Fade in on Roswell at night, an outdoor shot of trees, sky, and a whole lotta lightning. Clearly something serious is going down tonight. And speaking of going down tonight (gee, never used that one before), we pan down to an idle car overlooking some conveniently-placed cliff, and I quickly surmise that we are in the presence of the teen-sanctioned make-out point which exists in every fictional town in cliché-plot-device history but which never manifests itself in real towns like, say, mine. And they're always called "Lover's Leap" or "Romance Cove," though I'm sure if this one had a name it would be a cheesy, alien-themed one that just can't put aside the whole Roswell mythology thing for one second, like, say, "Lift Off Point." Ooh, and it's a phallic joke, too! Anyway, the shot zeros in on a pick-up truck, in which a couple of Roswell teens get down and jiggy in the back. But what's this? A flash of light forces them to stop in their tracks and look, frozen and open-mouthed, directly into the camera. Hi, guys. Relax, it's just lightning. Oh, and the guy's kind of creepy-looking and old enough to be the girl's father. That fact is probably a better reason to stop whatever it is I should not have just caught them doing.
Cut to the Crashdown, where Liz "Parker? I didn't even know 'er" fishes some pills out of a plastic baggie. Twenty-five seconds have passed without dialogue. And it's not that I'm just itching to rejoin the cast in its mad dash to bore me to stultified tears again this week, but you do have to admit it's quiet. Too quiet, in fact. Liz: "I hate the start of a cold . . ." And thus begins the lifeless, tedious hum that pervades all life experience, an uninterrupted drone known only to beekeepers, ham-radio enthusiasts, and viewers of this show forced to listen to the latest entry into The Good Book. The voice-over accompanies Liz going through the awe-inspiring and not-at-all-pedestrian ritual, one which the director of this episode clearly thinks none of us has ever seen before, of taking some pills and washing them down with some Poland Spring (they put water in a bottle now? Man, what will they think of , a stove-top device that boils it? How about some frozen, cube-like receptacle designed to keep it cold?). The journal entry continues, and it is entirely about Liz's impending bout with the sniffles. Yeah, that kind of thing always makes me grab a pen and run for the nearest site of private contemplation. Maria "I'm Not a Lesbian, But I'm About to Play One on TV" DeLuca finally bursts in to break up the monotony a bit, announcing upon entry, "Insert cheesy cliché concerning self-empowerment here." Actually, she does it for us, practically acting her way off the set in an unrealized attempt to imbue the words "today is the first day of the rest of our lives" with any emotional heft. She launches into a monologue about the men in their lives and how much boys generally suck and how they have to start to explore new possibilities. To illustrate her liberated point, she begins to unbutton the front of her uniform and advance on Liz, who, like, freaks out. But relax, oh-ye-of-exaggerated-sexual-draw. Maria's disrobing serves the purpose of showing off her new belly-button ring. This moment is so unnatural and tacked-on that I cringe to think of the post-first-draft meeting at WB Interpol, where some network suit chastises the writer for his severely laborious script and constructively suggests, "The opening seg needs some more visual pop. Maybe you should try a sight gag or something. Lemme suggest you try something with lesbians. You can't miss with lesbians." After it has been made clear that Maria is talking about her new physical accouterment and not a desire to accompany Liz to Lift Off Point at some undisclosed future time, Maria offers the self-congratulatory "ta-da" and informs Liz that "we are turning over a new leaf!" Memo to the set dresser: no more big bowls of fortune cookies in the WB break room, okay? Okay. Liz expresses some interest in Maria's new ideologies, but informs her that "skewering my navel is not exactly my idea of fun." At which point Maria removes the ring from her navel and demonstrates it to be fake. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Liz takes it and sneezes, and as they make their way into the kitchen, Maria asks Liz if she's still taking the echinacea Maria gave her. She makes her way into the dining room, now wearing what was once Maria's navel ring. But instead, Liz has decided to put it in her nose. I view the transfer of said ring from Maria's linty navel to Liz's snotty nose, and I reflect for a moment on which locale I would like less to inhabit if I were a very small man in search of a home. Probably I'd avoid the nose, primarily on the basis of the gales which would threaten to propel me forever out of my lodgings with each of Liz's deep, soulful sighs. Then again, who the hell knows where that navel's been, really? Liz walks past her father, who requests some help with a large tray of dishes. We've seen him before. I'd recognize that vacant look of sheer dimness anywhere. This, to my recollection, is why we here at Mighty Big TV dubbed him "Slackjaw" to begin with. He turns to see the nose ring and registers a vague change of expression mild enough to convey, "I'm very, very slow. I'm aware of something bad, but make no mistake about it, I'm very slow." Liz tells him it's fake. Apparently already briefed on the incredibly brief shelf-life of parents on this show, Slackjaw wastes no time staking his claim on a Big Moment with Liz: "You've been so busy with school and new friends. We don't even get a chance to talk." Slackjaw, you're so slow. But don't worry, he reassures her, they can make up for it this weekend at some camping thing that I don't fully understand. Liz says her friends aren't really going, and everyone she knows has sort of "outgrown it." Yes, Liz. I know a thing or two about that. Like, say, the thirty years I have aged during this heinously long introduction. And I know it can't be over yet, because no highly dramatic event has yet ensued which can rationalize the glum-like glumness of the opening credits. At which point Bania the Curator bursts into the Crashdown looking for Max. "I thought he worked for you, dude," Maria sasses, almost as good a retort as one can expect under the circumstances. No one's seen him. So instead of tracking down his trusted confidante and the only other person willing to degrade himself in a blazer the color of which has been resolutely out since, well, clothes were invented, he entrusts his shocking discovery instead to anyone within earshot of the set: there's been a sighting. Liz: Guilty stare. Maria: Guilty stare. Slackjaw: A-yuh?
Opening credits: It's the strangest thing -- someone apparently decided to pull the plug on the usual theme song and instead go with a rather spirited version of me, sitting on my couch, bellowing the lyrics to the power ballad "Almost Paradise" from the Kevin Bacon classic Footloose. Ah, the magic of a little bit of mute and a whole lot of disengaging the closed-captioning. I swear that I could see forever in your eyes. Paradise.
Fade up on Bania the increasingly mad curator, unfurling a map and lecturing a dubious Max on the sighting. This "Close Encounter," as Bania calls it ("Of the Libelous Kind," Spielberg's legal team calls it) took place near -- damn, a place I can't spell. But much of the remainder of the episode takes place there, so I'm going to hazard a guess and if I'm wrong you can lambaste me in print and even beat me with sticks. If you're that serious about spelling. Here it is: Frasier Woods. That seems silly. Would the woods really be named the same thing as Kelsey Grammer's dry-witted and droll television counterpart? Frazier? Frajer? I'm sticking with "Frasier." Max asks who reported it, and when he finds out it was "a hiker named Buzz," he suggests it was a hoax. Bania tells Max that it wasn't a hoax. Max tells Bania that Frasier Woods is a big place. Bania tells Max, "Not when you know where the cops are looking," and from seeming nowhere extracts that instrument of perfect scientific precision and utility, the compass. Not the kind that tells you where north is, mind you, but the kind to which you attach a miniature golf pencil and draw a circle for no apparent reason. It's ludicrous to watch a grown man attempt to use one to any real effect, considering that the last time I saw one of those was in third grade, during the unit entitled, "Protractors, Compasses, Slide Rules and This Dusty Old Abacus: Bizarre Math Tools You'll Never Have Any Real Use For." Bania puts the compass on the desk (or back into his Care Bears Pencil Holder, if he were me in third grade -- or, uh, not me, but someone else) after drawing a circle around Frasier Woods, and regards Max again. There's been corroboration. It was near the Indian Reservation. Max wants to know exactly what the witnesses saw, at which time we cut to Porno in his dimly lit cell of an office, grilling a "Rocky Calhoun" on what he saw that night. Rocky is not quite as forthcoming with information as Porno would like, so the Sheriff is forced again to do that thing where he gets really close to his subject in some horribly sexual and vaguely threatening "now you don't have to go and tell your daddy about this" moment. But apparently that's not Rocky's method of modern love, because after offering a description out of every cheesy alien abduction plot ever featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, "It was a white, hot light. Sort of like an X-ray," he goes silent and the scene is forced to end.
And we're off to school, where a shot of Maria from the neck up is juxtaposed against glaring high-school boys barking horny hellos. Apparently Maria's image-bending bender has launched into high gear, and whatever is going on southwards of her neck is garnering more than its fair share of attention. I'm going to guess it has something to do with breasts. The audience, sadly, is treated to nothing more than Maria's slicked-back hair, which, in some species-bending irony, makes her look more like the Judy-the-Time-Life-operator prototype of a run-of-the-mill alien than anything else we've seen in this series so far. She runs into Liz, who has done exactly nothing to make herself more physically attractive to boys, with the possible exception of covering her mouth when she hacks up nasty green cold-induced mucus brought on by her fake cold. Thanks for trying, though, Liz. Oh, wait, but you didn't try. And that's why no man loves you. There. All clarified.
Full frontal shot of Maria. She tells Liz she's wearing "an Aqua Bra. All the fun of implants, except without the invasive surgery part." Yep, there's some kind of tits going on there. Yikes, can I really use that word in good conscience? Come to think of it, though, this scene is already such an anti-feminist remark on women and beauty (but she's wearing a pink turtleneck! And a pendant, for crying out loud! Doesn't that alone make her a liberated hippie?) that I feel like I can call them whatever I want and still not be the worst thing about what I'm currently watching. What's going on? Allow me to tell you -- nothing. I hope there are some loose strands of plot buried deep within that cleavage somewhere, because we have got to get things underway action-wise. This is absolutely ridiculous. Seriously. Oh, and I've also learned a really amazing medical fact you should all write down in your own journals: if you stop referring to a cold directly, it magically ceases to exist.
From afar, the two girls spy Max entering the famed "Eraser Room." "Famed," as in mentioned once and dropped while YOU were surfing over to see what was happening on The West Wing. Or on the channel with all the strident static and dead air. Oh, no, wait. That's this channel again. Anyway, Liz comments that she hates not knowing what's going on with Max, and Michael follows soon after into said Eraser Room. Just as silent staring seems to take over the inactive action permanently, newly-minted cutie Alex makes his way over and revives the time-honored method of handing out flyers as a means of moving the plot forward, a move which was used once to great benefit to "save the clock tower" in Back to the Future and then scrapped forever in favor of actually having characters interact with each other. The flyers are for the aforementioned "Father Camping Weekend," for which Liz meekly (though through this miserable non-coughing, non-sneezing, non-nose-blowing, non-NyQuil-swigging cold of hers, who can blame her for being so dour and monotone? A little sympathy, people) tries to rally support for the weekend. Maria happily excuses herself from the event, practically singing the words "no dad!" like it's an advertisement for a drink that offs your father and makes you downright mirthful that, at least one weekend out of the year, you don't have to waste your time wishing he were undivorced or undead long enough to drag your huge breasts into the woods for camping fun times. Anyway, the bell rings and everyone in the entire school goes to class, with the exception of Alex and Isabel, who must already be at their "Flirting for the Criminally Hopeless Male" Seminar. Alex invites Isabel to a Fellini film. She's not really into that. Alex's toothy grin flails for just a moment, until Isabel offers, "Want to see a regular movie instead?" "Regular"? Granted, I probably would have turned down an invitation to a three-hour black-and-white film with subtitles in high school also. Maybe instead you could all come over and write my recap for me. You know, if you don't have to go camping, like, with your dad. Or something. I'll ask again: what's going on here?
Meanwhile, over in the Eraser Room, Max briefs Michael and Isabel on the sighting. Isabel says the whole thing is just the result of a bunch of mindless crackpots, but Max informs them that Porno has sealed off a large stretch of Frasier "tossed salads and scrambled eggs" Woods near the Indian Reservation. They have to get there before Porno has a chance to investigate. But how can they get into the woods without arousing suspicion? Enter this episode's most influential character, "Camping Flyer," which Max uses to suggest that he and Isabel use to get closer to the site. Michael gets all wah-wah about having no father to call his own (he really needs to consult with Maria on how to get the most "no dad!" bang for his buck, because this is a lifestyle choice that really seems to suit her) and opts out of said weekend. Shut up, Liz. Oh, wait, she wasn't even in that scene.
Upstairs at the Parker residence, Slackjaw is wandering about aimlessly as if he's seeing his own house for the very first time. Which really is the miracle of being so simple, I suppose. I think we've all learned a valuable lesson today. Anyway, he ambles into Liz's room, perhaps thinking it's the bathroom or the circus (remember, he's simple), and right on cue she exits the bathroom wearing, OH MY GOD, only a bra. Calamity ensues. As she reaches for her robe, Slackjaw notes that "I've got to get better at this privacy thing." Dude, did you just, like, find a sixteen-year-old in a basket on your stoop? And I know this isn't some "let's learn to cope because you're motherless" thing, because we know her mom is around somewhere, respecting her daughter's privacy so vigorously that we haven't heard so much as a "Liz, you still alive up there?" out of her in almost two months. Slackjaw brings up the camping trip again, telling her that "he wouldn't miss it for anything." She lies and agrees that going would be just super, listening intently as Slackjaw says it will be great for him to meet all of her little friends, like that fellow Max and his sister, and even Michael, "that guy with the hair." Oooh, very good, Slackjaw. See, even though he didn't know we ALL have hair, did you see how he recognized that someone has more hair than another person? Keep up the hard thinking, Slackjaw! You'll be out of art therapy before you know it. Liz says she doubts that those guys, or their hair, are even going, and Slackjaw retorts, "Well, I guess some fathers aren't as involved in their kids' lives." Wrong answer, Slackjaw. Why don't you go take some relevance lessons from my new hero of stage and screen "Camping Flyer" and come back when this mess is over? Oh, Camping Flyer. You're gonna be big one day. Big as any paper-goods product has ever been in this business. You may even one day become more famous than the leading star in your genre, "Calendar Pages Flipping By to Connote the Passage of Time." Dare to dream, Camping Flyer -- dare to dream.
From the middle-class tedium of the Parker house to the wrong-side-of-the-set degradation of Michael's housemobile, we join the Roswell ghetto already in progress. Michael slams the rusting-off-its-hinges screen door and walks outside to the dining table. Michael and his foster father are in a big fight, but this moment is important as it confirms that Michael has apparently, in fact, been adopted by Tony Clifton. The subsequent exchange between them is such an adept depiction of the browbeaten working poor that I'm sure lower-income Americans who live in trailer parks were actively recruited to write this crackling dialogue. In fact, let me share some with you now. The action surrounds Michael sitting down to his dinner, a heaping bowl of Life cereal:
Michael: There's no milk.
Tony Clifton: Use beer! [beat] I thought I told you to wash the dishes.
Michael: Hey, I'm eatin' dinner.
Tony Clifton: Oh, that's what you call dinner.
Michael: Yeah, like you care.
Keep in mind, people, someone actually sat at a blank computer screen and decided (as in, "engaged himself in so-called 'reasonable' thought") to fill the screen with the above dialogue. And hey, if he's eating cereal for dinner every night, when did Michael find time to get so puffy in the last few months? I've never seen "bacon and chocolate cake" cereal before, but clearly Michael has greater access to these products than someone of my more diminutive weight. And his acting is a little suspect in this scene, I might point out. But I suppose those are the risks of playing against the honed comic brilliance of the great Tony Clifton. Someone catches Michael's eye from afar, and he runs over to discover River Dog, apparently having taken lessons in guileless ambling from Slackjaw, sauntering about the trailer park as if he's just window-shopping for some poverty of his own. And this is where the episode should really have started. River Dog asks Michael if he "saw it," and it takes Michael a moment to realize that all this "sighting" mumbo-jumbo isn't the hoax he had initially believed. Michael asks how River Dog knows, and he cryptically responds, "I've seen it before." Yeah, I've pretty much seen all this before, too. Except for the acting acumen of that wunderkind flyer. I'm just sayin' . . .
I don't want to say anything, but I'm starting to think Maria might have killed her dad and gotten away with it. We open on Liz toting her weekend luggage downstairs in the Crashdown, begging Maria to accompany her. Maria gleefully revisits her restrictive "anti-father" policy when Liz tells her that she can't imagine being with her father for so long, confirming that she's "always found fathers grossly overrated." Liz finally flat-out resorts to bribery, and they settle on a $62.50 compromise by which Maria will accompany a girl so hapless and pathetic she wouldn't recognize the expression "friend without strings" if the words came squirting out of an Aqua Bra and spelled out the letters on the floor. Liz manufactures another just-plain-bad attempt at a sneeze, and Maria pulls a plastic bag out of her Crashdown locker and tells Liz to take some of this echinacea and goldenseal. Well, you know what they say about fake herbal medication killing off the germs that cause fake colds. Anyway, Slackjaw stands at the top of the steps while Liz hands Maria money and Maria hands Liz a bag of pills. Liz closes her locker and walks away scratching her nose madly, as Slackjaw looks in the horror at the realization that taking drugs in pill form somehow makes you a cocaine addict. Or whatever. Because if I were really to get nit-picky (and judging from the already madcap length of this recap, I'm helpless to stop myself), I'd point out that this Three's Company crossed-signals-and-misunderstandings plot ("You thought I said Jack was going to kill Mr. Roper? No, Chrissie, I was merely saying that Jack can act like such a dope, er!" I mean, really, how much misunderstanding can there really be through that not-at-all-soundproof swinging kitchen door? But I digress -- wildly) cannot be more done done done. With a capital DONE.
Porno's office. Kyle has dropped by for a little father/son bonding of his own, and the highlight of this scene is actually in the first five seconds during which I have to watch him actually deadpan the line, "I'm sixteen," without adding "years away from retirement." Porno storms into the office, ranting about the hiker, the fisher, and everyone else who has spilled their story about the sighting and it's turning into such a media event and one heaping tablespoon of blah blah blah. He finally looks up long enough to register Kyle's presence in the room, pausing to ask why he isn't in school. Kyle responds that he has third period free and he came by to buy a tent for the big ol', say it with me, father camping weekend: "The only two days in a row we get to spend together all year." But Porno has to cancel. He has to rush the search for whatever is out there before the FBI and the media get there first. Sitting in the sinister dim shade of Porno's office, Kyle broods about his daddy not loving him enough to spend any time with him. Porno tells Kyle that he'll tell someone named "Coach Clay" to "take care of you this weekend," and I wonder if he's unearthed some paternal loophole by which you can appoint a proxy dad. All I'm saying is that I don't want to be around when the staunchly anti-dad Maria hears about this controversial new development in parenting.
Cut to the Crashdown, where Max, Michael, and Isabel probably had to do this scene over and over and over again until they could finally stop themselves from looking directly into the camera and muttering, "But we've said all of these words already." Michael has already related the story about River Dog's impromptu pop-in at The Town on Wheels, and the other two note that this proof of the sighting "could even lead to actual contact." Michael goes into a little tirade about how River Dog healed him when he was sick (even though aliens don't get sick) and the fact that he got those stones (because rocks are pretty hard to come by in the middle of a forest). Michael surmises that, rather than leading them to another alien, River Dog is another alien himself. Huh? This scene = strictly filler.
Cut to another non-scene across the Crashdown, where Alex tells Liz about how "amazing" Isabel is. He then freaks out and suddenly can't process how Isabel Evans would like a guy like him, and he refers to himself assassin-style in the third person using all three names, like, eleven times: "Alex Charles Whitman, Alex Charles Whitman, Alex Charles Whitman." He finally excuses himself to go froth psychotically at the mouth in a private and secure location, and Maria slides up in time to warn Liz -- again -- that "these Czechoslovakians have way too weird of an effect on us." Shut up, third-episode storyline. Liz tells Maria that she has been successfully avoiding Max, and Maria wants to know in turn why he is staring at her. Er, probably because he's standing, cash in hand, at the register, and she is a waitress. And isn't attending to your customer's needs, like, a cornerstone of the food service industry? Take off that cheesy waitress outfit and the degrading tin-foil tiara and see how much staring he does then. Anyway, Maria is forced to suck dry the teat of her already drained "wacky redux" subplot, demanding that Liz "make him think that you are over him -- lie if you have to." And that's just what Maria does, badly I might add, and she and Liz tell Max and Michael that they have big dates this weekend with, get this, "some college guys that we met." Michael shoots that "remember how I don't give a shit about you" glare Maria's way, though Max seems secure in the knowledge that there is no institution of higher learning within a 500-mile radius of where they're currently standing. As they leave, we cut to ACW stalking Isabel over at her table, and when she tells him that she has to cancel their "normal movie" plan in favor of camping with her dad (which really should have signaled "blow-off in progress" right about there), ACW plays it smooth and tells her, wouldja believe it, he's going camping that weekend too. Y'know, she's still way out of his league. But he's getting better by the second.
Check-in at the buses to the camp site, and all the usual suspects are there. ACW has recruited the meekest, most tweed-coated man in town to be his father. Max and Isabel's (new) dad expresses curiosity as to why his low-octane, yawn-contest-going kids would want to take part in this unusually movement-requiring ritual. Slackjaw yuks, guffaws, and hee-haws his way through telling Liz and Maria how darn tootin' he is that they're all spending some time together away from it all. But before he gets to the end of his suddenly ironic homily on the benefits of outdoorsy solitude, Liz and Maria spot Max and freak out. Shut up, Liz. Kyle, meanwhile, runs into the great Coach Clay, who too-happily winks, "I hear we're going to be bunking together on this trip." Kyle falls into the trap with, "Pinch me." But just before the coach gets around to administering said pinch, Porno shows up to save the day. "I thought you had to work," Kyle says. Yeah, now there's an opening for the position of "crackpot loony." The fathers all vaguely meet, and ACW's suddenly prominent father comments to Porno, "The sighting. Isn't it close to where we're going?" Yeah, we remember that's why everyone is going. We haven't forgotten since it was last mentioned eight seconds ago. We know. The Ulterior Motive Patrol is already on the case. Everyone's got a reason for traipsing into the brush, and not one of those reasons has anything to do with hanging out with a father. So why make it the plot in the first place? Max spots Liz and Maria. Snide comments about expensive dinners and the college boys who provide them ensue. Meanwhile, outside the bus, Porno is acting on the suspicion of seeing Max and Isabel show up, lingering around the bus that will take them into the woods, flagrantly displaying "Intent To Camp." He makes a quick cell phone call back to the police station and manages to deliver the single most insanely improbable line of this episode: "I think something might happen tonight." I don't want to be the one to kill that idea, Porno, but I've been watching this episode and I just thought I'd advise you accordingly so there's no question about it later: Don't. Hold. Your. Breath.
I hate this episode. There, I said it. I hate, hate, hate it. As in abhor, despise, revile, and scorn. So much do I hate it that I was able to conjure four SAT-sanctioned synonyms without benefit of thesaurus. So freely through my bloodstream does the venom now flow. It's predictable and repetitive and ridiculous and repetitive. And pointless. And futile, stupid, and vain. And repetitive. Put it this way: In the MBTV Style Guide I received shortly after I accepted this odious (detestable, loathsome, horrid, shocking) task, one of the guidelines to follow in putting a recap together was the seemingly innocuous "shoehorn the major plot points in." But wasn't that back in the heady days when a show could be criticized on the basis of being "too plot-driven" or "too character-driven?" What's the statute of limitations for freaking out because a show can't even find the keys to the goddamn car? So let's take stock and pull ourselves together before my roommate comes home and finds me swinging naked from the chandelier crying out my new primal-scream therapy song, "La la lee lee loooooooo" so loudly it drives the neighbors to call the police. Again.
Shot of dozens of unheralded extras meandering around a woodsy set so fake that it looks like every plastic flower arrangement has been collected from every motel and cheap diner on Long Island and patched together with some green spray paint and the dead Christmas tree that's still in my living room. Everyone's getting set up. Porno uses his cell phone reception as an excuse to set up camp right to the Evans clan, just as Slackjaw enters the scene and sets up right along with them. Cut to later that night, where, thrown together by both contractual obligation and criminally unintuitive fathers, they roast some marshmallows and tell some scary campfire stories about -- guess it for a dollar -- aliens. Cut to them playing poker. He and Slackjaw go down to the wire, and Mr. Parker becomes suddenly hostile with the bizarrely out-of-context line, "What are you hiding, Max? You got some power over these guys, makes them do exactly what you want?" Dude, you just raised him a quarter and called. A quarter. Anyway, Slackjaw has a full house, but so does Max and his full house is higher. But he changes the cards to lose on purpose. I don't know why. All I have to do is shoehorn in those plot points. No one ever said anything about being clever. That was just gravy.
Over in some other unsupervised corner, Isabel shows Alex some stars. He accidentally says "date," and she freaks. Because she can't get involved with anything. And to hear this exact conversation again with the gender/alien roles reversed, Max runs into Liz and tells her that he wanted things to "slow down, not screech to a halt." But she's made him a part of this, and now she won't let him in.
And speaking of letting people in, that's easy to do when your house is made of material that can be huffed, puffed, and otherwise blown in. Back in Gratuitous Poverty Land, Michael is snugly tucked away in the burlap sack stuffed with old newspapers and eviction notices he calls a bed. The door swings open to reveal River Dog coming to get him and tells him "it's time."
Slackjaw-bound, Liz returns from her enervating conversation with Max to find her father snooping around in the tent. He takes out the plastic bag and asks her to explain. She tells him about the herbal remedies, adding, "You take it when you're getting a cold," and I marvel for once that the director had the discipline to keep her from sneezing at that moment. Slackjaw lapses into another speech about not feeling like he's part of Liz's life anymore, and the scene just ends, exhausted from making so many people hate it. And as sleepy time descends upon Camp Blah, I rejoice for once in my decision not to get cable in my current apartment, because without bunny ears on top of the TV, there's nothing really handy to impale oneself on. This is of particular concern considering that The Good Book is back in full effect. This entry is mostly drowned out by the sound of me finally lashing out in a fury, tearing the plug out of my wall, and pitching my ten-year-old wood-paneled TV out of my second-story window, carrying with it the deluded misconception that if the characters fall from such a great height within my television, they will somehow be damaged in the fall as well.
Liz is wandering in the woods in the middle of the night. Then she runs into Max and Isabel. Then they have to get to the sighting before anyone else. Then Isabel storms off and they all follow. Then Porno is wandering somewhere else, and sees them walk off. Then there are three minutes of commercials. Then they're doing the same thing when we come back. Then they hear dogs chasing them, and Liz sacrifices herself and Maria for the good of Max and Isabel: "The important thing is that you find what you're looking for." They let the Evans kids take off and claim to just have gotten lost in the woods when they attract the attention of the search party. Meanwhile, Michael and River Dog traipse through the same woods. River Dog falls. He thinks he's broken his ankle. Michael tells him to fix it, and it slowly dawns on River Dog that Michael thinks River Dog is their father. He's not. Michael fixes the ankle. River Dog will not be his father figure. Till the end of time. Especially poignant in an episode where -- oh, never mind. I was going to pretend to not hate it anymore. And then it dawns on me: I still hate it.
Why a new paragraph, Djb? They're still in the woods, after all. Mr. Parker runs over to Maria and Liz, claiming that their disappearance "scared me to death," not adding, "I even forget my own name, sometimes. That scares me too." Mr. Parker makes his way over to the officer and asks if they found anyone else. The officer indicates a handcuffed and livid Bania the Curator being hauled into a police car and informs Mr. Evans, "I found him wandering around the woods with a metal detector, looking for spaceships." More non-drama: neglected Kyle sneaks up on Porno spying on Max and Isabel in the woods. By divine coincidence signaling that the episode has thrown directorial credibility out the window in a vain attempt to close out the hour, the Alien Three and River Dog just plain run into each other in a well-marked clearing, under the prying eyes of no one. Even though everyone from their parents to the police to the FBI to Hard Copy is looking for them. Porno, for one, is stymied in his search due to Kyle's nagging interference: "How many times have I heard the stories, dad? How many times, you sittin' at home listening to Grandma cry while Grandpa spent the night chasing spacemen out in the woods? That's my role now, isn't it?" Yes, Kyle, that's your role. You're Grandma. Kyle surmises that Porno never went to see his father again because "to him, you were just a low priority." And for a little extra cheese on his wah-burger, Kyle tacks on the eye-rolling, "It's ironic." No, it's not.
The Alien Three and River Dog look into the grass, where a blue spray-painted shape which appears to be a product placement for Sephora glows up from the ground. "It's a sign," River Dog offers. What? WHAT? Luckily, Porno comes along just in time for us to learn absolutely nothing at all about what the holy living hell anyone is talking about. Max makes the symbol disappear, and leaves Porno standing alone in shock when they tell him that they'd gotten lost. And speaking of lost, if there were a plot, I'd be cut adrift in it somewhere. In the final sequence of this week's episode, we see Porno entering some kind of ambiguous old folks home/loony bin, where Porno Senior has apparently been stashed to live out the rest of his days. Porno attempts to make peace: "Maybe you were right. Maybe you were right all along." Yes, exactly. Exactly nine seconds left in the episode, that is. And three of them belong to the "Executive Producer: Jason Katims" screen, and I slam down the well-trodden pause button one last time so I'm sure to get the spelling right when I add his name to my increasingly long list of people to hurt. Very, very badly.