Friend or Faux

"Friend or Faux"

"Friend or Faux" is the eighth episode of the second season of the supernatural American/Canadian television series Haven. It first aired on SyFy on September 2, 2011. It was written by Sam Ernst and directed by Stephen Reynolds.

Plot

Cornell Stamoran, a bank manager and neat freak, wakes up to find his twin has made a mess in the bathroom. Downstairs the twin has messed up the kitchen to make pancakes. Stamoran in suit ready to go to work pulls out a gun and shoots the twin several times. He goes out and gets into his car, but there is a strange noise and his twin appears in the rear seat with a gun. The twin tells him to get out of the car because there is someone he needs to kill.

At the Grey Gull Duke has a hired hand called Henry who seems nervous. He explains that he saw something he shouldn't have. Stamoran appears outside and Henry hides behind the bar. Inside Stamoran orders a drink. He spins a silver dollar on the counter. He asks Duke about Henry, but Duke plays ignorant. Stamoran says he doesn't like liars, so Duke tells him to leave. As he goes he says to Henry, knowing he is there, he'll see him outside. Duke brings his gun out to make sure he leaves. At the door Stamoran pulls a gun and starts shooting. Duke returns fire, telling Henry to run, then he wounds Stamoran in the arm. Henry is on his motorbike and up the road when Stamoran drives off.

Duke tells Audrey and Nathan what happened, omitting Henry from the story. Nathan gets the owner information of the car and he and Audrey go to speak to Stamoran. On the way out, with Evi in the background, Nathan tells Audrey he was late because of the time it takes to edit The Troubles out of his reports. After they go Duke also leaves—packing guns.

At Stamoran's house they find him uninjured. His car arrives and they chase it to the shell of a giant unfinished hotel, the Everwood. In a shootout at the entrance with Duke suddenly appearing, the driver gets killed. He looks exactly like Stamoran, but he was the one wounded by Duke. They hear a strange noise and another Stamoran appears and runs into the hotel. They all follow him in and search through the unfinished building until Duke spots Henry's hiding nook. Henry comes out and explains that he is in trouble because he saw Stamoran kill someone. The Stamoran copy arrives shooting and they all run downstairs and split up.

Audrey and Nathan find Stamoran who explains that he is the original and he shows them the bodies of his copies. He explains they all have his memories. They seem to have one purpose: to kill someone called Henry. He killed them because he didn't know what else to do and the first was killed at the Everwood, which causes Nathan to think that that might be what Henry saw. Nathan goes off to look for Duke, Henry, and the copy. Henry tells Duke that he left home because when his mother died his father stopped noticing him. When Duke finds an exit, Henry runs back into the hotel.

Nathan doesn't find Duke, but he does find the Stamoran copy who says he just arrived. Nathan realizes that this is the real Stamoran. Audrey watches Stamoran spin a silver dollar and realizes that he is the copy, but too late, because the copy catches her off guard and gets her gun. Audrey asks the copy how the situation works with Stamoran. He explains he has all the memories but also has all the cool parts. He does all the things Stamoran can't and fixes all his messes. Audrey tells him she has someone else's memories as well. She asks him, "If we have somebody else's memories then what makes us us?" He responds that she thinks too hard and Audrey says that that's what her school friend used to tell her, but laughs, explaining that she'd never really met her. She was someone else's friend, not hers. As she approaches him, she explains that the best part about her memories is that the person whose memories she has went to Quantico and knew how to disarm a person, which is what Audrey does. She cuffs him to a pipe and goes to find Nathan. In the police station Selectman Gerst comes to leave a note for Nathan, but when he goes into his office he rifles through the files. Audrey finds Duke and Henry, then calls Nathan and tells him to meet in the atrium. The copy, trying to escape, finds a pointed tube projecting from a pillar and impales himself on it. As he dies, there is the strange noise and another is generated.

While heading for the atrium Nathan notices a wall with blood at its foot and removes a masonry block to discover a body in the wall. He goes to call Audrey but Stamoran knocks him out with a block. His copy, having watched, urges him to kill Nathan and thus work as a team. He doesn't want to kill a cop, but the copy tells him that he should have thought about that before killing Neil, the man in the wall. Stamoran said he had no choice: Neil was going to tell the police that he was embezzling from his bank. Audrey and Duke open fire from above while Stamoran and his copy return fire. A lengthy gunfight leaves Audrey and Duke out of bullets, while the Stamorans are sitting with more ammunition. Audrey tells Duke to take Henry and go, then steps out unarmed, asking the copy not to hurt Nathan. She tells him that Henry didn't witness his crime, but the crime of the real Stamoran. If he kills her now all he'll remember is cleaning up after Stamoran. She tells him he has a chance to have his own life, a chance to save lives, not end them. Stamoran decides that he has to kill Audrey, but, before he can, the copy shoots him. Sensing the end coming, the copy gives Audrey the silver dollar and then fades away.

In his office Selectman Gerst accuses Nathan of falsifying police reports by deliberately omitting all the details concerning The Troubles. Nathan figures that Driscoll has put Gerst up to the accusation and that he is about to lose his job. Gerst recommends that Nathan leave Haven because things are going to get rough on his "kind". At the Grey Gull Duke has arranged for Henry's father to come and get him. Inside Nathan is drinking. When he starts dancing (horridly), Duke has to take a photo and reaches for Evi's phone and clicks. An SMS arrives from Driscoll, "Thanks for the files info. I took care of the rest." Duke is stunned.

The Everwood

In reality the Everwood is an abandoned hotel called the Aspotogan Sea Spa, located on the Aspotogan Peninsula in Nova Scotia, Canada, and situated about two miles (three kilometers) south of the location of the Grey Gull in Tilley's Cove. The sea spa was started in 1993, but construction stopped in 1994 when the builders ran out of money.

Reception

This episode earned a Nielsen household rating of 0.4 for 18/49. It was viewed by 1.463 million viewers.

External links

• Aspotogan Sea Spa Website.
• Google maps location of the Aspotogan Sea Spa.
• An Aspotogan Sea Spa backgrounder from SouthShoreNow.Ca.