Warning: Spoilers for The Colorado Kid ahead. It's very short (100 pages) and there isn't much to it, but there are some key points I'll talk about.
I read The Colorado Kid early this week to see if I could gain any insight into Haven, and well.. I didn't get any. This is a classic case of name-dropping, Stephen King in this instance, in order to get some publicity. The only similarities between the show and book is the setting in Maine, a female protagonist, and two old guys who work at the newspaper.
Most glaring is the thematic disconnect between the two. While King uses the frame narrative as a larger allegory for the nature of stories and mysteries, the writers of Haven clearly have different ideas. They have a mystery, to be sure, but not of the kind King envisions, the one where the answers are left up in the air. The mystery of Haven is derived from the supernatural elements described as the troubles. This is not a mystery where there are small clues and seemingly unanswerable clues but a mystery dependent on the random nature of these troubles. Every time something bad happens, it's obviously the troubles and can be fixed by pinpointing the person at the center. Not a great mystery if you ask me, especially since no one can explain anything about the troubles.
"Love Machine" has one of the better troubles, machines repaired by a guy going berserk to keep him in Haven, as there are some gruesome scenes and actual danger for Audrey and Nathan. But the ongoing stuff with the second Audrey and the mystery takes an abrupt turn when the second Audrey goes to the coordinates in the book and returns with no memories. Then her boyfriend takes her away. Huh? What's up with that? And the building on the island is now gone. Yes, it's the troubles again, but seriously, WTF?
Score: 7.4/10
