I’ve been trying all week to come up with something to say about the HAVEN premiere, tonight on Syfy at 10/9c, but I’ve been facing a big problem.  Based on the pilot episode alone, HAVEN is not good enough to make me list it atop must see TV this summer, but at the same time, it’s not a bad enough show to lump it into my “please avoid at all costs” list (certain current Monday shows on ABC Family, you know who you are).

For a bit of background, HAVEN is described as a supernatural thriller series based (very, very) loosely on Stephen King’s novella “The Colorado Kid”.  Emily Rose (she’s been everywhere – ER, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, JERICHO, JOHN FROM CINCINNATI) stars as FBI agent Audrey Parker who heads to the fictional town of Haven, Maine, to investigate the disappearance of a recently-released-from-jail felon.  When she happens upon his dead body, she teams up with the local detective, Nathan Wournos (the stoic and adorable Lucas Bryant), to solve the case.

In a typical “not from around here” fashion, Audrey gets confused about the random quirks of the small town she’s not used to and butts heads with the Chief and the locals, including Eric freaking Balfour’s smuggling-fisherman (it’s not a pilot season without Eric Balfour showing up to bring some Eric Balfour-ness to the screen).  Much is made about her past as an orphan with no family, and the local news editors (seemingly the only carry overs from the King novella) find a picture that could prove perhaps she isn’t as family-less as she might have suspected.

I like Emily Rose; I think she’s a solid lead.  I like Lucas Bryant; I like the exploration of his weird inability to feel pain.  I even appreciated the way Balfour’s Duke comes off as charming and kind of creepy at the same time.  Like I said, the show itself isn’t horrible.  I think my biggest problem with the show was that I felt like big chunks of the story were cut out or never written to explain so many things, most importantly, how Audrey knew what was causing the storms.  Since I don’t recall seeing any explanation of her investigation into it, I chalked that up to her possibly being a big TV fan, so maybe she saw the cliché somewhere else.

Long rambling story short – give it two episodes to decide whether you can make it all season, like I’ll be doing, and check out a preview clip!