Props to Seth and Justin. And, hi.
And now, on an all-new WB Monday: The Hybrid Chronicles II: Electric Orbaloo
Isabel "Upper Body Of Evidence" Evans clears her throat and shifts uncomfortably as we fade up on the Sheriff's Station and discover her sitting to her brother, Max "Upper Body Of…Oh, Wait" Evans in the middle of a third degree with the only sometimes ambiguously sinister Deputy Hanson. Hoping to accrue enough screen time to dial up his temp job in Pasadena and tell them he won't be able to come in today, Porno's right-hand man (ew, not like that) lets loose with his fey Southwestern accent and asks the two, "About what tahm did you arr-ahv at the scene-ah?" Max stoically (duh) near-whispers (duh with fries) his overly pensive (duh combination plate with an eggroll and a free Coke) reply: "Nine-thirty." We cut from this room over to Porno's Office Of Slatted Lewdness, where last week's spiteful televised manifestation of the very evil that is my everyday existence, "That Me Guy," listens to Porno answer the very same question with the not-different-enough-to-build-the-dramatic-tension-no-how-response, "Shortly after ten PM." That Me Guy is curious to know just how Porno knew Laurie In A Box was trapped under the earth, and Porno puts his hands behind his head, arches his back in a stretch (sorry, Porno, but it's already been made explicit that flashing a little chest isn't going to sway the attention of the assembled law-enforcers, as we're learning four times over just in the room, if you know what I mean, and I think you do), and lies, "I spotted the oxygen tanks." In the room, Isabel answers what I imagine to be the same question with an increasingly we-get-it answer, "We heard her screaming." How many shots were fired? Porno says four. Max says six. Why am I still wearing brown this week? How many times do I have to write that I hate brown? Man, they're taunting me. Deputy Sometimes asks Max and Isabel just what exactly they were doing in the woods, and Max cuts off Isabel's response mid-first-syllable, telling Hanson they were "hiking." Porno, meanwhile, tells That Me Guy that Max and Isabel were "on their way back from the library; their car broke down." I'm sorry. Is this Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot remake of the wacky Kevin Bacon/Elizabeth Perkins romantic comedy He Said, Porno Said I've accidentally flipped over to on HBO on a rainy Sunday afternoon sometime during the heyday of that classic screwball genre known as Wacky Juxtaposition Hijinks? In 1987? We get that they're lying. We watched Part I. We were invited to the backstory and asked to stay for punch and pie. Move. It. Along.
But really, they won't. Last week's doddering Judge Extra, Golf Extraordinaire, appears in Porno's office out of seeming nowhere to clarify, "Didn't you say you got to the scene at ten? Now, I may be wrong, but I think our library closes at eight!" Apparently no one in Roswell has informed the old man about this town's strict adherence to Continuity Standard Time (C.S.T.), under which eight and ten, June and December, and Max Evans and God all seem to remain remarkably interchangeable. Perhaps when Judge Extra becomes too confused to serve in his civic capacity any longer, he can return to the set and take a job as Roswell's continuity editor. On second thought, they'd better just go ahead and just wait for him to die before jamming a pen between the stiff fingers of his right hand and propping him up on a leather swivel chair, as they seem to have done to the current ex-man or woman who occupies the post. It's a much easier way of procuring script approval. And they don't mind a bit when you borrow their stapler.
I'm rambling on about what, exactly? Back in the sovereign nation of Linear-Recap-Ania (I never even knew this place existed! Why, look at all the linear recaps!), Judge Extra's bluff-calling acumen whooshes us back into Hanson's office, where the deputy's sudden high volume of dialogue equalizes the effects of his southwesty dialect and makes him sound like he's a part-time actor and third-shift proofreader from the greater Los Angeles area instead of a deputy in Roswell, New Mexico. Just like what happens in real life! He tells the Evans kids that their parents are waiting for them at home, and for them to go straight there. But before they go, Max asks if he and Isabel can procure an audience with Porno. Hanson, always cognizant of the reality that the longer this scene finds reason to continue, the longer the Operations Department at the Pasadena branch office of Goldman Sachs goes without administrative assistance, shakes his head and denies them access. A pan over to the closed door of Porno's office reveals yet another protracted bout of ACTING, and behind the door we find Porno and That Me Guy bellowing over each other about "abuse of procedures!" and "we saved that woman's life tonight!" and "this whole thing is a load of crap!" Word on the last one, Porno. Judge Extra notes from his comfy couch in the corner, "Have your report on my desk by 10 AM tomorrow morning." As opposed to the "AM" that occurs, say, right in the middle of the afternoon. Then, proving that his arduous study of Hyperion's just-released A My Name Is Adam Schiff: Jaded One-Sentence Problem-Solving Tips For The Elderly Law Enforcer was hardly in vain, Judge Extra ambles over to Porno's desk with a resigned sigh and a pithy comment: "You're burnt out. You need a break. Give me your badge and your gun. You're officially suspended until this week's hearing." Porno hands over his badge, hoping that he can chow down enough Count Chocula to mail in the necessary quantity of UPC symbols so they can send him another "Genuine Sheriff Of Choco-Vania" badge that looks just as realistic as the one he's just given Schiff. Oooh. A hearing. Porno looks despondent. Schiff looks like the only person involved in this show who needs to be in a warm bath more than I do.
Over at the long-forgotten Minimum Security Memorial Hospital (and deep inside the Wing Of Casually Executed Petty Theft), a short-haired nurse with a clipboard, a warm bedside-manner smile, and a part-time waitressing job at the Hooters in Monica Del Rey (my Nick Carter calendar didn't specifically stipulate that it was "Take Your Two Thousand Extraneous Extras To Work Day." Maybe I need to get a new calendar, then. Oh, but those piercing green eyes!) administers a shot to a waking Laurie In A Box. Laurie, oxygen tube in her nose and "I thought Courtney was the poor man's Courtney" t-shirt concealed beneath the hospital blankets, focuses her eyes on Nurse Go-Away-You're-Draining-The-F/X-Budget and speaks weakly: "You saved my life." The nurse refuses to accept responsibility, claiming, "No. The people who found you did." The nurse continues that there are a few folks from the Sheriff's office who would like to speak with her, but Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" plays on as Laurie does her Scarlett O'Hara I'll-think-about-it-never diva routine, and the nurse assures her, "I can tell them to wait." Nurse Extra (are she and the judge related?) asks All Boxed Up With Nowhere To Go if she needs anything. She squeaks out that she would like some "juice." Nurse Extra takes her leave as the minor strings are at large on the soundtrack, fairly drowning out Laurie In A Box's doubtless follow-up request, "With a healthy twist of foreshadowing, if there's any left." Once alone in the room, Laurie In A Box opens her eyes and glances around suspiciously. Wait. She's not asleep? I don't follow.
The back of a girl in a candy-striper uniform approaches Michael Guerin (I know we're not supposed to know who that is from behind and all, but even the lack of significant character exposure in the past two months can't disguise the perpetually Suck-n-Cut hairdon't) and informs him, "The Sexual Dysfunction Unit is that way." Heh. The candy-striper turns around to reveal herself as "Guarding" Tess Harding, but anyone who has seen the cumulative store of Nicole Kidman's first ten American movies probably already knew that. I'm kidding, of course. I love Tess. Tess is good. On the island, Tess equals life. Tess tells Michael, "According to the blood work and X-rays, Laurie is human." Michael deems this new piece of information "impossible," probably not because of the actual facts at hand but because of the ability of anyone but him to skulk around in private spaces easily collecting privileged information. Michael wants to know why Isabel had a flash when she touched Boxing Helena, and Tess begs him to just get out of there, claiming, "This polyester number isn't working for me," though I'm sure any number of Tess-lovers (some perhaps with the initials "DF," but I'm just guessing here) would beg -- like on their knees -- to disagree. Michael says that he's not leaving until he can get a look at her, and, over Tess's protests, bursts into her room to -- wait for it -- find the bed empty! Guess she was thinking out of the box after all har har har. Sigh. Sorry.
Opening credits: "Needs more cowbell."
A frighteningly close-up shot of a coffeemaker doing its time-honored coffee-dispensation thing makes me momentarily muse on the inability of Mr. Coffee, the imaginary corporate icon, to score a guest-starring credit somewhere between the names "Diane Farr" (oh, for the love of…) and the aforementioned "Szarabajka," who I guess is Alex's Swedish tour guide and his Ricola dealer abroad or something. A knock on the door triggers a wider shot of the room, revealing that we're in the kitchen over at the Den Of Porno. Porno, a tight white t-shirt and a pair of slim-fit blue pants away from too-adequately living up to the alternate meaning of his given TV name (seriously, I think him buck-naked riding a bicycle would somehow leave less to the imagination right now), answers the door to find an "Agent Suzanne Duff, FBI" brandishing a badge and inviting herself in. She pounds past him and into the kitchen, pouring herself a cup of coffee and starting right in: "Laurie DuPree is missing again." And in the interest of tracking down Boxing Helena, she tells him, "Judge Lewis has to agreed to let me bring you back in on the case." She rifles through his refrigerator on a hunt for a milk product of some kind, because she's a tough ball-breaker kind of woman whose name is not Susan, and lays down some ground rules: "You're still suspended so I call the shots, you follow my lead, and you get my back when I need it." Gee, I wonder if she's "tough." Porno proclaims this glad event his "lucky day," and Agent Ball-breaker watches every film ever in which a woman is characterized as being a "Gal Friday," and for some reason chooses to settle on a level of rat-tat-tat annoyance somewhere in the neighborhood of Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy. And it ain't easy to be that annoying. Then she peeks in on a television in the room and snarks that, when it comes to helping her, "It beats watching Oprah." Um, Agent Ball-breaker? This doesn't even beat watching Judge Mills Lane. I hate markets where Oprah is on in the morning. I hate crying before work and I'm all late on the Book Club recommendation of the day because the bookstores aren't open yet.
Porno attempts to change tacks and tell Agent Ball-breaker that the recent surge in remarkably extraneous extras down at the station leaves her a glut of underworked deputies who would be happy to "be [her] go-fer." She sits down in one of his living room chairs (of which there are, as stipulated in "A Roswell Christmas Carol," only two, so clap clap clap, continuity) and puts her feet up on the other, telling him, "I appreciate honesty. So I'm gonna be straight." Shout-out? Oh, this kind of straight: "This is my second case. My first was an interstate kidnapping case that went off without a hitch. I like to catch criminals, and I want to make assistant director by the time I'm thirty-five." Oh, you opportunist career woman! Good thing she's being appropriately characterized as The Bitch, then. Agent Ball-breaker adds that part of achieving this goal is remembering to ask for help. Porno tells her that she is very honest and, as if in confirmation, she snarks something about his awful cup of coffee. Porno gets all "thanks for the distillation tips, now where's your mule and your mountain, Obi-Wan Valdez?" Then he responds, "C'mon. We've got a girl to find." Agent Ball-breaker all but mouths the words, "Girl? You mean womyn?" and Porno realizes that a Price-Club crate of Y-chromosomes strategically affixed to his clothing still wouldn't provide him the ammo necessary to match her manhood for manhood. Porno looks under the welcome mat to see if maybe that's where she left his penis. Nope. She's a man-eater. She'll only come out at night. Oooh, oooh, she'll chew you up.
Maria "Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya" DeLuca stands at her locker, back to the camera (I know the cast of this show should consider a stint in the Witness Protection Program, but as far as I know they're not right now, so pivot that camera thing 180 degrees so I can get back to the business of making fun of their make-up), when from behind her comes a voice a-callin', "Javlar, jag missade bussen!" Which, as my Alta Vista translator informs us, is a well-known Swedish colloquialism meaning, "Daddy Hanks's lawyers say my month in absentia wasn't a breach of contract." Damn. Even my Explorer bookmarks are getting as snarky as I am. Maria turns around and is orgasmically thrilled to regard the presence of Alex "Away Without Official Lead" Whitman, whom she hugs and screams something about how happy she is he's home and where's my copy of ABBA Gold and the duty-free carton of Mentos you promised and so on and so on and blah. I don't even remember if it was ever made explicit in anything but the spoilers that Alex was, in fact, in Sweden for the past month, and apparently neither do the "writers," so he's sure to scream something about the "flight from Stockholm" being "vilken javla rora." Translation: "For Your Consideration: Cast Away for Best Picture!" Damn you, foul snarkism of the Alta Vista Translator. Daaaaaamn yoooooou! From behind Alex, the metallic clanking of a near-bursting heating pipe turns out to be nothing more than the clomping run of Liz "If I Only Had A Heart" Parker, who clomps up to Alex and monotones, "Hur ar det." Red alert! Red alert! Malfunction in the Lizbot! Danger, Will Robinson. Maria, prepared as she must always be for emergencies of this variety, extracts a small vial filled with WD-40, and pours it inconspicuously into Liz's central system. The Lizbot visibly relaxes, utters a barely audible "aaaaah," and continues speaking in a facsimile of a human voice that makes her sound almost exactly like a real little girl! Maria calls Liz "Frieda," and interrupts to ask Alex, "Well, were the Viking guys hot?" Alex isn't gay. That's why he really doesn't know how to answer that question except with a promise of "slides." The two girls react with the kind of glee that is best served ironically but, clearly, isn't. Because slides rule, people.
Yeah. We're still in front of the locker. Alex turns the conversation to "what's been going on around here," and Liz launches into this week's episode in telling Alex about Boxcar Betty's disappearance and consequent redisappearance. They turn to note Max walking forlornly toward them, and Liz makes toward him as Maria and Alex take off in the other direction. Alex skulks off-screen with an incredulous, "I've been gone one month." You guys? It's news of a local law-enforcer being suspended for misconduct, not the polio vaccination. Everyone take pains to chill. Liz makes her approach to Max, asking him how he and Isabel are hanging in. Max says something about just being worried about Porno, just as Kyle skulks past them and ignores Max's attempt to initiate conversation. Whoa. Somebody checked his chi at the door this morning, no?
Porno sits in Porno's Office Of Slatted Lewdness with his head in his hands. A paper bag drops out of the sky and lands on the desk in front of him, and Porno looks up to discover Kyle above him, noting, "Chicken sandwich, extra mayo." Even the condiments department in the Roswell trailer has extras this week. And, ew. Kyle asks if Porno planned on clueing him in about the whole suspension thing, and Porno defends himself by saying that he's been brought back as a "glorified secretary," adding, "My time isn't really my own." Kyle bemoans the crapitude of Adam Schiff and his shoddy treatment of Porno's plight, adding, "It just pisses me off that we can't tell him the truth." Porno, reading from the book of jiving with these kids today like the dad in Better Off Dead, sits back in his chair and groans, "It's like you kids say: It sucks big." Oh, Porno. That is so not what the kids say. You're creepy enough when you're playing the lascivious adult hanging around in the woods with teenagers; when you start with the "sucks big" and the "that's the dope smack, yo," and you show up at the party with the visor with two straws that holds two beer cans, wearing the pissing Calvin shirt tucked into the Z Cavaricci jeans and laceless white Keds and the backwards "Cocks" cap, well, then, I'm quitting, aren't I? Or fired.
Agent Ball-breaker busts in and interrupts them both mid-word (that sucks! Porno was just going to ask Kyle if he wanted to take off a day of school and go to see "That Lollapalooza Show" with his cool, hip new dad!), barking orders at Porno: "Sheriff, where the hell is that background report I asked you for?" 'Cause she's a strong woman. Don't forget. Porno attempts to soften her up by introducing her to Kyle, and Agent Ballbreaker's motherly instinct kicks in both by nature and by nurture, as she takes his hand all limply and whispers, "You look just like your father." Awwwww. Underneath it all, she's just a little girl. This inherent vulnerability is why a chick can never be President. Thanks for the valuable gender-stereotype reminder, Roswell. Kyle takes his leave, and Agent Ball-breaker asks for an update on Box Of Rain. Porno confirms that his scores of deputies are down at the box site at this moment, and I stifle something in the area of ten million "hope they brought a box lunch" jokes, none of which is at all funny, and many of which are identical to each other and involve repeated use of the words "hope they brought a box lunch." Anyway. Porno nearly breaks out an acoustic guitar and climbs out onto the roof for an impassioned cover of the classic tune "Get Backstory (To Where You Once Belonged)" with this news: "Paranoid schizophrenic, no parents or guardians on record," and she ran away from a mental hospital in Texas a week before the kidnapping. Satisfied for the moment, Agent Ball-breaker momentarily loosens the vice on Porno's family pride. Porno's beeper (more methods of contacting Porno? Which they couldn't have used last week to avoid suspicion with the private phone line blah-di-blah? I guess Max left his semaphore flags scrolled up in their proper box until Gus Van Sant decides to do a shot-by-shot remake of Help or something. Not to say that he wouldn't use them before then, if he thought they could be of help) goes off, and he removes it from his pocket to read the LCD: "Frazier Woods. Something you have to see. M." Michael? Max? Mighty Big TV? Maxim cover shoot? Motorola product-placement gone embarrassingly haywire? It's probably a little bit of all of those things.
Oh. Dial "M" for Michael. Porno seems a little disappointed. He stands in Blaine's Tomb, the large hole in the ground that once held the always-on-the-go Whine In A Box, wearing yellow dishwashing gloves and poking at a bluish/green piece of shiny rock. He tosses it into a plastic bag and tells Michael that he can't be poking around anymore, seeing as "this is how trouble starts." Michael seems mad. The eerie minor chord thinks the whole thing is eerie.
Crashdown. Liz, alone again, clears a plate with one bite of charred food left on it, and Max walks into the dining room to alert her, "I wasn't done." Yeah, well, come back when the kitchen's open, King of the Clean Plate Club. I wasn't aware that the "O" in OCD stood for, in fact, "onion ring." So Liz, all "me no hurt man, me no hurt man," puts the plate back down and stands at his table. Thanks. I'll call you when I need the check. Blah small talk history exam, and Max requests another Coke. Liz notes that he's been "sittink here since six," and the inadvertent alliteration clues me into an as-yet-unseen sibilance in her "S" that briefly threatens to unseat all of her many, many other speech tics as the most annoyink one thus far. Maybe not, though. Besides, it's a whole lot easier to notate the "k" sound in type. Liz sits down at the booth, and Max launches in that he's worried about someone dangerous in the town, as Liz puts the pieces together: "That's why you're here. You're worried about me." Not a single "S" to speak of. The hypothesis goes unproven for another line. Liz goes doe-eyed: "Thank you." Awwww. Chicks. The usual gaping is broken up by a knock at the Crashdown's door, where My So-Called Sean stands outside begging for food. She tells him to leave. And so he does. What a self-respecting ambiguous criminal. She shuts the door behind him, turning back to Max, stage-directing a sigh, and offering him "two pieces of asteroid pie." She disappears upstairs to get her books, telling him, "You can stay as long as you like." As you like? Because that's just exactly how teenagers talk. Just ask Porno.
Speaking of whom, the man arrives home, walking in and throwing some mail down on, I think, the floor. He opens the door to the hallway closet, and out jumps Boxing Helena, looking haggard and dazed for a change. She screams, "Stop looking for me! Please!" Porno recoils, wishing any single other member of this cast had been the one to jump out of the closet and into his arms. If. You. Know. What. I. Mean. And. I. Think. You. Do. Again. Ain't that always the way, Porno? Ain't that always the way?
I seriously want to do an Extra with the golden-throated WB announcer guy to find out how he managed to choke out the words "L'il Bow Wow" right in the middle of promos for the Aryan Family Network without giggling like a schoolgirl. I'd also be interested to hear about his ability to deadpan the words "This Feb on the Frog" three separate times in one commercial without slitting his throat. As I feel I must do to both him and myself each and every time I hear him say it.
There seems to be a party of some kind unfolding on the Crashdown roof, as Alex unspools miles of tangled electrical cord and Liz sits with Isabel, telling her, "I'm glad you came." Isabel thanks Liz for hosting this tiny bash, and there's a touching moment of interspecies bonding between Isabel (alien) and Liz (Bicentennial Man without the Pepsi Girl) that almost causes them both to well up almost exactly like real little girls! Maria walks into the frame holding the evening's welcome home buffet of "an appetizer of Swedish Fish. These are Lundstrom bowls from Ikea." And to drink, Peru! Heh. That's from a movie I like. Maria's all bitch bitch bitch about the cold, and Alex holds up a slide to one of the five million paper lanterns no one's gotten around to taking down from when this rooftop was actually a Club Med in Maui on Pig Rotisserie Night. He tells them, "You guys are sissies. After a winter in Sweden, this weather is downright balmy." No one bites back, "Sorry, Dolph Lundgren, I didn't mean to go ahead and be a full-time matriculating high-school student in my damn spare time," which is what I'd be screaming at any of my friends who upped and offed for the Scandinavian skies while I was back at home busting my ass studying for the Chem A.P. Yeah. Like I ever took A.P. Chem. Instead, Isabel opts for a far more innocuous, "That's [sic] a lot of slide carousels there, Alex." He says he wants the ladies to feel like they had been there, too. I wish they were all there right now.
Boxing Helena (she's craaaazy, in case y'all had forgotten) rages around the Den Of Porno, while that estate's namesake promises her that a lot of people want to help her and that she doesn't have to worry. Boxing Helena surmises that Porno was on the saving-her crew rather than the killing-her crew, and "if you were working for them, you wouldn't have saved me." She leans in and asks, "Can I trust you?" which always ends up getting completely corrupted in the air and winding up sounding to Porno like "Can I buy you a drink?" or "Hey, Copper, what's your sign?" Porno puts a hand on her shoulder all don't-you-worry-about-a-thing-little-lady, sitting her down on the brown plaid couch procured at cost from the One Day At A Time sample sale and leaning in too close with this: "Are you talking about the person that did this to you? Was it more than one?" Laurie clenches her teeth and snarls (because of how crazy she is, natch), "Everyone keeps asking me about the man who took me. Is he tall or short or fat or thin?" I won't be kidnapped like a fox, I won't be kidnapped in a box. "But it wasn't a man. It was a them." It was a them? "They're not from here." Ack! Aliens in Roswell? It can't be! The phone rings just then (I'm surprised it's not Alex, calling to report that he scaled Alps taller than that dramatic high point), and Agent Ball-breaker barks from the other end of the line that she's received news of a construction crew doing some work at Frazier Woods, and she needs him there ASAP (and I just bet she'd be the kind of person who would pronounce that "ay-sap," given the opportunity to do so). Porno asks if this can't wait to morning, and Agent Ball-breaker twists the wrench just enough that his voice rises a full octave above hers, telling him, "Not while I'm calling the shots. I thought we had an agreement, Sheriff. Can I count on you or not?" Hey, "writers"? You can really stop with the hell-bent careerist bitch routine, because now we really, really get it. Really. Calm it down. Paint another dimension on her already. I mean, really. Even Angie Harmon lets her hair down and does a Neutrogena commercial every once in a while. Porno agrees to meet her and hangs up. Boxing Helena looks upset that Porno might leave her in that dark, brown house all by herself, but he leans down before her and asks if she can trust people that Porno trusts, seeing as she trusts him so much. Ew. Run away again, Laurie. Tell a friend. Or a teacher. Or a trusted member of the clergy. Or…oh, I don't know. Life just seemed so much easier from inside of the box.
The rooftop gang sits around, doing almost Strasbergian justice to the stage direction, "They wait for phone to ring." The phone rings. Hey, look at that. Maria tosses it to Liz, who answers it and hands it off to Isabel. Isabel listens for a moment and then hastens to leave, apologizing to Alex, "Sheriff Valenti just needs me to do something for him." And then they wonder why everyone thinks he's so sketchy. Isabel makes it to the window of Liz's room before once again telling Alex how sorry she is, but he's all non-committal guy with his newly-acquired Swedish moxie (wasn't sure there was such a thing, but there you go), telling her that they'll reschedule when she has the time. She tells him he looks great. I tell him that another unexplained absence from the set like this one and it's Bosom Buddies II: Back To The Bosom for him and Jeremy Miller on the Superstation from now until Daddy bails him out with a role as the lead singer of a Whitss-type rock band in the hotly-anticipated sequel That Thing You Still, Apparently, Do.
Alex asks if Liz has a thin strand of contrived plot non-relevance to get her out of the room for a minute (er, I mean "an extension cord"), and she walks down the steps (more oil for poor Lizbot…the damn droid can't even bend its legs) to discover My So-Called Sean standing at the bottom of them. He makes with the flirty talk while she scours a random shelf looking for whatever will allow her to see slides more quickly, and My So-Called Sean asks her out through a mouthful of crackers. Alex interrupts with some more stage-directing contrivances, asking Liz if she has any Windex and barely acknowledging My So-Called Sean. Then he says, "Sean." Then Sean says, "Alice." Told you everyone thought he was gay. Alone again, My So-Called Sean asks after the state of Liz's relationship with Max, and she tells him, "We're semi-involved." They're friends. "Friends plus." Now with extra cleaning power. My So-Called Sean pretends not to care that his paroled ass is being turned down, and takes off. Alex yells from upstairs for Liz to get the lead out (no small feat for someone comprised almost entirely of alloyed metals), as he plugs in the cord and all of the lights go out. He cries, "Ta mig fan," which means, "I love you, Mighty Big TV." Whatever. Tell me it doesn't.
Well, we know there's a supermarket in town from "A Roswell Christmas Carol," but if continuity be our guide (and quite the Sherpa it is), if your last name isn't "Valenti," you probably haven't been given directions to exactly where it is. Walking through the aisles together, Kyle product-places a few cans of Pringles and Tess piles on more snacks while general adorable hijinks ensue. Nearing the checkout, they come upon two townie women in the middle of a conversation about "two minors in the Sheriff's patrol car, and I heard one of them missed taking a bullet by inches." It's "crazy behavior." It's "hereditary." Stupid townies. This is obviously what happens when unattractive, overweight people are allowed to run wild without an escort. Good thing the twentysomething pep of one Amy DeLucawitz arrives at this moment, as she comes bursting out of, like, a box of egg matzos or something and approaches the check-out counter snarking gossip and tacking on, "One thing you obviously know nothing about is Jim Valenti. Otherwise you wouldn't be talking such trash." She throws down her six-pack of sass, and adds that she would like "two scratch-off lottery tickets." Awwww. White-trash mom saves the day.
Boxing Helena, crazy, and Isabel, hair-challenged tonight, sit in the darkness of The Den Of Porno. Laurie chews on her hands, and Isabel points out that they're bleeding. Laurie pronounces herself "so cold" and rises to put on the collective store of clothing that exist in the universe. Isabel needs to know, "Laurie, what did they do to you?" Laurie's crazy, so she points to needle marks on her arms that aren't really there, because she's crazy. She was in a mental hospital because she's crazy, but bellows to Isabel that she wasn't really supposed to be there because she's not really crazy, even though she's really, really crazy. "I'm not crazy!" Except that you are. A knock on the door sends Laurie crazily into Kyle's room and Isabel to let in Max and Michael. She tells them that Boxing Helena has shown up, and they knock on Kyle's door and tell Laurie it's okay to come out. Isabel introduces Max and all's well on that front, but as soon as Michael moves back into the frame, Laurie goes full-tilt crazy (due in part to the high levels of craziness she possesses), screaming "Stay away from me! You're dead!" She slams the door and escapes out the window. Over at the Sheriff's Station, Porno and Agent Ball-breaker receive simultaneous phone calls indicating that something is terribly, terribly wrong. Back at the action, Michael runs outside and stops Boxing Helena, but she slo-mos through him, chowing down most of the scenery around her in the process. She tears into the street to get away from him, and an oncoming red Camaro drives right out of a weekend on the Jersey Shore in 1977 ["known in some circles as 'last weekend'" -- Sars] and plows Laurie over. Not a scratch on her. The driver gets out of the car as two police cars drive up. Agent Ball-breaker runs to see if she's okay, and Laurie points right at Porno and screams, "The aliens came to his house. He held me there so they could come get me. He said I would be safe, that I could trust him!" Porno denies it. So Laurie describes the interior of the Den Of Porno, and it seems to embarrass him less that he rekidnapped another teenager than does her vivid description of his "green curtains" and "green, checked wallpaper." She tacks on, "The aliens are his friends," which is the best line ever out of context. Agent Ball-breaker marches up to Porno and proclaims their partnership "over." He must be so disappointed.
Cut to the interior of some interrogation room in the rapidly expanding Sheriff's Station. Porno sits at the end of a long metal table looking all the naughty little boy as Agent Ball-breaker makes Porno into a boy soprano in the Roswell City Opera, telling him that he should have called her when Boxing Helena turned up at his place. She sits on the table and clicks on a tape recorder: "What's your relationship with the kids in this town, Sheriff?" He looks at her all "how many distinct definitions for 'dirty old man' are there in that FBI training manual, anyway?" and tells her that she had her chance to ask these questions when his lawyer was around. She's just a woman, so she can't yell with the big boys, but she does snarl that Porno will lose his job, what with the hindering a police investigation and all.
Back on the roof, Liz and L'il Hanks sit on two reclining lawn chairs while a non-distinct projection of "stock footage foreign locale" sits on a sheet before them. As Alex flips the slide to a shot of his "host family" (one of whose name is -- shout-out -- "Gustave"), Liz keeps it All About Her with a fret about Kyle not understanding where Max is coming from. Alex catches Liz not being incredibly excited about his National Geographic Tour Through Cast Member's Contract Violations 2K, and she apologizes for being so preoccupied. slide. Oh, yawn. It's a picture of Alex hugging a very blonde Nordic girl named "Leanna," with whom we learn Alex has "a long-distance thing going on." Meanwhile, the folks in R&D over at Gillette headquarters schedule an emergency meeting intended to invent the technology that allows you to shave a long-distance beard. If you get my drift that Alex is gay. Alex shifts the conversation to Liz and My So-Called Sean, a topic Liz dismisses as "gross." Yeah. For Sean, maybe. Liz congratulates Alex on how "smooth" he was and how he was "playing it cool with Isabel," adding, "I think her interest is piqued." Alex claims that lusting after Isabel is something "the old Alex Whitman would do," a comment that is then juxtaposed against the slide of two huge mountains right to each other. I wonder if that would have been more or less funny if it had actually been intended. Blah blee traveloguecakes redux part the five billionth, and Alex stops on a picture of the aurora borealis, which he explains in the most technical of ways. He then advises, "You've really gotta travel, Liz. It's the most amazing thing." She starts to cry with a resigned, "Someday." Poor Lizbot. Plans ahead. Buys her ticket. And then the airport metal detector rears its ugly head and the lights beep and the alarm goes off and she's made of metal and she's back home before you can say ta mig fan.
School. Kyle dispenses more snacks from a vending machine (note to Kyle: on the whole "emulating Buddha" thing, actual similarities in your physical make-up is probably pretty far down the priority list. Think about what that will do to your spin-off cachet before your Cool Ranch Dorito. I'm just a friend who cares) when he's approached by Max, who asks, "Can we talk?" Thanks, Groan Rivers. Kyle deadpans a perfect "no" and walks away. Max follows behind, whispering about how sorry he is. Kyle my dad's losing his job and blah blee, but Max breaks in with the news: "Kyle, your dad has some stuff in his office. Stuff that Michael found out at the burial site. And it's alien." No, it's a trinkety piece of quartz from the gift shop right to the Hope Diamond. It's not alien. It's not orb-shaped and it doesn't even glow. Use your context cues, people. Turns out Kyle doesn't care either, telling Max to deal with the damn problem himself. Max counters, "No one will think twice if you walk into that office. Kyle, we need your help." Michael and his one-trick repertoire edges ever closer to obsolescence.
Liz sits alone in Random School Closet, and Max enters, telling her and us, "I got your note. What's wrong." And in a word, she responds, "Nothing." No "K" to speak of. Has someone been readink someone's forums? She says that she's been "thinking" (ack! What's going on?) a lot lately, and launches in, "Have you ever wanted to see Sweden?" Yes. Yes, he gets it. He wants to travel. But "the closest I'm going to get right now is the granolith chamber." Ouch! Shot in the face with continuity! Like I even remember if the "granolith" serves a specific purpose, and, if it does, if that purpose is in any way related to Sweden. Max sits down to Liz and tells her, "It doesn't work that way for us. You know that." Liz thinks the aliens are "getting cheated on," and Max plays his most subtle "just go away" card ever, looking her right in the eye and somehow keeping the celebratory "yay" lodged at the back of his throat -- FOR NOW -- when he deadpans, "Liz, you should get to see Sweden." Go. Go right now. Need a passport? Some luggage? One of those huge European adapters for you to plug your power pack into so you can refuel in the Sleep Simulation Phase and prepare yourself for a tourist travel day of input, input, input! Do you need that? I'll get it for you. Max tells her that she is "part of the group," but that he doesn't want to hold her back and have her realize in five years that she missed out on it all. "You need to be allowed to grow." She hugs him, and her eyes glow white like The Iron Giant when he's pleased, and Liz asks why Max can't come. He tells her that he'll be "watching" her, "and I'll be here when you get back." Wait. What just happened here?
Under the cover of darkness (well, darker than usual) inside Porno's Office Of Slatted Lewdness, Kyle skulks in and rifles madly through Porno's drawers. Ew. Not like that. Just when he gets his hand on a bag of tobacco that seems to hold the crystals (check that, they do glow), the door bursts open and Agent Ball-breaker walks in with a stern message: "Kyle. You shouldn't be here." Kyle makes up a story about needing to get his report card signed, then snatches up the first piece of paper he can get his hands on before making for the door. Agent Ball-breaker wants to see how Kyle is doing in school because it's totally her personal business, and he hands her the paper looking very, very guilty. She stares at it for a few seconds, then hands it back with an encouraging "I didn't like trigonometry either." He makes his way into the hall to find that Tess had his back the whole time, and as the grades fade and the paper becomes blank again, he realizes she has performed a mind-brain-freezes-warp-scan thing that made Agent Ballbreaker think she was looking right at the thing. Tess asks for a simple thanks as Kyle pulls her out of the station. And she gave him a "D" in trig. By the way.
In a giant courtroom-esque room with about ten million empty wooden chairs and about one light, a disembodied voice reports to a seated Porno, "A town's reputation is made by those entrusted to enforce its laws and maintain order. Sheriff Valenti has shown, of late, that he can do neither. Therefore, it is the recommendation of the council that he be removed from office, effective immediately. All those in favor." A chorus of ye olde "ayes" showers down, and I half-expect the council to run out into the streets and start dumping giant boxes of tea into the dried-up lakes all around town. Nary a soul objects. Which is too bad. Because I kind of like tea.
Crashdown. Max and Isabel enter to find Liz (how can we miss you, dear, if you won't go away?), Michael, Tess, and Kyle. Liz breaks the news about Porno. Sad faces reign. Kyle removes the bag of light blue crack from his pocket, and it's monologue time: "In the past year, my dad and I have been put through an amazing amount of your crap. You and your Martian friends move in, take over, and obliterate any shred of normalcy. Our lives are no longer ours. Now promise me you're going to stay away from my family. Promise me this is the last time we have to put ourselves on the line for you." Insert last week's "glacial pause" timeframe before Max finally gets around to responding, "I can't." Kyle hands the blue glowing orb crack to Max, but drops it before he gets a hand on it. It hits the floor, and Kyle walks out. Oh. Burn.
Max, Isabel, and Michael sit upstairs at Chez Evans, Michael clutching the Hopeless Diamond and wondering, "How do we figure out what this is?" Max and Isabel sit on the bed in a state of this-is-more-fun-horizontal until Isabel distractedly busts out, "What's Valenti gonna do?" Max frets that "he gave up everything for us," and Michael plays the pragmatist, arguing, "He gave up a crappy job with low pay and long hours." Max starts to scold him all "I'm the King blah blee," but Michael is all "in this hooded shirt of many shades of clashing brown, I'm the Chess King, so I get a royal voice too," adding, "We were born into this cause, Valenti chose it. Let what he did be worth something." Max spontaneously remembers having an old microscope (remnants from the Liz-dating days, I guess), which he takes out in a flash. Placing a swab from the Hopeless Diamond under it, he sees the blue CGI cells from the fifteen billion WB ads for The Hybrid Chronicles. Max notes, "It's like they're pulsating." Welcome…to the rock!
And The Country Bumpkin Guitar Of The Disenfranchised Former Small-Town Sheriff continues to rage on the soundtrack as we join Porno in the process of sleeping on his ratty couch right there in the middle of the day. Many tap-tap-taps on the door reveal Amy DeLucawitz, looking all shiny and new as she enters carrying a picnic basket and notes, "Cahoun Park has a power boat with our names all over it." Heh. "The Porno And DeLucawitz." I would so sail on that ship any day you asked. He attempts to decline her offer, but she refuses to let him off the hook, making with the flirty with the promise of "killer potato salad." Actually, maybe that would be a better name for the boat.
And back at the Crashdown, My So-Called Sean sits alone again at a booth, stopping Liz on her shift with the equally flirty, "You look like roadkill." Awww. She does look pretty bad. She snipes that she's having a horrible day (because she can't go to Sweden? That pretty much does in my entire week right there, then) and that she just wants to be left alone. Instead, My So-Called Sean proposes a solution: "You need to write what's bothering you in mustard." Eh? He motions for her to sit, explaining that DeLucawitz has a "trick" by which "you squirt it right there in the beautiful ground-beef patty. You chow down, problem's gone." Augh! Can we place every one of those words into a damn impermeable tube and throw it into the ocean, insuring that all of those words will never, ever be uttered by human lips again? I'll even make do without "you" and "it," provided I've heard the last of "squirt," ground beef," and "patty." Please. PLEASE. And leave it to DeLucawitz to nauseate me with the mere mention of food (killer potato salad, beautiful ground-beef patties, last season's brief bout with fruity sex pies…it's enough already), even when she isn't there. My So-Called Sean slides over the beautiful ground-beef patty on which Liz is to squirt her troubles away. See? See how awful? On the beautiful ground-beef patty, she squirts the word, um, "grolo." Good sentiment. I agree completely. She takes a bite of My So-Called Sean's burger and talks with her mouth full. Then she leaves. Which is totally, totally grolo of her.
Noooooooo! I can't even do it. Out in the Jetta, Porno thanks DeLucawitz for adopting him as her charity case. Then they kiss! Please no. Iron stomach, don't fail me now. Once again I am disgusted by the thought of Amy DeLucawitz and food, seeing as this fifteen-second scene causes me to spontaneously rid my system of everything I have put in it since I was old enough to chew. Wow. Grolo as hell. Well, I guess it's an adjective. "Grolo." At least that's how I seem to be using it.
Kyle is putting together a meal of some kind in the Kitchen Of Porno when Tess enters, coat on. "My stuff's packed. I'll be gone after school." Whassat, now? Tess apologizes for overstaying her welcome, but Kyle turns to face her and begs, "Don't leave." She tells him not to worry, that he has the right to protect his family, but he leans against the counter and goes all gooey and faux-sentimental in a way I'm afraid I'm never going to allow when I'm exec-producing the spin-off starring the two of them: "You're part of the family I was trying to protect. As far as I can see, you're the only good thing about having an alien in my life." Awwww. So cute. It will make the inevitable hook-up all the more bizarre now that they're family, but we'll get over it. Tess pauses for a timely amount of time before adding, "Kyle. You are definitely my favorite human." Kyle's at the ready with the necessary retort, "Well, you're my favorite Martian." Good save, y'all.
Michael and Isabel walk past a huge sign reading, "Pinecrest Psychiatric Hospital," stopping by a small window leading to a basement. Michael puts out a hand, and the thing smashes to bits. Isabel lets him know, "Y'know, you could've just used your foot." Y'know, Isabel, after a straight hour of watching untrained dilettantes ripping off his only schtick, it's finally Michael's turn for his patented weekly break-in. Let the man do his job. Downstairs, in a dank basement region, Isabel asks, "Could you imagine being locked up in a place like this?" And the only reason that line is even in there is to set up Michael's response, "That would suck big." Geddit? Geddit? Like what all the kids are saying today? Yeah. I thought you might. Michael cracks open a file cabinet and effortlessly tracks down an empty file folder with Laurie's name on it. He's outclassed at his own game one final time when Isabel stumbles upon a blue bag tagged with Laurie's name, which she opens up to find a stack of old photographs, one of which is a picture labeled "Grandpa 1935" with a grainy black-and-white shot of Michael wearing overalls and looking generally mired in thoughts of Depression. Isabel: "My God, that looks just like you." Michael: "That is me." Grolo! Or is it?