and it’s in the background, the “stuff that only writers would know” but they both agree what it was about was that “they all came to look at Audrey. And who knows what it is that they see with their dead eyes when they look at her.”

They discuss the issues of filming these graveyard scenes in the rain, saying that there are some shots where you can see the leaves getting hit by rain but the actors are under cover so they stay dry. As Audrey, Nathan and Duke are stood talking by the bronco; “this was supposed to be a walk-and-talk, but instead it’s a stand-and-talk,” because it’s raining and they’re under cover their, but they can’t go very far without getting wet, and that’s a hassle for hair and makeup and wardrobe. And they comment that “In order to see rain on screen, it has to be pouring buckets.” “Or lit right.” Normally rain just doesn’t show on camera.

Nathan’s gone off to make his phone call and they comment “This is where Duke is real with Audrey. And this is setting up a foundational thing for their relationship, which is already kind of established, but we’re building on it and building on it, because we really want three relationships going forward into season three. Everybody’s talking about the romantic relationship, and I’m not saying that’s not an element, but I’m just talking about three fully fledged relationships.” “There’s three very different burdens and perspectives running through the series now.”

As we see Garland they talk about how “awesome” it was to have the actor Nick Campbell back, and how thrilled everyone on set was. And how “we always knew that he would be coming back in this way. It ended up being the last episode of the season, but we always knew he was coming back.”

As Nathan and Garland talk, “So this is a huge scene, and Jim, you wrote this scene, and rewrote it and rewrote it.” And Jim agrees that “Everyone had a lot of opinions about what needed to be said between Nathan and his father.” and Sam continues, “This is a huge big deal, the two of them getting together. They’ve had this fractured relationship and then in the last 12 episodes Nathan has risen to be chief and he struggled and fought, and now they have a new relationship. And we find out at the end of the episode [when Vince and Dave disagree about whether they need him back or not] that there is a possibility of him coming back. And if he does come back (and I can neither confirm nor deny) it would be very interesting to see how their relationship changes and evolves.” They also discuss the possibility that, since the ghosts are the result of a curse, there is a question over whether this is really Nathan’s dad that he’s talking to.

They appreciate the line and the actor’s reaction when Garland learns that Audrey shot the Rev. And they both agree that the way Audrey shot the Rev. was “very satisfying.” And there was a line there they took out where someone (Nathan or Duke) says to Audrey that she could have just shot him in the leg, and without even looking at him she says, “Could have,” and just keeps walking. It didn’t make it into the episode in the end because it was felt that it was “a little too bad ass.”

Where Garland tells Nathan he can’t fall in love with Audrey, “And this is the big question, this is the choice that Nathan has to make, because there’s a certain truth to what his father says, which is Nathan’s job is to keep this world together, and being in love with one of the central pieces of it and having a relationship with her is dangerous as hell.” And “There are so many women out there, but unfortunately only one that he can feel. It’s so tragic. I’m so happy we did that to them.”

The mention the rain again; “We shot 91ish days and it rained 67 of them this year,” in comparison to season one when the weather was beautiful.

As Audrey walks by the Rev. they comment that it would have been cool to have had Audrey walk through the Rev. here “I wish we had the budget to pull that off.”

Talking about Simon and the Rev. “It was interesting because in some ways they have the same agenda, and in some ways they have completely conflicting agendas.” And they say how in the Glendowers episode they had wanted to have flashbacks to the 1980s to show the relationships of these people, with dual timelines for the episode. They would have had Vince and Dave younger, “all that kind of stuff.” But it just got too complicated to do, partly because the curse itself was complicated enough to explain that they it made it difficult to add more complicated story telling on top.

Talking about the bronco, “That truck is a big source of production headaches. It only runs when it feels like it and for some reason Lucas is one of only two people who can drive it.” “Which is terribly convenient.”

As Audrey sees the orange paint on Kyle’s wife’s hand, they note that the logic of that receeded into the background a bit because there were a couple of scenes that got deleted, one that they couldn’t shoot because it just kept raining too much. So “that particular investigative thread got pushed to the background,” but equally, “it’s not really missed all that much.”

And they talk about realising that for a lot of people watching, they are not watching closely enough for the details like that to matter e.g. watching the first episode when it aired with a friend and they were excited to watch it but “While they were watching, they were doing 27 things. They were answering the phone, dealing with the kids… and I thought, how does the normal viewer catch everything…. But people usually do catch a lot of stuff; certainly the ones that write on the boards.”

As we see unconscious people being taken into the shed by the Rev.s men; “this was an important point in terms of how brutal can we be here, because we shy away from being too brutal, This isn’t Walking Dead, by a long shot. And so we have all these innocent people about to be murdered.” And talking about how bad that is, but also, “When you look at the mood of America and you see how angry people are on both sides, you can see that a zealot who really feels that they’re doing the right thing could get to this place. It feels more possible now to me in this country than at any time in my life, because there’s so much anger about so many different things.” And “It’s interesting because the arc of this season of dealing with the ‘normal’ people in Haven, with some of them rebelling against the presence of the Troubled in the town, we kept working on what that meant in terms of the bigger story arc and you wind up in this place where you have concentration camps or genocide and that was always troubling to us (no pun intended) because it didn’t feel quite right in modern day America that you would actually go to that kind of place. Which was another reason that this curse worked well for this episode because the Rev being the leader of these fanatics coming back from the dead and appearing to them as though he’s been divinely chosen to come back and complete his mission; you can go one step further. And then the thing with Duke tying into it became an either/or, a way to leverage Duke and give him an out.”

As they’re all assembled outside the shed, “This was a tricky scene to shoot because it’s five pages in one location and that can get really boring to shoot, and everyone was complaining about it. And they’re just standing around, but after I watched it when it was cut together and with the music and everything; there’s so much going on in this scene.” And they add that it helps a lot to have Simon at Duke’s shoulder talking to him, and so in the end it was tense enough that it didn’t seem slow at all, but on the set it was like “how are we going to make these five pages interesting of people standing here talking.”

And they mention the rain again; they had to shut down early because it was raining so much. They’d never shut down early before, but this day there was rain and lightning and so this was shot over two days. And they note that there was no way they could show the ghosts getting rained on, because they’re ghosts, “If they’ve got wet shoulders, then we’ve got a problem.”

“And this of course is setting up the two fathers fighting this war through their sons, and I love that. It shows that Nathan and Duke are fated. We haven’t talked about how much fate there is in all of this.”

As Kyle’s blood soaks into Duke’s hand, they point out that his eyes change colour, but he doesn’t get the rush of strength he did last time. “That’s an essential point, that he got a lot of strength the first time, but after that he doesn’t get super strong, and that was something we’d discussed for a long time.” But there’s still enough going on for Nathan to notice, and “the stakes of this whole game just changed for Nathan.”

They say how much they like Garland’s final lines (“I have a son too, you know. Damn good one.”) “those father/son moments” and that now “the die is cast between Nathan and Duke. “And what’s interesting about this scene is it’s not really about Audrey Parker at all.

As we see the Herald’s offices, “That storefront says ‘Haven Herald’ all the time, year round. I love that, it’s in that town of Chester, and it’s the one permanent set we have that’s not on a stage. Jim, we’ve set up some stuff here that people probably don’t notice, with the Chief and these two guys.” And he talks about loving the actors, “John Dunsworth looks like your accountant, and he’s not.”

And so then we see Audrey in her apartment. “So this is a set we don’t use very much; it’s too bad, it’s a beautiful set. She’s making pancakes, which everybody knows that. That was actually a fishing guide in Minnesota who went on about his pancakes and he kinda reminded me of Nathan, so that’s how that started.”

Then we see Audrey get tasered, “Who tasered her, where she went, all of that stuff, we wrote, and shot, and then decided not to use. And I’m obviously not going to say anything about that, but that actually went some place, and it will still go some place and we’ll reveal that in season three. But I feel bad that we left on that much of a cliff hanger, but this was an action packed episode.”

“So there’s the whistle. That’s actually Eric Balfour’s whistle, he wears it all the time, so we made it part of Duke.” And then we see Nathan confronting Duke, “We were most excited about this scene, in the writing of it, and it was the easiest to write in a lot of ways. We went through a few versions, but the core of it remained the same the whole time.” “Because is it about the two of them and their girl that they share between them, or is it about everything that happened in the scene before between the fathers, is it about the betrayal that they’ve had between the two of them, is it about what is about to be revealed on Nathan’s arm? It could be about any of those things, with these guys. And that is just wonderful.”

“It was a very physical scene with these two guys; both of them in incredible shape, able to do their own stunts.” And when Duke notices Nathan’s tattoo, they point out that it’s fresh, and then as we hear the gunshot, “Alright well that’s out JR Ewing ending, we’ll hopefully pick it up right away when we get back in season three and we hopefully head back into the writers room pretty soon now. Thanks for watching.”