Fade in on Max "Wheels of Fire" Evans in repose, curled in the corner of this episode's namesake, newly clad in the never clichd, 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.