By Djb
Previously on Roswell: Isabel wears curtains and marries a gay man in an even gayer lavender boutonniere.
Ack! Pores! We open on a Wayne-and-Garth-esque Extreme Close-Up of the eyes of Max "Ack! Pores!" Evans. A high-drama cut to The Blackboard Of Fatherly Conspiracy cuts quickly to a close-up of the mouth of Liz "Ack! Bores!" Parker, as she asks, "You okay?" A close-up shot of Max's mouth -- framed as it is by his prepubescent bar mitzvah boy facial growth -- responds, "I can't believe this." Cut back to the eyes, and whatever it is Max can't believe goes permanently unanswered as his staggeringly girly eyelashes brush against my television's picture tube and the screen goes blank forever and ever and ever. Oh, just kidding. You all know as well as I do that nothing will kill this show. Instead, the rest of his sentence tells us, "My whole life is up here." And even though the three-by-five cards clearly spell out, "What is Max hiding?" the Lizbot's central mainframe blinks a furious "Annoy! Annoy! Annoy!" and she one-ups the title character of The What Is Max Hiding Show in concurring, "Yeah, so is mine." Cards! Cards! Cards! Max mourns in a dull (duh) monotone (duh super-sized with fries and a coke), "My own father." He looks at a card that reads, "Tess," and tests his reading comprehension by hazarding, "Tess." Pee Wee's secret word of the season having been uttered, we are treated to a best of Tess package of Tess-o-licious clips from last season. Max and Tess naked in the planetarium. Tess engulfed in Ed Wood-ian CGI as the granilith chamber achieves liftoff. The rest of the cast standing on the scoping fjords of Sandy Land and averting their eyes from such profanely Ed Wood-ian CGI. Back in Monopoly Nazi's office, Liz mistakenly believes that there are new viewers of this show who might need to know more: "He's got cards up here for everythink. Los Angeles. Utah." Utah? More "previously" clips. The Alienmobile bursts into flames and goes flying over a cliff. Why did he do that to the Jeep, anyway? Liz fields that one: "You thought you'd never need it again." So be it, but isn't that a little overzealous? I mean, I don't have any further need for long division, but you don't see me setting my fifth-grade math teacher on fire and tossing her into a dark ravine, do you? I mean, DO YOU?
Liz takes Max's hand and pulls him away from The Backstory Board. She suggests, "Maybe you should tell your father." Max looks somber and notes, "These are my parents. I can't put them in this kind of danger." Liz, however, can be put at the business end of a long-range FBI rifle for fortysomething episodes and no one opposes it for a moment, save for those of us jaded enough with her world-constantly-in-peril constitution to ask, "Yeah, well, then why in the world isn't she dead yet?" Max seals the dramatic action of this episode by noting, "They can't ever know the truth." Liz asks what he intends to do, then, and Max knows instinctively. He quietly intones, "The necklace I gave you when I thought I was leaving?" Yeah? What about it? "I need it back." Liz pulls the Zapf symbol out from in between her Aquabra and forks it back over. Somber music ambiguously plays. My fifth-grade math teacher knows her days are numbered. Shut up, Mrs. Verini. The school bell tolls for thee.