Over the rock-out grooves of another WB band whose fifteen minutes will end unceremoniously at this episode’s first commercial break, Max "We’re Not Going Anywhere" Evans halts "Shut Up" Liz Parker in the school hallway and informs her that their teacher didn’t show up and they’re ditching fourth period. Initially resistant, Liz is quickly persuaded by Max’s claim that "there’s something I want to show you." And off she goes. And while I can’t be too presumptuous about what Liz really expected to be shown, I’m fairly certain it had little or nothing to do with a jaunt in the Jeep to a locale in the middle of the desert vaguely resembling the landscape of the moon but much less convincing. The Jeep plows through the terrain, Liz noting, "This is so cool." Well, yeah, Liz, if your idea of cutting school and driving in one of those fake cars on an LA sound stage in front of a blue screen on which is being projected looped images of the video game "Dune Buggy" is in fact as "cool" as you are currently pretending it is. We find out that they are on "The Old Highway," and Max tells Liz that he has taken her there in an attempt to "do something normal for once." And again, I wasn’t much for truancy myself during my secondary school education, but to my knowledge "something normal" involved four friends, a borrowed bong, and the windows closed tight in the back seat of a 1982 Impala. Moon driving? Less common. But anyway. So a song comes on that they both really like, and Liz’s super-long (to call it "over-long" would smack of redundancy at this point) journal entry commences in drowning out said song. Really, though, this voice-over is endless. I cannot possibly recount the whole thing. Okay, I’m going to. Contest entrants beware -- this is where it’s at, Parker-style: "Have you ever had a moment when you’re with the one person in the world you want to be with and the wind is blowing through your hair and the song that just describes your entire soul happens to come on and then the person you happen to want to be with happens to love the same song and suddenly you realize you’re listening to it together?" Ack! Run-on Sentence Police, arrest that girl! Max stares off into the beyond with a glare that bellows, "Note to self: THIS is why I’ve never asked her to do this before." So Liz’s voice-over deems this a "perfect moment," which, on this show, is shorthand for "something is about to go horribly, horribly wrong." And, comfortingly true to form, it does. A horse runs (okay, ambles) out into the middle of The Old Highway, and before Max can slam on the brakes, the Jeep meets it head-on and goes flying. Uh-oh. And though I’m sure no animals were harmed during the making of this episode, the prevailing aesthetic of the Jeep losing control appears to have been taken from stock-footage remnants of a "Toonces the Driving Cat" skit. Pan to the non-flaming wreckage, where a totally-fine Liz views a face-down-on-the-steering-wheel Max and attempts to revive him by very quietly asking, "Max? Max?" Oh, and that thing about being with someone when the song I like comes on? It has never happened to me. Like, ever.
Opening credits: As words go, the words "Shiri" and "Appleby" rank very highly as silly, silly words.
Fade in on the screaming lights of an ambulance, which seems just slightly better at navigating The Old Highway than a certain Max Evans I might mention. Max is hanging on by a thread while Liz sits daintily in a nearby chair, the medic on call giving literally every available ounce of his attention to her. She’s fine. Max is not fine. Not a scratch on her. There must be an abundance of drippy, too-smart, journal-banging goody-two-shoeses in heaven. Because God has resoundingly chosen not to take this one. ["You’d think He could have left Old Scratch a voicemail or something about her, though." -- Sars]
Cut to school, where Maria encounters a cagey Michael, who does his best to make a quick exit. She rightfully accuses him, "You’re avoiding me." But just as she seems poised to launch into one of those patented Maria speeches that seems so often to include the phrases "my mother" or even "my mother’s Jetta," her cell phone rings: "Mom, I told you to stop calling me." Yikes. For a character we haven’t even seen yet, Mrs. DeLuca has more personality than almost anyone on this show. Ha ha ha, I’ve used that joke before. Anyway, Liz tells Maria about the accident with her and Max, and they’re all off to the hospital. Cut to the racing of a stretcher down a hospital hallway, a doctor spouting fake technical jargon ripped from the most recent edition of Fake Technical Hospital Jargon For Dummies. Another doctor races alongside Liz, barking questions with no easy answers: "When did he lose consciousness?" (When I wouldn’t stop talking about my journal), "What’s your relationship?" (He is an angel, and I was touched by him.)
Back in school but with ER music still a-blazin,’ the principal (I think) runs up to Renee to alert her about the accident. Just like in any emergency: parents later, guidance counselor now. He informs her that Max and Liz are at Roswell Memorial, and she offers to take on the case. She walks away looking as happy as if she had pushed them into traffic herself, and makes a quick call to "Control" with a "get thee to the hospital" bravado about it all.
And speaking of hospitals, Michael and Isabel run in as a nurse draws a large vial of blood from Max’s arm. The angry nurse tells them that no one is allowed to be there, even family, and Michael responds by angling over and letting her know that "I realize you’re just trying to do your job but we’re all in shock right now." She relents, telling him "just to keep it low-key" and smiling, and I pray that this lame-ola leitmotif of Michael makin’ time with older babes is mercifully close to ending. The nurse leaves, apparently just a little hot and bothered, and Michael runs past Isabel with the revealing line, "I’ll get the blood." And so begins and ends the plot. He will get the blood and then . . . the blood will be gotten. I mean, I don’t mean to give anything away here, but come ON.
Meanwhile, in what I imagine to have been an essential plot development of every madcap comedy ever starring Richard Pryor and/or Gene Wilder, an alien-hunting FBI bad-ass in a suit (surprise! No one bothered to hit "Chess King" with the FBI’s corporate credit card) slides covertly through a door marked, no kidding, "Hospital Personnel Only." So I guess he’s going to knock out a paramedic of the exact same size, strip him down, put on his clothes, and affect his identity in an attempt to procure sensitive information about Max and his alleged alien leanings. Jeez! Go out and buy the damn scrubs yourselves, okay? You’re the FBI. You can read my mail, for cryin’ out loud. Stop trying to pretend you can’t.
Back at the vigil at Max’s bedside, Isabel gently freaks, saying "they can’t get that blood." Liz expresses some concern about what they’ve done before in similar situations, and Isabel tells her nothing like this has ever happened to them. What about when one of them gets sick? "We don’t get sick." Oh. I guess that’s that, then. I guess my barely-repressed memories of the yearly excruciating trip to the pediatrician where he took vial upon vial of blood from my tiny, pin-pricked arm for what seemed like hours was just a dream. And it was all for absolutely no reason. I couldn’t get sick, after all. And what about Dum-Dum lollipops, official put-this-in-your-mouth-and-stop-crying-already treat of my pediatrician’s office? Did I never have any of them? No, coy Isabel, I guess I did not. Anyway, Isabel says they need some human blood and suggests it come from Liz. Ever the boring downer scientist, Liz observes that lab tests can tell male from female blood, to which Isabel concludes, "Then we need to find a guy." Lesson to Liz: this is what happens when you cut fourth period. Be good, Liz. Be MORE good.
Cut to long-dismissed glorified extra Alex, deep in counsel with the freaks and the geeks about Roswell’s lack of something called a "garage band scene" while strumming chords on a guitar and looking generally perplexed that his name fell back into the script. He is interrupted by a plot-driven Maria, who says she needs his help and drags him away with the line, "The point is, the musicians get the ladies." Whatever. Only when the stage directions say so, cool guy.
Back at the fun-times locale for kids of all ages known as "the hospital," Michael is once again in the process of doing something regrettably stupid in the lab where all the blood samples lie, and is stopped from continuing by the sudden appearance of Alien Hunter #1, who I mysteriously recognize even without his suit. I kind of thought that he would walk in wearing the hospital scrubs and still be wearing a tie over it. Anyway, Alien Hunter starts rifling through the blood vials while Michael hides in a corner of a room which seems too proportionally small to conceal anything, except from those unlucky few born without the gift of peripheral vision.
Meanwhile, Alex enters the hospital with Maria. Liz informs him that she needs a huge favor: "I need your blood." Short of busting out into a "garage band" version of "I Would Do Anything For Blood (But I Won’t Do That)," Alex looks suitably horrified. Cut back to Alien Hunter searching through the samples for Max’s blood. He is interrupted by the nurse on-call and subject of Michael’s flirtation. She takes over the duty of looking around, strangely puzzled. Michael continues to hide in a corner, seen by pretty much everyone but the very people who are close enough to smell him.
Back with the rest of the kids, Maria stands guard while Liz preps Alex for the bloodletting. There are particularly juicy nuggets of dialogue I strive to get down on paper, and I rejoice in my discovery of the rewind/play combination which repeatedly shows the blood going into the the vial and then back into Alex’s arm. How painful that must be for him. Anyway, Alex opines in a comical cadence which befits a far more amusing show, "Okay, I have any number of reservations at this particular moment." Shut up, Alex. Stop thinking you’re Xander. Because you so aren’t. Taking my advice (as well he should) and upping the dramatic ante ever so slightly, Alex opines, "What are you people hiding?" But he’ll never know.
Anyway, they get the sample just in time for us to cut once more to the blood testing lab, where Michael comes out from his "hiding" spot to engage the nurse (her name, apparently, is Susan) in conversation. She seems unsurprisingly unsurprised to see him. He makes up some pointless story about wanting to take her on a date. I have no idea why. She rebuffs him in a "well he was just seventeen if you know what I mean" kind of way, all a ruse for Liz to slink on by and hand off the vial of Alex’s blood. Clever. Alien Hunter who opens my mail looks on from afar, bereft of blood sample. Her name is Susan? Why does he know that? Why any of this? For Thanksgiving, my mom made a yummy turkey.
Back in the waiting room on the hospital’s other set, Liz and Maria avoid a curious Alex’s glances while sitting around, waiting for something to happen. I KNOW HOW THEY FEEL. Liz tells Alex to go home, and Michael seconds that emotion when Alex starts asking more questions. So with a "nice new friends you’ve made, Liz," Alex is off to talk to the friends who understand his emerging love of garages, or whatever. Liz goes after him, and Alex snipes that if he isn’t going to get an explanation for the behavior that made me run screaming to the closest dictionary to make sure I had the correct definition of "furtive" (the jury is still out), he’s going to do something dramatic. Like be kinda mean. He comes up with a plausible, albeit after-school-special-esque, motive for his sketchy involvement in this whole thing: "Is it drugs? Is that what this is? You and Max go out for a drive, he gets wasted, almost kills you both? That’s what I’m covering for, isn’t it?" And it works, kinda. Except when Alex refers to himself as "straight," which remains hilarious to me regardless of the word’s intended meaning. Liz confirms Alex’s dark fears, opting for drugs as a motive, as it’s the lesser of two evils. Meanwhile, somewhere in Miami, a deep-into-retirement McGruff the Crime Fighting Dog sits up on his plush La-Z-Boy in Miami, chokes on a Milkbone, utters the plaintive phrase, "Have I taught them all nothing?" and dies. "If you know a use even part of the time/Tell him to quit/Take a bite out of crime." Hey, McGruff? Screw you.
Max is alive. Huzzah. The Mom With The Bangs has finally finished up her Tupperware party in time to pick him up from the hospital, and Max bargains himself out of staying for further observation. Michael, Isabel, and Liz all come in, and there’s a bit of a heartfelt moment when Bangs and Liz are introduced. If by heartfelt you mean "boring and wasteful of my time." As the gang begins to exit the hospital, Maria remembers that she left her purse in Max’s room. For some reason Michael offers to retrieve it, and as he pulls back the curtain, he sees Alien Hunter and another guy going through the garbage and generally searching around for clues. "Forgot her purse," Michael brilliantly ruminates. Yeah.
Cut to Chez Evans, in which Michael informs Max and Isabel that the guy in the trash back at the hospital is definitely Alien Hunter, Today’s Man getup or no. Michael suggests that "somebody is closing in on us" and "we need to figure them out before they figure us out." Yeah, that’s the plan. And then why don’t you "do some stuff that makes the stuff be done." How much more general could this all be? All the better to keep the thin remaining strands of plot going around and around and around and around and around. And around.
Meanwhile, Renee drives up for a covert meeting, stealthily, under the cover of darkness, with Alien Hunter, now comfortably back in his street clothes of suit, suit, suit. He tells her that the blood test came back normal. But he’s suspicious that the blood might have been switched. Really? Have you proof of it? Why not just ask any attentive member of the viewing audience? We saw it all happen the first time, and now here we are watching theories about it being ploddingly discussed by quizzically unsure professionals.
Sassy Kyle is interrupted by an ever-bewildered Alex, who tries to sit and enjoy lunch with this person we’ve never, ever seen him with before. Kyle, his evolution into The Meanest Bitch Liz Taylor Never Played nearly complete, kills the messenger of no message, accusing Alex, "Liz sent you to find out if I told anyone anything." Alex pleads ignorance in trying to get someone to tell him anything, but Kyle snaps that he’s "tired of being lied to," and that Liz has turned into nothing more than a stranger. Alex tries to commiserate, but Kyle sees right through it (although there really is nothing to see through), accusing him of being on their side and buttering Kyle up for information. Pan to Isabel standing by a railing, looking down on the conversation. Reveal yourself, Isabel! Zap them with your eyes or make objects move around and go really mental like Carrie at the prom, but for God’s sake DO SOMETHING!!! Y’know what else my mom made that was really yummy? Stuffing.
Max and Liz are out on the town, checking out their current "are we being followed again" status. Here’s a hint: you’re in the tackiest tourist trap America has to offer. You’re surrounded by families in Winnebagos wearing flip-flops, banana clips, and Ocean Pacific Jams. A guy in a suit might as well be waving flares used to land aircraft carriers to show off a t-shirt that reads "Follow Me To FBI Headquarters" and singing the part in "Follow The Yellow Brick Road" where they just keep repeating "Follow, follow, follow, follow" repeatedly. And then you could figure it out. As if you hadn’t already, five episodes ago. But no. So Max and Liz run into the UFO Center and Alien Hunter follows them. They lose themselves in the shuffle, and Alien Hunter is forced back outside and into his stealthy black car. Isabel, Michael, and Maria go off after the guy. I want to scream in boredom and frustration, but just then I am reminded by the subsequent commercial that my life could have been A LOT worse if the WB had designed a weekly one-hour show centering entirely around Old Navy Performance Fleece. Does that dog have a deal with the devil or what? Enough already.
Acting as a conduit into my own soul, Isabel sits in the back seat of the Jetta, rolling her eyes and sighing at each flirty word out of Michael and Maria’s mouths. They are camped outside of Alien Hunter’s cheesy motel room, waiting for him to emerge. He finally does, but before we have a chance for any action, we are back in school with Max and Liz. They are coyly evasive with each other, as is their wont. Liz invites Max to dinner at the Crashdown. How romantic. Good idea, Liz: show him how much you love him with a candlelight meal under the stars . . . at a diner. And I bet she expects him to pay, too. Max declines with a "let her just TRY and complain when I finally do take her out and we end up at Taco Bell" smile, and Liz hastily changes the subject to the accident, the most morose available topic, which can conveniently dovetail into how she saved Max’s life. Max thanks her for saving his life, to which Liz responds, "It was Alex who did it. He really came through. He always does." Max takes this as cue to alert Liz to Alex’s still-in-the-dark status about the whole alien thing. "Isabel saw him talking with Kyle today," Max tells her, and Liz tells him that she used the "McGruff" defense and told Alex, roughly, "Don’t worry. It’s nothing. Just drugs." Nancy Reagan must be rolling over in her grave. Oh, wait, she’s not dead. Yet. ["Prove it." -- Sars]
Back at the motel, Isabel is on Jetta lookout while Maria and Michael search the room. Maria points him in the direction of the garbage in search of clues, noting that "any babysitter worth her salt knows that the best place to look is in the garbage can. It’s always revealing." Ew. Know what’s in my garbage can? No, me neither. That’s the point. Bury those snotty tissues and postcards from your senile cousin in Florida and let somebody else dump them on the compost heap for you. That’s why they call it "refuse." But why take my advice? Michael and Maria clearly do not, and they go diving into Alien Hunter’s trash. But what’s this? It’s a phone number, with no name attached. Maria brilliantly proposes they call it, and I wholeheartedly second that motion, based primarily on the fact that the phone number does not start with "555," an exchange which would insure only that they were trying to call one of those fake TV numbers on a fake phone lying unplugged just out of sight. After a few rings, a voice on the other end picks up: "Topolsky." Maria and Michael look shocked and shell-shocked, respectively, and Maria notes after hanging up that it’s entirely possible that Renee isn’t exactly who she says she is. Good thing the audience was primed for this inevitable discovery about five weeks ago, lest the shock of it be too great and my heart give out in the high-drama melee. Or, as is the case here, not.
Speaking of Renee, our return to the outdoor cafeteria depicts the ubiquitous counselor sitting down to lunch with Alex (just as all of us so fondly recall those frequent lunches with our own guidance counselors) and -- say it isn’t so -- slipping something into his drink when he isn’t looking. I half expect her to laugh the evil "haw haw haw" of a naughty French villain and then tie a helpless Alex to the nearby train tracks just as the black-and-white locomotive bears mercilessly down on him. Idle chitchat ensues, intended to win over the already vulnerable boy, until Renee broaches the subject of Max’s accident. Just as she seems poised to take the plunge in what I now know are her character’s waning moments, Liz comes over and makes sure no privileged information has been exchanged. On her way out, Renee suggests that Alex meet her later in her office. Now just the two of them, Liz apologizes once more and Alex reacts, "Are we all covering for Max now? Me and Kyle?" Liz says Kyle knows nothing. Alex commences a speech about how this is all going to "blow up in your face" and then, visual irony serving its meager purpose, Alex’s own face literally blows up into a nasty nosebleed. Uh-oh. Who’s having trouble keeping away from the drugs now, eh Alex? All of this pro-drug propaganda of the last TV hour must have legitimized the whole experience to him, because the cocaine imagery is so strong it’s like someone taped Stevie Nicks: Behind the Music over the last quarter of Roswell, but leaving out the music, the pat upbeat ending, or any reference to the poppy song stylings of Lindsey Buckingham. Alex hightails it to the bathroom, where we are treated to the not-so-fresh experience of watching him pull wad after wad of bloody tissue out of his nose and throw them in the garbage with many other clumps of bloody tissue wads. So I guess this is what Maria looks for while she’s babysitting, then? But apparently one man’s trash resulting from an inability to clot is another FBI agent’s treasure (that IS the saying, isn’t it?), and as Alex exits, Renee slides in and collects a sample.
Crashdown-bound, Maria is telling Liz the same story as Michael is telling Max and Isabel about their hotel hijinks, in a he said/she said comic interlude about as funny as whatever that feeling is that you get when you’re not laughing. And speaking of dour constitutions, Alex walks in on a really pissed-off Renee, who instructs Alex to sit down. She knows everything. About the blood test. And the hospital. And Max. She tells Alex he’s not safe with Max Evans around and offers him the opportunity to write down a confession and sign it. He resists at first, but Renee muscles him with the too-true comment, "Think about who it is you’re protecting. What friend would put you in a position like this?" Renee also has friends, she says. Friends who can help him. Friends who can keep secrets. Friends in low places. Where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases. My blues away (ee-ay-ay). Yuck. I don’t like country music, and I grow angrier by the second that Renee’s speech about how damned popular she is has invoked a rollicking, line-dancin’ ditty sure to keep me up until dawn. Stupid Renee.
Speaking of friends, Max finally shows up at Alex’s locker to thank him for saving his life and all. Alex tells him that Renee has already been informed of The Great Blood Switch, and he won’t tell Max if he signed her confession or not because "now you know what it’s like being in the dark, Max." Ouch! Good show, Alex. And to boot, he’s out of earshot just before the deafening cacophony (I’ve always wanted to use that word in a recap, and now I have) of Liz’s Parker’s drug-addled mind spins out another entry into her journal: "It’s amazing how blompo blompo blompo." "Blompo," of course, means "the rest of the babbling, pointless crap I can’t in good conscience subject you to anymore." Thank goodness for blompo, huh? That word could not have been invented at a better time.
In the scene, blompo. The end.
Just kidding.
So anyhow, Alex meets Liz at the Crashdown at her request, apparently just to drill home the fact that she is simply not going to tell him anything about anything. Just in case he might ever start to misguidedly believe that anybody out there actually likes him. She tells him that "there is a right side and there is a wrong side. And if you choose the wrong side right now, Alex, something really terrible is going to happen. To all of us." Say again? Renee has the blood sample. She already knows. Isn’t that pretty much the extent of the information Alex is, in his current capacity as "clueless dunderhead," able to supply? Ooh, I’m arguing plot points -- I must be emotionally invested in this episode. Either that or I’m finally out of catty comments about what everybody is wearing. By the way, nice pants, Alex. Did a group of failed white rappers have a tag sale or are you just progressively shrinking inside of your ridiculously large "’Burning Down the House’ video" ensemble? Oh, good. That’ll hold me.
Uh, where were we? Near the end, I hope. Alex enters Renee’s office and tells her that he’s worried about Liz. He wants to know what Renee’s ambiguously powerful friends will do to Liz if he signs a confession. Once again, she tells him to write everything down, but again is interrupted by the arrival of Liz. The two enter the hallway, where Liz is obviously just trying to stall her while Alex is doing something dubious behind the closed door of Renee’s office. And sure enough, we cut away to Alex typing away on Renee’s Apple Powerbook. Alex logs into her e-mail account and begins to scan through her messages. Doubtlessly hampered by the dozens of forwards that clog up all of our in-boxes ("Top Ten Zany Things You Can Do To Drive Your Roommate Absolutely Bonkers. Number One: Spit in his face and call him Dorothy"), Alex nevertheless stumbles upon something useful. Cut to a dawning look of "I don’t wear men’s suits to work every day, but I think I’ve been had regardless" suddenly passing over Renee’s face; she pushes past Liz and bursts into her office to find Alex standing guiltily at her computer. He turns the screen toward her to reveal a "Federal Bureau of Investigations/Department of Justice" screensaver on her computer. At which point, her cover is blown and she’s apparently off the case. "This isn’t going to end just because you know who I am," she threatens. But if I hadn’t known inside of a minute in October who she was, I don’t think the US Government logo on Renee’s computer would have proved all that helpful to me. I mean, I’m as guilty as anyone else of having used the flying-toasters screensaver when not that many were available. I guess that makes me a secret member of the "Flying Toaster Brigade." Am I off the case too? ["No. Nice try, though." -- Sars] So Renee is gone, and Alex threatens to follow suit if Liz won’t connect the dots between Max Evans, West Roswell High School, and the FBI. Of course she refuses to tell him squat, and we fade to black on Alex walking sullenly down the hallway.