Fade in on Max "Wheels of Fire" Evans in repose, curled in the corner of this episode's namesake, newly clad in the never clichéd, governmentally-sanctioned uniform of The White Pajamas of the Freaking Insane. A far-off voice of disembodied eeeeevil wishes him "good morning, Max," touching off an extended round of dialogue ripped directly out of the FBI training manual, The Big Book of Exceedingly Generic Paranoia. Don't believe me, eh? Fine, then. Suffer as I suffer:
Max: Where am I?
The Far-off Voice of Disembodied Eeeeevil: Someplace where no one can find you.
Max: Why am I here?
TFOVODEeeee: That's what I want to try to find out.
Max: You've made a mistake.
TFOVODEeeee: I don't think so. I know what you are.
I'm sorry I must suddenly cease my scintillating verbatim transcript of the rest of this sequence, but the dialogue has suddenly grown quite inaudible as it becomes overwhelmed by the industrial sound of The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences smelting together dozens of extra Emmys as an adequate reward for all parties involved with the exquisite originality of the sequence. TFOVODEeeee informs Max from seeming nowhere that "you're going to tell me everything," inspiring an enraged "oh, come ON" shriek from this wearied recapper (thirty-two seconds to the first "Tell me everything!" An absolute record!). Max whines out his home address (it's 6025 Murray Lane, by the way, for those obsessives among us with screen names like Max_Is_Dreamy and with relatives who work for Greyhound and with scads of free time to scour the fictional desert southwest in search of fan-fic-worthy details like these) and informs TFOVODEeeee that it "can call my parents." And if I have just one thing in common with TFOVODEeeee, it's a mutual desire to erase the memory of the existence of any parents on this show, Max's or otherwise. Besides the fact that the inflated star salary of the legendary Mary Ellen Trainor (Parker Lewis's mom! Dare you doubt me?) needed to be jettisoned just to construct this one last new set, I hardly think that TFOVODEeeee glanced around the proceedings at any point during the abduction process and mused, "Y'know, what this scene really needs is some more shelfy bangs!" Because he didn't say that at any point, I betcha. So the vague threat of parents is removed. Max's claims that his home planet is Earth, causing a marauding band of biohazard-suited henchmen to bust out of the walls and tie poor Max to a table. Cue Bar Mitzvah Video Effect. Cue Tarantino-esque administering of an injection of some kind into Max's suddenly veiny, veiny arm, insuring that he will sleep "in this place with the lonely crowd, lie in the dark where the shadows run from themselves." Cream reference. Hey, I said it would be a Cream-reference-filled recap, but I never said anything about those allusions making one bit of sense. Not one gosh darned thing.
Credits: Thousands of years from now, when the origin of the expression is known only to historians and updaters of the Oxford English Dictionary, MBTV readers will be posting to the boards of The Real World: Third Ring of Jupiter that a character has apparently outlasted his usefulness on the show, leading to that character precipitously disappearing from any actual episode yet remaining in the opening credits, much to the untold humiliation of he or she left out to dry each time the show airs. And thus they will write: "Gosh, haven't seen him around in a while. Boy, have the producers pulled a Nick Wechsler on him or what?"
Hiding in the back of the Crashdown and fairly screaming out their affinity for being aliens, or being really near aliens, even as thousands of atom-sized surveillance cameras record each incriminating word, Michael, Isabel, Tesla, and the Lizbot 5000 discuss the potential deadness of the already martyred Max. Good thing they're in the kitchen, and good thing the head chef has decided to stop by, because when Isabel delivers a pathos-laden, "What if he's already dead?" address, it's well-done wah-burgers all around. Tesla claims that Pierce and The Initiative have no desire to kill him, that he's there primarily for observation, prompting an overly-concerned, "How the hell do you know?" from a suddenly responsible Michael. Out of nowhere, Liz leaps up and hightails it out of the kitchen as if she'd finally heard the subliminal "oh my God, Liz, everybody hates you" chant hanging so heavy in the air since the first moment of, well, her very organic existence. But we cut to the Crashdown's front door to determine her real reason for such speedy travel, as Maria and Alex enter just in time to emote "concerned" all over the damned floors. So mechanical in her "running, frightened" cant to the front door that the creaking of her un-oiled joints almost drowns out the quiet but not imperceptible muzak version of "If I Only Had a Heart" that mysteriously plays whenever she's in the room to further accentuate her Tin-Man-esque ways, the Lizbot 5000 haltingly stiffens and stops just short of the Crashdown's entrance. Maria and Alex are quickly brought up to speed on Max's capture. All non-shanghaied aliens couple up with their safe, human counterparts and look very, very dour indeed. Hey, why so glum, everyone? Oh, yes, that's right -- because suddenly you're all in this mess together, which means you all have to act exactly the same as each other all the time. I know I mentioned this somewhere in the forum thread for this episode, but damned if it was so far down in the convo that even I didn't read it, so here it is again. Quoting myself, am I? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to narcissism at its absolute freaking apex: "[A]nother thing that drove me crazy about this episode was how all of the characters seem to be becoming exactly the same. Wacky Maria, for instance. What of the herbal remedies, side-kicky nature, and problematic hair? Gone, gone, gone. In an attempt to move the action along and focus more on the, ahem, 'plot,' her character has become completely one-note. Yell at Michael, blah blah blah, weep about their relationship, blah blah blah, grouse and mope like everyone else blah blah blah."
And then I skipped a line and wrote, "Blah." 'Cause I'm a riot like that.
More! Can you believe it? "Early in the series[,] they were all laughable stereotypes of people, now they're all unlaughable carbon copies of each other. Yes, I know, I'm impossible to please. That's why I work here." Hmmm, three whole paragraphs of quoting myself, eh? I might need a week off to recover from the broken leg I just suffered when I fell down hard while in the process of trying to get over myself. But I mean, really, it is true: it's like the only thing that remains consistent about their characters as they were initially imagined is that, when times get tough, sometimes they hug. And really, that's it.
But comically, to a finally amused audience of me, Lizbot has no one to hug. Divested of this comfort, she rails against the one person she thinks is to blame for a situation that is all undoubtedly her own fault for some reason I implicitly believe but remain at a loss to describe, threatening Tesla, "Where's Nasedo?" Tesla doesn't know; he's never left her alone this long. Segues be-damned, Isabel insists that they have to rescue Max, leading Liz to strangely determine that they have to go to Porno. Dismissed before the words are even fully out of her mouth and labelled "Dismissed Plan #1," Tesla suggests that they render the abounding humans even more pointless than they already are in using their mad voodoo alien powers to bust Max out of the white-paneled joint themselves. Living with Nasedo has taught her quite a few things, but she becomes dubious of her "Alien Lite" counterparts, ending her speech with the doubtful powers questionnaire, "You do have them, don't you?" Michael does his reluctant best to describe that the extent of his powers pretty much ranges from "I can open a can -- with a can opener" to "I like donuts." Isabel, on Alex's urging, divulges her ability to walk into people's dreams and subconsciously communicate with them. Lizbot insists that Isabel perform this sorcery on Max, but Isabel expresses doubt that she could get into a waking person's head, conveniently erasing the continuity-based conundrum that he's sound asleep by almost-lethal levels of toxins injected into his blood stream even as this pivotal scene lurches toward an indeterminate conclusion.
Meanwhile, back in "this place where the sun never shines, where the shadows run from themselves" (um, Cream reference again. Same one as before, almost), a white-suited man (a medical white suit, not a David Byrne white suit. I guess you'd call them "scrubs") threateningly enters. Max is still strapped to the table, and seems helpless to defend himself against said eeeevil man advancing on him with a laser of some kind and pointing it in his direction. Max flinches as the button is pressed, only to find that the laser thing is merely a remote-control device for the table he's strapped to, thus recalling thousands of childhood images of gimmicky Craftmatic adjustable bed infomercials and inspiring my roommate and me to lob several "I chose the VCR!" and "I got my new bed, a great night of sleep, AND a free toaster!" jokes at the screen. Ah, '80s humor. How it's fallen, and how it can't get up. Aaaaanyway, Max becomes alert and sits up to stare into the eyes of The Apprehender Formerly Known as TFOVODEeeee, now made flesh in the form of Agent Pierce. For some reason, Max recalls last week's run-in with the agent when in deputy's clothes, a ten-second detour on the way to the carnival. Pierce shares with Max the results of his tests, telling Max, "There's something very strange about your x-rays. Something that doesn't make sense." Glacial pause. "They're completely normal!" Ta-da! Well, now that that's all clear, I guess we can just wrap things up and go home. Let them go. Let us all go. Oh, but not so fast, you optimistic overreactor, you. For the clever ruse is that there's something else about Max that "doesn't make sense." One thing? Let's start with why he didn't manipulate the molecular structure of the metal clasps. It's been documented that he's used his powers to increase the temperature of whatever he wants to, like, a billion degrees. How about melting those white walls and waltzing right on out of there and naming an episode after a classic rock band I can actually reference with some authority? How many albums did Cream record, really? Four? And solo Clapton doesn't come close to counting. The blood cells, upon further inspection, are "completely not human." Pierce gets a little angrier, launching into a list of the special agents who had lost their lives in the line of trying to track down aliens. Pierce knows all about the crash. He knows all about the silver hand print. He knows all about the alien they kept for "three years of observation on the one held in captivity. RIGHT HERE!!!" Hey, pipe down, man. This shameless display of "acting" you seem to be falling into is strikingly at odds with the glazed-over homogeneity of everyone around you. No one's impressed. No one's watching. Flah blah gah. That's really what I think of it all. Pierce conjures up Lever 2001 again, asking Max what it does. Max remains mystified. Pierce points the laser at Max and the Craftmatic Adjustable Death Bed again lies flat, as the white outfitted henchmen enter and administer some more, er, "Strange Brew" into Max's bloodstream. Cream reference, by the way. Pierce passes a hand over Max's face and his eyes fall shut. How about that dream infiltrating thing now, Isabel? Or now? Or how about -- oh, never mind.
Alex and Isabel sit in Liz's bedroom, Alex still deeply invested in looking for any situation to promote his "creepy and constant groping of you for the good of the human race" platform. As she lapses into the dreamy state for the first time in many an episode, Alex attests that "if I'm holding onto you, maybe you won't get lost." Wow. I know it's like, Friday at 1:30 in the afternoon and all, but I feel suddenly so gripped by the irrepressible power of that pick-up line that I can barely restrain myself from running out onto my empty street and screaming it out to the heavens just to see how many lovely ladies stop by for some further slick material. Throw that line at enough people and it's bound to stick to someone eventually.
A Psycho-rip-off close-up of Isabel's eye signals that she is now inside of Max's mind. More unspecial-effects mayhem ensues, tonight brought to you by the pre-Lucas special effects house Industrial Light and Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat. Hey, you know what I'm really excited about? Do you know? You don't. I'll tell you. I'm just itching for that probing journalistic triumph of the Later Today interview with Katherine Heigl during the press junket tour for My Father, The Hero Part Deux when she talks about how Roswell really "challenged" her as an actor and how the "amazing cast" was "so supportive" of her acting "decisions." The saving grace of it all is that she probably won't believe a damn word of it, but she'll be awfully convincing when she cites the following scene in discussing her Stella Adler lessons and how they taught her how to "trust" her "method" when she would find herself "in the moment." And it goes a little something like this: Isabel is crawling around on the floor of the white room, crying out Max's name and acting ten kinds of utter lunatic. Through the haze, she sees Max in a corner of the room, and he's -- get this -- tied to the wall with his arms splayed and his head tilting to one side. No, really. Wow. Someone shoot a fax off to the WB's Overwrought Metaphor Department and let them know that their Christmas bonus comes early this year, okay? Thanks so much. Now I'm not religious by either nature or upbringing at all, but you have to admit this is curious. Whatever, he's God. He's even God-like. Of course he is. This is not blasphemous treatment of the crucifixion at all. Goodbye, 7th Heaven retention ratings. We hardly knew ye. Isabel begs Max to tell her where he is, and he tosses a few mental images her way: he's being wheeled into the facility on the death table, he's being tortured by Pierce, and from the sky falls the flaming wreckage of the alien Mother Ship filled with heaps of interplanetary blah blah blah. She wakes up, freaking. A somber, cooperative, wholly Max-like Michael calms her down and retrieves the following information: they're drugging him, they're hurting him, they're taking his wine and turning it back into water. But here's the good news: she knows where he is.
Cut to the completely closed UFO Center, where the five remaining disciples mysteriously stand around an abandoned display and talk quite loudly about where to find Max. Now I don't mean to nitpick here (oh, wait. Of course I do), but didn't the plot of an entire early installment of this show ("285 South") center around a renegade Michael getting caught, alone and completely silent, inside of a guard-dogs-and-barbed-wire-protected UFO Center even though his best friend had the keys? I guess Bania-the-Nick-Wechsler'd-Curator decided that one break-in attempt six months ago challenged his delicate constitution to such an extent that he would simply leave the front door swinging wide open at all hours of the night, just in case the displaced alien youth of the town required further investigation of their questionable galactic fate. Anyway, Liz again threatens to go to Porno with all of this information, but Michael claims that the three remaining aliens can go to the sealed facility in the middle of the desert and get Max out of there. Liz says that she's going too, and Tesla barely cloaks the collective sentiment of our planet, and any other planets they might know about, in telling her to just. Stay. Away. For Christ's sake. See what I did there? Tesla, Michael, and Isabel walk right out the open front door of the UFO Center, leaving the three remaining humans to bask in the cheesy neon glow of the latest confirmation of their absolutely incontrovertible superfluity. Translation for those just tuning in: They suck. Say buh-bye.
Commercials. Y'know, it just occurred to me that if there's one media entity who really defines America at the start of this, the new millennium, it's the "Snap into a Slim Jim" guy.
Over the strained psychedelic grooves of the incongruous incidental music (hey, show, leave the Cream thing along already, okay?), this week's wacky caper transpires: Michael, Isabel, and Tesla skulk into the seemingly deserted facility which holds Max. And though assumed to be perhaps the most secretive government conspiracy (this building might as well be called "The John F. Kennedy Memorial Alien Holding Center for Cuba's Plan B Facility") the history of our great nation has to offer, not one armed guard or angry dog prowls anywhere in sight. Hey, want me to quote another one of my forum posts? Nah, forget it. I guess all of those tiny FBI surveillance cameras are in short supply, seeing as so many of them have gone out on location, recording essential documentation of alien life, things like the roaches and backs of cereal boxes on top of Michael's refrigerator. Back in this scene, however, Michael opens a pothole of some kind which reveals a ladder that -- surprise! -- leads directly into the creamy nougaty center of said sealed facility. Michael climbs down the ladder first, and for some reason the camera remains directly at the bottom of the ladder, capturing a multiple-second shot of Michael's expanding rear end descending rapidly and ominously on the helpless viewer. At least this time the underwear color is indeterminate. Anyway, they're inside. As I've mentioned. They stand in plain sight of just about everything, watching a suited individual place his palm on a security pad and gain access via his fingerprints. This development somehow leads Tesla to observe, "He's in there." Another suited man walks by, and Tesla pulls them into a corner. Danger passes. OR DOES IT? Michael attempts to exit their hiding place, but Tesla pulls him back and warns him at almost full voice that "they always patrol in intervals." Cut to inside the white room, where a decidedly non-lucid Max listens to Pierce's questions about the crash, the orb, the communicator, and blah. He's completely unresponsive, leading Pierce to begin bellowing that he wants Max "completely coherent -- for the PHASE!!!" You mean . . . there's MORE? Oh, foreshadow's sake!
Now this right here is just getting plain ol' sad as hell. Cut to the Crashdown, where the Irrelevant Three (those are the humans, by the way) sit in silence. Porno enters and sits, reaching out a hand one more time only to have it slapped away like so many old men who attempt public bonding with underage girls. He sidles up to the three and swarthily confides, "I was up all night, trying to figure out what happened at that carnival. I mean, I know what I saw. Mirrors or no mirrors, there were two Max Evanses standing right in front of me. And now one of them is in the hands of Agent Pierce and the Special Unit." Good. Fine admission, Porno. You're still normal. Now STOP. Because you're never going to earn their trust with a follow-up confession like, "I'm just hoping that it isn't the one we all care about." Ew. Or should I say EW! Stop that. It's crawling all over me. Anyway. Liz looks away and tells Porno that she doesn't know any more than he does. Tacit agreement all around. He leaves, asking how he can help them if they won't let him in. Turns out he can't. Ha ha. How about a totally absurd music video charading as plot development to make us all feel a little better? Fine: as the music blares and the scene fades back to the white room, a song I know nothing about accompanies the scene of Max's torture. The Storm Troopers strip him down, shoot him up, throw him in water, and feed him after midnight. I remember this scene being, like, twenty minutes longer than it turned out to be, and I'm momentarily disappointed at the lost prospect of a Real World-esque montage I can recap in three words while glossing over eight minutes. But there is no rest for the weary, and the weary is me. And so we move on. Cut to Michael, Isabel, and Tesla, still hiding out and "whispering" their attack plan. Remember those girls at slumber parties who didn't know how to whisper? These three cats are all her. Shut UP, Tesla! Isabel knows something is very wrong, and Tesla warns that "the minute they see us, it's all over." Michael threatens to "take this thing down" himself, and proceeds to exercise his normal modicum of care as he goes chasing after a suited man wheeling a Craftmatic Adjustable Death Table and making a right at the end of a hallway, where an arrow points and a sign reads "morgue." Okay, people, two words: SEALED FACILITY. Who the hell are these signs for?
Back at the Crashdown, Liz goes into full-tilt robot mode as she stands up in a "fit" and announces, "I'm not waiting anymore. I'm going to do what Max would do for me." You mean -- what? Hook up with the new girl in plain sight of your pathetic misery, then snicker at the very notion of you getting torn limb from limb as you get dragged in four directions when your extremities get tied to ox carts running off to different destinations? Oh, wait, Max didn't do that second part. That was me. I thought that. Damn. I must really hate her.
Back at the sealed facility, the three aliens once again hide from white-clad enforcers. They make their eventual way into the morgue, nervously pulling back a sheet that we just know does not contain the extremely wet and experimented-upon remains of Max Evans. The body they reveal, however, has a silver hand print on it, and Tesla asks just what exactly the hell that is. Isabel explains that it's how Nasedo kills, but Tesla's protests to the contrary are interrupted by the arrival of Agent Pierce at the door of the morgue, observing, "You shouldn't be here." Frozen silence all around as we fade to a much needed commercial respite.
Commercials: Here's a three-step insider marketing tip for all you would-be movie industry types out there. Name a movie Screwed. Cast Norm MacDonald, star of Dirty Work, as your dashing leading man. Wait for the bucks to ROLL IN.
Fade back pretty much where last we left off, Agent Pierce staring the three down. But apparently he is no kind of Agent Pierce at all. And as Tesla looks at him and observes, "It's you," the lights start to glow and Evil Ed morphs, sans Tic-Tacs again, back into his default goofy self. Tesla's first thought is in compensation: "Don't ever leave me alone like that again." Which he's never done. With the exception of the three years he was in containment at the very facility he has waltzed back into for the sole purpose of speaking in so full a voice that he might as well have brought the cast of "Riverdance" to step-dance through the echo-y metallic walls of the otherwise silent morgue. Oh, wait. I guess he could have been contained for three years before Tesla came around. Whatever. He says he has four of them to protect now, and Michael can barely prevent himself from bursting into a soulful rendition of Madonna's poignant "Oh, Father" at this touching reunion. Which he could do with little threat of alien-hunter detection, considering the volume the four have already reached. Evil Ed pledges to get them out and to safety once more. Wow. How amazing. He's so nice, suddenly. I will signify this almost inexplicable character shift with a nickname connoting its believability within the framework already established for his character: how about "Evil Ed." And so it shall remain. Cut to Nasedo-as-suited-agent hustling the rest of them into plain sight, at one key moment evading even Pierce as he crosses an adjoining hallway. Tesla pretends that this moment was dramatic enough for her to look relieved. It's ruse-tastic!
Porno's office, where the one and the ONLY nixed plan suggested in the course of the entire run of this show -- the one where Liz tells Porno "everything" -- is currently being enacted. She enters his office and he turns around to face her, relishing her arrival there with just a little too much in the way of hedonistic satisfaction. She dispenses the follow gem: "Your new deputy, Fisher, he isn't a deputy, Sheriff, and his name is not Fisher. It's Pierce. From the FBI Special Unit. He's the one who has Max." Oh, really? That's news. Brilliantly written and brilliantly delivered news, too. Porno responds, "How do you know that?" and I half-expect Liz to break her character of total non-character behavior by responding, "Well, first of all, everybody in the freakin' COUNTY knew that." She doesn't. Freak. She advises him that she "can tell you where he is," but first he has to trust her. And one glance later at those pouty lips of the Lizbot 5000, it is apparent that Porno wants to do plenty more to her than just trust. But trust will be in there somewhere, I'm sure.
Back at the sealed facility, Michael and Isabel share a private status report; meanwhile, Evil Ed and Tesla are off somewhere in the background, banging pots and pans together and playing another hilarious round of "Who can scream louder?" You guys, quiet. Seriously. Anyway, Isabel doesn't want to travel with Nasedo anymore, claiming that he could be working for Pierce. They can't trust him at all. But all at once Evil Ed and Tesla return unto the scene, and the plot thread in development is abandoned faster than Evil Ed's once and future evilness. In anticipation of a complex escape from a place they literally strolled into, Evil Ed has actually brought along a clipboard. No, really. Soon he will take them all into the sealed facility's locker room and pull down a chart with football plays diagrammed in a complex maze of X's and O's and lines connecting them. He's just that thorough. They synchronize their watches. This is all very Laser Tag of them. Evil Ed hands Michael the clipboard which has "the escape route," telling Michael to "scan it." We learn that the aliens are supposed to be equipped with the power of photographic memory, a capacity Michael does not possess. Then there's the door. It's made of a metal the aliens can't manipulate. Go, alien hunters. But how did they know to make a door an alien couldn't break through? Nasedo, field this one, will you? "They know more about you than you do. They've been studying us for fifty years, remember?" Hmmm . . . how about the rotting three-pound wooden plank they tossed aside so cavalierly to gain access in the first place? Oh, right. The thing about nothing making sense. I'd almost forgotten. Okay, then there's the x-ray-protected door behind which Max's Behind The Music is currently being taped. Evil Ed can shape-shift into anyone or anything, he claims, but he doesn't have human bone structure so he can't get through the x-ray. Fine. But Michael does have human bone structure, so he can get through the door. Even though the x-rays won't match, right? Wrong, I guess. Michael looks forlornly on and inquires, "So you're different from me?" Evil Ed responds, "Biology lessons later." (Read: never.) Evil Ed continues that, since the only other female agent is now dead, Michael will have to be the one to help spring Max. Michael smartly observes that he can't get through the door either because he can't alter his fingerprints, and Evil Ed tells him that he can, he just doesn't know it yet. For why THIS pisses me off, please refer to last week's episode, in which Max asks Tesla why Evil Ed can shape-shift but they can't, and Tesla gives him a reasonable explanation why and agrees, "Yes, we cannot shape-shift." Until this week, that is.
Back inside the white room, a post-torture Max attempts to rise on Pierce and molecularly manipulate his ass right on down to the ground. But Pierce laughs it right off, telling Max that the serum they've given him suppresses neurotransmitters and prevents his use of powers, but I'm still sticking with my original proclamation that there was a long, long window of time when The Most Agreeable Alien Nice Guy This Side of ALF could have offed them all with his mad-ass voodoo powers. So Pierce changes his approach, locking Max back into the Craftmatic Death Chair and observing, "It's not that you're part alien. It's that you're part human." , Pierce fits Max with a huge piece of headgear which looks less like the virtual reality tool it is intended to be, and more like the sunglasses all of my grandmother's friends in Boca have taken to wearing on those hot, bright afternoons at the flea market. As Pierce narrates a filmstrip of Max's life, he presses a button and the images inside of the granny glasses change from Isabel to Michael to Alex. "You have feeling, emotions," Pierce says. "Love." As a picture of Liz, looking airy and exhilarated, comes up, Max begins to scream. And I finally think Max and I might just have something in common, until I realize that the image inspiring his bellowing is one in which a bloodied Liz appears to be very, very hurt. And then I begin to giggle and snerk, realizing that, sadly, no, Max and I will never be the same at all, in any way. It's virtual reality. It's not real. Max says it: "You're evil." Good work. Now tell me, Pierce demands, where is the other Lever 2001? Tell me where it is. TELL ME! Acting! Damn, these FBI guys can't keep it under control. Running out of non-trite threatening dialogue, Pierce threatens Max with that threat that just never comes off as believably threatening, "You can either tell me where the other orb is, or you can tell me which one of your friends you want me to kill first." Oooh, I have some ideas, if this run-off should come down to audience participation. Lemme know, okay? Max caves.
Evil Ed and Michael continue on their extremely noisy tour of the sealed facility, with Evil Ed smack in the middle of a speech on the limited capacity of the human mind. When Michael was engineered, Evil Ed orates, he was given the ability to perform the functions of the full extent of humans. Then Michael picks up a corpse's dead, fishy hand and tries to clone his fingerprints, Evil Ed encouraging him all the while: "You can do it, Michael. The only thing stopping you is yourself." Michael tries. Evil Ed checks his watch. Like, ha ha. Not. Michael tries again. He can't do it. Someone throw rotten tomatoes at that woeful failure of a loser alien, already. Cut him loose, Evil Ed. I don't care what planet you're from, there's a phrase and it's the same in every language. Use it now or prepare to forgo self-preservation later: Dead weight. Cut to Tesla and Isabel, also in full view, bonding over their shared desire to save Max. Their role in the caper is as follows: Isabel is going to be John Malkovich in Max's head all over again, letting him know the escape plan. But Tesla, what are you going to do? Rather than just describe her role in the rescue, Tesla mysteriously decides that this highly-charged powder keg of emotions would be the perfect venue for her to display her powerful ability to send people on really, really vivid LSD flashbacks, ten seconds at a time. She makes as if being apprehended by a suited agent, but Tesla breaks Isabel out of it in time to tell her it was just a deception. Bitch.
Back at Fingerprint Failure Central, Evil Ed insists that if Michael can't clone the fingerprints posthaste, Max is sick, dying, dead. Cue more "you have to do it for me" dysfunctional father/son dialogue ripped straight from the shooting script of Varsity Blues. Michael reacts negatively to Evil Ed's nonpresence throughout his life, screaming -- SCREAMING -- at Evil Ed for not showing up earlier. Finally they're about to be caught, as all of the hooting and even more of the hollering has apparently inspired a suited man, traveling without back-up and looking resolutely nonchalant, to approach the door. Unarmed. Of course. And just in time, as Michael completes the fingerprinty transformation, the agent walks through the door and Evil Ed takes him down with a hand print and a smile. Michael asks Evil Ed how he can kill all these people, and Evil Ed responds that getting "home" requires some as-yet-undetermined amount of fighting for. Michael: "You're not who I thought you would be." Evil Ed: "Neither are you." Evil Ed waves a hand and Michael becomes a man in black. He hands him a comb and declares it "showtime." Where did the comb come from? And come to think of it, where did the clipboard go? Oh, right. Aliens.
Now this is just getting boring. I mean, really. Back in the white room, Pierce is holding both communicator orbs and reviewing his actions taken during the most recent commercial break: "You finally told me the truth. About where you hid it. Now make them work." But we already knew what was going to happen , didn't we? Max levels with Pierce in telling him that he really doesn't know what makes Lever 2001 tick, but Pierce is now so hell-bent on evil that even Max's double insistence of "I can't tell you what I don't know," coupled with the even more convincing "I can't tell you what I don't know" isn't making a believer out of anybody new today. Cut to the shape-shifted Evil Ed and the hair transformed, Gattaca-ready Michael, strolling through the hallways. Cut to Isabel and Tesla, Isabel fearing it will take her longer to get into Max's head than last time. Back to the white room, where Max is once more strapped to the Craftmatic Adjustable Death Chair. Always a sucker for a life lesson, Max takes this Christ-inspired moment to mutter the let's-break-into-individual-discussion-groups-and-ponder question of the week, "Who's inhuman now?" Oh! He's right! Let us revel in the grotesque error of our barbaric ways. Nah, screw it. He doesn't know what Pierce wants to be told, so with the sinister incantation, "Open him up," Max goes under the knife. Nice try, though, Max. Great try.
And so the time has come. Isabel method-acts her way back into Max's mind, telling him the plan. First he must "get Pierce alone in the room," so just as the initial incision is made, Max sits up and screams, "Stop!" Pierce tells the surgeons to stop. Like Max couldn't have thought of that "needle in sternum, ask for cessation" solution all by himself? Moron. So Max promises to tell Pierce how the communicators work, provided everyone else leaves the room. So they go, and Isabel leaves Max's brain. But just as the room is cleared and Max sits up with both Levers 2001 in hand, Pierce's patience runs low anew in telling Max he's taking too long. In five seconds. Whatever. But just as Pierce warns Max that "you've had your chance," the orbs begin glowing green, and Pierce's Tesla-produced fever dream kicks into high gear. Michael and shape-shifted Nasedo bust through the walls and into the white room, all with the usual Bar Mitzvah Video visual flair. As soon as Michael has Max clear of the door, Pierce snaps from the trance and realizes Max is gone. But the shape-shifted Evil Ed has stayed behind, attempting to take Pierce down, but failing to do so when other suited agents are clued into the deception and go after Evil Ed. They run in. Evil Ed, in shape-shifted form, is shot. Porno runs in, and Pierce takes off after Max and Michael. I think I forgot to mention that Max's shirt has been off again for, like, this entire episode. Gunshots. Porno. Pecs, everywhere. Porno shoots Pierce, who gets trapped behind the security door. I guess that was what it felt like to recap a so-called "action sequence," in light of which I hope that my MBTV show to recap is Yule Log, considering how hard it is to make fun of the painful slowness of an extended sequence when everything sudden ceases to move slowly. And thus it ends, much to the relief of my Cream-addled brain. To be continued. Oh, thank God.