An opening shot of cold, vacuous space (or -- IS IT?), soon filled by an inordinately tight profile shot of Isabel "Take My Agent, Please" Evans, somberly speaking the line, "I'm finally ready to let someone in, and I want him to be you," as if she has been assigned the task of doling out candy to trick-or-treating Halloween revelers at her wildly popular front door and she's just taking her job really, really seriously. Into the one remaining decimeter of screen space left unused by Isabel's giant noggin enters the equally sizable head of Alex "This May Be a Contrived Dream Sequence and All, but At Least I Get to Make Out with Katherine Heigl" Whitman, who responds, "I've been waiting to hear that, Isabel," followed by some other incoherent attempt at pillow talk I think might be borrowed from that mystifying "she told me I was her forever lover, y'know, don't you remember" section from the end of "The Girl is Mine." They kiss in intense close-up, signifying the culmination of the many hook-ups which masquerade as plot development on this show and have led to the unlikely nookie pairings-off of pretty much every speciously complementary couple on this show except for the salt and pepper shakers at the Crashdown. ("But boy, that sure would SPICE things up a bit," I volley at the screen with not nearly as much irony as I wish I could muster for such a heinously "Dear Kidsday" quip.) As they kiss, the blue screen, formerly sporting the planetarium stars, actually turns blue, becoming the blazing desert sky over Sandy Land. A tech guy finally leans over and flips FaceCam into the desired "off" position, and we pan down to discover that Isabel is decked out in a blue strapless dress of inarguably prom-like proportions. I'm going to go out on a corporate-venture-tie-in limb here and guess that the dress is made by Levi's. And then there's Michael, appearing behind her on the fjords of Sandy Land, showing up predictably sans the tuxedo and the corsage. Isabel stands among a bunch of symbols, constructed on the sand out of red Play-Doh by a small child who grew up in that faraway land where the indigenous language is Zapf Dingbats. Faux artsy camera mayhem ensues: Bizarre angle! Bizarre angle redux! Bizarre angle the third! Son of Bizarre Angle! Bride of Bizarre Angle! I was a Teenage Bizarre Angle! When I return from downing a Price Club carton of Dramamine and receiving treatment for a suddenly-acquired inner-ear imbalance, Alex is waking Isabel from a dream. Which is kind of a bummer, not due to the sudden lack of artistically pretentious everything in our new surroundings, but more considering the fact that it's been raining in New York for six straight weeks and all I really do is stare into my computer all day anyway, so it was a tiny bit comforting that somewhere on an LA soundstage, someone is still choosing blue as the default sky shade.
Alex and Isabel, meanwhile, are still on stakeout (much like the comedically mismatched Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez were in the zany 1987 comedy caper of the same name) in the abandoned warehouse that contains the audio-visual equipment monitoring Tesla's house. Always insuring that she undertake any important action directly in the line of the camera's three-square-foot range, Tesla is placing books in her bag in an innocuous fashion that in no way should encourage or inspire me to make another pointless eighties pop culture reference just to prove that I can (see: Stakeout, 1987). Cut back to the warehouse, where -- oh, shit, Isabel's head is on fire! Oh, no, wait, it's just the scourge of red backlighting again. Besides, Isabel on fire would only occur in the version where something ever actually happens on this show. And then it would be Liz's head that's on fire. Oh, wait, that would happen on the version where something ever actually happens on this show and I singlehandedly get to decide what it is. Isabel grabs a cell phone and dials, which wakes up Maria "Forget Me Not" DeLuca and Michael "I've Already Forgotten You" Guerin, asleep in the Jetta outside of Tesla's house. The couple has apparently slept in the car, which bodes well for this episode's DeLuca Hair Check, considering her overnight Jetta doze assumedly didn't allow for a prolonged and ill-advised visit to Hair and Makeup.
Cut to school, where Max "Boys Go to Jupiter to Get More Stupider" Evans once more explains to Liz "Has Spent Some Time on Jupiter Herself, Apparently" Parker that "whoever Nasedo really is, it's using Tess's body to get to me." Uh. Huh. Because I'm so sure that your "inability to control" your propensity for fondling the nubile blonde chick is rooted entirely in some interplanetary conspiracy. Meanwhile, philandering boyfriends everywhere try out that standby "yeah, but I was possessed by the evil darkness of Nasedo" routine on their gullible mates. More cell phone fun times. The caller informs Liz that Tess is in the building and "heading this way." Cut to Tess, er, heading. She saunters into the woman's bathroom, with Liz in hot pursuit. Upon entering said restroom, however, Liz is unable to locate her target. Liz turns and they're facing each other directly. Tesla says she thought they'd worked everything out, and Liz agrees that the two could be friends. Ever the puzzling vixen, though, Tesla then shoots a barb at Liz, who as a conversational opponent makes so easy a target that she could be verbally outwitted by a mime. A dead mime. And the barb is this: "Then tell me -- why is everybody following me?" Oh, busted! Stakeout gone bad. Much like it did for our two madcap heroes in that '87 romp. Oops. Did it again.
Opening credits: With some very minimal adjustments, Shiri Appleby's name can be effortlessly anagrammed into "I lisp, harpy be."
Fade up on The Dour Six in the all-new outdoor setting of an abandoned bumper-car ride of some kind. Liz is recounting the pre-credits sequence to the only other people who were directly involved with it for the benefit of the television audience, who has just finished watching it. Each preaches his or her industry standard for how to approach Tesla. Michael observes that "this is the fourth alien we've been waiting for our whole lives," and Isabel protectively observes that "I don't think that anyone or anything that would pretend to be a teenage girl in order to seduce Max is on our side." Max, unsurprisingly, is very, very, very quick to agree, once again drilling home the tiniest shred of absolution regarding his infidelity. Meanwhile, philandering boyfriends everywhere try out that standby "yeah, but she's a shadowy shape-shifter who put me under her spell and was only coincidentally, like, really wet -- and, oh, did I mention nubile -- when I fondled her goodies" routine on their gullible mates. Isabel indicates that she has felt Tesla's power as well, saying that she felt drawn to her "for some specific reason," at which point I marvel at the "writers'" one remaining scrap of subtlety, since Isabel doesn't suddenly don a top hat and cane and launch into a tap-dancing musical ditty entitled "Me and My Foreshadow." Alex, eager to legitimize his undeniable need for some guiltless lovin' of his own, for once in a conscious state, offers to get close to Tesla. Isabel tells him to stay away, using the rationale that "we don't even know if Nasedo is Tess anymore." Eh? I don't get it. Or rather, I do get it and I'm annoyed that every time there's reference to actual plot development, it deprives me of just one more opportunity to concentrate on what's really important here. Like making fun of what they're wearing, for instance. And also how they walk. Good thing plot developments happen so infrequently, then. Let us all rejoice in the static silence of it all. Max observes that Nasedo "could be anyone at any time," and they all turn their attention to a nearby black-clad man, who must be very, very evil because his umbrella is black as well. Come to think of it, everybody who walks by carries a black umbrella. Even though the shot displays said black-clad man having walked through a field exhibiting bright and complex shadows cast by the nonexistent sun above them. Maybe the umbrellas are more of a symbol, an allusion to the storminess of the soul, the inner tempest each character is experiencing. Or maybe Jonathan Frakes just caught the lighting guy away from his post at the fax machine, his résumé in one hand and Aaron Spelling's contact information in the other, a chilling reminder that no matter how many teary-eyed thirteen-year-old girls are staked out on the lawn of Jamie Kellner's house chanting "we love you Jason, oh yes we do" over and over and over again, this show just might be in a teeny predicament, creatively and otherwise. You think?
Okay, this scene is almost over, I promise. Each alien stage-directs him- or herself over to their safe, human counterparts. Alex again expresses his concern to Isabel, saying that "we can't just sit around and wait for her to do something." He puts his hand on her shoulder in an attempting-to-be-couple-y way, a movement conveying comfortable physical intimacy with an effortlessness I haven't seen since Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Pullman fell so convincingly in love in Mr. Wrong. Whoa, mister, hands off the merchandise there. It was only a dream. And not even your dream. Isabel glances up at Michael and gets another vision of the fjords of Sandy Land. Maria asks what Max and Liz are planning to do, and Max gabbles something about the camera still being hidden in Tesla's house, at which point a giant abacus drops from the sky, and Max dons a top hat and cane and launches into a full-scale tap-dancing ditty entitled, "Two Plus Two Equals Foreshadow."
Cut to Porno's office, where Evil Ed watches Porno examine said tiny and foreshadowed camera and asks, "But who? Who would plant this in my house?" Porno attempts to get to the bottom of this absolutely unbaffling non-mystery, asking Evil Ed what he does for a living. Evil Ed responds that he's in "government consulting, the boring stuff," taking his stock response one step too far and adding, "No special clearances, no matters of national security, if that's what you're thinking." Well, Evil Ed, it wasn't. But now that you mention it: you're new in town, you're a little on the very cagey side, and I think I've alluded once or twice to the fact that parsing the knotty subtext of your complexly drawn character is almost as difficult a media exercise as trying to figure out which side were the bad guys in Schindler's List. So maybe that is what I'm thinking, even if I only think it a little. Porno asks if Evil Ed has ever had any contact with the FBI, and Evil Ed goes full-tilt "why, shet my mouth, Mr. Good Sheriff, sir" in a way that might be considered vaguely worth further investigation if I could pretend that I cared even slightly about any of this.
The non-action of it all suddenly becomes even more secondary, though, considering the sudden appearance of the largest, most intently flying fly I have ever seen in my life, shooting kamikaze style around my room at the uncatchable speed of Mach, like, infinity. It's fast. And huge. It's awesome in its strength. It's even shrewd. And it's probably pregnant. It has a defined personality. It can read the book I'm trying to kill it with. With all twelve billion of its eyes. I'd even hazard a hypothesis that it isn't actually buzzing due to the predetermined elements of nature which typically cause flies to do so, but rather it is making a "buzz, buzz, I'm a fly" sound effect with its functional tongue and fang-like teeth staring directly at me in its [insert Jeff Goldblum reference here] way. And what's really bad is that it has provided almost no viable opportunity for me to kill it. It will fly and fly and fly and fly and fly, coming to rest for one half of a non-second on a Ming vase or an original Matisse or ten thousand other hyperbolically expensive things I don't really have, all of which are not exactly the appropriate venue for my impending ambush of said fly with my drawn weapon of Entertainment Weekly's hardcover yearbook for 1997. Which I do have. Because it was free with my subscription. In 1997. Speaking of which, I don't know about you, but I think we need to watch out for this DiCaprio kid -- he might just have the makings of a real star! Oh, um, speaking of kids, Evil Ed casually adds that besides him and Tesla, the only other people who have been in the house were the movers and "a couple of [Tesla's] friends from school." Then it all dawns on Porno, who promises to get to the bottom of it all, sending Evil Ed on his way. Following Evil Ed's departure, Porno removes a manila envelope from his desk and extracts numerous photos of Max and Liz, some of which show them shaking hands with Evil Ed. The faux-scary music, which has all the sinister mood-setting gusto of a George Winston piano sampler played in reverse, tells me it's time to be very, very afraid.
I'm sure that at some really fruitless development meeting at WB Interpol last summer -- perhaps it was at the one where the "writers" decided "They Love Tabasco" was a more viable avenue for story-arc exploration than "Plot Continuity" or "We Are Not Maddeningly Boring" -- that it would be okay if the overall tone of the show were unceremoniously disrupted for the periodic occurrence of a wacky caper of some kind. But having just explored this topic in such extensive detail that it earned its own damned pull-quote in last week's recap, I feel absolutely unable to tread on this territory again. Basically, Isabel returns to the age-old routine of stealthily creeping into mysteriously unsupervised private locations filled with file cabinets overflowing with relevant and easy-to-obtain information. That was a sentence I wrote last week, but with Michael's name in place of Isabel's, who prances into some administrative office and under slim pretenses requests Tesla's entire dossier of personal information. When the secretary retreats to ask for permission, Isabel takes the reigns of a nearby computer which must be called the "Learn All About Tesla 2000" and prints out her class schedule. That event needed a wacky caper? I thought they were, like, best friends. Thus proving that "reality" on this show is defined as "whatever makes the least possible sense at any given moment," only one person espies Isabel at her cunning ploy through the window of the office door. It is Tesla. Silly Tesla. All she has the ability to do is choose any given time and stare into someone's eyes, making that person into her unwitting slave. But look at what Isabel has. Her class schedule! Ha! Who has the upper-hand now, Tesla? WHO, I ask? Oh, that's right. You. It's still very, very, very much you.
Crashdown. Max and Liz review the contraband class schedule, brilliantly deriving from it the order in which Tesla attends her classes. They can hardly be far from cracking this whole thing wide open now. Max tells Liz that Tesla has not attempted to draw him into her menacing web of sexual deceit lately, but Maria remains unconvinced and suggests that Max remains supervised at all times. Michael, finally appearing to get to work in the kitchen at the exact moment the Crashdown appears to be completely empty, chimes in that "I don't cook for myself, you know." Yeah, Puffy, I think you do. Maria runs to fetch an order, but Liz's waitressing skills seem to be so well-honed that she knows intrinsically that "I don't cook for myself, you know" must really mean "I want you to hold Max's hand and coo really loudly in public about us all being aliens and the alien lovers who love them." Because that's exactly what she does. Liz admits that she's scared of Tesla, just like she used to be around the other aliens. Max suggests that they assuage their collective fear of Tesla ever so slightly by watching her on the monitor, just as Porno sidles up with the tiny camera and informs them that it might not be the very best idea. He tells them about Evil Ed's discovery, much to my non-shock thrice over. Porno knows that the alien-hunting unit of the FBI is in Roswell, and lets them know that "the more I know, the safer you'll be." Well, having been divested of the tiny camera so soon after coming into its company, perhaps they could ask Porno if he knows where they could develop some pretentious eight-by-ten glossies of suspicious-looking and dour teenagers, as Porno and everyone else in town seem to have settled on the still-life (and apparently totally legal) method of invading another person's privacy.
Meanwhile, Isabel arrives back at Chez Evans to discover the only-helpful-to-her-children-when-she-disappears-for-nine-consecutive-episodes Bangs deep in the process of taking Tesla through the entire Evans family history, up to and including "that silly clown show you used to put on." Wow, I smell a flashback episode. Or at least I hope I do, because six-year-old Max crying in a clown suit is something I would really love to see. Or maybe it will just be canceled, which I'd very, very, very much more like to see. But six-year-old Max in a clown suit with a giant red nose that for once scales to his ears is a definite, if distant, second. Anyway, Bangs rises and informs the two that she has to get to the market ("the market"? Who says that? Is that before or after she hits the general store and the blacksmith? Like she could really do any of those things before she gets her shoes cobbled!), and lays it on thick with Tesla, telling her to come by and spy extravagantly any time she wants. That panic-stricken look in her children's eyes that new friends bring is reward enough for her, after all. After the market beckons and Bangs offers a final "Cheers, Gov'nah!" and takes off, Tesla is quick to the point of her visit. She tells Isabel that she has close feelings for Max, and asks Isabel if she ever gets "moments when you connect with someone" that make her believe that, no matter the consequence, she and this other person are "destined to be together." Isabel gets another flash of Michael on the fjords of Sandy Land, snapping back to reality in time to deny that feeling. Anyway, that's how Tesla feels about Max. She then leans in and whispers that moment from the promo about there being "signs all around you." Isabel glances over at the counter to see four sugar cubes in a formation that seems to terrify her. Ack! It's a square! Be still my normal, measured heartbeat!
Cut to later that evening. Isabel and Max sit upstairs at Chez Evans and attempt to verbalize the feeling Tesla inspires somewhere deep within them. Aggravating? Abrasive? Worthy of flaming swords plunged deep into her vacant brain by way of a vengeful and righteous God? They go with "primal." Well, it wasn't my first choice, but at least they didn't choose "freakin' awesome," which probably would qualify as my last. Michael, having been called by Isabel, appears pointlessly at the upstairs window, primarily as a means of moving them as close together as possible in case of a dramatic development that requires copious amounts of confused, late-night staring. Turns out that's exactly what happens. Cut to Isabel sleeping. Back in Sandy Land, the red Play-Doh is juxtaposed against The World's Most Sinister Sugar Cubes to form a pattern I'm at a loss to give one darn care about. Then Michael is back in Sandy Land. Then he and Isabel are making out. They awaken with a start at the same time. Michael runs into Isabel's room, and each breathily mutters, "It was a only a dream." No. Body. Cares.
It's the middle of the night at Chez Evans, and the Alien Three are attempting to figure out what the symbols from the dream mean so they can finally reconnect with the good people of Zapf Dingbats. Neither Isabel nor Michael chooses to divulge any, say, incestuous details of their night's sleep, though Isabel does tell Max that Tesla had made one of the symbols out of sugar cubes on the kitchen counter. In an agonizingly ponderous fashion, Michael gets around to recounting the meager subplot of "The Blind Date," in which he and a peripheral Isabel spent their three collective minutes of screen time holding up neon signs to the heavens reading "Save Our Subplot" in hopes that the mother ship would sympathize with their new planet's dearth of the most precious resource any planet could possess: good dialogue. Anyway, the story is this: Michael and Isabel tried to contact Nasedo and produced such a non-impression on the nine viewers of that episode that this episode's winner for Most Nonsensical Snippet of Dialogue Ever, "Michael used the 'V' constellation to navigate the symbols," might as well have been spoken as "let's base the dramatic turning point of this entire series around that time I sneezed. Off-camera." Max gets mad. Michael thought that finding out about their past was the goal. Max angrily attests that "the goal is to stay in control," a sing-song retort that can not be taken seriously in the presence of people who have no idea what's going on anyway, thus inspiring my roommate and me to simultaneously burst into the "I like to stop at the duty-free shop" song from an episode of Seinfeld from, like, six years ago ["I myself went with Vanilla Ice's 'drop the zero and get wit' the hero' here" -- Sars]. Which made more of an impression than the entire scene I have just finished watching. In slow motion. For three cumulative hours. Saturdays suck.
Cut to an anti-incest public service announcement (posing as yet another examination of the Fun With Fonts diagrams) that exists solely for the purpose of Max attesting that, well, maybe the Alien Three aren't really a family after all. Max asks, "That's what we've pretended to be for so long, but what if Nasedo tells us different?" Liz, once again drawing from the ancient gospel of one of those fortune cookies she would be unable to act her way out of, observes, "You are who you choose to be." Oh, wise sensei. Now if you will only solve the age-old riddle of at what point in the hatching process I should feel inclined to count my eggs, the pieces of my life would all miraculously fall into place. Max and Mr. Wizard then move over to another excessively helpful computer, which diagrams the "V" formation Michael had been describing. Why? WHY??? Each of them silently admitting that they have no idea what on Earth (or non-Earth) is going on in that lab, and knowing in some small way that another science-fiction-oriented show has already examined the letter "V" from an exhausting number of perspectives, Max and Liz begin staring noncommittally out the window. And in The Most Repetitive Thing To Ever Happen including the spelling of the word "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" which I invented just now, the two stare out the window and right at Tesla. Jeez, how many of her are there, anyway? Always a sucker for a moment as awkward and stagy as her acting, Liz takes this "oh, wait, I guess you're not forgiven" moment to ask Max what it was like to kiss Tesla. Max responds that it was "upsetting." Yeah, that's one word for it. Back on the computer, something is suddenly very important about Venus. Then a greasy bohunk is sidling up to Tesla in ways learned only in the rare human-species derivation known as the Porno family. Oh, wow. It's Kyle. And his stint in this episode has already outlasted his extensive profiling in the opening credits, which is a rare accomplishment for his marooned character these days. But he still doesn't get a chance to talk just yet, hoarse as his voice must be from repeatedly screaming, "Well then why did you cast me to begin with?" during his quickly degenerating contract negotiations.
Back inside of the school, Michael approaches Maria at her locker and asks "to get serious here." He wants to move to the level. Or something. Cut to Isabel in the eraser room, giving Alex the same speech. Each alien makes solemn promises pledging booty-filled monogamy to their non-threatening human counterparts, in a sequence so damn funny it completely wraps around the humor spectrum and safely back into the territory of not being comical at all. Overcome with cheap, manufactured lust, Michael pulls Maria into the eraser room, only to discover it already inhabited by Isabel and Alex. Har. Har. Har. As I've already mentioned. Everyone's going steady. Except for my stomach.
More dreamy fun times. Alex deposits an exhausted Isabel back at Chez Evans before wishing her sweet dreams and not understanding just how sweet too sweet can be. She drifts back into Sandy Land, where this time she and Michael are just plain doin' it, right there at the brink of the fjords. Flash of something swimming. Flash of some cell-type looking thing. Flash of baby. Isabel wakes up. Cut to Guerin Manor, where Michael is hovering over an architect's table of some kind, drawing on the symbols and moving around the diagrams as if he's trying to Etch-a-Sketch his way to interplanetary liberation. He glances over at one of his large picture windows, where he spies Tesla. She breathes on the window and makes four dots with her finger. Michael asks just what exactly the hell that means, and he's told he already knows, before experiencing a flash too dark to see and a recapper too lazy to rewind.
Commercials: It's true. I'm wearing O.B. right now, and my snowboarding has, like, never been more killer.
Oh my God. I wasn't quite sure of this until I was deep into the long and torturous recapping process, but this is quite simply the lowest-quality, most dirge-like in length and tempo, most derivative of itself episode of Roswell I have ever had the misfortune to not be killed by a plane landing on my house during. I have so had it. I cannot bear to watch even one more second. My unflagging desire to set my hair on fire and run into traffic can no longer be contained beneath this thin veneer of sanity. It needs to stop. But I still need to recap, so let's recap. Here it is so far, by the numbers: Nineteen weeks, one plot line, zero lines of strong dialogue, three unlikely cross-species relationships, fifty billion "but what does it all mean" flashes of two hundred foreign symbols, and at least one mystical bar of soap which reveals the past of a lost planet almost as well as it lathers. One bad guy in at least four forms, made of up three syllables, rhymes with "potato." Sort of. Five parents have vanished, as have countless teachers, a promising guidance counselor, a failed blind date, a Tabasco sauce leitmotif, several orbs and communicators to a world beyond ours, and at least one about-to-be-condemned-anyway Chinese restaurant and pool hall. Not to mention the precipitous disappearance of millions of viewers who were taken on that magical journey from curiosity to camp appreciation to annoyance to sheer dismay that one network could be accountable for churning out uneven, undesired, and just plain boring crap just to rake in advertising dollars and continually undermine the demographic it thinks it has come to shape and understand. Yes, that was the spectrum of emotions viewers experienced in the early days of the show. Then Liz Parker got shot in the stomach, and it was nothing more than a consistent downturn from that moment forward.
Back at the Crashdown, Liz reads Tesla's school report to Max and Maria, but clearly they find nothing worthy of note. Kyle contract-negotiates his way into the Crashdown sporting a resolutely perplexed look, which is not so strange considering he is the only person who has been out of the camera's range for so long he might just think it's a new place. Liz has invited him there to warn him about Tesla, and she tells Max and Maria that she "can't just let him get sucked into this without tryink," pronouncing the optional-for-Sabbath hard "K" on "trying" with quite a bit more zeal than in her attack on "suck." A word she should probably take a little more to heart in the future. She makes her way over and thanks him for coming, asking "can you talk?" Ever the bitchy Melissa to Liz's Joan Rivers-esque conversational introduction, Kyle snidely informs Liz that "you can't beat a blonde." Kyle thinks Liz is jealous, but for some reason volunteers the location of their upcoming date, which, for some reason is at the public library. This upsets Liz, I believe for some V-related reason I'm currently at a loss to discern.
In a scene more pointless than a truckload of unsharpened number-two pencils, Max and Liz sleuth out the library ("Wow, a chance to see a whole new library," Liz's ulterior motive fairly screams) in an attempt to avoid forcing the producers to play the closing credits at half their speed. Why, for crying out loud, are we back in a library? I do not know. But with ten minutes left in this episode and even fewer episodes left in this show's history, I'm not making up any more kitschy nicknames to explain this pointlessness away. Max thinks it's all a trap, and that Tesla's using Kyle as bait to get them to the library to begin with. Way to avoid said trap, kids. Over in the section with all the books (that should narrow it down nicely for those of you who nodded off during the credits and haven't woken up yet), Kyle attempts to get in Tesla's pants -- her smarty pants, that is, considering the erudite nature of the attempted tryst. She takes him to a deserted section and forces him to help her to the top shelf. All the while, Max is in hot pursuit, and he climbs onto the top shelf at a safe distance from them both, in time to see Tesla put her hand through a flaxen piece of scrim I guess I'm supposed to think is a wall. She extracts an Urban Outfitters journal with rough-hewn pages and a spiral binding, then informs an in-heat Kyle that "it's time to go." And they go. So I guess they were using him as bait. Or something. Nice dress, Tesla. No, let me guess: Levi's?
Back at Chez Evans, Max enters to find an apoplectic Michael screaming the words "Pullman Ranch." It's the site of the crash, he saw it in a flash, the cave drawing will lead them right there. M'kay? And speaking of purging the remainder of disparate plot inconsistencies, we cut to Isabel dreaming about Sandy Land, but this time she's with Michael and some small child who is going to grow up to have problem hair and terrible roles in inferior shows that are quite simply beneath her. She wakes up, knowing inherently that she is pregnant with Michael's child. Michael exits his own room and they briefly discuss said baby conundrum, Michael commenting that "something weird like this had to happen sooner or later." Minus the "weird like this." And I still don't care. Out-of-wedlock teenagers sure need all the help they can get, though. I sure hope they remember to register at Baby Levi's.
Nighttime at Chez Evans. Max is dreaming of his home on Zapf. You know, for a species that invests so much in its dreamy states, they're going to have to start hanging out somewhere besides the middle of the desert. Six months into the show, and they can get pregnant in their dreams, but not once has any of them had the falling dream, or the showing up naked at school dream, or the one where you wake up and the sheets are -- oh, never mind. Anyway, he's in Sandy Land, and he's holding hands with Tesla. Suddenly, earthbound Tesla appears in Max's bedroom and promises to "show him everything." Cut to Tesla's adorable little SUV (Alienmobile Lite?), carrying the two of them off to some indeterminate desert locale. Oh, it's the scoping fjords of Sandy Land. The, um, crash site. Open to the public. In the middle of the night. Stupid government. Tesla tells him that they've "all been here before," the emotional trip wire that leads Max to kicking around the new girl and accusing her of being the shape-shifting Nasedo who killed Atherton, Hubble's wife, and thousands of other tertiary subplot throwaways that I don't remember being introduced to in between the other thousand hours of absolute plot stasis. I do not possess the vocabulary to explain the tone of voice in which Max delivers his line, "How many victims will there be after tonight," but I do an unparalleled (because who else has tried it, really?) impression of it, if y'all want to give me a call. Anyway, Tesla hands him the funky journal, and he tells her that he lives "in this world, and I will not be a part of anything as evil as you." They fall to the ground and tussle a bit. She tell him to "think, Max. You've seen my face before." Cue several-minute flashback of naked alien children emerging from pods (inappropriate! Hey, where's the FBI when you need them?) covered in the interplanetary silly string Michael once returned to when his sweat became comically overwrought. Besides the problematic continuity of Isabel and Michael finding each other first and taking Max with them later, and the eternally incestuous issues all of this raises from a baby-producing standpoint, I find it patently annoying that it took two episodes for Tesla to get around to telling them. Back in the desert, Michael runs up to Tesla and demands to know who she is. She's not Nasedo. Isabel, all pickles and ice cream, paces herself in demanding to know just who Tesla is, then. Counterfeit dramatic intonement almost as par for the course as breathing, Max breaks the news: "She's one of us." The four stand on the Zapf symbol representing the wholeness of the four of them, each a lonely and confused sugar cube in a decidedly unsweet world.