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.