Fade in on just another day at West Roswell High, where Liz "Winnie Cooper from Hell" Parker and Maria "Farrah Fawcett from New Mexico" DeLuca stroll casually down the always-mysteriously-shadowed hallway. Liz gives new meaning to the compound verb infinitive "to blather on criminally" while grabbing Maria's arm in the dawning realization that if she let go, Maria would become as conspicuously absent as the sense of style in this sequence. I mean, really people, listen to this unfashion show: Maria's raw-umber-themed deep focus regatta-backdrop long-sleeved tee with the light blue sleeves has its design origins with the "All You Need Is Two Stoned Designers And A Flashback" label. And what the hell kind of shirt has a backdrop, anyway? Liz's more understated atrocity leaves normal with unmatching bright red shoulder patches that look like stitched-together alms befitting an eighteenth-century Oliver-esque urchin with a cockney accent saying young-British-urchin things like, "Thank'ee, gov'nah, for these right dec'rous togs ya saw fit to b'queath."
Anyway, Liz indicates to an already disinterested audience of me that precious little has transpired in her life this past week, as her topic for discussion is her latest kiss with Max Evans. Yeah, yeah, it was amazing, it was earth-shattering, it was inexplicable. I guess Liz's brain has conveniently omitted the part where the aftermath of said kiss led to the other kisser fleeing from the scene as if he had just power-smooched a big box filled with broken glass. So as they reach Maria's locker and her frustration with Liz's insipid "well, he was, it was, duh" rhetoric reaches an unusually obvious fever-pitch, Maria chooses to hide behind her herbal remedies and tries to calm Liz down with a few eye droppers-ful with something called "grief relief. I got it from my mother's shop. It's this herbal remedy that shocks the body back into reality when the mind's gone into overload." Oh please God, just let it be arsenic and we can be done with this whole thing right now. She offers the elixir to Liz and suggests that it may be necessary for use at some future time. Maria then indicates the impending arrival of Max "Insert Ostensibly Passé Ear Humor Here" Evans, walking toward them. Maria's off, and Max and Liz are alone. Max stares ambiguously down at Liz and inquires, "What's that?" Thinking he means her Victorian-Era Vagrant shirt, I begin loudly ad-libbing, "Well, Maxwell, these togs is..." But apparently he simply meant the crack vial Maria has handed off, and Liz quashes the topic altogether by assuring Max that it's "nothink." Due to the obvious time constraints of this already eternal opening sequence, Liz forgoes the necessary segue and skips right to "Y'know, Max, the other night when we kissed . . ." But before Liz has a chance to launch into a big prepared speech brought to you by the letter "I" and the number "1," because of how much it looks like "I," Isabel interrupts and tells Max that Michael has been acting weird. Max, ahem, jokes, "Weirder than usual?" and I even pass my hands over my eyes for a moment, like when people watch horror movies, suddenly gripped with panic that Max's quip is about to yield another one of those macabre grins we were subjected to last week. But Max is back to his old, just-plain-uninteresting self, and I for one could not be more relieved for this compulsory return to form. Isabel remains really cagey about whatever it is that's bothering Michael, and it seems like her entire motive is in getting Max to follow Michael into the bathroom to "see what's going on." It's such a staged, inauthentic moment that if someone approached me and gave me said speech, I would never hesitate in my instantly formed belief that, "Oh, cool. Surprise party for me in the bathroom." That's just how narcissistic I am.
So Max leaves Liz with barely a word, and into the boys' room we go. Michael is slumped over the sink, washing his face madly. Upon Max's approach, Michael recoils and demands privacy. He then recreates an event in which I partook exactly zero times in the entire course of my high school career and walks into a stall. Max walks to said stall, and Michael again demands that Max leave him alone. Max finally fake obliges, leaving me wondering if anyone thought he wasn't going to open the door, pretend to leave, and remain in the bathroom. Pretty much the only person who misses out on this brilliant scheme is Michael himself, who waits the requisite no seconds before exiting. Much to the surprise of the people who watch this show but have somehow not seen any of the six thousand promos leading up to it, Michael has a black eye. And really weird teeth. One of these things is new, and one has been there all along, but right now I'm just too giddy at the prospect of this show trying to take on a Big Issue with the vaguest modicum of subtlety or tact to remember which one is which.
Discredits.
In the most clichéd use of locomotive imagery as harbinger of evil since damsels in distress were tied to train tracks in turn-of-the-century silent movies, Max and Michael stand morosely watching a freight train separate the right and wrong sides of town. You know you've got a screwed up socioeconomic environment in a place where tacky neon diners and tourists in trailers connotes "right." Max inquires as to Michael's unfortunate run-in with his unconvincing purple stage make-up, and Michael replies that "he was drunk." Apparently, Michael's foster father (a.k.a. "Tony Clifton") has laid a hand on him before, just never this badly. Max worries that people are going to ask questions, and Michael asks Max to fix it. I think he mumbles something about trying to heal it himself, but I'm sure all he was able to do on contact was "make it really itchy," as the extent of Michael's powers has repeatedly indicated. Foregoing the "maybe we should just wait and see if that doesn't heal itself" non-bravura performance, Max heals the eye and tells Michael -- and not for the final time, I'm sure -- that "you don't have to protect him. He's not even your real father." Wow, isn't this a frighteningly sanitized perspective on the part of the WB that domestic abuse only happens in lower-class environments to adopted children? The impoverished really are savages, aren't they? Oh, Christ, look at what this show has done to me -- I'm actually grounding my evolving world view in the sociological teachings of Michigan J. Frog. So Max waves a hand or whatever he does and manipulates molecular structure once more. You know what's quaint and a little sad? That the writers genuinely believe that every time an alien works his or her mad voodoo shit, the moment can be imbued with drama enough to make us all "oooooooh." Like we've never, ever seen anything like it since, say, the last episode. Michael makes Max swear that the entire situation is between "you and me," and one can practically see the skid marks left by the Alienmobile as Max steams toward town to start breaking his promise as soon as non-humanly possible.
Michael ends the scene with the words "you and me." Maria and Liz begin the scene with the words "you and me." Speaking of you and me, let's get the hell out of here. Because everything's about to go very, very wrong. Cut to Liz and Maria, of all places, on shift at the Crashdown. And they are talking about, of all things, how they have to stay away from Max and Michael because they know it can't work in the end and it can't be and those aliens are like a drug and blah blah blah spacecakes. Maria even invokes a cultural reference that died about three years before she was born by telling Liz that they have to "just say no" and, brandishing a frying pan, adds that "this is your brain on Max." Oh, har har har, but purely in that 1986 "Where's The Beef?" kind of way. In walks DeLucawitz, toting, for some reason, a whole lotta pies. On the word "coconut," an always-lascivious Porno sidles up with just plain carnal pick-up lines from the dating advice column in Maxim magazine, including, "That looks awful good. And so do you, Amy." For some reason, this material seems to be working. DeLucawitz flirtily chides Porno for, um, finishing too quickly on their two attempts at an outing, and Porno tells her that sometimes work calls. Because that was back in the day when there were alleged aliens running around this town and Porno was on the hunt to track them down. DeLucawitz counters, "But when I make a pie for someone, I expect it to get eaten." AUGH! Porno fires off an equally TV-14 comeback about eating whatever she makes, and I wonder if this scene's hidden ironic intent was to use really yummy-looking baked goods to make me physically ill by the prospect of ever eating again. Ever.
Commercials: Good thing Arsenio's cultural viability has totally sustained this fertile new 1-800-COLLECT period of his artistic development.
Michael arrives at The House That Drives, entering to find Tony Clifton watching television. Tony takes his drink away from his lips long enough to inquire, "Where the hell have you been?" He never even leaves the comfort of his Un-EZ Chair (called so because out here, nothing is ever EZ) to face Michael. Michael opens the refrigerator door, remembers that the only options for cuisine on this show are Bangs's cooking and Sex Pies, thinks better of eating, goes in his room, slams the door, and lies down. Hey, careful of the bedhead, Michael, it can really screw up your -- oh, never mind.
Meanwhile, back inside the migraine that is The DeLucawitz Situation, Maria and her mother share tense words over their respective relationships. Maria, remembering that she is in real life older than the character playing her mother, reverses the parenting roles for a moment and tells DeLucawitz that she doesn't want her mother "to rush into anything." Her mother, continuing her series of poorly shrouded sexual allusions, responds, "Anything? Or Jim Valenti?" Again, ew. And by technical definition, if you're really trying to up the repugnancy ante as high as it can go, I believe the correct terminology would actually be allowing Jim Valenti to rush into you. Either way, kill me. Maria tells DeLucawitz that he wants what all men wants, and that "he's a cop and you're a hippie." Yeah, drop that hippie plot line thing. She's playing forty and it's a dead end. I'm just sayin'. For once heeding my always spot-on advice, Maria changes directions and tells her mother that Porno is the kind of tough-guy man who can't open up and won't share his feelings and other male-oriented clichés that are always, always true. On television. One character finally calling another on his or her extremely transparent inner monologue, DeLucawitz assures Maria that "Michael will come around." Maria warns that once men get what they want, they disappear. DeLucawitz hopes Maria's not talking from experience. I wish they weren't talking at all.
Michael, the one character on this show who does not represent the creamy-nougat middle-class in its complex totality, continues to lie in bed. Once again making it amply clear that there is no government surplus of good dialogue for consumption by the penniless, Tony Clifton and Michael engage in the following witty repartee:
Tony Clifton: I told you to do the wash.
Michael: I'll do it later.
Tony Clifton: Today!
Michael: I'm not your maid.
Tony Clifton: You're right. You're good for nothing. Do the wash now.
Bravo, I cry through the tears. Bravo, indeed! Oh my God. This so cannot be happening. Michael tells Tony Clifton to go to hell, and Tony Clifton responds by yelling something incomprehensible about Michael's parents and then throws the contents of the laundry basket all over his browbeaten foster son. Ow! Big fluffy cotton clothes! I can practically feel the low thread count of the Wal-Mart brand name chafing against my own sensitive skin! A shouting match ensues, Michael crying, "You're a man who keeps me around just to collect a monthly check." And even if that snippet of dialogue hadn't been featured in the "previously" section this week, I'd still remember that the identical line was used in the Pilot. I'm just that pathetic. At this point, Max and Isabel come running into the so-called "house" unannounced. Apparently, they heard some yelling even through the thick, currency-papered walls of their ivory tower. How good of them to investigate. Tony Clifton, spotting Isabel, asks the lady if she wants a drink. A fracas erupts when Isabel apprehends the drink from Tony Clifton's hand and throws it at him. Wow, Isabel. How very Sassy Old-West Dame of you. But Tony Clifton fails to view the situation from the same historical perspective as I do. She threatens, "If you ever touch Michael again I will kill you" and Tony Clifton counters by grabbing a Daisy Air Rifle of his own. But before he gets around to yelling more drunken threats and accidentally shooting himself, Michael holds out a hand and . . . makes Tony Clifton really, really itchy! Kidding. But how surprising would that not have been? Instead, Michael goes full-tilt Carrie on his father (he's not my real father, man!) and makes some chairs blow all around the room. What a productive use of your powers, Michael. So the Alien Three run like hell, leaving Tony Clifton hurling horrible epithets, including "you're a freak," after them.
Cut to inside the Alienmobile, where the three of them have apparently decided to drive and drive and drive until finding the protective asylum of . . . the front lawn of Michael's house. Michael again guilts Isabel and Max for having something to hold onto in Roswell, telling them that Tony Clifton was "the only thing I had, and now you guys screwed that up for good." But he was drunk, they say. He won't remember in the morning, they say. We're sorry, djb, they say. We'll knock off early and avoid ruining another one of your weekends, they say. Actually, they leave out the last part for some awful reason. Michael says he doesn't belong anywhere, and Isabel has a lovely moment where she asks Michael is it would kill him "to ask for help just once." So he storms off. Again. Remember the one scene in this episode that ended without Michael playing another round of Super Wah-Wah and running off somewhere? No? Funny, that. Neither do I.
Suddenly it's raining, as it only does in the desert when it's utterly essential for dramatic effect. Maria looks out her window to see Michael outside. But he's not the man she's had the nookie with before. What with his wet and matted down hair, he's easily six inches shorter. And this cleanliness thing doesn't do a whole lot for him, either. But it's all good, because the dialogue-free nature allows for a far briefer conclusion to this sequence. She mouths words through the window he cannot hear, ending with her repeated exclamations of "no, no, no, no, no." Good thing all chicks mean "yes" when they say "no," eh Michael? I'm sure that's a Tony Clifton-esque lesson you've learned well. Because we cut to Maria toweling Michael off, then undressing him and putting him in her bed They lie in bed together. But the water keeps coming. He's crying. This uncharacteristic display of human emotion actually brings a tear to my own eye. Then I ask my roommate to help me extract the butter knife I've just inadvertently shoved in my eye in an attempt to gouge it out as to avoid watching the rest of the scene.
Crashdown, where -- yuck, who the hell is that? Oh, it's Liz. I should have known from the uniform and the sweeping and the grating speech pattern and the way she isn't listening to the problems of anyone but herself. But I guess I chose to ignore all that, now didn't I? She's ranting about a totally unrelated non-plot point for the better part of the episode, indicating that it is indeed Congressional Filibuster Hour inside of Liz Parker's brain once more. She then has the audacity to ask Maria, "Are you even listening to me?" But Maria is for once sullen and mopey herself, so Liz finally finds a dark corner for her own weighty personal baggage and gets around to asking Maria, "What's wronk?" At this moment they are interrupted by Isabel, who runs in asking after Michael. Maria plays aloof in telling Isabel that she's worried about Michael too and wants to know what the big deal is. Displaying further proof of the Alien Three's only conditional loyalty to each other, Isabel somehow manages to wrap the contrasting statements "It's Hank. He's been hurting him and Max and I are trying to help" and "Michael made us promise not to say anything" into one breath and still make it all sound believable. Maria cops to Michael's presence in her bed, ending said admission with, "I haven't seen him since." You guys? YOU GUYS? I know it's kind of an uncharacteristic move for him and all, but didn't he, like, spend the entire day in school? Clarifying this knotty plot point, the only other person who saw fit to access the many benefits of a secondary school education, Max, runs in and informs the other three about Michael's apprehension by Porno. Like I care.
DeLucawitz arrives back at New Set. Maria tells her about Michael being in jail and all. And if I were Maria's mother, which I'm not, this what I'd say: "Standardize the damned haircut already, okay? You look like a different person every week, and never a particularly fetching one in any of your numerous incarnations. No child of mine is going to march around the streets of this town looking like she's in the goddamn Witness Protection Program." Oops, that would be a bit off-topic, though, wouldn't it? But you still couldn't stop me from saying it. So I'd finish up that important parenting tip, and then I'd say, "Maria, why is your fake-boyfriend in jail? And why on earth are you telling me about it?" Turns out Michael decided not to rat out Maria and never produced an alibi for the evening. She needs DeLucawitz to talk to Porno and tell him that Michael was on New Set the whole time. Which is nice and very, very noble, what with the bonding and the "can I trust you" mother/daughter spiel. But unless I'm missing something significant here, the noises coming from The House That Drives (the yelling, the gunshot, et. al.) actually occurred while Michael was there, before he ever arrived on New Set at all. We don't know how and why Tony Clifton disappeared, but that was never really part of the conversation, now was it? Hence, we cut to the police station, where Maria's process of making a pathetic, unwitting pawn out of her mother is now nearly complete. Valenti believes DeLucawitz: "If you say he was at your house, he was at your house." But DeLucawitz asks why Porno believes her and not Maria. Maybe because Porno pretty much hates anyone excepting those who bring to the table the possibility of him getting laid? It's just a theory.
Kitchen. Chez Evans. It's the morning, and Michael is for some reason in the kitchen making breakfast. And for a guy who ate his dinner with the cannibalistic gusto of an anthropological study in a National Geographic feature just days before, Michael certainly is adept at laying out the numerous ingredients necessary for breakfast preparation. Isabel enters. She is glad he is there. Bangs and Our Father the Savior enter and regard Michael skeptically, until Michael is finally able to break through his own tough-guy veneer and ask Our Father the Savior for help in becoming emancipated. Wow, this man really is God, as we cut to the scene where Michael, ruffian outsider with a problematic adoption record, numerous skirmishes with local law enforcement, and limited social connections to either adults or peers of any kind, signs the papers that set him free. It makes absolutely no sense at all, but if it gets us closer to ending the episode, you're not gonna hear a peep out of me about it.
Hey, it's the last two minutes of the episode! Someone turn on Roswell! Cut to Porno's office, where Tony Clifton enters and tells Porno to call off the search for him. Porno asks about the gunshot, and Tony Clifton advises him to "never clean a gun while you're drinking." Words for us all to live by, really. Anyway, he announces that he's hitching up the trailer and leaving town for good. Porno advises him to do so quickly, to which Tony Clifton enigmatically announces (well, enigmatically for the twelve seconds) that "I'm already gone." Hey, I wonder if that means he's the shape-shifting alien we've heard almost nothing about during the last hour. Turns out he is. Cut to a beat-up station wagon in the middle of nowhere. Tony Clifton pops some pills, exits the vehicle, and opens the trunk, from which he extracts . . . another Tony Clifton. Under the bright glow of the giant flood light, I mean "extremely realistic moon," one Tony buries another in a shallow grave and returns to his car. He shuts the door, holds up a hand, another bright light glows. Cut to exterior view of the car, shaking and quaking with the special-effects reality of Plan 9's cutting room floor footage. Back inside, Tony Clifton, er, shifts shape. Hey, slickster, nice goatee. He pops some more pills, drives out of the shot, and I'm back in the bathroom concentrating on that pesky ring around the shower drain before I'm subjected once more to hearing the Collective Soul song in the "songs from this week" that made Michael so damned weepy in the first place.
Discredits.
In the most clichéd use of locomotive imagery as harbinger of evil since damsels in distress were tied to train tracks in turn-of-the-century silent movies, Max and Michael stand morosely watching a freight train separate the right and wrong sides of town. You know you've got a screwed up socioeconomic environment in a place where tacky neon diners and tourists in trailers connotes "right." Max inquires as to Michael's unfortunate run-in with his unconvincing purple stage make-up, and Michael replies that "he was drunk." Apparently, Michael's foster father (a.k.a. "Tony Clifton") has laid a hand on him before, just never this badly. Max worries that people are going to ask questions, and Michael asks Max to fix it. I think he mumbles something about trying to heal it himself, but I'm sure all he was able to do on contact was "make it really itchy," as the extent of Michael's powers has repeatedly indicated. Foregoing the "maybe we should just wait and see if that doesn't heal itself" non-bravura performance, Max heals the eye and tells Michael -- and not for the final time, I'm sure -- that "you don't have to protect him. He's not even your real father." Wow, isn't this a frighteningly sanitized perspective on the part of the WB that domestic abuse only happens in lower-class environments to adopted children? The impoverished really are savages, aren't they? Oh, Christ, look at what this show has done to me -- I'm actually grounding my evolving world view in the sociological teachings of Michigan J. Frog. So Max waves a hand or whatever he does and manipulates molecular structure once more. You know what's quaint and a little sad? That the writers genuinely believe that every time an alien works his or her mad voodoo shit, the moment can be imbued with drama enough to make us all "oooooooh." Like we've never, ever seen anything like it since, say, the last episode. Michael makes Max swear that the entire situation is between "you and me," and one can practically see the skid marks left by the Alienmobile as Max steams toward town to start breaking his promise as soon as non-humanly possible.
Michael ends the scene with the words "you and me." Maria and Liz begin the scene with the words "you and me." Speaking of you and me, let's get the hell out of here. Because everything's about to go very, very wrong. Cut to Liz and Maria, of all places, on shift at the Crashdown. And they are talking about, of all things, how they have to stay away from Max and Michael because they know it can't work in the end and it can't be and those aliens are like a drug and blah blah blah spacecakes. Maria even invokes a cultural reference that died about three years before she was born by telling Liz that they have to "just say no" and, brandishing a frying pan, adds that "this is your brain on Max." Oh, har har har, but purely in that 1986 "Where's The Beef?" kind of way. In walks DeLucawitz, toting, for some reason, a whole lotta pies. On the word "coconut," an always-lascivious Porno sidles up with just plain carnal pick-up lines from the dating advice column in Maxim magazine, including, "That looks awful good. And so do you, Amy." For some reason, this material seems to be working. DeLucawitz flirtily chides Porno for, um, finishing too quickly on their two attempts at an outing, and Porno tells her that sometimes work calls. Because that was back in the day when there were alleged aliens running around this town and Porno was on the hunt to track them down. DeLucawitz counters, "But when I make a pie for someone, I expect it to get eaten." AUGH! Porno fires off an equally TV-14 comeback about eating whatever she makes, and I wonder if this scene's hidden ironic intent was to use really yummy-looking baked goods to make me physically ill by the prospect of ever eating again. Ever.
Meanwhile, across the Crashdown, Max tells Isabel that "I promised I wouldn't tell anybody." Michael comes in. Isabel, clearly out of practice resulting from her deplorable under-use lately, can't act her way out of an alien pod in pretending she doesn't know what happened to Michael, and Michael sees right through her and storms out. The three share a large confrontation, in broad daylight, in the middle of the street, so loud and conspicuous it threatens to erupt into one of those full-scale, lavish musical numbers this show is so famous for. This unambiguous drama culminates with Michael telling the others that he can't expose his father and "bring all this attention to us." Whatever. Isabel reveals Tertiary Plot Attempt #6043b by telling Michael that her father, a lawyer, knew of a case where a minor was allowed permission to live on his own. Who? Cares? Use your powers on him, she suggests. Come stay with us, she suggests. Recalcitrant Michael finally agrees to the latter. Michael storms away, and Max asks how they'll explain this to their perfect suburban parents. Isabel says that they'll think of something, continuing the scene-to-scene annoying thematic linking with the hopeful statement, "I think it will be good for Michael to be part of the family."
Cut to dinner at Chez Evans, where Michael is deep in the process of being neither good nor part of the family. Bangs flits around the kitchen while the rest of the members sit in that "thank God money has come along and civilized us" kind of horror watching Michael shovel food onto his plate. Isabel whispers to Michael that they usually wait until everyone is sitting before they begin to eat because "it's polite." Oh, aren't they just the Perfect Suburban Family. It's like these people exist completely without subtext. But the poor cretin doesn't understand, even though he's been friends with the Evans siblings since he was six years old and has spent more than his fair share of nights sleeping on Max's floor. All I'm saying is that Michael, destitute as he seems to be, grew up in a very suburban area with relatively well-to-do friends. He's lived among them and learned their culture. He uses a fork and a knife at the Crashdown, so it stands to reason he would have mastered the basic tenets of public food consumption. I mean, he's not Encino Man, for cryin' out loud. Anyway, dinner convo is very, very strained. Max and Isabel make up stories about what Michael's father does and have apparently told Mom and Pop Evans that Tony Clifton is just away on business for a few days. Bangs serves some awful looking thing that I'm glad has nothing to do with pies, or with the sex that people seem to have when they eat pies.
Now this is just plain disgusting. Later the same evening, Maria and Liz arrive at the DeLuca residence. Hey, new place! You can practically hear the champagne corks popping on the sound stage as a Roswell Set Designer resets the "we have been [this many days] without a new set" counter from two billion days back to zero. Pie everywhere. Liz complains about being too tired to study, and as they dig into a pie for the practical purposes of a "sugar rush," Liz spots numerous other unfinished pies strewn all around the place. Perplexed moments of curious sleuthing ensue, culminating finally with Maria sitting down on Porno's hat. Strange, actually, considering that I always considered the hat to be Porno's locus of power, and I wondered where the extent of his virility would be if ever he were away from it for too long. DeLucawitz is on the front lines of discovering the answer to these questions, as from behind a door off the kitchen comes the girlish giggling of, well, hopefully it's her. Maria stomps around, making her entrance into the house known. DeLucawitz stumbles out of the room, and the hemming and the hawing reach their apex when Porno stumbles into the kitchen also. His shirt is kind of untucked, his hair is kind of askew, and there is a big cheesy lipstick smear on his face which looks more like the result of my great-aunt Sylvia from Lauderdale giving me an "I haven't seen you since you were THIS BIG" kiss on the cheek than the result of vigorous, ahem, pie-eating of any kind.
Oh, yes, weekday board-game hour with the parents. I remember that from my high-school days. Er, not. Back at Chez Evans, the Perfect Suburban Family plays a game of "Monopoly: A Parable for the Societal Gulf Between Rich and Poor." Oh, you say that's not the name of the game? Well, the Evanses must have a newer edition of it than you and I, because in this scene its primary purpose seems to be symbolizing the harshness of financial realities. Because I know so many people who spend their own lives traveling around a city, accruing their fortune in real-estate ventures from the comfort of their wheelbarrow. Michael owes Mr. Evans $975 and offers to "catch you time around." Oh, how the Perfect Suburban Family laughs at the folly! Isabel, sensing tension, offers to lend Michael the money, but Mr. Evans (nickname pending) clues him in on that "borrow from the bank" rule. I'm sorry, but has this show become so boring that I'm delivering a play-by-play commentary of a Monopoly game? Clearly, it has. Anyway, Michael gets all in a huff and storms off. Again. Isabel follows and apprehends him on the porch, telling him that he has to speak up, and that Our Father The Savior (there it is) can get him the help he needs. Michael tells Isabel that he doesn't want to become "the poster child for domestic abuse," perhaps because it would conflict with his current corporate sponsorship of the poster child for increasingly ferret-headed hair nightmares. I mean, really. It's only getting worse, and dramatically so. He leaves. Max comes onto the porch and tells Isabel that "you can't make up in one night what he hasn't had in a lifetime." I don't know. Someone had better run over to the new DeLucawitz set and tell that to Porno. I know he doesn't get a whole lot of that pie he was so recently taking a bite of, and judging by the sepulchral sneer plastered on his face, he was making up for a lot of lost time back there.
Commercials: Good thing Arsenio's cultural viability has totally sustained this fertile new 1-800-COLLECT period of his artistic development.
Michael arrives at The House That Drives, entering to find Tony Clifton watching television. Tony takes his drink away from his lips long enough to inquire, "Where the hell have you been?" He never even leaves the comfort of his Un-EZ Chair (called so because out here, nothing is ever EZ) to face Michael. Michael opens the refrigerator door, remembers that the only options for cuisine on this show are Bangs's cooking and Sex Pies, thinks better of eating, goes in his room, slams the door, and lies down. Hey, careful of the bedhead, Michael, it can really screw up your -- oh, never mind.
Meanwhile, back inside the migraine that is The DeLucawitz Situation, Maria and her mother share tense words over their respective relationships. Maria, remembering that she is in real life older than the character playing her mother, reverses the parenting roles for a moment and tells DeLucawitz that she doesn't want her mother "to rush into anything." Her mother, continuing her series of poorly shrouded sexual allusions, responds, "Anything? Or Jim Valenti?" Again, ew. And by technical definition, if you're really trying to up the repugnancy ante as high as it can go, I believe the correct terminology would actually be allowing Jim Valenti to rush into you. Either way, kill me. Maria tells DeLucawitz that he wants what all men wants, and that "he's a cop and you're a hippie." Yeah, drop that hippie plot line thing. She's playing forty and it's a dead end. I'm just sayin'. For once heeding my always spot-on advice, Maria changes directions and tells her mother that Porno is the kind of tough-guy man who can't open up and won't share his feelings and other male-oriented clichés that are always, always true. On television. One character finally calling another on his or her extremely transparent inner monologue, DeLucawitz assures Maria that "Michael will come around." Maria warns that once men get what they want, they disappear. DeLucawitz hopes Maria's not talking from experience. I wish they weren't talking at all.
Michael, the one character on this show who does not represent the creamy-nougat middle-class in its complex totality, continues to lie in bed. Once again making it amply clear that there is no government surplus of good dialogue for consumption by the penniless, Tony Clifton and Michael engage in the following witty repartee:
Tony Clifton: I told you to do the wash.
Michael: I'll do it later.
Tony Clifton: Today!
Michael: I'm not your maid.
Tony Clifton: You're right. You're good for nothing. Do the wash now.
Bravo, I cry through the tears. Bravo, indeed! Oh my God. This so cannot be happening. Michael tells Tony Clifton to go to hell, and Tony Clifton responds by yelling something incomprehensible about Michael's parents and then throws the contents of the laundry basket all over his browbeaten foster son. Ow! Big fluffy cotton clothes! I can practically feel the low thread count of the Wal-Mart brand name chafing against my own sensitive skin! A shouting match ensues, Michael crying, "You're a man who keeps me around just to collect a monthly check." And even if that snippet of dialogue hadn't been featured in the "previously" section this week, I'd still remember that the identical line was used in the Pilot. I'm just that pathetic. At this point, Max and Isabel come running into the so-called "house" unannounced. Apparently, they heard some yelling even through the thick, currency-papered walls of their ivory tower. How good of them to investigate. Tony Clifton, spotting Isabel, asks the lady if she wants a drink. A fracas erupts when Isabel apprehends the drink from Tony Clifton's hand and throws it at him. Wow, Isabel. How very Sassy Old-West Dame of you. But Tony Clifton fails to view the situation from the same historical perspective as I do. She threatens, "If you ever touch Michael again I will kill you" and Tony Clifton counters by grabbing a Daisy Air Rifle of his own. But before he gets around to yelling more drunken threats and accidentally shooting himself, Michael holds out a hand and . . . makes Tony Clifton really, really itchy! Kidding. But how surprising would that not have been? Instead, Michael goes full-tilt Carrie on his father (he's not my real father, man!) and makes some chairs blow all around the room. What a productive use of your powers, Michael. So the Alien Three run like hell, leaving Tony Clifton hurling horrible epithets, including "you're a freak," after them.
Cut to inside the Alienmobile, where the three of them have apparently decided to drive and drive and drive until finding the protective asylum of . . . the front lawn of Michael's house. Michael again guilts Isabel and Max for having something to hold onto in Roswell, telling them that Tony Clifton was "the only thing I had, and now you guys screwed that up for good." But he was drunk, they say. He won't remember in the morning, they say. We're sorry, djb, they say. We'll knock off early and avoid ruining another one of your weekends, they say. Actually, they leave out the last part for some awful reason. Michael says he doesn't belong anywhere, and Isabel has a lovely moment where she asks Michael is it would kill him "to ask for help just once." So he storms off. Again. Remember the one scene in this episode that ended without Michael playing another round of Super Wah-Wah and running off somewhere? No? Funny, that. Neither do I.
Suddenly it's raining, as it only does in the desert when it's utterly essential for dramatic effect. Maria looks out her window to see Michael outside. But he's not the man she's had the nookie with before. What with his wet and matted down hair, he's easily six inches shorter. And this cleanliness thing doesn't do a whole lot for him, either. But it's all good, because the dialogue-free nature allows for a far briefer conclusion to this sequence. She mouths words through the window he cannot hear, ending with her repeated exclamations of "no, no, no, no, no." Good thing all chicks mean "yes" when they say "no," eh Michael? I'm sure that's a Tony Clifton-esque lesson you've learned well. Because we cut to Maria toweling Michael off, then undressing him and putting him in her bed They lie in bed together. But the water keeps coming. He's crying. This uncharacteristic display of human emotion actually brings a tear to my own eye. Then I ask my roommate to help me extract the butter knife I've just inadvertently shoved in my eye in an attempt to gouge it out as to avoid watching the rest of the scene.
Allow me to digress for a moment before we return to the inaction in unprogress to let you know that I took a two-hour impromptu break from recapping to clean my bathroom. I did so without benefit of gloves, a sponge, or assistance from anyone besides my new best friend, Gross Shower Drain Bacteria. And it was still a more pleasurable, palatable experience than watching the remainder of this episode. Oh, and did I mention I cleaned the entire thing with my tongue? Still, though.
Returning from commercial, we find the daytime version of Michael and Maria in bed. The high drama over and the rain gone with it, Michael's hair has apparently returned to an alien's natural style of flat and lifeless rather than aloft and puffy, and for a moment I'm pretty sure that it's Max in bed with Maria. DeLucawitz enters and finds the two together, freaks out unsympathetically because she doesn't know Michael's plight of being really bad at Monopoly, and rants him right out of the house. She demands Maria's presence in the kitchen, presumably because the kitchen has better lighting for this particular mother/daughter confrontation. Cut to said brightly-lit kitchen, where Maria attests that all she and Michael did was sleep. DeLucawitz then proceeds to display the poorest example of parenting skills this side of Susan Smith in basically telling Maria that the reason she can't have boys sleep over is not because she's sixteen, not because she's living at home, not because all boys only want one thing, but instead because she can't abide by the fact that "it's okay for you and it's not okay for me." She then slides effortlessly into that parallel universe in which gritting your teeth and attempting speech through clenched jaws substitutes for acting concerned, telling Maria that "I can't go back and change my life, but I will be damned if I watch yours go down the same way." Cue tender woman-bonding music. Hang on, I think I missed a spot underneath the medicine cabinet. I'll be back in another two hours.
School. I just noticed that, for a show whose first half-dozen episodes kept us trapped in an educational setting more than Head of the Class, this is the first time we've been classroom-bound in a good long while. Tender music continues. Michael, apparently able to access whatever worthy-of-recall gel product necessary to reclaim his hair's usual, ferret-like form, sits in class. Knock on door. It's the police. They want Michael. Cut to Porno back in long-lost inquisition mode, asking Michael for an alibi for last night. Denial, denial, denial. Porno informs Michael that after a night of screaming and crying and a gunshot heard by neighbors, Tony Clifton has disappeared. Michael, alibi-free for the evening, looks very very guilty.
Crashdown, where -- yuck, who the hell is that? Oh, it's Liz. I should have known from the uniform and the sweeping and the grating speech pattern and the way she isn't listening to the problems of anyone but herself. But I guess I chose to ignore all that, now didn't I? She's ranting about a totally unrelated non-plot point for the better part of the episode, indicating that it is indeed Congressional Filibuster Hour inside of Liz Parker's brain once more. She then has the audacity to ask Maria, "Are you even listening to me?" But Maria is for once sullen and mopey herself, so Liz finally finds a dark corner for her own weighty personal baggage and gets around to asking Maria, "What's wronk?" At this moment they are interrupted by Isabel, who runs in asking after Michael. Maria plays aloof in telling Isabel that she's worried about Michael too and wants to know what the big deal is. Displaying further proof of the Alien Three's only conditional loyalty to each other, Isabel somehow manages to wrap the contrasting statements "It's Hank. He's been hurting him and Max and I are trying to help" and "Michael made us promise not to say anything" into one breath and still make it all sound believable. Maria cops to Michael's presence in her bed, ending said admission with, "I haven't seen him since." You guys? YOU GUYS? I know it's kind of an uncharacteristic move for him and all, but didn't he, like, spend the entire day in school? Clarifying this knotty plot point, the only other person who saw fit to access the many benefits of a secondary school education, Max, runs in and informs the other three about Michael's apprehension by Porno. Like I care.
DeLucawitz arrives back at New Set. Maria tells her about Michael being in jail and all. And if I were Maria's mother, which I'm not, this what I'd say: "Standardize the damned haircut already, okay? You look like a different person every week, and never a particularly fetching one in any of your numerous incarnations. No child of mine is going to march around the streets of this town looking like she's in the goddamn Witness Protection Program." Oops, that would be a bit off-topic, though, wouldn't it? But you still couldn't stop me from saying it. So I'd finish up that important parenting tip, and then I'd say, "Maria, why is your fake-boyfriend in jail? And why on earth are you telling me about it?" Turns out Michael decided not to rat out Maria and never produced an alibi for the evening. She needs DeLucawitz to talk to Porno and tell him that Michael was on New Set the whole time. Which is nice and very, very noble, what with the bonding and the "can I trust you" mother/daughter spiel. But unless I'm missing something significant here, the noises coming from The House That Drives (the yelling, the gunshot, et. al.) actually occurred while Michael was there, before he ever arrived on New Set at all. We don't know how and why Tony Clifton disappeared, but that was never really part of the conversation, now was it? Hence, we cut to the police station, where Maria's process of making a pathetic, unwitting pawn out of her mother is now nearly complete. Valenti believes DeLucawitz: "If you say he was at your house, he was at your house." But DeLucawitz asks why Porno believes her and not Maria. Maybe because Porno pretty much hates anyone excepting those who bring to the table the possibility of him getting laid? It's just a theory.
Alienmobile. Back at the fabled tracks. Michael tells Max and Isabel that Porno has promised to find him a "new foster situation," but then drifts back into that martyred speech about how any home he has will only be a cheap substitute for the real thing. He lambastes Max and Isabel once more for their comfy suburban lives causing them to become apathetic about finding their real home. The only thing keeping this theme from becoming really, really overdone is -- no, wait, there's nothing. I can't stand it for another second. So Michael runs away to find Nasedo, and Isabel finally gets pissed enough with Michael's ideas on family to tell him to "put up or shut up." Max agrees in the most tedious way possible, alerting Michael to the nature of whoever it is he's looking for: "I think it's not safe out there. I think Nasedo is dangerous, Michael. You heard what Hubble said. He's a killer, a shape-shifter, and he's out there. We need to stick together now more than ever." But Michael's off regardless, Isabel hurling "go ahead and run" and "go ahead and run"-related comments after him. Come live with me, Isabel. I shall treat you like the queen-bitch-goddess you are.
Liz Parker on her rooftop. Oh, good. I mean, oh, shoot me. Max appears from seeming nowhere and tells her he knows they've been needing to talk. Liz understands, or at least pretends to, and it takes a full four seconds longer than usual to transform this sequence into being entirely about her. She tells Max that she knows there are larger issues afoot, then admits to knowing about Michael's well-publicized situation. Now wait just one cotton-pickin' minute, here! What kind of person would just walk around spilling the beans about someone else's problems? Oh, yeah, everyone on this show. We lapse into Filler Mode once more, Max lamenting that he "can't lose him." Liz reaches out and puts a hand on Max's shoulder in that "see, I can't lose you either" kind of way, indicating once more that she has not listened to a thing anyone has said to her since "you broke the bottle when you fell."
Max, everywhere at once, appears mysteriously in the scene back at Chez Evans. He walks into Isabel's room; she embarks on a little speech about the stones from "the place we come from" that River Dog gave them at the cave when Michael was sick three hundred episodes ago. She holds the fake plastic orange stones in her hand, confirming the widely suspected belief that the Alien Three are indigenous to the bottom of a fish tank.
Cut to Michael in The House That Drives, who for some reason I thought was already gone. I was kind of under the impression that when impoverished renegade alien types took off to contact the Mother Ship, they didn't stop at home first to pack up a few knickknacks. He's stuffing his worldly goods into a burlap sack of some kind, one that I expect he'll tie to a stick and carry over one shoulder while belting out tunes of the "I've Been Down So Long" variety on his Hobo Brand harmonica. Max enters and tells him not to go. You have me, Michael. You have Isabel, Michael. But Michael again thwarts Max's attempts at kindness with more barbs, including the arch, "Keep in touch, all right?" Michael, while I have your attention: snide retorts plus bad acting equal the appearance of integrity. Keep that in your mind if you want to remain as snide as I think you do. And I would recap in full the pathos-laden Speech of the Week by an always sincere Max Evans, but that would lend credibility to the prospect that Michael is going to run away for any more than like five TV minutes. Which, trust me, he won't. Basically, Max tells him that he'll have no one to blame but himself if he runs away. He has to stay. They're family. Max gives Michael a poorly wrapped package of some kind and Michael leaves. Again. It's like every time I finish one scene, four more pop up in its place. And they're all exactly the same.
I love Michael hitchhiking. No dialogue, many cars blowing right by him, rain kicking up once more for dramatic effect. Can't recap rain, now can I? He's picked up by some kind of trucker, who launches into a big speech about what a bust his visit to New Mexico was. As Michael opens his fish-tank stones package, the trucker blathers on about how there are no aliens in Roswell, ending with, "If you were an alien and you could go anywhere in the world, would you pick Roswell?" If? IF? HA! Wow. How amazing that this trucker doesn't even know he's in the presence of an alien. Have I made that comment before? Maybe that's because this scene has happened before. Let us not dissect it further. Michael gets nostalgia-eyes when he sees the fish-tank rocks. Is this trucker in any way significant? No, as it turns out. So Michael takes this moment instead to have a dream sequence flashback thing to the Alien Three in the desert together. And I know you'll be absolutely astonished to heed these words, but it's a sequence we've -- no, really -- seen before.
Kitchen. Chez Evans. It's the morning, and Michael is for some reason in the kitchen making breakfast. And for a guy who ate his dinner with the cannibalistic gusto of an anthropological study in a National Geographic feature just days before, Michael certainly is adept at laying out the numerous ingredients necessary for breakfast preparation. Isabel enters. She is glad he is there. Bangs and Our Father the Savior enter and regard Michael skeptically, until Michael is finally able to break through his own tough-guy veneer and ask Our Father the Savior for help in becoming emancipated. Wow, this man really is God, as we cut to the scene where Michael, ruffian outsider with a problematic adoption record, numerous skirmishes with local law enforcement, and limited social connections to either adults or peers of any kind, signs the papers that set him free. It makes absolutely no sense at all, but if it gets us closer to ending the episode, you're not gonna hear a peep out of me about it.
Hey, it's the last two minutes of the episode! Someone turn on Roswell! Cut to Porno's office, where Tony Clifton enters and tells Porno to call off the search for him. Porno asks about the gunshot, and Tony Clifton advises him to "never clean a gun while you're drinking." Words for us all to live by, really. Anyway, he announces that he's hitching up the trailer and leaving town for good. Porno advises him to do so quickly, to which Tony Clifton enigmatically announces (well, enigmatically for the twelve seconds) that "I'm already gone." Hey, I wonder if that means he's the shape-shifting alien we've heard almost nothing about during the last hour. Turns out he is. Cut to a beat-up station wagon in the middle of nowhere. Tony Clifton pops some pills, exits the vehicle, and opens the trunk, from which he extracts . . . another Tony Clifton. Under the bright glow of the giant flood light, I mean "extremely realistic moon," one Tony buries another in a shallow grave and returns to his car. He shuts the door, holds up a hand, another bright light glows. Cut to exterior view of the car, shaking and quaking with the special-effects reality of Plan 9's cutting room floor footage. Back inside, Tony Clifton, er, shifts shape. Hey, slickster, nice goatee. He pops some more pills, drives out of the shot, and I'm back in the bathroom concentrating on that pesky ring around the shower drain before I'm subjected once more to hearing the Collective Soul song in the "songs from this week" that made Michael so damned weepy in the first place.