New season, new hair, new set of mysteriously follow-the-trail-of-breadcrumbs-and-pecs alien-identifying clues left shoddily buried three inches under the Earth's crust in a well-trod patch of windy desert smack in the middle of town. Let's begin, shall we?
Fade up on a wide shot of a clearing in a southwestern desert almost as pleasing and generally interesting to the eye as the hey-what-does-this-button-do blinding white fade-in that has just preceded it. The sound of ambiguous beeping akin to a truck backing up (the truck, doubtlessly, containing a hermetically sealed box labeled "This Show's Momentum," backpedaling furiously onto an exit ramp clearly marked "Last Season") grows gradually faster as we cut to a hand holding a metal detector over the ground. Beep beep beep. The hand puts down the metal detector and opts instead for a shovel. Beep beep beep, dig dig dig. As the hand with the unseen face begins to unearth something buried below the surface, a voiceover interrupts the action with the sentiment, "I feel as if you've buried something." Cut to the interior of a therapist's office, where this sentiment of the doctor proves that Jason Katims did, in fact, receive and read the copy of Have A Nice Trip, See You Fall: Punny Urkelisms For Every Social Situation, a scriptwriting primer guide I sent him as a means of helping him create even more hackneyed and contrived dialogue than could previously have been imagined in primetime programming. And, clearly, it's working so far. Thank you, US Postal Service. Fly like an eagle, indeed.
And so we join a downcast Max "Pecs Luthor" Evans, listening as the therapist-formerly-known-as-Urkel-esque drawls at about a millionth of the necessary speed, "Max, I want you to know that however unique you think your problems may be, there are millions of teenagers out there going through exactly what you're going through right now." All this slogging is merely a prelude to the inevitable "Last Season on Roswell" retread that is the inherent challenge of the chronically low-rated series, which must constantly explain and re-explain itself in the unlikely event it should attract a new viewer or five over the course of the upcoming season. Which is why it is all the more infuriating when the therapist continues to emote so slowly and carefully and thoughtfully, as if his character is of any real import at all, like he's prepping for a Good Max Hunting watershed moment at the end of this scene where he holds up a copy of this week's script and the two hug and cry and Dr. Backstory reiterates over and over and over to a sobbing Max, "It's not your fault. It's not your fault." But it is your fault, Max. It really, really is.
The camera zeroes in on Max's face, a technical feat that requires the assistance of a native Sherpa and miles of rappelling cable to traverse the boy's mountainous pecs just to arrive at a tight shot of anything north of neck high. As the drama intensifies by virtue of the reedy, Native American rip-off drone of The Pan Flutes of the Damned, Dr. Backstory suggests, "You want to try and tell me what's been going on?" Max deadpans: "Well, I guess the natural place to start is...that I'm an alien." Viva la flashback reel! Last season flashes before my eyes like the death knell of quality television it so clearly was, from the kids emerging from their wax paper wombs fallen to Earth from Planet Silly String to the scoping fjords of Sandy Land to the Crash Festival to the shooting at the Crashdown. Max helpfully VOs, "My sister and our friend Michael are also a little green around the gills," but even this early attempt at colorful writing is squashed by the fact that it is delivered in a typically monotone interpretation by someone who clearly wasn't in on the joke. Sad, that. And so it goes: "The six of us were connected by the secret we shared. There was also Tess." And then there was, indeed. And what better way to be introduced back into the action than with a "Millionaire and his wife, the movie star, and the rest" flourish? Because Tess is so the human-and-alien-DNA-mixture embodiment of that which is "the rest." Shot of the white room. Shot of Evil Ed becoming Pierce. Shot of Pierce pulling the gun on Michael. Max clunks on: "As much as we tried to convince ourselves that we could live a normal life, we couldn't. To save our lives, Michael killed Agent Pierce of the FBI." Cut to a shot that didn't appear anywhere in a first-season episode, of a scruffy Porno, a skull-capped Michael kickin' it gangsta flava in an I-know-what-your-hair-jokes-did-last-summer skull cap of some kind, and Max, all under late-night desert darkness, burning Pierce's body. "And no matter how justified it was, the truth is we killed a man. And that wasn't easy. For any of us." And so he has come clean, but in a purely "not" sort of way, as Dr. Backstory VOs once more from afar, pulling Max back from the distracted coma whose non-energy I share with Max already, asking him, "Max, don't you have anything to say? Anything at all?" See, because Max hasn't actually said anything, anything at all. The potential for action already artfully sidestepped, Max gazes around distractedly and deadpans, "It's like you said. Just normal, teenage stuff." Hey, look what not happened! Par for the course, I think. A new season of Roswell has begun. Back in the desert, the shovel reveals a bone of some kind, buried so far under the surface of the Earth that merely blowing on the grain of sand that concealed it would not even have come close to providing the necessary force to reveal it in its entirety to the world. In fact, you'd have to blow really, really hard.
Opening credits: Brrrrr! Who turned the cultural thermometer down to zero? Oh, it must have been Dido. Singing. Still. Otherwise, second-season reediting ahoy! The new shots mostly play like misplaced footage from the flashback sequence, with the addition of the actors' names so they stick in our minds until we see them again on VH1's all-WB Twentieth Anniversary Where Are They Now spectacular. Sadly, the looming specter of Emilie DeRavin's presence in the opening credits has become a reality, but hey, Nick Wechsler's face is still lurking around, so that offers the hope that one's presence or hierarchy in the theme sequence in no way correlates to increased screen time. You got that straight, Appleby? And Michael? And Porno? And...the rest? If you know what I mean?
In a bold directorial flourish unknown to audiences since the headier, meta-TV days of the incomparable Max Headroom (history will prove me right, dammit, so save yourself the incredulous hate mail), we open on a shot of a TV within a TV. But rather than sticking to the time-tested formula of the meta-TV cracking wise about the antics of that crazy President Reagan or hawking that sure-fire marketing winner "New Coke" in my general direction, this TV is showing something called a "Congressional Subcommittee Inquiry," and I decide to forgo a passel of "Roswell is more boring than C-SPAN" jokes because, well, history will prove me right on that, too. Agent Pierce sits on a witness stand while a Strom Thurmond-ish political composite (and what better way to arrest and captivate the viewing sensibilities of the WB target demographic than with a character best described as "a Strom Thurmond-esque political composite," I ask you. No better way, is how) grills him on "how much of the spending of the special unit was authorized" by Pierce's superiors. None, it turns out. Pan away from the television to the couch backstage at the Crashdown, where Alex "That Thing You Don't" Whitman proclaims Max "a genius" in his ability to have "Nasedo pose as Pierce, make a mockery of the special until and the government threat" against them all. Max flatlines that he had "nothing to do with it," claiming that he hasn't heard from Nasedo "in three months." Well, retracts Alex, "If Nasedo can put an end to the special unit, I'd say all your problems are solved." But from a corner of the room pipes up Roswell's "It" fashion girl, Isabel "Max to the Maxim" Evans," who wastes no time in filling the room with the stench of generic paranoia in her assertion that "we still have our enemies to deal with." See, here we go again, right here. Twenty-two episodes of back-story, and all they can cook up is a line with the biting specificity of "Bad things are bad when they're bad. Like, really, really bad. Y'know? You like my leather pants? 'Cause, God, I do." Max retorts that "it's been over three months, and nothing has happened" (though I would like to propose that the time-frame on the whole "nothing happening" non-development, while we're talking about it, has been significantly longer than three months, har har har) and says he doesn't want to live his life in fear like Michael. And just as the fight seems poised to escalate to almost "alive" levels of intensity, a voice from the couch reports that "they're taking a vote." We pan over to discover Maria "Charlie's Hein-gel" DeLuca sitting on the couch. She is bedecked in white stockings, a positively crotch-length red-patterned strapless skirt indicating the design scheme of "Don't blame me, I bought it stoned" wall-hangings in a seventies suburban kitchen, and problematic tresses that prove my repeated, plaintive cries for her to "DOOOOO SOMETHING" about her hair were sadly misinterpreted during their muffled trip through my television speakers and found their way into TV Land as "MEDUUUUUSA." And so it goes.
And so back to the Crashdown TV, where Strom Thurmond calls "for an immediate disbandment of that component of the FBI called the special unit." Teeming hail of "ayes" from the congressional peanut gallery. Meanwhile, a nondescript blond in a Crashdown uniform happens through the back room, comments, "You people are way too into C-SPAN," and prances off. Maria calls out, "Goodbye, Courtney." Um...eh? Anyway, a unanimous "aye" vote would mean the end of all this silly alien hunting, then, wouldn't..."Nay!" Damn damn dammit. Strom Thurmond recognizes a "Congresswoman Whittaker," a firecracker kind of work-that-sensible-navy-suit-you-law-making-heart-breaking-vixen-you mid-thirties politico who stands and delivers a speech about a crime in 1972, in which "the special unit of the FBI investigated a murder" in which there was "no murder weapon, no entry wound apart from the presence of silver markings left on the skin which subsequently vanished." Yeah? YEAH? "Yet the internal organs and tissues of the victim were completely decimated." Anyway, finally stops talking, allowing us to...oh, God, MORE? Sigh. Fine: "Nuclear analysis of the victim's bones show traces of a substance dubbed cadmium-x, a substance that doesn't exist on Earth." Except for this one time, of course, when they found the substance on Earth. Except for then. Strom asks Pierce why there was no record of anything concerned with cadmium-x in the unit's files, and Pierce tells the room that the existence of the substance was a hoax. How far into the filming of this episode do you suppose they were when they realized that the word "Cadmium" and the letter "X" are, for some reason, impossible to say fluidly? Strom can't do it, Pierce can't do it, Congresswoman Va-va-voom can't do it. It is a bad name. And it fills me with an unstoppable craving for Cadbury Eggs, which can't be so good, either. Mmmmm...chocolate. Anyway, we then cut away from the TV-within-a-TV for no other reason than it now being time for Maria to fulfill her early-season quirk quota with the blistering non-sequitur, "I am definitely not in the market for a thirtysomething shape-shifter, but I have to admit the man rocks." She then stands and proclaims the show "over" (if only, sister), and the rest of the cast woodenly stage-directs themselves off the set, as if the characters just met in the parking lot before the scene began and received a script which neglected to include the typical "goodbye" ruzzah-ruzzah of a large group departing, like "Elephant, elephant, elephant" or "Orange and grapefruit, orange and grapefruit." So no one says goodbye. They just skulk off in six different directions, all of which cannot logistically lead to doors unless the Crashdown has suddenly begun subscribing to the ever-changing architectural rules of the Brady house. Quite fluid they've all become with each other, really.
Max hangs behind and accosts Maria, who must be reading every third word of her dialogue off of the giant cue cards that surround the set just beyond the camera's gaze (it's a good day on the set when all of the actors remember to skip the words "Please flip card now" while filming a scene, I bet), so nonsensical has her uncontextualized hilarity quickly become: "Girlfriend, I know we bonded over the summer, but I am not quite ready to show you the bod just yet." And rather than pull this scene back into reality it so clearly lacks with a barbed response of the "No thanks, Crotchy McPantsFree, but considering the outfit, I'm already standing right there at the front railing overlooking the panoramic vistas of Cooter National Park, wouldn't you say" variety, Max remains sullen in his inquiry, "Heard from Liz yet?" Maria tries lying, and Max calls her on it, saying that he heard her on the phone with Liz. Oh, God, like he would even know? Five seconds on the phone with Liz, Maria might as well have been on the phone with the riveting recorded drone of the "At the beep, the time will be..." lady than with the stellar conversational acumen of one Lizbot 5000 I might take the time to mention here. So she sets it straight for Max. Liz left without saying goodbye for a summer-long stint in Florida. "In layman's terms, she blew you off. Big time." She then likens Max to a "groveling dog," adding her cartoonish impression of what Max might talk like if re-imagined as an animated, um, groveling dog. She tells him to "play it cool, let her come to you." Wow. Somebody put down her copy of The Rules over the summer and snuck her anti-feminist ass right into a Frank T.J. Mackey seminar, much to my nontraditional delight. He confirms, "Play it cool?" Okay, are they all in a full-scale production of West Side Story on the side or what? Yeah, Daddy-O. I said play it cool, and maybe Liz will come to you tonight at the dance at the gym while you're all simultaneously doing a dance and repeatedly yelling the word "Mambo!" in coincidentally harmonic ways. Actually, knowing this town and it
s penchant for wacky theme parties of no consequence to the plot, I hesitate to suggest that idea too loudly. Either way, Max asks if Maria can heed her own advice, considering she has "left five messages for Michael in the past two days." Maria turns and hilariously volleys, "What's your point?" Um, did I use the word "cooter" above? Wow. I'm really sorry about that. Am I twelve? Maybe I'm twelve.Out in the Crashdown dining room (glad to see the creative honchos at the network have decided to forgo set or locale development in lieu of dumping the entire season's budget on Isabel's Michael Kors leather dominatrix pants), where Alex plays the dilettante nerd in whatever media genre needs him most, this time alerting Isabel to the "arts theater" playing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Oh, that obscure "art" film? Who flew over the what nest, now? Never heard of it. Alex wants to go to the movies. Isabel does not want to go to the movies. She wants him to find out anything he can on cadmium-x, and when she remains as standoffish as usual, she excuses her behavior in her typical fashion: "Look, they finally let me back on the set. You see where I disappeared to last season? Subplot Hell isn't just for the unpretty anymore, and I am not -- I repeat, NOT -- sitting in my trailer all season again playing mahjongg with that creepy Nick guy and all those weird adults who intermittently played our parents or something. The PLOT, Mr. Teflon Famous Guy's Son. Talk about THE PLOT." Anyway, she doesn't say that or any portion of that at all, clearly. What she does say is her usual you-are-at-least-ten-years-and-fifty-beautiful-people-away-from-my-lovin' put-off, and it works, "You know it's not you. It's just with everything that's happening, with everything on my mind, I just can't think of being with a guy right now. Y'know, any guy." And, as the zany happenstance so much a facet of the language in Katimstopia would have it, "any guy" himself enters the Crashdown in the form of the digger-of-poorly-concealed-bones, who apologizes for interrupting them and is soon to be frozen in non-adorable Humbert Humbert-esque slathering all over Leather Pants Evans. Moony gazing ensues. The man, a (slightly) younger, smarmier, smoother talking salt-of-the-Earth Mel Gibson doppelganger, introduces himself as "Grant Sorenson," but I wouldn't get too used to staring down his real name, as he has already been redubbed "Mel Glibson" in light of the painstaking character description previously put forth just twenty-five words or so before. He and Isabel share a private moment. Hi. Hi. Alex mood-breaks, sticking a hand out and loudly announcing his name, and it is not entirely unfunny. Mel Glibson wastes no time: "I was just wondering if you might be able to tell me where I could find the sheriff's office." Panicked looks all around as Isabel tries to shine, "Why are you looking for the sheriff?" And I totally want him to riff, "'Cause baby, you're guilty of larceny for stealing my heart" or something, and of course he doesn't because the sheriff's office is the very site of the "jail" of which Isabel is so clearly the "bait." And so he reaches down to answer her question visually, dipping into his bag, and...hey, mountain man, is that a cadmium-x infused alien bone in your product placed Urban Outfitters rucksack, or are you...oh, never mind.
Cut to Porno's slatted office, where the Sheriff is attended by some other law-enforcing fellow, whose name I don't know at all and whose lines in the history of the series usually include some variation on "Yes, Porno" and whose stage directions always resemble "Stands unobtrusively while the world continues turning without any help from him, thank you very much." But he is poised to bust onto the scene right about now, as Mel Glibson forks over his findings. Porno observes that it might be a coyote bone, and the officer of little repute throws in his first monkey wrench with the inquiry, "Why would anyone bury a coyote?" Porno asks where Mel Glibson turned up the bones, and the concerned look on Porno's face -- not to mention the red neon lights which point from the heavens at Porno's head flashing "guilty, guilty, guilty" -- indicates that Mel has just named the exact spot where Porno took his teenage charges out into the woods to help them with their assigned summer reading of the timeless classic "Close Match Book Before Striking." Wouldn't want our brains to turn to mush just because no one's watching us on television, after all. Mel Glibson, who we learn is an geologist, continues on, his plot-developing savvy a thing of beauty: "Why would a metal detector detect bones?" Deputy Omnipresent, old guy with a new purpose, observes, "I just got goosebumps" (what is it about a grown man saying the word "goosebumps" that creeps me out so bad? Honestly. I would really like to know) and leaps into action after Mel leaves the room, telling Porno, "I'll get an excavation team on it right away." Porno furrows his brow, and not for the first time that day, I'll bet, and rues the moment his ever-burgeoning need to spend quality time alone with his young male friends led him to such drastic means. I will say, however, that the word "goosebumps" is infinitely better than "gooseflesh," which really makes me want to puke. Apropos of nothing.
Oh, hello, you two. Over at The House Government Subsidy Built, Michael "Hey, Hey, I'm the Monkees...Yes, All Of Them" Guerin and Tess "That Girl Is Poison" Harding talk intently as Tess helps to unleash the full extent of Michael's powers. Michael stares at a table of rocks, and with a pensive, concentrated gaze, smashes the rocks into a million pieces in an unspecial effect brought to you this week by the fine folks at Industrial Light And Guess Which Cup The Ball Is Under. Max and Isabel enter. Tension everywhere. Max tells them that "Nasedo is finished in D.C." Tess shrugs her shoulders and garbles, "Well, it's not like he's Ward Cleaver when he's here," and the way she says "Ward" and the way she says "Cleaver" just set my teeth on edge and also makes my head explode. Tess. Grrrr. Max dourly (um, duh?) tells them that someone has dug up Pierce's bones. Michael asks what Mel Glibson (though he doesn't exactly refer to him as such) was doing out in the middle of the desert with a shovel, and Max snarks, "That's what geologists do." Heh. It's true, you know. They debate as to whether to contact Nasedo, and Max demands that they do nothing without his say-so. Michael says he's not just going to sit around doing nothing (well, I beg to differ, Mr. Guerin), demanding, "You're our leader. Why don't you lead?" Max snipes back, "Fine, crack some more rocks!" All hail the reigning King Of Comebacks. Meanwhile, over at the crime scene, Deputy Omnipresent unearths a Swiss army knife, and we cut to Michael suddenly there, overlooking the action. He then inexplicably begins to run, and trips over a rock in his path (Ha! Angry rocks enact vigilante justice! Crush that pain, alien boy!) and stumbles right on top of what looks like a five-billion-year-old surgical glove right in his path. He picks it up. It dissolves. He utters the pearl, "What the hell?" I cannot believe this show was renewed.
Isabel and Max walk down Roswell's one street, talking about the geologist's credentials. Max promises that his facts all check out, and Isabel insists that "Nasedo had a pretty good cover, too." He promises to check it out and Isabel says she can take it on because she's hot to trot for Mel Glibson, but King Max of the sovereign planet Sucker spots Liz "Dreary Appleby" Parker standing alone down the street and the conversation is over. He runs up to her and asks when she got back. Her hair looks really good. The whole thing has gone about a shade lighter and I can't say it's a bad thing. And that -- and this I promise -- will be the last nice thing I'm apt to say about her for the entire season. Including my comment about the nature of the tube-top-ish skirt with unmatching green sweater, which is completely inappropriate corporate attire for the job interview we're about to find out she's going on. They see each other. Hi. Hi. He knows how strange everything was before she disappeared, but he retreads that Pierce is putting an end to the special unit and that all the badness looks like it's gone, gone, gone. He begins to tell her about his non-feelings for Tess, but she cuts that off in the hope that she can find a "fresh start." She tosses her hair no less than six times in this scene. Stupid hair. He tells her she looks great. She has a job interview, and it's this great opportunity with...hey, it's Congressgal Whittaker! Liz has an interview with her. What an unbelievable coincidence! They leave to begin the interview after she introduces herself to Max in a decisively "perhaps they'll forget this plot line has Kathleen Topolsky's name written all over it, but replacing the phrase 'school authority figure' with the radically different 'political authority figure'" kind of way. And then they're gone.
Deputy Omnipresent looks very, very proud as he attends Michael Guerin, who sits in Porno's office in a brown sleeveless button-down collared vest (yes, it really is as ugly as it sounds) that the fine folks over at the Gay Rodeo will be very, very disappointed accidentally fell into their fire sale pile. 'Cause man, no one in their right mind would get rid of that thing on purpose. I'm just sayin'. Porno pulls out Michael's Swiss army knife and tells him they found it near the crime scene with his fingerprints all over it. "Do you remember our little meeting out there a few months ago?" Porno asks. "Or do I have to refresh your memory?" Michael thinks "refresh" might be the best possible route, and Porno responds with a fabricated story and an even more fabricated police report about the night Porno caught Michael drinking in the desert. He tells him not to leave a calling card the time he takes off to break the law, and sends Michael packing with all great haste. Deputy Omnipresent goes all Dirty Harry on our haltingly-character-developing-asses with his comment, "I smell a rat," all the while snarling and furrowing his brow, the collective Roswell low-cal substitute for acting that we've certainly not seen for the last time.
Outside and one second later, Michael grabs a payphone and is somehow mysteriously on the phone with Nasedo. He reports a "code red," and Nasedo tell him not ever to call him again "unless Max knows." Then he hangs up. Yeah, that's the whole scene.
Middle of nowhere. Mel Glibson is crouching over a smoking pot of some kind, performing an action I can only term as "geologically suspicious." Didn't think that expression could exist, did you? He turns around to spot Isabel, who's wearing something smaller and something blacker than the last time they interacted. Y'all remember that time, way back in another scene, also before Isabel was eighteen and legally permitted to induce the "How YOU doin'" response from someone with the capacity for that much facial. He asks what she's doing out there, and she tells him that Roswell is a small town, "and when something interesting pops up, sometimes your curiosity gets the best of you." He ponders, "Something interesting?" Hey, that's just exactly what I thought. Seems impossible to me, too. She asks what he's doing in Roswell, and he quickly outlines the fact that there were nuclear tests done in the desert in the fifties, and he's testing the area for radioactivity, as commissioned by a corporation who wants to build a chemical plant on the site and pollute the land even further. Thanks, Mr. Wizard! This feels like a school trip.
Christine Todd Whittaker sits in Porno's office, telling him that she just wants to "cut to the chase." Needless to even recap, the dialogue continues to sparkle. She plays him an oh-I-just-happened-to-have-this tape recording of a phone conversation she had with Pierce when he first came to Roswell. As such: "My first move is to look into the Sheriff here. I think he might be the key to everything." She tells him that once Pierce came back to Washington, he started lying to her and everyone about everything. Porno coyly tells her, "I would strongly advise that you not spend too much more energy looking for aliens. I mean, you just might just find yourself out of a job like your friend, Mr. Pierce." But as Porno and the Congressgal come dangerously close to blows on the matter of The Missing Script -- er, I mean "The Lying FBI Agent," Deputy Omnipresent makes sure his nickname holds up at least through the end of the dwindling segment in bursting inappropriately into the office and announcing, "They found something on the murder victim." Congressgal gets real curious: "Murder victim?" Porno stands and furrows accordingly, "There isn't any murder victim. It's some bones that were dug up by a geologist. We don't even know if they're human." At which point the Congressgal coughs and makes for the door wheezing, as oxygen masks drop from the ceiling and Deputy Omnipresent fastens one securely to his face and breathes normally, all for the purpose of avoiding permanent lung damage from inhalation as a result of the toxic effects of getting too near Porno's second-hand smokescreen.
A lab-coated doctor stands over a table, on which Pierce's corpse has been completely reconstructed. ["Should I bother to point out that there's no way, after only three, months, that the corpse would have decomposed to that extent in such a dry climate? No? Didn't think so." -- Sars] The doctor reports, "There's no doubt the bones are human." Porno, Omnipresent, and Congressgal stand aside while the doctor points out the left side of the corpse's ribcage, which has been entirely fused together as one large bone. Porno tries to play it cool by screaming out loud his belief that nothing is amiss at every possible moment, and this time he says that there must have been a fire and the corpse was compromised in this way. But the doctor tells us that bones don't melt, and that this freak occurrence was caused by "a short and very contained burst of unthinkable energy." Right. Check. Porno promises to launch a full-scale investigation, but Congressgal snarls that she has no interest in "leaving this situation in the hands of a county sheriff." She'll consult with the FBI and she's not taking her eyes off these bones and blah blah blah ball-busting-woman-in-power-cliché-cakes. Omnipresent looks on, and if I didn't already completely know that he was about to emerge as the most bland bad guy since every one of the Alien Four's first season nemeses, I wouldn't be so darn tootin' surprised when he comes out with the suggestion, "Based on this new information, maybe I should bring that kid back in." What kid? Cut to late-night at The House That Government Subsidy Built, when a knock on the door signals a blasé Michael to mutter something about the hell Porno gave him about leaving the knife in the desert. But when he opens the door to the house, the many flashing lights and government officials who have come to witness the arrest signal that this is not business-as-usual at Porno's House Of Police Subterfuge. Either way, Michael's under arrest for murder.
day at the Crashdown, the Pierce manifestation of Nasedo has been hastily re-imagined as something akin to (cough cough) comic relief, as he saunters in the door with the snarkilicious, "You can never find those little pod people when you want them." Hey, Pierce/Nasedo/FBI Bad Guy Dude? The pilot called...it wants Porno's sunglasses back. In fact, it wants its entire introductory Porno Crashdown sequence back. And just like always happens to me after a lifetime of watching one riveting congressional filibuster after another, a large, dorky patron of the Crashdown recognizes Pierce and proclaims him to be "that guy from TV...that crazy FBI guy." Pierce blazes past him with that "oh, petty humans" reaction I haven't seen played out in such Technicolor realism since Marvin the Martian cocked his head at Bugs Bunny and proclaimed these "Earthlings" to be oh so silly after all. He proceeds to the bathroom and shuts the door, while Dorky Comic Foil (if you remember the WB's dictum of the overweight, glasses-wearing cross-section of the populace existing exclusively as comic foils to the beautiful, of course) stands outside and excitedly awaits Pierce's return. Pierce holds a hand up in front of the mirror (remember when shape-shifting required popping a pill of some kind...yeah, I barely do either. Damn you, continuity editor, we hardly knew ye. Daaaaaaamn yooooooooou!), and the room goes white and light pours through the keyhole. He exits the bathroom as Evil Ed/Nasedo/Tess's Father Dude instead, clearly of no interest to the still-waiting Dorky Comic Foil waiting outside, pen and compliments ("Um, remember when you voted on that really big issue and you stood up and said 'nay'? Man, that was awesome!") both at the ready.
Evil Ed (fine, we'll just go with "Nasedo." If you insist, then) enters the back room and, quite at the top of his voice and to the most crowded room in the history of suburban culinary architecture, fairly screams to Max, Tess, and Porno, "Sheriff Valenti, welcome to the ever-burgeoning 'I Know An Alien' club." Funny. Not Earth-shatteringly hilarious enough to blow fifty years worth of your species' cover on this planet for, perhaps, Mr. Non-Discretionary Alien Man. Just barely quiet enough to be drowned out by the blaringly loud and carefully placed "songs featured this week" record-company cross-promotion soundtrack tunes that I'm kind of getting used to but still find cheesy and opportunistic. But funny, nonetheless. Other than those things, a hootenanny freakin' riot. Max asks what Nasedo knows about Whittaker, and he admits that he knows the congressgal "intimately." Intimately? "Well, to borrow a rather crude human colloquialism, I've been diddling her all summer." Crude? Nay. From the fifties? Yeah, maybe that. Maria (who I didn't know was there) comments to Alex (who I think I knew was there, but didn't care), "I hope he's using birth control," which must have been the punch line of a quip whose set-up we, the audience, never had the privilege to hear. Max shares the information about Whittaker and the bones, and Nasedo insists that he must "extinguish every human who has this information." Alex launches into another totally unfunny Xanderific comment ("I assume this excludes present company" or some such thing) that proves conclusively that I knew Xander, I worked with Xander, and you, sir, are no Xander. Sorry. I'm opting out of the presidential debates tonight to finish up this recap, so I felt that this shirking of civic duties as an American citizen warranted at least one arcane political reference. Which is a good quota. Seeing as I only know one. Oh, wait: "Dewey defeats Truman." There. I know two.
But at this moment, Liz Parker saunters grandly down the steps from her room, loudly demanding, "Isn't killing people what got you into this situation to begin with?" Nasedo retreads the fact that his only job is to protect The Royal Four, and he will stop at nothing (up to and including souped-up intergalactic cheese like the nickname "The Royal Four," it sadly seems) to protect them and their entire species. Max announces that they won't be killing anyone, anyone at all, and the dialogue goes full-tilt Hercules in the middle of the afternoon on your local UPN affiliate network when Nasedo dramatically intones, "Oh, my. A pacifist for a king!" Oh my, indeed. Nasedo continues on that the feds know about cadmium-x, and if they find it on the unearthed bones it's Anal Probe Central for Public Alien #1, Michael Guerin. They know Christie has the bones, but reigning Maxim queen Isabel astutely observes, "My breasts! Look at 'em! Better yet, try to look away!" Again, that's not really what she says. And I'm not so much a breast man myself (no, really, I'm not), but look at that tank top. Teen People Parker is looking, shooting daggers into her own publicist's heart at the moment, I can tell you this much. Anyway, Isabel astutely observes, "Even if we knew where they were, what would we do with them? Hiding them isn't going to solve the problem." It would have once, if only they hadn't brought two corn-on-the-cob holders and an unsharpened pencil out into the desert as their primary digging materials for the evidence-concealing-party from back in the heady halcyon days of summer. Idiots.
Jesus Christmas Jones, at least the template for how to write every single episode in the history of this series wasn't used as Pierce's kindling. That's for damned sure, as we cut to nighttime at Whittaker's office, the congressgal telling a manically filing Liz to "go home." From out of seeming nowhere, Pierce appears behind the congresswoman. She introduces him to Liz and asks him what he's doing in Roswell: "Seems like the worst place to be for a recovering alien hunter." He makes a pass. Liz leaves the room. He whispers that he needs to talk to Whittaker, and she volleys, "You should have thought of that before you publicly humiliated me on television." Okay, reigning King and Queen of Delusions-of-Grandeur-Ville (population: them), for the last time: it's C-SPAN, man, and NO ONE IS WATCHING. I'd take log rolling on ESPN2 over that. I'd take the local religious broadcasting station that always seems to be the only channel that ever comes in with crystal-clear resolution, despite the lack of an antennae, on every TV inside a college dorm room in every college on the planet. I'd take an endless loop of Eight Is Enough reruns in PAX-TV, for at least in that values-friendly show exists the ageless comic timing of the incomparable Dick Van Patten and the perpetual adorable tykedom of the aw-shucks-inspiring Adam Rich. Again, I'm just sayin'. Anyway, Pierce sexes Whittaker right on out of the place, and in no short order, Max slides in through a mysteriously appearing back door. He starts to walk around frantically, but Liz posits that she doesn't think they'll be back "anytime soon." Was that sexual tension? And if you have to ask...
Oh, gross. Michael sits, wifebeater-clad, alone in a prison cell, as memories of my summer long co-recapping stint on Oz surge to my throat in the most uncomfortable, anal-rape-recalling kind of way when Porno enters the cell and sits down with Michael on the bed. Porno tells Michael that he needs to be careful when he's in there, like not trying to use his powers to escape. "The best thing to do," he advises, is "to sit tight." If that isn't a cloaked allusion to surviving the grittier aspects of getting accustomed to prison life, damned if I know what is. Michael confides to Porno that he killed a man, so maybe this is where he should be. He doesn't know what they're up against. He's mad at Max because their leader won't lead, but how is he supposed to know how to lead? Or something.
Back at Whittaker's office, Max erupts in fury (okay, he throws a piece of paper and yells "dammit." I said "Max," people. We're talking about a Remains of the Day emotional spectrum here, so allow me the hyperbolic indulgence of for once claiming that he "erupts" in something resembling "fury," okay? Okay) when they fail to find anything of importance on cadmium-x. Max hopes that maybe the bones are "just bones," and that things can "just go back to how they were." Liz expresses uncertainty at this notion, and a glacial pause ensues. So, Liz, continues, what exactly is cadmium-x? Max is so on this one: "It's an isotope of cadmium that might have been created when Michael killed Pierce." Liz nails it right back: "So it's some sort of aftereffect of Michael using his powers?" Yeah, and if they don't get the bones before the bad guys test for cad-x, Michael is screwed. "We all are." Groan. Liz tells Max to check out the Las Cruces University medical center. Why? Well, for insanely technical science-y reasons you simply won't hear about from me is why, and then she pauses in her own self-conscious dorkiness to report, "I'm not a dork..." You just play one on TV, har har har? "I just like science." Oh. That, too.
Alone on the darkened streets in front of the Crashdown, Nasedo catches up with Max, who boils down the story about when and where the bones will be delivered to one line. Nasedo then asks if Max has had any, er, "relations" with Tess, and Max offers, "I haven't performed any mating rituals, if that's what you're asking." Nasedo tells Max that he heard his destiny with his own ears, and warns him, "I would just be careful not to confuse what you want to be true with what really is true." Hey, thanks for the fortune cookie, Obi-Wan, but don't you think something in a "tangible" would be more the kind of advice your young leader could be using these days? They part. Evil Ed walks into an empty parking lot and spots the five billion year old surgical glove and utters, "Oh, no." And I've said it before and I'll say it again gladly: My. Thoughts. Exactly.
Whittaker and a team of henchmen accompany the bones of her old flame into the testing facility while Max, Isabel, Isabel's breasts, and Tess all try to make their way into said facility to enact a wacky caper of wacky caper-ish proportions. They spot an overweight, none-too-comely, wacky-foil-to-the-beautiful security guard, and Isabel quickly devises a cerebral scheme which will take all of her cunning: make with the hooters, and don't delay. She asks him where the student union is, and he leaps off his can to take her there. Max palms the security door (didn't this happen in, like, eight episodes last season? Any eight, really) and walks right in. Whittaker stands in a room filled with computers and various other alien-bone-cadmium-x testing facility paraphernalia, and Max rings Tess up on a cell phone to tell her she'll be working her mind-bending voodoo shit on eight people while he performs some as-yet-undetermined task.
Back inside, Whittaker utters, "Gentleman, start your engines," and the computers whir to life as Max walks out in plain sight. Tess mind-warps the room into believing that Max is not there, and he approaches the pod that contains the bones. He opens it (I know I should be bored by this, but I totally feel like I'm in the middle of a really kick-ass game of interactive Zork, so I'm just gonna go with that vibe for now, if that's okay with everyone here) and jumps to the floor below. Seeing the skeleton, he runs a hand over the bones as the scan begins, and the power from the scan prep knocks him back off his feet. Max rises again and runs a hand across the bones and makes every ounce of that pesky cadmium-x disappear just as the scan begins. Tess' mind meld lets up. The results print out upstairs (oooh, cadmium-x scans while u wait), and Whittaker learns that the bones contain no trace of cadmium-x. And, to boot, the skeleton was said to have been in the desert for forty-two years. Ha ha, Whittaker. She gets pissed and leaves.
Back at the Crashdown, everyone celebrates their collective good fortune for a moment until Courtney enters the room all unexpectedly, and then they talk even louder about how they have to be more careful about talking about how they're aliens when there are people around to hear them. Courtney throws a casual hi to Michael, and it gets Maria all up in hackles. She tells him she wants to know why they're not together, and he blither-blathers on about the fact that he's "a warrior" or some such silly leave-me-alone-you-dumb-painted-harlot kind of thing. She misses him. "I know, but don't." Do you miss your spine too, Ms. DeLuca? I'm no syndicated Cybill Shepherd of relationships or anything, but please do yourself a favor and dump him. DUMP HIM! Or, even more pathetically, let him just dump you already.
Outside, Max runs into Liz and the chemistry (save for all the plot brilliance to come from the liberal flowing of one cadmium-x) dissipates completely as Max asks her if they could "go back" if everything else went back to normal. He touches her arms. Rush of images. Anyway, she can't pretend. She goes to bed.
And, finally, back at Chez Evans, Max climbs in bed and...ack! It's The Pecs! They have come to pillage the town and steal the children and wreak untold havoc on an otherwise peaceful and unsuspecting world. I know some of y'all just couldn't love shirtless Max more, but I have to be perfectly honest, or what kind of opinionated bastard recapper would I be? The pecs. They just plain terrify me. I ascribe unto them evil motives. They are not drawn to scale with his body or the rest of the planet. I fear the pecs. A knock on the door (barely audible over The Pecs! It's the beating of the hideous pecs! Ahem. Sorry) gets Max out of bed (Ack! Pecs! Or, um, did I say that already?), thinking Michael has come for a visit. But as he opens his window, a bloody and near-dead Nasedo falls into his room. Nasedo utters the line, "They're among you now," and is able to choke out "The Skins." And then he dies. Oooh, an opposing evil faction of some kind! And they're called The Skins. Which can inspire only hope that if Max is not on The Skins, he is instead on The Shirts, and should hasten to access said attire to cover those garish things straightaway. If, that is, he can find one that can contain them. Whoa, Nelly. How I fear the pecs.