This week on Roswell: I got my first real six-string. Bought it at the five-and-dime. Played it till my fingers bled. It was...oops. Sorry. Wrong "Summer of..." End egregious Bryan Adams cross-referencing here. Yeah. RIGHT.
Fade in on a shot of a rocky promontory under a blue desert sky, sitting so still and lifeless against the surrounding environs that it doesn't even require the self-evident screen caption, "Liz Parker in repose." Cut to the back room of the pod chamber containing Isabel's discovery from the end of last week's episode, where the Kubrick-is-dead-and-yet-his-lawyers-live-on "Granolith" gleams. Into the room walk Isabel, Michael, Tess, and their fearless intergalactic leader, Max "And when I get that feeling, I want pecs-ual healing" Evans. Tess comments first that "it sounds like fluorescent lights in Bio lab." Michael wants to know if Nasedo "ever mentioned a rock collection" (a comment I can't say I entirely understand, particularly considering that Nasedo in his default "Evil Ed" human configuration really seemed like more of a "stamps" guy), and Tess muses further, wondering if the inanimate object can "hear" them. Max gazes upon the gleaming (unlike the thousands of previously recapped orbs that merely "glow") black cone, kept perfectly maintained and without a speck of dust on it by some kind of intergalactic housekeeping crew with the help of "Windex Surface/Glass/Granolith" for the better part of the last fifty years. He stares into it and his own reflection stares back, each taking a forgotten moment to flex their equally imposing shoulders and silently muse, "My, aren't these coming along nicely," before returning to the matter at hand. He orders the crowd, "We'll come back after school."
Cut to -- wait for it -- school. Max recaps the scene for MightyShortAttentionSpan.com in again asserting to Michael that "after ninth period, we'll go back." Michael takes this and all other opportunities to test his acting range by adding the new "caustic" to his previously established "acerbic, sardonic, and cynical," sniping back, "Way to prioritize, Maxwell." The two are soon to run into Maria, who pauses after looking at Michael and cracks herself up, "New gel?" Yep, in fact it is, but between him and Max, there's simply no more Second-Grade Class Photo Brand grease-down left for Maria over at Hair and Make-up today. Which is a shame, considering her own increasingly teased-out eighties extensions, a style less in line with her so-hip-it's-1998 proclamation that "Portishead tickets went on sale this morning" and more expressing a would-be joy that "Tiffany tickets went on sale this morning" before breaking into the side/side/chin/chin dance popularized in the video for "I Saw Him Standing There." Anyway, Maria wants to know, "You get my messages?" Michael sticks around just long enough to utter a noncommittal "yeah" and skulks off. Oooh, so now he's got "cutting" tacked on to the ol' acting résumé as well. Say, does the golden sheen of an Emmy qualify as a "glowing orb"?
Their Walk Of Blame down the hallway now resumed, Max sarcastically deems Michael's attitude toward Maria as "nice" (hey, Max? You leave "snarky" to the professionals and stick with the "bland" and "vanilla" your strange Granolith God gave you, k?), just as they run into the Earthbound manifestation of nice herself (it's Liz, by the way. Duh), who tells Max, "I don't know what to do. Calls keep coming into Congresswoman Whittaker's office. I mean, should I return them, or..." But she too is soon to be cut off by Michael, who positively bites her head off (hope you like vanilla, Crankitola Khomeini) with a resolutely evil, "Not. Now." Liz skulks off as well with the giddy, flirty promise, "We'll talk in trig," leaving Max and Michael alone again. Max searches futilely for a pre-departure zinger possessing a modicum of originality, and parts from Michael with less the pre-departure zinger and more the Spencer Gifts t-shirt: "Mean People Suck." Not to say King Max shouldn't search for alternative methods of keeping his royal subjects in line, but the best way to garner respect in any universe probably includes the strenuous avoidance doing so via a collection of bumper stickers read off of the back of a Ford Pinto while looking for a parking space at a Grateful Dead concert. So let us briefly bask in the palpable relief that Max didn't choose a parting shot of "Keep your laws off my body" or "Don't blame me, I voted for Mondale" and get on with our recapping day.
Max slides off to read an informative Safire column on the dissolution of clever language on this planet, as well as to promise that his conversational too-fine-a-point-on-it won't include a hoary chestnut of a retort often to be found ironed onto the t-shirt of a comic-book store owner (also discarded: "Thank you, Jerry"). Michael, meanwhile, is briefly left to his own devices. Soon, he is to run into a short, bearded, balding, bespectacled (if that sounds just as charming as you think it is, you're still not thinking creepy enough) man who looks coincidentally like a Judy-the-Time-Life-Operator version of alien life himself. He speaks. In English! Damn, these aliens soak up the local color in a hurry: "Mister Guerin. True or false. We're not even a month into the semester and you're already failing my class. This is a new record." Um, true? Michael informs the Chris Elliot But Uglier doppelganger (I know. I can't believe I wrote it, either), "World War II just doesn't do it for me." Ugly Elliot tells Michael that he has to write a first-hand account of a World War II vet from "the 509th Bomb Group," which will be on his desk by five. Because that must be when school closes nowadays. And also because the prospect of a kitschy flashback episode is carte blanche for skipping all of your other classes. Michael counterstrikes, "Old people creep me out," and Ugly Elliot suggests, "Well then, think of them as living history." Ew. Same to you, Ugly Elliot. It's how I prefer to think of you. Buh-bye.
Over at a dingy roadside motel stinking of moonshine and cheap plot devices called the Pinewood Lodge, Michael is sitting at a table, detachedly asking, "What was World War II like?" A gravelly voice from beyond responds, "Whaddya think?" Michael takes a stab at another one: "Roswell. How was it different back then?" We cut over to a bed (um, ew? Couldn't they have, like, met at a diner or something? I'm so sure public-school administrators love hearing about how their students had lingering meetings between old men and young boys in a motel room miles from civilization. But he was in the Army, so of course he's harmless) to find a familiar looking curmudgeonly old feller who the opening credits like to think is named "Charles Napier," but who I instantly recognize as a perfectly viable Hey, It's That Guy! candidate. On the Roswell query, HITG plot develops, "I don't know, I haven't darkened their door since '47." But Michael pays no heed, and he tries to make this whole experience end as quickly as possible (word) by appealing to HITG's similarly-disinterested-in-this-experience nature, "Look, Hal." HITG corrects him, barking back in that "I hope the implied 'ya dang varmint kids today' comes across with every sentence I say" kind of way, "Captain Carver." Close-up on "Hey, It's Captain Carver," angrily asserting his elder, titled superiority, all the while holding a pen and staring at a folded-back newspaper with the crossword puzzle facing out. Wow, Carver. Way to maintain your rigid sense of intimidation while doing the Junior Jumble. Michael offers, "Let's make this easy. Why don't you give me a few good details that I can put in this little notebook of mine, and I'll just copy the rest out of a book." Ol' Man Carver chides Michael for his wont to plagiarize, barking out war terms and telling him that "kids today are softer than soap" before returning to the Wordy Gurdy and wishing he could just be back at his Military Elderhostel in Boca rather than sitting here with the snot-nosed kid with no respect and ever-changing Lee Press-On Hair.
The conversation turns to why George Washington Carver left Roswell in 1947, and when Toothless McGeritol asks Michael if he knows what happened that year, Michael snides, "Aliens crashed. Humans went bonkers." Carver asks if Michael could have "handled that," and Michael rolls his eyes once more: "Sounds terrifying. Four feet tall, silver suits, no hair. Very scary." Michael begins to proclaim the entire theory of aliens on Earth as "crazy," and Carver puts down the newspaper in which he was not doing the crossword puzzle, thinks ruefully, "Now I'll have to settle for rewriting 'The Family Circus' to make it funny later," and walks toward Michael barking, "Hey look, kid. I'm not one of your hoodlum friends. You better start showing me a little respect or I'll kick your ass through this door." Michael offers to save him the effort, rising to his feet and angling in on the stage direction "I am walking with anger" toward the door until Carver calls him back with the baiting, "They have black eyes. Empty. Vacant. Ageless." Michael stops, and Carver threatens, "You gonna stand there like some slack-jawed simpleton?" Slack-jaw! Shout-out, table for us. Michael angles in on the stage direction "I am ceasing to walk, overcome with emotion as the stage directions now dictate I must be," and he turns around to ask, "You're going to teach me about aliens?" And so they sit together at the table and Carver begins his yarn: "Y'know, these sissies today that complain about global warming should have to spend a New Mexico summer on a military base without any air conditioning." Wow. This comes across as really, really rehearsed. A close-up on Michael's face briefly reflects that oh-I'll-bet-you-talk-this-way-to-all-the-closeted-alien-boys cynicism, but further too-tight visual forays into the "When Aquanet Attacks!" current configuration of Michael's hair are soon to give way to a black-and-white shot of a manual typewriter called a "Royal" that looks like a far more advanced piece of machinery than your average scotch-tape-and-maché product-placed iMac. Step One: Master ergonomic concept of right-handed carriage return. Step two: Procure Correct-O-Type or reasonable facsimile for purposes of letter deletion as taught to the professional secretarial graduates of the Katherine Gibbs School, leaving them plenty of time to stay at home and raise the children while baking their hard-working husbands a delicious rhubarb pie, the remains of which can be freshly stored for days inside of the futuristic plastic storage invention of so-called "Tupperware." Step three: There is no step three. There is no step three. ["[Chuckle.]" -- Sars]
Carver really launches in: "In those days, you could write an invoice without depending on Bill Gates." Thank you, "writers," for that obvious comprehensive knowledge of the home computing industry. Seriously, what does that mean? Here's more: "Women had curves. Something you could hold on to." Thank you, Grampa, for so tirelessly promoting your "I like big butts and I cannot lie" feminine preferences platform, but I just don't see how it's germane to the alien story. And it's kind of yucky and off-putting. Y'know, while we're talking. Still in black and white, a shot of a calendar showing "July, 1947" with the first eight days crossed out tells us, in fact, that this is the summer of 1947. Thanks for that. "Me, I was a twenty-one-year-old know-it-all. Well, a little joyride that May still had me grounded in a dead-end desk job. What can I say, I was nuts about the girl and she wanted to see Hoover Dam from three thousand feet." Cut over to this aforementioned hotter-than-global-warming-curves-on-a-fat-chick-who-doesn't-know-her-Hoover-Dam-from-her-Bill-Gates-or-some-such-senile-thing military base. The color fades back into the frame as we come to rest on the 1947 version of Carver, head down on the desk, visions of a saggy latter-day Mae West dancing in his head. Lots to "hold onto" there, Dirty Gramps. A phone rings and an unseen military man yells, "Carver! Get the phone," so we know the person we are about to see is, in fact, "Carver." The head lifts off the desk, and...hey, it's Michael! It seems that he'll be playing "Carver!" His hair is slicked back in that instantly recognizable bad-boy-in-the-forties 'do (as if the Subtext-Free Zone of lines like, "I was gonna do things my way. And my way was trouble" weren't en
ough to flesh out the character for us enough, thanks), a look which has been ripping itself off from Casablanca to Dead Again and back. And though it's definitely an improvement over the FFxy (Farrah Fawcett for Men) hair gel he's used this season thus far, if forced to choose between "those bangs" and "that widow's peak," I would still choose "honorable death" or even "please don't put my mug on TV." Michael/Carver (hereafter known as "Carver," for the purposes of linear recapping, and because of how damn believably he plays another character besides his own. We'll call the present day Carver "Carver2K" for clarity's sake) picks up the phone and reminds us yet again, "509th, Carver." The voice on the other end asks if the line is secure, then goes on to report, "There's been a crash." Carver asks who it was, and the voice tells him, "I don't know. But it's definitely not one of ours." And so it goes in Gimmicky Theme Episode Number One, continuing a proud television tradition that has blossomed through the medium's rich history. And here it is, back again. Just when you though you'd erased memories of Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in full costume regalia frolicking through a bedchamber in Shakespearean Padua forever. Trust me. It happened. And it wasn't no good.Credits: Hey, perfect time for them, seeing as the episode is, like, half over. One of the amazing things about Gimmicky Theme Episode Number One is that it really makes you ponder the philosophical concept of time. And how much I wish this episode weren't wasting all of mine.
Back at the Pineview Lodge, Michael ignores Carver2K as he rambles on about the day they received "that call." Banter of this very kind ensues. "Some people thought it was a glider or a test missile," he says, trying to remember if he's talking about shuffleboard or what, "but my money was always on the Commies." Damn dirty Commie Pinko Reds. Michael briefly hopes that a sudden noise like a car alarm being tripped in the parking lot doesn't cause this riveting interview to be cut short when Carver2K leaps by reflex under the table, hugging his knees raging like a lunatic and bellowing, "Blast those yellow reds to hell! Fifty-four forty or fight!" Because he is OLD and CONFUSED, people. Carver2K snarks about Michael's hair, but I'll have to take a rain check on recapping that comment 'cause my eardrums still hurt from the accelerated volume of this episode's other mad shout-out. He continues, "They sent me and Richard Doty out to the crash site, some thirty-odd miles from the base. Doty and I stopped along the way for a couple of Zagnuts." Zagnuts? If there exists an official candy for The Criminally Freaking Insane, it would simply have to be Zagnuts. You're telling me this man isn't just a little touched? You're not? You're wrong.
Back in '47, Carver and Richard "Max Evans" Doty drive through the scoping fjords of Sandy Land in a military van, and Doty hops out wearing the Porno sunglasses that are going to be appearing before Shiri in the opening credits, so prevalent have they been on every character this season so far. The crash site is filled with saluting military folk, and the two uniformed men stroll toward the site to a charred patch of Earth, which Doty notes is "too small to be a B-29." Just then, Carver2K VOs that "Colonel James Cassidy was the kind of guy who hated guys like me," as present-day Officer Porno marches up to Doty and Carver, removing his sunglasses (to give back the loaner pair now that he's discovered Doty had his all along, no doubt), and shouts, "A little late to be making yourselves useful, don't you think?" Carver blames Doty for the tardiness, not offering Porno Cassidy so much as a bite of his Zagnut, seeing how stuffed Porno Cassidy already seems to be on the mercilessly chewed scenery lying all around the crash site even now. Cassidy tells them to check in and "get down there and help out," then goes nose-to-nose with Doty and sneers, "I'll give you hungry." Ew. I just bet he will. Michael grouses about their military record being good for nothing, and Max sincerely offers, "Orders are orders." Down at the site, other uniformed men are already loading boxes of ambiguous crash debris onto a truck, and a shard of something shiny falls to the ground, inches short of Carver's feet. He leans and picks up what looks like a shard of glass, and something inspires him to squeeze said glass shard into a ball. It crumples easily, and he opens his hand to see the metal take its proper shape once more. "Get a look at this," Carver muses. "Betcha people would pay good money to see this." Because from a strictly linear perspective, this is the first real glowing orb the good Roswell folk have had the opportunity to study. It's just too bad that they're a few years off from being able to legitimately up its market value by listing it as "prewar" when they sell it on eBay when it's replaced by a more ambiguous, shinier, more orbish orb. And there will be another orb. Oh yes, there will.
From behind a police barricade some feet back (it seems the good and great Doty and Carver moved, without walking, from the entrance to the crash site and back to the exit with one simple cut. Maybe it was the continuity editor's plane that went down that fateful day after all) comes the sound of a casting call for extras in The Other Sister, and one of the speakers is doing a superb job of mimicking the speech patterns of...oh, wait. It's Maria. I'm sorry, is that a southern accent? Wow. I mean, WOW. Man, I know I said it in the forums and all, but if your acting résumé in any way lacks the name Meryl Streep written in fourteen point font across the top (because she so uses a one-page résumé and answers job ads through Monster.com, but you see where I'm going with this), you must check the accent at the gate, take a number, and pick it up on your way out of Hollywood, which should really be any day now. And she's wearing a -- what is that, really? Y'all have seen Dick Tracy, right? If you can help me out, just do a copy/cut/paste of Madonna's blandest outfit in that movie, add a Krispy Creme hat without the logo and glaze stains, and you're on your way. She's mad. I think. Carver spots her and listens a moment, and Carver2K pipes up with the VO, "I live by one simple rule when it comes to women. A great voice equals great gams." Great voice, eh? Which I can only assume means that the eardrum-blowing, bastardized southern accent Maria is not adopting would put her in a similar "gams" category as, say, Sherilyn Fenn's character in Boxing Helena. Maria demands she speak with someone "ahn frarge" (At large? In charge? Madame DeFarge?), and Porno of '47 (buh-bye, new character names. What am I, the IMDb?) approaches, apprehends the camera, and has her escorted off by a "Deputy Valenti," played by Kyle. Oh, the intertextuality of it all! MariaMadonna continues to rant. Even the closed-captioning gives up, reading simply, "The Confederate flag burns itself in shame. Robert E. Lee died for your sins."
Another military vehicle pulls up, and we learn from Carver2K's VO that "Our Senior Counter-Intelligence Agent, Captain Sheridan Cavitt, was known around the base as 'Mr. Brain.'" Which I guess means that he doesn't have a brain. I'll chalk this genre of humor up to "military irony" and move on. He marches up to Carver and barks that the truck carrying spaceship evidence or whatever should be taken to a nearby hangar. Gosh, L'il Hanks fills out that uniform well. Collar up to the chin and a monochromatic Regis-before-he-was-Regis tie, and buttons everywhere. These duds foretell a mercifully nipple-free episode unfolding even now. And for this I thank all that is holy.
Back suddenly in present day (where the nipple potential is, by its nature, increased greatly, particularly considering Dirty Gramps and his unceasingly gams-heavy rhetoric), Carver2K lights a cigarette as he and Michael walk outside, Michael knowing-it-all, "I know the rest. The Feds made Marcel the scapegoat, they blamed the crash on the weather balloon, it was all Cavitt's idea if I remember correctly." Carver2K asks where he gleaned that bit of information, and Michael volunteers that he's been reading UFO magazines since he was eight years old. "So you want to believe?" Michael takes a PSA moment to co-brand with thetruth.com in offering radical new information that will instantly make ME put down the pack, anyway: "You shouldn't smoke." Oh, shut up, self-appointed master of The Department of Raging Self-Evidence (I, um, just used that expression twelve hours ago in my Extra, but I made it up, so I can use it again, right? What are you going to do, arrest me for smoking har har har?). He continues on that he has great memories of being in the service, but he thinks it's going to be hard to put his uniform back on for the reunion because "everything I believed that uniform stood for died in '47." He removes a glowing orb from his pocket and hands it to Michael. Michael opens his hand, and the reflective surface uncrumbles. "It's a little something from way back when." Carver2K smokes and smokes. But even in these enlightened millennial times of post-perestroika, it's still not the most enjoyable way Carver2K would like to hop back into that collar-high uniform of his and smoke himself some Reds.
In an Army vehicle back in '47, which looks disturbingly like the Alienmobile with a white star painted on the side (I guess the period-decorating F/X rates could not be procured at pre-inflation prices), Michael '47 (how's THAT for a nickname?) drives while Max '47 frets that the reporter is "onto something." Yeah, onto the second side of Tape One of her Berlitz tapes in Esperanto. Michael '47 laughs that she "just needs an exclusive," and Max '47 gets all broken up: "I love this country. What if something's really out there capable of destroying us? Destroying everything." Michael '47 blithely tells him not to worry, but just at that moment some strange force seems to take control of the truck. Carver2K VOs that "at that moment, some strange force seemed to take control of the truck." Thanks, voice-over narration. You're not insulting to the audience's awareness of the narrative at all. Can someone score me the Ridley Scott director's cut of this episode so that I may avoid such kowtowing? Wow. A Bladerunner Director's Cut joke. Sorry. I'm going to go play dodgeball and eat some paste and get back in touch with my public-school, pre-hyper-educated roots. But first, recapping: The Alienmobile With Star slows down by itself, and in front of it appears a white glowing object of some kind that Michael '47 strikes down before driving off the road. Michael '47 runs to check under the truck, and Max '47 looks in the back at the cargo they're carrying. "Hal?" Michael '47 walks over, and the two stare speechlessly at a red papier-mâché -- wait for it -- glowing orb. They stare in shock and disbelief. They've never seen a red one before.
Over at Anachronistic Tavern, the Bart Howard classic "Fly Me To The Moon" rings as the soundtrack for patrons doubtlessly appreciative of the cutting edge jukebox that allows them to listen to jazz standards a full seven years before they're actually written. Words and music, 1954. Look it up. Would that have been SO HARD to check? Something tells me that even if they could nail down a song that existed then, say "Puttin' On The Ritz," they would just end up playing the version by Taco from, like, 1984. Check. Your. Sources. People. Anyway, some 1940s yokels sit at the bar talking to the bartender about the sightings people have been reporting around town. A man reports a "crashed disc," and his Julia Sweeney-esque companion notes the her religious leader called it "the end of the world." The bartender hopes that "it's just the beginning" for a potential tourist trade, and the first man muses, "Roswell, New Mexico. Home of the little green men." Ha ha ha. Shut up. If there is anything that makes me batty about a flashback episode, it's the winking nods to the inevitabilities of the future, like in Almost Famous when the Rolling Stone editor spends fifteen minutes explaining what a fax machine is. Yeah, we get it. And I'll bet a thousand dollars that the cast was told to believe that this bar is the future site of the Crashdown. Stupid method bullshit. Michael '47 and Max '47 sit at a nearby table, Max '47 wondering, "They were really glowing, weren't they?" Michael '47 wants to "blast those things to Kingdom Come," but Max counters that, sadly, "this isn't a John Wayne picture" and begs off to "hit the hay" after telling Michael, "when it's time to act they'll tell us." Michael '47, meanwhile, spots MariaMadonna by the bar, approaches, listens patiently to her lie about being from Fort Worth, and asks for her phone number. She tells him that he doesn't strike her as the kind of guy who calls, then turns to grilling him on what was in the truck. He complains that she had to go and ruin all of their fun, utilizing the wholly unoriginal line about "telling you" leading to the inevitable "killing you" that would be better if completely drowned out by the swingin' soundtrack if the composer weren't so busy trying to write each note as it's played by an unseen band, one not due to arrive at Anachronistic Tavern until well into the decade.
Back at his table, Michael '47 encounters a very angry Alex '47, who spins his chair around and sits down hard, sniping, "What are you doing talking to that reporter?" Michael '47 stays smooth, placating him, "She was looking for a free drink, Cavitt. [Who? Oh, yeah...] When she realized I wasn't buying she moved on." Cavitt blah blahs about how the press can't be trusted (like Benny ever would have said they'd win it in five and actually meant it? Sigh...) and goes on about creating the smokescreen, tossing around the word "weather balloon" and telling Michael '47 to just stay away from her. A quiet, instrumental swing version of Debbie Gibson's "Electric Youth" begins to seep out from behind the wooden saloon doors and onto the streets of Roswell. Okay, not really.
"In the Mood," a song unique by virtue of a little something called ITS ACTUAL EXISTENCE in 1947, plays in a very red room. Whatever. It's probably the Brian Setzer retread. Carver2K lets us know, "Around this time I had this girl I used to go with. Only she wasn't a girl. She was a woman." Hey, it's Isabel '47! Yay! And she looks amazing and has no accent. The "voice equals gams" equation the ol' horndog put forth holds true this time. She's admiring herself in the mirror while polishing her toenails, as we learn that their relationship was one "of simple pleasures." She takes a pair of socks out of a drawer and suggestively tells Michael '47 that the socks are his. Only they're not. And so she puts them away, takes a sip of something stiff (ew. Not like that), and turns toward Michael, who asks, "You wanna hear about my day?" Isabel '47 responds, "Absolutely not," and she and Michael take to the bed in sexy ways that surprise me greatly. But chaste WB coitus is soon to be interrupted by a black-clad Bond Villain with a fedora standing in the bushes outside of Isabel '47's window. Michael gets up to check it out, and yells "get on out of here," because if the forties were all about one thing, they were all about using one word too many. Michael '47 turns away from the window, hums a few bars from his favorite ABBA ditty, and climbs back into bed. Maybe he thinks his brilliantly imagined nickname is, in fact, Michael '74.
Back in modern times, Carver2K and Michael sit at the bar at the Crashdown. Carver2K orders another milkshake and calls Maria "sweet cheeks" in the process, and she warns him that it will be his third one. Michael proclaims her "The Dairy Police," and she throws up her hands with The World's Most Medically Technical Affront Ever: "I'm not the one sitting to an ancient gastrointestinal tract, pally." Oooh, face! But in a purely "look at the cool insults you can learn hanging out with Liz Parker" kind of way. Liz who? Exactly.
Carver2K tells him to get the check and that he'll finish the story later, but Michael begs for him to continue: "We'll go ahead to some of your old haunts." Carver2K asks Michael if he has a car, and we cut to the kitchen, where Michael asks Maria for "a favor" and The Woman Scorned tells him he's a total jerk for not returning her calls. "And for God's sake, Michael. She's not even a real blonde!" Michael, lord and master of Selective Privacy Manor (he just walked past a cook -- who wasn't him, mind you -- on his way into the kitchen), loudly responds, "This whole jealousy thing is getting a little tired. Just accept the face that I'm an alien, you're a human. Our lives do not mix." Louder, moron. They couldn't hear the trailing end of your sentence up on the Mother Ship. Maria hilariously responds that Michael "made the exception for Bottle Job and Old Man River out there." Oooh, good, MBTV-worthy nicknames. She denies him the car until he plays the He's Gonna Die Soon card, and she hands him the keys. Pushover.
Maria walks through the door of the Crashdown and into a diner in 1947. Maybe this is the place that became the Crashdown. Maria '47 bids hello to Michael '47, and she brings him over to a booth containing "a nurse at the blace." Chase? Face? Oh, base! That makes sense. Maria '47 thought Michael was there for an interview, Michael '47 thought he was there for a date. Michael '47 makes for the door and tells her again that it was "a weather balloon," and Maria '47 defends her rights as an American: "If extraterrestrials landed in Roswell, we have a right to know." That accent, man. I swear, Leslie Grossman is sitting at home right now, laughing her ass off and holding up a giant foam finger reading, "I SERIOUSLY RULE." And she really does, man. She makes it look so damn easy.
And back over to Isabel '47's place, where Kyle '47 is sharing a bed with her. Military police came to her house, she frets. And came and came, it seems. Ouch. Sorry. Cut to Michael storming past "Dixie" (Tess '47) and into the office of Porno '47 to ask just why the hell that should have happened. Michael '47 tells Porno '47 that she's "a civilian," and Porno '47 tells him that he was told to stay away from the reporter, adding, "Do you REALIZE how many FIRST LIEUTENANTS are just WAITING to slide into the cockpits of B-29s? You wanna get back in the air? Then you will shut up, stay on base, and finish out your suspension IN A COMPLIANT MANNER!" Got it? Yessir. "ARE WE CLEAR?" "YES, SIR!" Porno '47, chill! Let us remember how tiny the Roswell set budget is. A few black-and-white photographs of vintage-looking planes bought at a West Point street fair for $5 (already in their frames) mixed with slightly faded film stock aren't going to convince me we've really been transported. So keep your teeth off the scenery, because I would swear there are fewer pictures on that wall than there were when this scene first started so very, very long ago. Porno '47 gives Michael a meaningless project about sending telegrams to the families of privates killed in a van accident and sends him packing. Back at his desk, Michael '47 throws his hat and then his light. He picks up the phone and in a moment of frustration calls Liz '47 and tells her they need to talk "without that damn reporter around." I'm impressed she's even in this episode, considering this time period was before the advent of most of Lizbot's computer components. Time was, around the end of World War II, your average Lizbot mechanism would have taken up a whole room!
Cut to an indeterminate time later, when Liz '47 and Michael '47 sit in a car under the cover of rainy darkness. Liz '47 says that doctors she had never seen before pulled her into a room to help with an autopsy of a species -- "not a mammal" -- she'd never seen before. She shows him her artist's rendering of that big-eyed Judy-the-Time-Life-Operator drawing on a piece of loose-leaf paper. After the autopsy, she continues, an Army general told her that she wasn't allowed to tell anyone her story. So she's getting out of Roswell to forget all about what she saw. Michael wishes her "good luck," and she leaps out. He begins to light a cigarette (It's Carver. We Get It), but before the smoke hits the lighter, he hears a decidedly Lizbot-esque scream and leaps out. He boards the bus and looks around for her, asking, "Where's the girl? The nurse that was here?" There's no girl. Robot? Well, now, he forgot to ask about that, didn't he?
Michael '47 walks back onto the base and finds Tess '47 inside Porno '47's office. He asks her how he can find some information about a "troop transport plane going to London." Tess '47 tells him, "People are sayin' you got a screw loose, and I know the Colonel agrees." She excuses herself for a hair appointment (not a shout-out, seeing as I'm kind of digging her blonde Betty Boop thing going on in this episode), leaving Michael The Suspected alone in Porno '47's office, surrounded by boxes of unsealed envelopes loudly advertising "Confidential" in block red letters. He closes the door. Nice to know that the Michael Guerin of the past can access confidential information practically seeping out of the walls just as easily as the Michael Guerin of the present. He cracks open an envelope to find a black-and-white picture of a male human corpse. Nice job, Michael '47. Even though the production assistants -- er, I mean "Base Housekeeping," were planning to put that very eight-by-ten in a cheap Ikea frame and fun-tack it to a nearby wall, thus maintaining the mystique of all things old by replacing at least a few of the scenery accoutrements Porno '47 could not stop himself from gnawing.
Crash site. Michael '47 gains entrance by dropping Max '47's name and telling the guard that he has to deliver a follow-up report. But just at this moment, Max '47 walks into the frame and asks what he's doing there. He's not allowed in without proper clearance, which Max '47 seems to have procured without a problem. Go away, Michael '47. Faking proper security clearance and getting away with it during high-stress times like this is so Michael '46. Max tells him that there is "nothing to see." Michael '47 tells Max '47 that he's "seen the classified reports," but Max '47 remains stone-faced and tells him, "Let me do my job." Max looks pretty good in that uniform. The hat frames his face well, tiny as his head may be. You can cut diamonds on those cheekbones. I'm just sayin'.
Carver2K tells us in VO that he decided "to talk to that reporter after all." His car, middle of the desert. Which is just fine with me, seeing as I cannot fully recap what I can not even slightly understand. MariaMadonna got a tip that a funeral home was contacted to send the military more than one child-sized coffins. "For what?" "To bury things." Heh. Michael launches in: "Colonel Cassidy asked me to draft Death Notice memos for two privates who he claimed were in a jeep accident. Those kids were at the debris site," and alternate sources say they were attacked "by two figures glowing white." Michael '47 continues that his brother was shot down in battle, and he doesn't want other families to suffer the same fate he did needlessly. He hands her an envelope. He's willing to go on the record. He is the savior of all planet Earth. They sing "We Will Rock You" in jubilant, almost sportsmanlike celebration.
Present. Which, of course, means the songs on the soundtrack from this point forward will be found on Now That's What I Call Music 2007. Out in the desert, Michael and Carver2K lean against the hood of the Jetta, Carver2K commenting, "You can run fast, but time always has a way of catching up." Michael excuses himself to the front seat of the Jetta and changes a bottle of juice into a bottle of beer for Carver2K, who asks about the nature of Michael and Maria's relationship and blah blah blah ain't-nothin'-like-a-dame-cakes. Carver2K says he was in love with Maria '47, and that he "should have kissed her then." Why? What happened that night to Maria '47? The action narrows! Hello, climax! Whatcha knowin'?
Anachronistic Tavern, where Max '47 enjoys a cool refreshing Zima (okay, not really), and Michael '47 approaches the bar and asks, "Tough day following orders?" Max responds, "I know I'm a coward. Don't rub it in," offering Maria '47 a run for her inflated pre-war money with his totally non-believable approach to Slurred Situational Dialects. Max leans in: "You were right. I saw stuff. I know what their plans were." He continues on that he's not proud of himself and wonders what side he's on. Michael '47 pauses glacially and tells Max '47 that everything is going to be okay: "We've got people who want to know the truth just as much as we do. And by tomorrow, the world will be one step closer to it." Michael '47 tells him, "Check the morning paper. It will all be there." He then offers his maybe-drunken friend a ride home, but Max rubs his eyes and refuses. Awwww. Who da widdle drunky-wunky? Michael '47 leaves, prompting an approach from Alex '47, who is trapped somewhere far beneath the giant ten-gallon hat he's fleeced from Porno's once-so-expansive costuming collection. The damn thing envelops him. Alex '47 offers, "Well done, Captain." Oooh, a set-up! A wacky ruse. And for once, I will admit this: I did not see it coming. Nor did I see Alex, so hat-obscured I thought he was Looney Tunes gringo Speedy Gonzalez himself. 'Cause he was the guy who was just the hat. Oh, excuse me. "Speedy Gonzalez '47."
morning, Michael '47 picks up a copy of every newspaper he in town to discover that the story never ran. Michael '47 calls her to find out she isn't in the office, and he returns to his desk to find a notice alerting him to his "honorable discharge" from the service. Storming into Porno '47's office, he finds Max '47, and every scenery-chewing military cliché ripped from You Can't Handle the Truth: Hoary Armed-Forces Chestnuts For Every Occasion is unleashed. Michael '47 yells, "You sold me out!" Max '47 retorts, "I had orders!" Max '47 tells him to take the honorable discharge, and Michael '47 begins to storm out with the also original, "You will have to drag me off this base." From behind him, Max '47 hazards what he really feels: "You always were a punk, Carver. Why couldn't you be a lazy, self-centered son-of-a-bitch this time?" Nice. Michael '47 slams him one, signs his resignation, and storms out with some more Dirty Harry babble.
"Mack the Knife" (fine, they're under the wire with Three Penny Opera. I'm surprised they're not accidentally playing the mid-eighties McDonalds commercial called "Mac Tonight," sung by a jazzy-looking half-moon wearing sunglasses and a tuxedo. Want me to get off this? Too bad) plays on the non-jukebox at Anachronistic Tavern, and the chatty bartender hands Michael '47 a piece of paper delivered for him. The bartender warns, "If you're gonna start using my place as an address, I'm gonna start charging you rent for that stool." Michael offers a slightly perplexed narrowing of the eyes, particularly considering the fact that he doesn't appear to pay rent in either his past or present existence, or to know the exact meaning of the word. He opens the note. It's from Maria '47, and it reads, "For safekeeping. Call me when you get this." There's a key and a 555 phone number. Grrrr. He calls the number and asks for Maria '47, but her sister answers and lets him know that she died suddenly in a car accident. The Confederate Flag flies proudly once more over the Texas skyline. Fort Worthless no more. Whew.
Night. Music. Drama. Michael '47 skulks around a restricted area inside the crash site and uses the key attached to the note to gain access to perhaps the most important secret the United States government has ever kept. Good thing there's no Guard '47 there to foil his ridiculously easy entry. He enters (with a camera, no less! No sirree, they're not on the lookout for him at all) to find about fifteen or so of the red papier-mâché sacks he and Max '47 found that fateful night in the back of the Alienmobile With Star. He takes a picture and skulks around, angling for a closer look. He looks down to spot several doctors, still in white medical gear and masks, dead at his feet. The child-size coffins sit against the wall, opened. From behind a white screen walk two moving glowing orbs, who don't appear to have any eyes at all, much less the "empty, vacant, and ageless" eyes we were promised. They make a little squeaking noise that Carver2K VOs from beyond were sounds resembling "the sound a mother bear makes when anything gets between her and her cubs. It's something to be afraid of." Michael '47 has a moment of epiphany where he realizes they were only trying to protect their unborn. So he whispers "save them" and leaves the room.
Havoc. Michael '47 is discovered and by chased by armed guards out of the building, and he leaps over a non-barbed-wire fence while he's shot at from behind. The camera falls to the ground on the other side of the fence and he's forced to leave it and go. Shots, shots...
...Shots. Carver2K is back in the present, shooting bottles off of the roof of a pick-up truck that is not his. Nice manners, babe. Michael wants to know more about what was in those sacks, and Carver2K is pressed to admit, "They look like human fetuses. There's four to a sack, eight total. That night I packed my things and never came back." He continues that there was no getting in or out of the base that night, so he has come to assume that "the only time I ever stuck my neck out to save anything, and it all went to hell." Or...did it? While some mad-ass James-Horner-esque orchestral music swells, Michael puts a hand out and smashes the remainder of the bottles. He turns to Carver2K: "You saved me." Awww. He then sets his thumb on fire and offers to light Carver2K's cigarette, but the codger takes it out of his mouth and gives Michael a big ol' hug. Awww. I'll bet he stopped him from smoking, too. Forever.
And finally, Michael returns to the Crashdown and the present. He apologizes to Liz for being such a rat bastard that morning, then we cut over to him and Maria back at the Granolith. He explains, "Meet the reason I haven't been returning your phone calls." He tells her that he owes more than he ever knew to her and Liz and Alex and Porno. Humans good. "So here it is." And he takes her hands. "Thank you." No, Michael. Thank you. He continues, "You know those pods that housed Max and Isabel, Tess and me? Well, there's another set and they're somewhere out there." Fade. That was the Summer of '47, and this is me never having to recap it again. And thus spake Bryan Adams: Those were the best days of my life. Not. He didn't say the "not" part.