By Djb
"We love you, Demian. Oh yes we do. We don't love anyone as much as you. When you're not near us, we're blue. Oh, Demian? We love you." And other chart-topping hits of the high school musical. Now Demian, you march right into that office and tell Albert and Rosie you want to be on the Ed Sullivan Show before joining the Army! Just don't interrupt them singing "English Teacher." They HATE IT when people do that.
Maria "A Little More Class, A Little Less Room" DeLuca previouslys us through the previouslys, standing in front of the familiar Chalkboard Of Self-Stealing Exposition. She's wearing a sleeveless denim vest of sorts which screams to the common viewer, "Maybe if the costuming department decks me out like the lost lesbian Dixie Chick I so obviously am not, the powers that were will be too embarrassed to use this hackneyed device again." No such luck, Maw. And so, referring to two chalk circles on the board, she lets us know, "Max and Tess are now an item. There, I said it. I don't like it, but I said it." Incidentally, Maria, the Max Chalk Circle could use a worse haircut, but you hit it spot-on representing his character's entire essence with the subtle and appropriate use of a big fat "zero." And Tess's looks just like her too, seeing as this stupid show will never let her character breathe in anything else besides two dimensions. Boy, this chalkboard montage is more helpful than ever.
But wait! What's this? A sudden cut to Michael "Bang! Crash! Tao!" Guerin indicates that he has gotten up to that all-important chapter in the relationship guide Men Are From Mars, I'm A Whipped Pussy Pawn that indicates he should always be around to help out, even on the opening montage. And so there's Michael, standing in front of a wall outside the school painted in colors of blue and gold, which also happened to be the colors of my high school, so I briefly lapse into a little Massapequa High school pride, yelping out a favorite cheer from Saturday morning football games of yore: "M! [CLAP] A-S! [CLAP] M-A-S-S-A! [CLAP] We're tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick boom, dynamite! [CLAP CLAP] Boom, boom, dynamite! [CLAP CLAP] Goooooo, Chiefs! You can beat those…" Those, um…ah, hell, like I ever went to a damn football game in high school. And on a Saturday morning? Everyone knows that's not the time for watching football. That's the time for recapping Roswell. More coffee? I believe I will.
By Djb
Tess "Traitor Joe" Harding puts her hands on her stomach and admonishes, "Max." Max takes the Superman penis crystal and inserts (shudder) it into the granilith chamber, and the strobe machines from Solid Gold that Katims bought at a Hollywood tag sale kick into life. It's Saturday morning, America, and I just want to dance dance dance! The not-quite-a-swastika alien symbol appears on the ceiling, and the lighting design that will return them to Planet Star Search shoots its cheesy-ass patterns from wall to wall. The judges' panel gives the five triangulated planets the marks of three stars, three stars, four stars, three-and-a-quarter stars! Max advises the other aliens, "Everyone say your goodbyes." So far ahead of you, Max. So very, very far.
Opening credits: The season finale of Roswell is brought to you in part "by Evolution from Dreamworks." And sixteen other moody one-worders that sound like rejected names for a new Calvin Klein cologne. Oh, and that movie? Looks. Retarded. Someone memo Julianne Moore that a little more Magnolia and a little less Ladies Man might help her career out a smidge. I'm only trying to help. Dude, this wasn't about the opening credits at all.
If some punk kid started playing "Who Let The Dogs Out" on his iBook on my overnight flight into the complete silence, I swear to God I would…party! Then I would jump right out the window.
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By Djb
Tap tap tap tap tap. We're at some kind of outdoor eating locale that looks a little like the Crashdown after the front wall was removed and reallocated to the set of Gilmore Girls ("Not renewed, Roswell? Well, then I guess you won't be needing THIS!"). Liz "Bowlmor Lames" Parker sits at a table with Maria, "My So-Called" Sean DeLuca, and Kyle "My Stepsister Is An Alien" Valenti, Kyle obsessively tapping the fingers of his left hand against the table in a vague simulation of the patience level the audience experiences in waiting for something to happen (and waiting and waiting and waiting). Everyone's in a jolly mood. Maria, shilling for the walled competition in her Crashdown uniform, banters at My So-Called Sean, "You've really gotta lose that earring. It's like you're so obviously trying." Sean banters right back that Maria is "retarded" (before you shoot off your poison emails, remember I was just quoting…and that it's just a colloquialism and doesn't automatically mean that Sean hates all retards), and Liz offers up that she thinks the earring is "cute." Maria suggests, "Let's hear from someone other than the bowling partner." Kyle -- tap tap tap -- asks all hopefully, "Isn't it, like, a gay thing, anyway?" (Before you shoot off your poison emails, remember I was just quoting…and that it's just a colloquialism and doesn't automatically mean that Kyle hates all the gays. Actually, that one wasn't a colloquialism at all. Excuse me. I have a poison email I need to go shoot off.) "Gay" and "retarded" in the same scene? Risqué! My So-Called Sean scoffs at Kyle's provincial point of view and asserts, "I've got to get out of this town, I really do," because living in a small town makes you narrow-minded and chilling in the clink makes you urbane. Everything I needed to know I learned from watching Roswell.
Maria finally notes the-tapping-fingers-from-the-first-act-going-off-in-the-third and begs Kyle to stop, but before we're all "I solved 'Clue'! It was Leanna in the University with the tapping fingers!" Max and Michael amble up, and Kyle and My So-Called Sean take off with barely a hello or goodbye. Michael sits down. Max asks Liz if he can talk to her upstairs. They go inside. Oh, wait. They are in the Crashdown. Huh. I mean, we've seen outdoor seating disappear and reappear at the Crashdown before (in, I think, "The Convention"), but it was three flimsy snack tables and a saltshaker, not this al fresco Viennese lanai thing. Seriously? Where's the wall gone off to? After Liz and Max take off, Michael looks concerned and morose at Maria, who frets, "Oh, God, somebody's dead, isn't somebody?" Syntax police, arrest that dialogue! Somebody wrote that line, didn't somebody? Michael promises that no one is dead, and tells her, "I have to see you tonight." I'm not talking 'bout moving in, and I don't want to change your life. But there's a warm wind blowin', the stars are out, and I'd really love to see you tonight. Oh, fuck. England Dan stuck in my head for the entirety of Memorial Day weekend. Thanks, Michael. Well, at least it blew the seemingly indestructible "Lady Marmalade" remake out of there for three or so seconds. That song. I swear. Shut up, Pink.
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By Djb
Liz's room. Quiet, pensive Max (as opposed to his frequently-appearing alter ego "Floppy Shoed, Clown School Graduate Max") follows Lizbot into her bedroom and starts up right at the doorway: "You were right about Alex. He was killed by an alien. I prayed that that wasn't the case, but it was." Mope. "We're responsible." Liz, hopping on the Solid Gold Spaceship and riding it without even a safety helmet until she crash lands on Planet Short-Term Memory, sooths, "I never blamed you, Max. I never blamed any of you." So, as has been so eloquently pointed out on the forums, I guess the words "You! Are! Responsible!" mean something quite different on the five triangulated planets, and who's frying up those hypocrisy-cakes down in Crashdown kitchen, anyway? Max approaches and tells Liz he needs all the information she has on Leanna. Why? He has to "take care" of the situation. Liz tells him that she's coming with him, and after some initial resistance, Liz uses that ironclad argument, "She killed Alex!" The words "written by Jason Katims" fade up on the screen, and the planet giggles knowingly. "Written."
Szechwan delight over at Chez Evans, where the perfectly functional Evans parents, Bangs and That Other Guy, serve themselves out of Chinese food containers while Isabel regards them repeatedly and adoringly. Bangs vamps till sleepy about their new "digital cable," which she just knows will "have a better picture, get more channels, and it will actually cost less." And it rules, but it doesn't cost less. That shit racks up the costs. Because why have one channel that plays exclusively black-and-white spaghetti Westerns when you can have eleven? Oh, and it doesn't work when it rains. Other than that, viva la Direct TV, Bangs Evans. Mr. Evans looks around for the Chinese mustard, repeatedly asking, "Where is the Chinese mustard? Has anyone seen the Chinese mustard?" Dude, just call it mustard. They'll know what you mean. No one's going to pull a big ol' package of Grey Poupon out of the bag; you're eating Chinese food. They're not going to try and snow you with the Dijonnaise or that mayo-and-ketchup thing they put on French fries in Holland. Just calm down. It's mustard. Not radium. Okay? Bangs vamps further about how "awful" some of the channels are. Wow. How many UPN affiliates did they give her, anyway? "Do you realize there are people teaching cooking classes naked? There are people talking politics naked." Which package did you choose, Bangs? Isabel breaks into the banter with a somber and leveled, "Mom? Dad?" that inspires her parents to look at her in rapt attention and the vibes guy on the soundtrack to noodle something in a minor key. She pauses for a minute, her eyes dewy, barely choking out, "I think the Chinese mustard is in the fridge, so I'll get it for you." Oh. So Chinese mustard is a metaphor for…what, some other kind of mustard? Hands off the French's, sister, or your dad is gonna kick your ass. Mr. Evans smiles so broadly at this random act of kindness you can see so far down his throat as to count the individual cilia. If he hated the shrimp toast so much, why didn't they just get a damn pizza? Isabel retreats to the fridge and pulls out two plastic containers of the Chinese mustard and hides her tears behind the door. God. Allergic to MSG much?
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By Djb
Den Of Porno. Tess lies on the couch sweating profusely, as expectant alien traitor moms are so prone to do. Porno soaks a cloth in a plastic, water-bearing container of some kind that are sold mostly to families living on TV who are trying to have a meaningful moment with an invalid in a room that isn't the bathroom. He dabs the washcloth on her head and assures her, "If anything goes wrong and you're not able to go home, you have a home here. And your child has a home here, too." But her child will have to be quarantined to the "Plot Illogic" wing of Porno County Hospital, because we've spent the better part of the last four episodes (well, except for last week, duh) learning that this son of a preacher Max can't survive in the Earth's atmosphere and, well, that's why they have to leave. I mean, I'm not trying to make a funny with the word "stillborn" in the punch line or anything, but it seems like Tess is just going to have to file Porno's gesture under "promises, empty" and move right on with her recapping day. Can't survive on Earth. Already knew that. Thanks. And so he continues, "You're part of this family now. We'll figure out what's wrong with the baby." Maybe something about it not being able to live in the Earth's atmosphere? I'm mean, I'm no TV doctor, but…anyway, Porno grabs the plastic container to make with some more warm water, but before he leaves the room, Tess calls him back with, "Thanks. Dad." Ew. He turns back and flashes the yellows before she tells him, "I just wanted to see what that sounded like." Porno wants to know how it sounded. "A little too weird." But it sure beats the hell out of calling your father "Nasedo" for the first sixteen years of your life. My dad made me call him Nasedo until I was sixteen, too, and if I told you it didn't put a strain of the worst kind on our relationship, well, I would be telling you a lie.
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By Djb
The Alienmobile rockets back onto the poor, unsullied Las Cruces campus under cover of darkness. Damn. If only that place had the benefit of an Incredible Supercomputer to warn of would-be intruders such as these. Max and Lizbot slip effortlessly through any number of doors warning about "Authorized Personnel" and so forth. They crawl through a heating duct in the ceiling and end up staring at Blah Blonde Part The Two Millionth And Four through slatted curtains in her dorm room, where Leanna sits, demurely knitting. Very interesting architecture on the Las Cruces campus. Another Mike Brady design. Liz asks what Max intends to do, and he quickly drafts and signs the Contrivance Directive that really makes it look like he's thinking on his feet, here: "I'm going to send a bolt of energy through that heater. It will explode. A fire will start fast, too fast for her to react." Liz frets about the other students, but Max has got all the angles covered, promising, "I can contain the fire with my powers long enough for everyone else to get out of the building." Oh. But aren't they all at the Nelly Furtado concert? And shouldn't you folks be getting over there as well? Liz worries that this plan is too impulsive for Max. And seriously, she's kind of right. At this rate, Season Three will be a twenty-two-episode mental battle over which kind of cereal to start the day with. I, for one, am glad to see a little get-go here.
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By Djb
But just as Liz accuses Max of acting too hastily, Contrivance floats through the pre-blaze duct and slams the sewing needle right into Leanna's finger, causing her to bray an anguished "ow!" and grab for a conveniently close-by tissue. Max tells Liz that she can go to the Alienmobile and think no more about this dirty business; she iterates twice, "This doesn't feel right," and takes off anyway, confident that she can make all the judgments she wants on his powers as long as she never ends up on the shit end of them. He holds his hand up and starts a small CGI fire compliments of the folks down at Industrial Light And Three-Card Monty. Liz exits through the authorized personnel door ("No discernable continuity allowed past this point!") and starts to make her way out of the building. But out of nowhere, she experiences a slo-mo flashback from five seconds ago of Leanna poking her finger with the needle and, thanks for the helpful reminder, saying "ow." Max, meanwhile, is still cooking the metal. Oh, come on. He can excise death from the human body before the opening credits of the pilot, but when it comes to starting a brush fire in a viaduct that controls the flow of actual fucking heat, it takes this agonizing, beefy-horned build-up? He cooked that heating duct using alien powers! Liz turns tail and bangs Leanna's dorm room door open, grabbing the blah-nde and forcing her out of the room in a hurry, grabbing the bloody finger tissue on her escape. Seriously, that's so unsanitary. Why doesn’t she just stuff it in her mouth and go as "Crazy Communicable Disease Girl" this year for Halloween? Upon seeing Liz enter the room, Max lets the fire go dead. Outside the room, Leanna is not the first to ask of Liz, "Are you crazy?" Liz apologizes for the "false alarm" and takes off. Around a corner, Max apprehends Liz in plain sight and demands to know what the hell what that was all about. "That girl's not an alien. She can't be the killer." Then she's what, somebody who just really hates Nelly Furtado? She saw Liz. She saw Maria. She busted out. Red-herring me all you want, Katims, but try and see if they can make just a little sense, okay? It was "I'm Like A Bird." Who leaves in the middle of that. It's the only reason people came. It's the only song she has. You wouldn't leave a Third-Eye Blind concert right in the middle of "Semi-Charmed Life" if you weren't a renegade blonde alien on the run, would you? No. No, I don't think you would. Me, I never would have shown up to begin with.
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By Djb
Isabel thinks it's the last scene of Our Town as she sits in front of Alex's gravestone talking to him and listening as he responds. Alex was born on the first day of the summer solstice, and I'm going to go ahead and let that piss me off for some unknown reason. Also, he was born in 1984, and I'm going to go ahead and let that piss me off for some completely obvious reason. And his little headstone reads, "May your song always be sung." Because the Whitss are so playing daily tribute concerts in his absence. Or is that another metaphor? This show has made me so literal I can only take things at the most face value possible. That, and I think the special effects on Buffy are totally freakin' awesome. Ugh. Look what has become of me. Isabel stares at the ground and asks, "How can I leave now? I haven't even lived yet." From behind her appears Alex "Still Not Totally All The Time Dead" Whitman, who has apparently gone modified Caesar cut as a result of having met Caesar himself, and floated down from Cloud Nine with a completely new floppy 'do. He teaches very important lessons to us uncelestial scrapes down here: "I know how scary it is to have to leave. Leave this world. But it turns out, it's not so bad. Your heart is your heart, your soul is your soul, that doesn't change." Heart and soul? That's what we learned in heaven school today? Isabel doesn't have to worry about interplanetary travel because she still has her soul? Why doesn't he tack on that she'll be fine hurtling out of the Earth's atmosphere in a scale-model ice cream cone as long as she has the correct balance of bodily humors and black bile? His soul? Go back home, Alex. Heaven must be missing a clich-angel. But before you go, you might want to take just a second from the platitudes and, oh, I don't know, tell Isabel who killed you? Isabel tells Alex that the night at the prom was one of the greatest of her life, and they dance again. Dancing on his grave. I have advocated this practice for Alex Whitman many times. Sheesh. I wasn't overly offended the first time I watched this episode, but the tides are changing. They let him keep his hip, skater chain. Casual Friday in heaven.
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By Djb
Still in the Alienmobile, still under cover of still darkness. Impulsively, Max pulls over to the side of the road and tells Liz, "There's something I need to tell you. It's about Tess and me." Liz impatiently tells him that she knows that they're together, but it turns out he's got another bomb to drop: "We spent the night together." Max? Just bottom out and call it "making whoopee" already so I can stop making fun of the ten million old-man expressions these people have put in your mouth. Nevertheless, it's better to have the Stones in your head than England Dan, and I don't think there's anyone out there who's going to disagree with me, up to and including England Dan himself and England Dan's entire family and all of his friends and John Ford Coley and his mom, too. Liz expresses an inability to express shock. Natch. So he drives it home: "Liz, Tess is pregnant." The "writer" knows that Act I must end with a dramatic turn. But really, we already knew that one. Not a turn. Not a twist. The "writer" thinks it might be okay to end with a straight line. And so he does.
People, how good was that Buffy? God.
Liz looks through a microscope, the bloody Leanna tissue sitting, infecting, right near them. Liz posits, "If I were an alien and I was having trouble threading a needle, I'd probably use my powers." Hey, all hail the rare but correct use of the singular conditional in all its [sic]-free glory. Hail not, though, the use of logic, for Liz blathers on, "But I probably wouldn't need a needle to begin with." Well, maybe Leanna is an alien so conditioned to being watched -- as she was when she pricked her finger -- that she takes pains to act like a human no matter what befalls her? Liz doesn't think so: "They're human blood cells, take a look." Microscope close-up. They're red. Well, I'm convinced. So then maybe Leanna's a human acting as a henchman for an alien -- as Liz was doing at Las Cruces -- and she's really a dupe who has successfully convinced them that she's innocent when it's still very, very, very possible that she still really isn't. I'm just saying, her relevance was written out and put to bed a little conveniently, no? Max asks Liz who she thinks did it, and at her promising that she really doesn't have any idea, has the raging freaking gall to whisper all meaningfully, "You must have some idea who it could have been." Maybe she's just hoping to wait until she's sure you suck enough to react the exact same way you did the last time she made a suggestion. Asshole. Liz hazards that "whoever did it set up an innocent girl," and lays out a plan by which the only way they can know for sure who did it is to "start from the beginning." Max can't do that. "I don't have time." Liz doesn't know what that means, so Max spills it all out in one very creepily breathy breath: "He can't survive here. He's dying. We're leaving." Liz asks, "Where?" He responds, "We're going back." She holds up a finger (no, not the one I'm holding up right now), mimicking the same action Max performed when he first explained to Liz where he was from back in Episode One: The Phantom Interesting Plot Line. How could she be expected to remember the exact thing he did with his hand three hundred episodes ago if they can't even conjure the names of hundreds of FBI agents and ambiguous government operatives who spent months of their professional careers trying to capture and kill them? Maybe it would have been a better move if this really had been the last episode, and that moment was just acting as the series bookend. Maybe a lot of things would have been better if this were the last episode.
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By Djb
Liz tells Max that he "can't leave before this is resolved." Oh, but he can. Liz tries again, same words, different order: "You can't just leave us with a killer out there." Oh, but he must! King Max has no choice! She rails back in one gasp, "Not anymore but you did and then you got Tess pregnant." Um. Word. Sorry. She goes on: "I jumped off bridges for you, I broke the law for you, I trusted you!" I was so barely watching this episode when it first aired that I literally looked up from my latest copy of ym to stop idly filing my nails and airily inquire, "What was that about Jeff Bridges?" But Liz has her own bomb to drop, coming out of nowhere: "I saved myself for you!" Max rails back, "You slept with Kyle," and then stands looking very confused when Liz grits her teeth and tells Max, "Take me home." Oh, God. I just Napstered that England Dan song. Why are you looking at me like that? It's the only damn song Napster's got left.
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By Djb
Oh, here we go. Burning candles and moody, Senor Chow's lighting greets Maria at The House Government Subsidy Built. She walks in and suspiciously asks, "Michael?" He responds, "I know you like Italian, so…" and we cut over to the table, on which sits a bowl of salad, a basket of bread, what appears to be a giant bowl of sauce, and those completely genuine red bulbous candleholders indigenous to finer Pizza Huts and Olive Gardens the world over. It's Michael's last night on Earth, and he'll be damned if he's not going out with all the free salad and breadsticks he can choke down. Michael indicates the flatware. Scooby Doo plates. "And I know Scooby's your favorite." In the genre of crime-solving, impediment-talking, van-riding, crime-solving sidekick dogs, it's true he's got no peer. Maria still requires a little more information, so Michael sits her down on the couch. A close-up of his cross-eyed (I meant "doe-eyed," Taoists), gap-toothed (er, I meant…ah, screw it, I meant "gap-toothed") mug greets us before a merciful pulling back and the following speech, transcribed here verbatim. Drool or don't…you be the judge: "There's a lot about you, Maria. There's a lot about you, but I think what means the most to me is that you're open. Y'know, I can look into your eyes and I can see you. I can see what you're thinking, I can see what you're feeling. How much I mean to you sometimes. How much I piss you off sometimes. But I can always see you." So far the only genuine thing about this scene is Maria's oh-stop-it-you're-embarrassing-me-even-though-everything-you're-saying-is-true shrug she gives after the line, "There's a lot about you, Maria." Anyway, she listens politely through this point and responds, "I see you, too." But no, for Michael is too mysterious and his waters, so deep: "No. No, you don’t see me. [beat] You know when Max and Liz would kiss and Liz would get the flashes. And when we would kiss, you didn't? I know how much that hurt you." Maria insists that she doesn't care about that anymore, but Michael presses on, because talking is cool and listening is for suckers: "The reason you didn't get the flashes is because I didn't let you get them. I didn't let you see me. I've never let anyone see me before. Because there are things inside me that I don't want people to see. There's things [sic] inside me that I'm not so proud of. But I thought about it. And I want you to see me." And, well, now he's crying. But as long as I know that the moral of this story is "I didn't let you see me because I didn't want you to see me," the hour it took me to recap this scene to this point has been well-spent, indeed. Michael takes her hand, and we travel through a Season One stock footage trail of Michael's finer hours, most of which Maria knew about and quite of few of which she was present to "see" the first time they happened anyway. L'il Michael emerges from the pod. Nothing to be ashamed of there. Michael Jr., same teeth, being belted by his dad. That's not his fault either. Michael crying in Maria's bed. Awwww. Flash-boom-bash, and we're back in Michael's house. Maria begins to cry, and cuts off Michael's attempt to tell her about the whole goodbye forever thing when she puts a hand over his mouth and kisses him for a long time. A pan to the table indicates that the untouched romaine and tomato salad will go uneaten. Shame. Such an Italian delicacy. And free! With breadsticks! All night!
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By Djb
Kyle enters Tess's room (he TAPS his FINGERS against the DOOR) and asks, "Is this a good time?" From the bed, she tells him it is. He hands her a bouquet of dandelions and congratulates her, starting a speech about "what's going on" that's quickly stymied when he looks toward the door and sees Alex standing there, staring at him all stone-faced. And truth be told, I'm home alone (in the middle of the day, mind you), and it's a little scary. But it would probably be a lot scarier if Alex hadn't been in every freakin' scene of the last nine episodes anyway. Nevertheless, there he is. Okay, it's creepy. Tess tries to deny Alex could have been there at all and hugs Kyle (he taps his fingers on her back), but suddenly Alex is all glowing yellow in the middle of the room, intoning, "You are the Royal Four. You're created from the genetic materials of your alien predecessors and your human subjects. You were given human form so you…" Go away, Creepy Alex. I hate recapping this scene. Kyle turns back to Tess and freaks, "Alex was in this room the day he died. I can't believe I didn't even remember it. I must have blocked it out." He makes to tell his father, but Tess turns him around and closes her eyes, making with the freaky-deaky mind warp. She then asks, "What were you saying?" Kyle responds, "That I'm really gonna miss you." Uh-oh. The fix is fully in. She hugs him again, his hands on her back. Tap tap tap. Exactly.
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By Djb
Almost. Over. So. Very. Very. Very. Close. To. Over. So okay, END. Still in the Alienmobile and now in front of the Crashdown, Max imbues a never-heard-of "ring" with some sudden significance, telling Liz, "I always thought that when we graduate I would give you my ring." I always thought that when we graduate I would give you my ring? Another brilliantly elegant bit of phrasing from the house of Katims and Co. Jesus. "It looks like I won't graduate." Sniffle. "This is something from where I'll be." Liz can't believe that he's leaving and this is all she'll have left. Max segues right into a ditch, asking Liz if she ever slept with Kyle. Wouldn't this be a good time for Liz to tell Max about "End of the World"? Wouldn't this be a good time for Max to see another person or two before he leaves the planet forever? Wouldn't this be a great time to cut it out with the David freakin' Gray already? I mean, I like the CD. I own the CD. But I turned off the freakin' CD, and I really wish the WB would consider doing the same. Not like y'all should be taking music advice from the proud recent owner of England Dan and John Ford Coley's "Really Love To See You Tonight," but it's just how I feel about the whole David Gray thing already, okay? Max wishes things could have worked out differently. He kisses Liz with the fiery passion of exactly zero suns. Liz tells him she guesses this is really goodbye, "ending" their "time" "together" "forever" and "ever," demanding, "Just tell me one thing. Do you really love her?" Max has the response at the ready: "Not like I love you." Liz gets out of the car and walks inside. Max begins to cry. That salt water is not good for the delicately treated leather his face has become this season.
Speaking of music cues, leave the Beatles OUT of this, thanks. It's a cover of "Blackbird" (oh, you guys, remind me sometime to tell you the story of when I went to see Paul McCartney reading poetry a few weeks back…it's not so germane to the recap, but it's an important story to pass along) sung by who-knows-who-cares back inside The House Government Subsidy Built. Maria and Michael lie on the floor, post-coital, Maria noting, "I think we just took a huge step in human/alien relationships." She loves him. He loves her. Someone love shirts, please, and get one on Michael. ["God, no kidding. Hello, dictionary definition of 'sunken.'" -- Sars] He drops the bomb that he's leaving. Maria: "Like eventually, right?" Michael tells her that they're leaving in a few hours. Maria takes it in silent stride, because the braying lunatic annoyance of the average high-school girl bubbles to the fore and is skimmed right off the top within minutes of her first meaningful sexual experience. Not. Sex doesn't make you smarter and more pensive, people. She's allowed to freak out right now. Instead, she calmly asks how long they have left. "About an hour." Cool. Then he can go home, and she can pick up her glasses at Lenscrafters and her car from Meineke.
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By Djb
Isabel, meanwhile, is on the sad side. Upstairs at Chez Evans, she's a-weepin' a blue streak, and Max slimes in and sits too close on the bed, reasoning, "When we came out of the pods and we lost Michael, it was just the two of us in the desert. I knew that I wasn't alone. That I had my sister. To me, Earth isn't home. Whatever's out there isn't home. You're my home." Ha! Billy Joel shout-out of the most arcane kind. It's a pretty song. Called "You're My Home." Buy it today.
Meanwhile, Liz turns up at My So-Called Sean's bedroom at what we learn from him is "three in the morning." Kissing montage, and a cut to her sitting up on the couch serving as his bed. He asks if she's all right, and she swears that she isn't. "Max Evans broke my heart." He hugs her. Was this scene put in as a dare?
Nighttime. Chez Evans. Isabel and Max sit on a bed, thighs touching, facing some unseen presence we know isn't her parents and we know isn't nothing and we know is a camera, so just show us the camera so it's like that Michael Keaton movie where he videotapes himself shaving so his son will know what he looks like after he dies, which is still a less creepy concept than thinking Max and Isabel are staring through the fourth wall and delivering this speech directly to us. Their parents. Max: "Mom. Dad. We know that in some way you always knew we were different." We know that you know that we knew that you knew that we knew. Clean. Up. The. Language. Isabel takes over, continuing, "We want you to know that we love you so much. We're orphans. We could've ended up anywhere, with anyone, but we got you." Isabel apologizes for leaving and then cries. Max promises, "You were great parents to us. We will always, always love you. Thank you. For everything." This looks like a tape insane parents would force their children to make as an alibi at gunpoint before burying them in the backyard. Max stands and takes the tape out of the camcorder. Oh, relax, you guys. It's gonna be six weeks before they even notice you're gone. And for maximum product-placement, you couldn't have stuck around ten more minutes and uploaded the entire thing onto one of the fifty iMacs just lying around?
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By Djb
Max enters Tess's room and tells her it's time to go. She asks if he really wants to do this, and he responds "yes" in a way that means, well, "no." He reaffirms his love for her and women by kissing her passionately, and she pulls back, stares Max straight in the eyes, and accuses, "You kissed Liz." Oh, snap. The whole "turning ketchup into mustard" kitsch of alien powers stops being so cool when you can no longer get away with shit like that, eh? Besides, it's only a cool power if you can change the ketchup into Chinese mustard. Tess perks up at her thought: "Don't worry. You won't remember her where we're going." Must. Go. With. Them. To that special, special place.
Montagecakes. Michael destroys the Alienmobile. Why? Either way, I'll bet you six alien dollars that car reappears out of nowhere in the third-season premiere without a word of explanation. The Alien Four and Porno watch it blaze into a ditch, Isabel hands off the videotape for their parents, and Max and Porno exchange a hug that just screams out a mutual "finally!" that knocked me off my chair from all the way over here.
And now, the very reason they had to air "Off the Menu" at all. Because the entire season finale hinges on information contained within it. Liz and Maria lie on Maria's bed over at the DeLuca place, lamenting the whole decay of their lives. Suddenly, they hear DeLucawitz braying from the kitchen, "Larek! He's name is Larek, and he's an alien! Who's Larek? And he's taken over this whole place! And he's holding us hostage here! With a gun!" Maria snaps her out of it with a "Mom, what's wrong," and DeLucawitz comes to a strange sort of consciousness, recognizing that it's kind of late for Maria to be up and for Liz to still be over. DeLucawitz walks over to the stove and begins impatiently tapping her fingers against it. Liz, an eye for all that makes sense in the world of absolutely arbitrary context cues, notes the finger tapping and remembers Kyle doing the same. Cut to a shot of Living Alex doing the same thing against his bass while on the phone. Shot of Tess mind-warping. Shot of DeLucawitz telling Maria she refuses to cover up the abduction. Cut to Maria and Liz, and it's fully daytime inside the Den Of Porno, Kyle insisting that he would remember if he had been mind-warped. Well, no, he wouldn't. Kyle: "So I'm supposed to look around the room, and…what?" Liz advises him, "See if you have an unusual response to anythink." One more "k" for the road, folks. And there it was. And so he looks around the room, and the tapping is soon to begin again in earnest. He drops a glass he's suddenly holding, and in the mirror watches a scene of himself walking in on Alex and Tess having a fight about him mind-warping her for two months while he decoded the book for her, and now there's nothing left to warp: "I might as well be dead." Cut then to Kyle helping Tess load an unconscious Alex into the front seat of his car, sending Kyle back inside, and speeding Alex off on his way. How the hell did he make it all the way to the highway if he was already unconscious? Kyle snaps out of it and turns to Liz and Maria: "I carried his body. She made me think it was luggage. She killed him. Tess killed Alex!" Sucks for you, poor Kyle. And your "family."
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By Djb
The Human Three are Jetta-bound toward The Scoping Fjords Of Sandy Land, while the Alien Four slide through the E.T.-Styrofoam "rock" "wall" with a simple wave of Max's hand. Inside the granilith chamber, Max puts up a hand, and we cut back outside to Liz, Maria, and Kyle crying their names futilely. Back inside, Michael stops Max: "I can't go." Isabel, holding a genuine expression for even longer than Max has been in his forties, believably steps forward and gives Michael a little look of hurt horror. Because now Is is the party-crasher of Tess and Max's little love nest. Not to mention that everyone on Planet Arium -- what's the word I'm looking for -- kind of hates Isabel a lot. But sssssh! Michael has a small speech he'd like to deliver. The "writer" thinks it might be time: "Ever since we came out of the pods, I've been on some quest to figure out where I belong. I finally found home. The weird thing is, it's here. On Earth." Max volleys a not-wholly-unaffectionate, "You of all people," before approaching and giving him a hug. Awwww. They both look at Isabel, and Max tells her, "I would understand." This is in some stark contrast to earlier scenes where they all "had no choice," and earlier episodes where Isabel wasn't allowed to be more than three miles away from him at college, much less chilling on a different planet. But Isabel agrees with his earlier assessment of their relationship, recalling scenes: "What you said before…you're my home, too." Dude, Billy Joel would be rolling around in the royalty money if anyone on either of these planets had ever heard of that song but me. Tess bitches that whoever is coming has to come. "Now." Gee, Tess. Quite the sudden and shocking turnaround in your character over the past three seconds or so. How odd. I wonder what it could foretell.
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By Djb
Sadness and brooding reign outside the granilith chamber until the door opens, spilling Michael back into the desert. Maria doesn't waste a second: "Tess killed Alex." They all turn tail and run back in, this time Liz delivering the news to Max that we've literally known for the last six minutes and have already heard repeated nine hundred and seventeen times. "She mind-warped Alex and sent him to Las Cruces to decode the book. When he broke out of the mind warp, she killed him." Kyle confirms the story, and tells them that he never said anything because, well, he was mind-warped, too. He advances on Tess and gives her a good learning on making yourself comfortable in someone's Earth family: "You lived in my home. You were like my sister!" Dude, it's true. They got an extra chair for her and everything. Max tosses everyone else out of the granilith chamber, and the showdown kicks up with Tess. Max wants to know why she did it. She hedges that they're running out of time. "TELL ME WHY!" Oof. Pipe down. Tess tells him why: "He would have told you what I did and I couldn't let that happen." His brain was so weakened by the mind warp that she didn't have a choice. Tess again asserts that all this means nothing, and that Max won't even give a crap about it once the five triangulated planets have them back again. "What matters is getting home. But you never understood that, did you? I might have been able to teach you, but that stupid bitch had you wrapped around her finger!" Hee. If you're gonna have a best line of the season, best to save it until the final six seconds of the WB run. Max asks rhetorically if this was all some kind of plan to get pregnant and go home to Khivar and the rest of the evil folk. Wait. Why are they evil again? Tess: "They're not my enemies, Max." Max intuitively surmises that she made some kind of deal with Khivar, and she confirms that in fact, "Nasedo made a deal forty years ago." The deal: "To return home with your child and deliver the three of you to Khivar." Which, again, seems a little odd in light of Nasedo's constant insistence that he "protect" them. Why? And "fattening up for the kill" doesn't count as an answer. Sorry. Tess tells him, "You were different then. You were a king. Now you're just a boy." Max raises a hand to her, as he will always wave his finger in her face, and she admonishes that if he kills her, he'll kill their baby. Oh, please. He couldn't kill a pregnant woman. He couldn't kill a bug. He couldn't kill grass. He could kill a good conversation. That he could kill. And has.
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By Djb
The granilith chamber plays foreboding music, which means it's time for her to go. So Tess puts a hand on the granilith chamber and CGIs into it, becoming in the process a giant, floating, scary spinning Tess. Max runs outside to find everybody else, and they make their way from the site as the chamber bursts through the rocks and zooms off into space. This must be what Nasedo meant when he said he didn't want them to call any undue attention to themselves. I mean, Jesus.
Max holds Liz. Michael holds Maria. Isabel has too much of the WB's virgin-whore complex still kicking, so, too damaged for a boyfriend, she paints the words "soy fifth wheel" onto her chest and goes dancing out of the frame. Max turns to Liz for the final Dreamer dénouement: "I've been really wrong about a lot. But I was right about one thing: to get you into my life. To be around you. To love you." Except that he's been totally wrong about that for the last twenty episodes. Not to mention the whole, overwhelming wrongness of it in general. Maria guesses at Michael, "You stayed for me." Yeah. What a bizarre plot device just to get him back outside. Isabel, bereft of anyone to make with the tender, is happy enough just to ruin Liz's moment, turning to Max and asking, "What happens now?" Max looks toward the sky meaningfully. "I have to save my son." Now someone give him a hand picking up those Styrofoam rocks and moving them to the new set across the street.
You guys are the best. Have a very pleasant summer, everyone.
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