Props to Kate and Meredith. Also big ups to the usual forum regulars. And happy birthday, Julie and wmpoty.
I started saying it during "285 South" and I'll continue to say so now: I'm just a sucker for a good road narrative. Also, for whatever kind of road narrative this episode is.
The well-guarded WB Stable Of Extras Over Forty is cracked open but a peek, allowing an older man and woman to escape the shackles of ageist typecasting as "Mr. and Mrs. Dick Van Dyke's Friend" on a first-run episode of Diagnosis: Murder, as they instead walk through the glass doors of a supermarket-like building and out onto the streets of Roswell. A pan to a sign above the store allows for the discovery that Ye Olde Lactose-Tolerant Couple is exiting a market which includes the neighborhood's "Cheese Shop," which another neon sign a few steps away indicates is "Open 24 Hrs." Which, truth be told and secrets revealed, is about a full hour short of the amount of cheese this show has the ability to perpetrate on its remaining viewing audience of the six of us during the course of its average business day. Up on the roof, one good visit to Hair and Makeup deserves another, as the suddenly admirable coif-stylings of Michael "Vidal" Guerin and Maria "Sassoon" DeLuca are the best things about a sequence in which the two alternately stare through sets of binoculars and stare at the Ye Olde Glamour Shot of "Grandpa 1935." In a rat-tat-tat banter-tinged string of dialogue that makes me wonder if Jason Katims didn't drop a quarter into the electronic carnival fortune teller and wish with all his might "I wanna be Buffy" (it's a Big reference, folks), Maria kicks things off by looking at the picture and observing, "Okay, that is freaky." Michael concurs that the similarity between his own gap-toothed mug and that of Grandpa 1935 is "pretty weird," and Maria takes it a step further in an expository direction with, "Michael, have you ever even thought of the possibility that this guy more than just looks like you? Like he is you. Like, your donor. Like, your human side is him." At which point, Maria drops her binoculars, scratches the needle on the record of a mysteriously-appearing phonograph, turns her rump-side to the camera, and gets wiggity-wiggity-wiggity-whack with a rousing hip hop chorus of Delfino and the Delphonics' "Baby's Got Backstory." Okay, that doesn't really happen or even have to happen, because we watched Part I and we also watched Part II and we get it. But Maria continues getting "Backstory in the High Life Again" with her continued assertion that "in some weird and twisted way, he and his relatives are, like, your family." Michael kills time, filling us in: "Like Laurie DuPree?" No, Michael. Like Tom Bergeron. But you were so close. Should have watched Parts I and II like the rest of us. And read the recaps, too, each more brilliant than the last. Michael laments that "it figures" that he "finally found a family member, and she's a complete whack job." A police car glides by the completely empty streets of town, passing without comment because they don't want none unless you've got guns, hon (see set-up for this punch line, as established above), and Maria peers through her binoculars and notes, "Someone's in Garrison's Hardware Store." Michael scolds, "Maria, we're supposed to be watching the Sheriff's Station." Maria defends herself: "I think they're having sex." Not damn bloody likely on this show. Unless it's some really unsavory coupling in keeping with the hella offensive nookie pairing from last week. Either way, Michael temporarily drops his "but we're supposed to do blee, but we're supposed to do blah" routine and guides his own binoculars in that general direction. But he'll be back to his cranky old disagreeable self in no time, I'm sure. Because he likes to contest opinions. Because he likes to argue. Because he likes big "buts." And he cannot lie. Heh. Sorry. Damn, Maria's hair looks good.
A close-up on the glazed-over eyes and slack-jawed, pasty face of Laurie "In A Box" DuPree pans back to the interior of the Sheriff's Station, where Agent "Ball-Breaker" Duff fills in even more I-already-knew-that gaps for the apparent target demographic of this show, known on the Nielsen comparative chart as "Born riiiiiight…now." Ball-Breaker: "Laurie [In A Box], if you help me find the man who did this, I can stop him from hurting someone else like he hurt you. But you have to talk to me." Ball-Breaker sighs that they've been "at this for two days," and threatens in the most gently passive-aggressive of ways to send Laurie In A Box back to her "old room" at Pinecrest with the art therapy and the electric shocks and the piping-hot box of genuine freshly-baked Crazycakes. Laurie In A Box thinks on it for a moment, then chokes out the minor-chord cue of the opening segment, "They're aliens." Laurie In A Box then erupts in a well-patented fit of ACTING, because the Secret Word Of The Day, "aliens," has been mentioned (other Secret Words Of The Day inciting equally incendiary results include "grandpa" and "help" and "in a box" and, on a very special episode, "Mecca Lecca Hi Mecca Hiney Ho"). Laurie In A Box makes for the door, but is held back by two deputies who burst in and pin her to the table. Her eyes dart around, and she has the wherewithal to grab a nearby pen and conceal it in her sleeve, an action noticed only by me, the six aforementioned viewers, and Jonathan Demme's lawyers. Who have been dying for something to do for the last ten or so years anyway.
More banter about sex up on the observation deck at Exposition National Park, when suddenly Maria notices activity outside the Sheriff's Station in the form of an ambulance pulling up and Laurie In A Box being carted off. Blah blee bling blah fava beans bleh Chianticakes, and we're inside of an ambulance with a shackled Laurie obscured almost entirely by the foreshadows and maneuvering the pen from the first act to go off five seconds later. Following close behind, Michael drives the Jetta and Maria sits shotgun, dredging up the older-than-dirt-and-only-half-as-colorful issue of something known as their "relationship." Michael claims that he doesn't want to talk about it (word), and Maria agrees that she doesn't want him to talk at all (word of the day), merely that she wants to pathetically default her way back into couplehood in the belief that "if we're chasing down some crazy girl in the middle of the night, the only reason that I'd do something so nuts is because you and I were dating again." Michael tosses out a "whatever," and the world nods wearily in assent. Because, whatever.
A shot of another car following behind the Jetta following behind the ambulance (first a scene set on the fourth floor of the cheese depository, and now a tense motorcade barreling through a one-joke town known exclusively for a much-maligned black mark on the history of America…how very Dallas, 1963 of them) cuts back to inside the ambulance, where Yawnibal Lechter [In A Box] extracts the pen from her sleeve and opens one of her leather-bound shackles. The attending EMT fails to notice as Laurie stands up and smashes a conveniently-placed piece of medical equipment over his head, then disrupts the driver's attention and sends the ambulance down a cactus-y, er, knoll and over on its side. The Jetta pulls up right behind, and Laurie jumps out into Michael's arms. More screaming and another attempt to flee, but the third car in the caravan (beat-up Chevy = evil) pulls up, and a black-clad villain with a covered face (I guess it was the white Spy's day off, leaving his Mad Magazine nemesis to freelance for other worthy opponents) leaps out and starts shooting. Laurie In A Box attempts to dash into the woods, but hits the ground when a bullet hits the car, and Michael crawls up to her and warns, "Now you can come with us or you can stay here and get killed." She nods that the non-killed option holds a bit more allure at the moment, and Michael holds out a hand and blows up the front hood of the Evil Chevy (the gun, Michael. Blow up THE GUN). The three leap into the car and tear off past the overturned ambulance, leaving Black Spy with nothing to shoot from behind the cactus-y knoll.
Openink credits.
I think that The Tiny TV Of Perpetual Viewing Discomfort has traveled a short distance since the opening scene of "To Serve And Protect," from a hard wooden table to straight-backed wooden chairs with, like, knives sticking out of them, to a hard wooden table in the kitchen with no darn chairs at all. On said TV, Thania St. John's temporary field replacement (sorry for the way intertextual reference, folks…even I don't remember what episode that one's from) stands in front of the crash scene, reporting, "Bob, sources within the county hospital say that the young girl, Laurie DuPree, became agitated while the vehicle was in motion." Back in the studio, "Bob" considers the fate that landed him on the Roswell affiliate of a network shown on a television that only broadcasts stock footage TV clips from the seventies, and repeatedly bangs his hand on the faux-wood news desk in frustration before turning the show over to the news update ("President Jimmy Carter today said…") with Thania St. John and the weather ("Good thing there is as of yet no such thing as a hole in the ozone layer to ruin this beautiful…"), also with Thania St. John. Cut to a shot of Max "If You Don't Look Good, You Don't Look Good" Evans in his kitchen, squinting to make out even a single image of the One-Pixel Radio that serves as their passive entertainment.
Max asks, "Where are you?" and we cut to the Jetta in the middle of nowhere, Michael reporting that Laurie In A Red-Running-Gag-Car-Of-A Box is "completely crazy…she tried to jump out of the car three times while it was moving." Inside the car, Laurie bangs and slams and slams and throws punches, Michael adding, "I used my powers to lock her in. She's basically like a caged animal." Laurie rips the sun visor off of the passenger side and commences in slamming it against the window, and Maria throws up her arms and lets us know, "Sun visor, fifteen bucks. Including labor, of course." As Thania shows us a "recent hospital photo" of Laurie In A Box (which, ew), Isabel enters the kitchen on a cordless phone of her own and warns Michael not to come back to Roswell now that the whole darn town is looking for Laurie. Back inside the Jetta, Laurie In A Box grabs at the CD player on the front dashboard and makes to bang it up good, inciting general panic in Maria, who warns, "Now you're hurting all of us!" Max tells Michael, "We can use any information we can get about the crystals," and Michael purses his lips and actually deadpans, "Oh yeah, she's a real conversationalist." Heh. Laurie In A Box, meanwhile, hoists herself up on her hands and begins madly kicking at the car's front dashboard, sending Maria to further levels of Car Talk-type apoplexy. Sun visor, fifteen dollars. Portable CD player, ninety-nine dollars. Systematically totaling the last vestige of Maria's first-season uncontextualized wackiness and creating an entirely new show from the ruins of failures…priceless. Go, Laurie!
Daytime at the Den Of Porno. Kyle "You Can Take Me To Prell And Back" Valenti accompanies Tess "Goldie Locks And The Three Lines Of Dialogue" Harding in the front door, where they are stumped by a loud whirring sound coming from the room. They walk through to the living room, where Bob "Porno" Vila has covered all of the furniture and is operating an immense woodcutting contraption of some kind (sorry…I opted for Home Ec) and wearing the latest in the Home Depot fashion collection's Gigantic Gas Mask Of The Endless Nuclear Winter. Kyle worriedly greets his father and asks what he's doing. Tess -- barely concealing her need to hop a plane to her native land so she can be with her family during the whole post-Tom-and-Nicole thing and mourn this latest passing of Hollywood royalty, as the rest of her indigenous nation must currently be doing -- stutters a bit and hazards, "He's building something. Right?" Dude. Tess looks awesome today. Like, rock-star hottie right now. Like, one more go-round with the ol' flattening iron before shooting starts and Tess's hair won't be the only thing around here spontaneously going straight. I'm just sayin'. That it looks really good. As Porno attests that he's finally happy for the "time to work on this," Kyle picks up a piece of paper reading, "On behalf of the city of Roswell, state of New Mexico," and then some further elaboration on a "Notice of Legal Action" taken by Mel Glibson against his once and future attacker. Porno Darth Vaders through the mask, "If there's one thing I've got plenty of now, it's time." And soon, maybe, a napkin holder?
Over in Max's bedroom, he stares through his microscope at the blue pulsy cells, the special effects on this show as always indicating that the "C" in CGI stands for, in fact, "Commodore 64." Max may never figure out what the throbbing blue cells are or the very essence of his interplanetary existence, but armed with his current advances in special effects technology and a copy of the 1987 World Almanac that comes with the six-inch floppy disk, he's a simple Load"*",8,1 away from having a V.I.L.E. Henchman advising him as to how to obtain a warrant to arrest Carmen Sandiego. Quick note for those of you born after 1980: I can't help you with that one. You just had to be there. In your basement. In 1986. Listening to a worn-out copied cassette of "Seven and the Ragged Tiger" that your older sister made for you. Sorry. rant is entirely about Pokemon or Nirvana or whatever it is you newfangled kids are all listening to nowadays. Deepest apologies. For having just turned a thousand last week. Anyway, Max hazards that he's looking at "some kind of alien bacteria…or something." Isabel suggests that Max employ the help of his "lab partner," and the sassy, smoking, Manolo-Blahnik-wearing lead in the upcoming spin-off Pecs And The City wisely kowtows to the viewing audience with his surefire three-pointer, "I'm trying to leave Liz out of this right now." Brilliant. Hack off the "right now" and tack on a "because of her clanging, Battlebots-esque demise at the hands of, well, me," and I'll take the damn fella right to Carmen Sandiego myself. Oops. Sorry again.
Cut to the Crashdown, where Isabel sits at a table with Liz "1.0" Parker and Alex "How Swede It Is" Whitman, explaining the scene before which explained the scene before which explained the scene before and my brain just exploded. Alex recaps (not to set up an auto-forward link to my new URL mightybigmartyr.com or anything, but can y'all see why this show doesn't always make it the easiest for me sometimes?) for our continuing short-term memory deficiency, "So they're driving around aimlessly with a fugitive in the car?" Yes. God, YES. Isabel informs the other two, "They may be gone for a couple of days, so we need to cover for them." They are soon to be interrupted by "My So-Called" Sean DeLuca, who ambles over and butts in, "Who may be gone for a couple of days?" Cock-eyed, elitist, is-there-or-is-there-not-a-license-plate-requiring-your-stellar-smelting-acumen glares are exchanged, so Sean gets to it and reports that DeLucawitz is flipping out about Maria's disappearance, and orders Liz to come over to the house. Liz runs into my grandmother's pre-war living room and grabs the floral-print curtains off the rod, hastily fashioning a coat out of them that she then throws on, and My So-Called Sean stares her down and notes, "Nice top. I dig the midriff thing." But the Lizbot, suddenly aware that her Have No Shame Chip has gone haywire, looks down at the prosthetic flesh-colored Girl Tummy the world can plainly see, and can only mimic those words that have been inputted in her general direction more than any other: "Shut up, please." Wasn't it just last week when she promised to go away forever?
Back at the Jetta in the middle of nowhere, Maria lies on the roof of the car while Michael barks at Laurie In A Box through the open driver's side window, "I'm trying to help you, okay? Just tell me if you have any family, how hard is that? C'mon, you can trust me. I pulled you out of that ambulance, I saved you from the kidnappers." He hangs on for a second and slams on the horn in frustration, causing Maria to all but dive off the roof. She screams Michael's name and tells him that she's hungry and that they're going to go eat at some desert outpost called The Roadside Café. Michael frets that the cops are looking for Laurie, and Maria steps into the driver's seat, nicely toning down the possible wacky quotient for such a line, and promising, "Trust me, even the cops give the Roadside a wide berth." Heh. Someone's channeling the Steven Soderbergh within after her brief starring role, it seems. Perhaps she'll dump her chili cheese fries onto a flattened piece of aluminum foil and light the bottom, inhaling in the euphoric fumes with the help of the twisty straw for her vanilla shake. Oh, and maybe Topher Grace will show up and play Michael Guerin, instead. Sigh. Topher Grace. See, now we've got a TV show here, folks.
Back at the Crashdown, Isabel and Alex run smack into the dwindling-into-obsolescence Agent Ball-Breaker, who flashes her badge to Isabel and all but chung-chungsus over to an interrogation room back inside of the police station. Isabel sits alone in said room and awaits Ball-Breaker, who enters for the third degree. Isabel asks, "Shouldn't my parents be here?" Ball-Breaker volleys back, "You're eighteen. The law says you're an adult now." Wow. Way to easily dispense with a plot hole so big that it's been shipped to Florida and set aflame for Shamu to jump through in the wet and wild climax of Sea World's Wonders Of The Water aquamarine spectacular. Y'all better watch out in the front row, there; you guys are gonna get soaked. Isabel's request for legal representation is similarly disregarded, and Ball-Breaker -- wearing this really long maroon topcoat that makes her look like she's a walking cane and a powdered wig away from slipping into a Merchant/Ivory production -- sits down and takes us back a few episodes, for a change. "Sheriff Valenti knew that Laurie DuPree was missing before a missing person's report was filed. How? He won't say." He also won't say how he knew just exactly where she was buried, as her unflinchingly descriptive nickname tells us, in a box. Ball-Breaker hopes to make a spark from the primitive method of banging two glowing orbs together, and with this specious reasoning -- and the need to stop developing and start denouementing here in the second half of the four-episode arc -- she puts zero and zero together, and eureka: "The only link I seem to find is you and your brother. You were seen during the investigation a number of times with the Sheriff." Isabel hearkens back to a host of poorly-developed "I lost my bike, I didn't know it was due today, my Lizbot ate my chemistry homework because she needs manganese to live" excuses, but Ball-Breaker, 'cause she's a Ball-Breaker, doesn't bite. Nuh-uh. "Isabel, what is the big secret, and why can't I be let in on it?" She's "not some local deputy working for some local Sheriff," she's with the FB.I. This would probably be scaring Isabel a whole lot more should these words have not been leveled at them verbatim during a small period in the plot arc I'll refer to for convenience's sake as the entirety of last season. A knock on the door really pisses off Ball-Breaker, but her protests that she not be interrupted cease the moment Mel Glibson enters the room and locks eyes with Isabel. Carrying a large package wrapped in a blanket, Mel tells Ball-Breaker, "I found this in the woods this morning, about a mile east of the crash scene." Ball-Breaker unwraps it to reveal a gigantic torpedo of a gun. Close-up on Mel. Even his hair looks good, covering as it is the large, Frankensteinian scar his forehead is increasingly acquiring as he becomes more furrowed and lumbering and likely to burst into a rousing chorus of "Puttin' On The Ritz" at a moment's notice if properly prompted. Like in that movie.
Yeah. Um. So all the ten-gallon hats and twangy slide guitar the desert Southwest has to offer and a dusty ol' sign reading "Roadside Café" isn't going to go real far in convincing the average living viewer that we're not right back inside the Crashdown set, minus a few of the alien accoutrements. It's the same set, people. The booths are the same color. The glasses and silverware are exactly the same. Michael even glances guiltily toward the kitchen, thinking that his work should require him to immediately stop slouching and being generally pointless at a table and go engage in his full-time contractually-stipulated activity of slouching and being generally pointless behind the counter. Maria looks at her menu, the front of which trumpets "Roadside Café" (thank goodness for the aforementioned presence of the Commodore 64, so that the staff of The Crashdown With Dust was able to whip up such a convincing set of new menus with any number of fonts and clip art using "The Print Shop Companion"), and notes, "The food that time forgot. Assuming that anything out of a can is a safe bet." Laurie In A Box stares straight ahead because she's crazy, and finally opens her mouth to report, "I have to go to the bathroom." Michael commands that Maria accompany her, and she impolitely declines on the basis that the restroom at the Crashdown With Dust has "one stall, no door." Michael frets that she'll "book," and Maria has finally "had it," leaning in and informing Laurie In A Box in no uncertain terms, "Look, I am not your mommy. And I am not your doctor. So there's no freakin' way that I'm gonna go in the bathroom with you and hold your hand while you go potty." Ha! Oh, crap. That's the first time I've ever tacked on an exclamation point in a recap without the greatest level of punctuational sarcasm ("Don't die, Liz!"). But I mean it. That shit was funny. Maria continues that she and Michael are only trying to help Laurie In A Box "escape the aliens who want to bury [her] in the woods." So she advises that Laurie deal with her nature-calling issues, and she can either come back to the non-Crashdown non-table with a new attitude, or she can "hoof it to the Mexican border. It's about a hundred and fifty miles thataway." Maria points off-camera, right past the Lizbot in uniform, holding a tray and spelling out the words "Lizbot no spell Crashdown R-O-A-D-S-I-D-E…does not compute, does not compute" on the LCD display that appears where her much-ballyhooed Girl Tummy appeared just a few short scenes back. Okay, not really. Laurie In A Box stands up and storms into the bathroom, her product-placed cargo jeans not nearly dirty enough for someone who otherwise looks like she was trained in hygiene by a subspecies of human who taught their progeny to wash using the tongue. Once she's gone, Michael asks if Maria thinks that ham-handedness will work, and Maria points in the other direction and notes, "Not a chance, but it doesn't matter. The Mexican border is thataway." Tee. Hee. Maria is cool. She has indie cred. Meanwhile, a patron at a nearby table orders an alien shake with dust and a Will Smith burger with dust. Just to keep up with the authenticity of it all.
Lizbot and My So-Called Sean turn up in the kitsch hell of the DeLuca living room (at least now we know where those boxes upon boxes of alien-themed supplies were stored during our recent ultra-realistic visit to that outpost known to millions as the Crashdown With Dust), where a suddenly-kind-of-subtle (what the hell is going on this week?) DeLucawitz has seen through Maria's ruse that she's going camping (even though this is the first time she actually seems to care), threatening Liz, "If you don't tell me everything you know about where the hell she is, I'm going to become very violent with you." Go! Go! Go! Hey, Ms. DeLucawitz? Here's a pair of heavy-duty pliers and an actual bag of black-market rust scraped from abandoned overturned tractor-trailers on deserted country highways, and also from the prop metal automaton that sits in a locked Hollywood supply closet while the details concerning the sequel to the Robocop franchise continue getting hammered out. Here they are. Just for you. Three words, Ms. DeLucawitz: Have. At. It. And remember…righty tighty, lefty loosey. I'll be right here if you need me. Wha? No, I don't need an A.L.F. hood ornament for my troubles, thanks, even though the ones you make really are lovely. I don't even have a car, after all. Okay, anyway, Liz saves herself, choosing to extend her bionic life indefinitely, offering the helpful, "She's with Michael." DeLucawitz grows despondent, and Liz tries to diffuse the already dropped bomb with her assertion that "they're just getting away." My So-Called Sean sits on the couch and snarks something about a "cheap motor inn," and Liz makes with the "shut up" again. Sizzling, this scene. DeLucawitz tells Liz to fork over her cell phone, insisting, "She shut her phone off, but I'm sure she'll be turning it on to call
you again, and when she does I'll be here with you to receive that call." Good plan. But the other thing? With the pliers? And the rust? And the extraneous Robocop reference? Yeah, um, that plan is actually much, much better.Back out in Dusty Roswell, Maria and Michael have paid the dust-covered check and are back in the Jetta, pulling up behind an escaping Laurie In A Box. She tries to make a run for it and stops, and the two jump out of the car and approach her as she sits on a log and makes with the glazed spacey thing once more, because that routine is, yessir, brand-new. Okay, not. Maria and Michael approach, and after another bout of protracted silence, Maria pulls Michael back a few steps and advises him that the only way to proceed is to "tell her the truth." He negates the idea immediately, and she warns him that his only other option is to "form an emotional bond with Laurie," which Maria believes to be impossible. Michael seems equally loath to enact this plan, as it seems primed to cause a scene of drippy pathos while the words "Emmy Clip" blink ironically underneath in a way that will spare the humiliation of no one. So he steps toward Laurie On A Log, and from behind him Maria calls, "You think you can handle it?" Michael snarks that he's "not completely emotionally retarded." Heh. I smell Michael Guerin's personal ad. And, yes, Michael, you kind of are. He makes his way over, and a really, really, really wide shot of him standing behind her under the bright sky underscores his utter vulnerability in the face of emotional investment, how he feels lost in this, the endless desert of the human experience. Ladies and gentlemen: art.
On a very special Den Of Porno, Kyle walks in to find his father sanding and spinning and cutting. He whispers a soft, "Hey, Dad." Porno takes off the gas mask, and Kyle expresses concern that his father is building "a guillotine." Porno laughs that he's only doing "a little woodwork, that's all," but the fact that he now sports facial hair for the first time in show history is simple televisual shorthand for the deranged, debased, and the generally neglected by mainstream society. In other words, expect Laurie In A Box to turn up in a future scene kitted out in Charlton Heston's Ten Commandments beard, which the director has snatched right out of the Smithsonian to match her escalating levels of insanity. Porno cops to the fact that he's making a "baseball bat," adding, "Give you one. When I'm done," because the sentence structure of the King's English is strictly the territory of the gainfully employed and decisively not crazy. As indicated here. Figure 1-1. Porno focuses his eyes on Kyle and admits, "I'm in kind of a dark place here, Kyle." Awwww. Poor, therapy-addled "writer" of this episode. That's so psychobabble, and gruff Porno would never think to say it. Porno continues (who, if he's hearing voices in his delusional state, is apparently hearing the book-on-tape version of When Bad Things Happen To Good People when he talks to God), "It's just gonna take me a little while to work my way out of it." Just shave. But Kyle assures his touched father that he and Tess are fine and keeping their "heads above water." He hands his father back the legal papers, telling him that pretty soon they might all be in that dark place together. Now there's the spin-off idea. Minus the Porno-being-there part, of course. And for all I care, they can really just go ahead and keep the lights on.
And we're back in Dusty Roswell, Michael sitting in silence on the log for another second. Um, action? Oh, there he goes: "Look, Laurie [In A Box], I know a lot of people think you're pretty crazy." Heh. Yeah. "Knowing everything you've been through, you seem pretty normal to me." He continues that she's the only family he's ever known, and he doesn't want to let her go. "I got all kinds of faults, and this one over here, y'know, she can list them off for you later on, if you want." Maria. He's talking about Maria. But he's loyal and won't turn his back on her. Laurie In A Box finally ventures something in the way of a full sentence, asking, "You're not my grandpa, are you?" No. She tells him, "Tucson. Grandpa's in Tucson, Arizona." And they're off again. I feel like I should be downloading "Holiday Road" off Napster in celebration of this continued mobility. Go home, people. Sorry, kids. Park's closed.
Shut up, Max. Oh, he's sleeping. Well, he's too loud anyway. Head on his desk and face comfortably nestled in the pecs (his whole fam damily and Alex's dad could be in there too, for all we know) and dreaming of a time that predated puberty when it didn't yet hurt for him to catch a football, he is undisturbed by movement in the glass containing the blue crystals. He awakens only after the glass that holds them tumbles to the hard floor (and fails to break. Hello, meager props budget) and the crystals turn to a bluish-green liquid that crawls across his desk and comes to rest on his hand. He wakes up in a big hurry, does a Mime School Dropout pulling of one arm with the other, and when he finally frees himself, the liquid crawls off him and turns back the more familiar glowing orb. The CGI on that one was more Tandy than Commodore. The orb is the same color as the ball in Pong. Max flips over another glass thing and traps the crystal underneath. Cool one, Max. Now do the one where you're in the little box, and you can't get…actually, there's probably someone on this show who could kick just a little more ass at that one than you could.
Back in the DeLucawitz living room (which, after the late introduction of it last "Independence Day," I still want to refer to only as "New Set"), My So-Called Sean plays video games and Lizbot plays with a ball and a paddle attached by a string (no, actually, I'm not kidding) when the cell phone starts to ring. Hello? Hello? DeLucawitz wants answers from Maria and wants them now, and Maria volunteers that she and Michael are "on [their] way to Arizona." Why? "We're being free spirits, Mom." DeLucawitz curries favor with me a bit more with her guess, "That means you're going to Sedona to get stoned and have sex in the hills." If. Only. I'd watch that show, too. Even without Topher, yo. DeLucawitz speeches about how she was seventeen once, too, and then insists Maria fork the phone over to Michael. They fight about it in the front seat of the car, but he finally takes it and mutters a very, very resigned, "Hey, Ms. DeLuca." DeLucawitz puts her hand to her forehead and launches into a tirade about how Michael needs to take care of her daughter, which is actually kind of touching and original in a way I haven't seen much of during this emotionally devoid period of pop-cultural history. At least, that's what I would be saying if she were Frances McDormand and this were Almost Famous, which she's not and this so isn't. The part that wasn't in the speech about Jason Lee's relationship with Patrick Fugit is, "If you have sex with my daughter, I will hunt you down and kill you like the mangy dog you are." Because that would have made for a very, very different movie. She closes up, "Call me if you need bail money." Verbatim, people. Before she even hands Liz the phone, Cameron Crowe's lawyers are at the door with the subpoenas and the shooting script for his semi-autobiographical sequel, Say Anything…Unless I've Already Said It. Jesus.
Michael hangs up the phone ("Your mom really freaked me out, man.") and informs Maria, "She wants you to have fun." Which, truth be told, she did kind of say. Back on New Set, My So-Called Sean advises DeLucawitz to "call the police," citing Michael as "a mighty shady character." "Mighty"? Shout-out? He is, after all, mighty big, as well. Liz snipes, "Look who's talkink," and Sean asserts that he is "not shady," but rather "misunderstood." My So-Called Sean comes at her with a pillow, and they start slamming each other. DeLucawitz rolls her eyes at the general idiocy of it all and is solidified evermore as my new best friend ever. She yells that she "need[s] a drink," grabs her bag, and makes for the door. She opens it on Max preparing to knock, snarks some more about crossing state lines, and sends him into the house. My So-Called Sean is straddling the welded metal edges of the Lizbot, but he stops abruptly when he lays eyes on Max. Liz stands up in a big hurry and asks if somethink is wronk, and Max tells her that he needs some help with his "science homework." Wink wink, y'know? Except, of course, not. My So-Called Sean hits her in the leg with a pillow, and I can't help notice that their chemistry together at least helps her rise above the level of, say, kelp. And what's with everyone leaving Liz alone with a convicted criminal for indefinite amounts of time? What was he in jail for, impersonating a full-time cast member? week: it's gotta be his last. Put it on ice already, Krakow. You're making everyone else look bad.
Night. Porno, clean-shaven once more with Good Guy Again Brand Shaving Cream, walks through the woods and comes upon Mel Glibson by a campsite. Porno approaches him from behind, hoping that they could "settle this thing." He admits that he went "over the line," but adds, "It doesn't give you the right to try to destroy my family." Awww. Porno's Lament. Mel stares glassily at the ground (sure is some disturbing behavior going on around town these days, eh? EH???), and Porno asks Mel to at least face him. He does, turning those unseeing eyes Porno's way and kind of, like, well, roaring, I think. He rises to attack Porno, who takes Frankenforehead down and punches him good. And punches. And punches. And punches. Glibson looks up, registers what's going on for the first time, and begs Porno to stop, and we cut to Porno walking with all of the determination his stumpy legs and stage directions will allow, bursting into Ball-Breaker's office and insisting, "I want you to put Grant Sorenson under surveillance." Ball-Breaker reminds Porno that he's no longer the Sheriff, moving to a corner of the room and picking up the gun from earlier, telling him that Sorenson found it at a dig near the crime scene, and actually using this logic: "If he is a kidnapper, why would he be trying to help me solve this case?" Wait. She's kidding, right? Hasn't she ever even seen an episode of Law & Order? Hold the phone. Wasn't Adam Schiff just a special guest on this very show last week? Playing Adam Schiff? With the number of crime shows popular culture has to offer, I think the only people who would buy into the "he's helping us so he's obviously a good guy" mentality are not only guilty parties in and of themselves, but also former residents of Colorado who routinely name their children Jon-Benet. And then kill them. Those are the only people. Anyway, Porno tries to explain that he went to talk to Mel mano a mano , and that when he approached, "He didn't recognize me. Suddenly, he lunged at me, and then one second later he's his old self again." Ball-Breaker turns this accusation of split personality around on Porno, telling him, "The problem is, right now, you appear to be the one with the split personality." Zing! Also split is the amount of facial hair that Porno once again has. Maybe he wasn't shaven before. It was very dark. Maybe he really is evil. Look, after all, at the facial hair.
Hey, world! Rejoice! The Lizbot is now Mac compatible! She appears to have plugged herself into the central frame of the UFO Center's computers, as she looks at a close-up of the blue, pulsing cells, thinking incorrectly that it will be of interest to us when she lets us know that the cells appear to be alien versions of "Y'know, waterborne parasites found in the blood cells of certain species of fish." No, Liz. I didn't know that. The parasite wasn't interested in Max and didn't attack Porno at all, so Max and Liz surmise for the sake of we're-running-out-of-time that "there's something unique about [Laurie In A Box's] gravesite." Liz has a plan, picking up the phone and dialing. "Isabel? Hey, it's Liz. We need you to do somethink." Max's brow furrows, all "but I am the king?"
And here is said somethink. Cut to Mel approaching Isabel at the counter of the Crashdown. Mel hopes that the purpose of this meeting isn't "the lawsuit," and Isabel promises that her only reason for wanting to get together is to apologize for how "things just got so complicated," and how she wants to go back to the beginning, as if they'd just met. She puts out a hand. He screams "Fire! Bad!" and runs away from the advancing townspeople and their flaming torches. Actually, they chat. She asks what he does for a living. He's a geologist. "What are you working on, right now?" He tells her he's working on a project in Frazier Woods. She wants to hear more about it. The opportunity for a guy to actually drone on about his job on a date is such a turn-on to him that it makes him forget that this is the most transparent ruse ever. He's the gunman, okay? We saw who he was shooting at when Laurie In A Box was actually still in a box. He was shooting at Isabel. Why's he going to spill everything? He's not. Gah.
The Jetta pulls up in front of a gigantic estate, which…oh, cool, Laurie's grandpa is the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air! Seriously. It's the same house, shot from a slightly more sophisticated angle. Actually, it's probably Tess's house, speaking of underused sets. Anyway, it's big. Michael takes Laurie's hand, and they walk to a gate. A gargoyle with a camera in its mouth perched on high turns to face them, and a disembodied voice comes over an intercom, asking, "Can I help you?" Michael introduces them all, announcing Laurie In A Box as "Mr. DuPree's grandaughter, Laurie [In A Box]." A wrought-iron gate slides open, and a maid opens the front door and flinches big. Michael offers a "hi" as they step in past her. If people couldn't see what they looked like from the driveway, what the hell would the need be for the camera in the gargoyle's mouth? Hmmm? A man in riding stirrups and a green sweater heads for "genteel" and "WASPy" but hits the mark for "effeminate" and "Harvey Fierstein imitating Judy Garland at the Friar's Club roast for Nathan Lane" when he runs down the hall calling, "Laurie? Is it really you, Laurie?" When I heard the voice before I saw his face, I yelled back something about it being "really you, Carol Channing?" The Effeminizer Bunny lays eyes on Michael and freezes, interrupted only by the appearance of Susan from Seinfeld, sporting extremely short hair and descending a gigantic spiral staircase. Laurie tells them, "I want to see my grandfather right now." He's dead, Laurie. He's been dead for seven years. "You were at his funeral, for God sakes." Which is why, when she saw Michael last week, she repeatedly screamed, "You're dead! You're dead!" I'll refrain from going with the hackneyed joke about grandpa being taken down by the cheap wedding-envelope glue, because even though the CGI has continually indicated otherwise, it isn't really still 1996.
"No. I'm the conciurge." Do you think that aspiring actor cries a lot? Y'know, at night?
WASPy is as WASPy continues to do over at the WASP's Nest, where Susan from Seinfeld and Harvey The Gay WonderWASP (that nickname, with a liberal debt to Wing Chun, will have to be shortened considerably in the unlikely event we should ever, ever see this person again) prepare martinis (because they're WASPy, people) and discuss how "spooky" all this is. Susan then thinks on it and proclaims the turn of events "typical," seeing how Grandpa 1935 "always did have that wandering eye. Looks like he just wandered off the old martial reservation and left us all a little surprise." About three olives and the relentless mockery of an already maligned people (haven't these wealthy white people suffered enough?) later, Susan from Seinfeld and Harvey The Gay WonderWASP become very disingenuous when they turn around and smile big, Susan glowing, "I love surprises!" The maid (Rosario? I don't know) is called in to turn Laurie In A Box into Laurie In The Bath, but Laurie shakes her head almost imperceptibly until Michael assures her, "It's okay. I'm not going anywhere." Once it's just the Martinis and Michael and Maria, Harvey subverts his people's norm and asks, quite straightforwardly, just exactly what it is Michael wants. He begins, "Well, your daughter…" before being violently corrected by Susan, who attests twice, "She's our niece, Mr. Guerin." Turns out the two had never even heard about Laurie's bout with institutional living, Susan (who is, by the way, fabulously vampy in this role) guessing, "Did the aliens chase her there, too? Y'know, aliens are chasing our family, Mr. Guerin. Don't stay too long, they might get you, too." Ha ha ha! Just in case you didn't already get it. Silly, silly WASPs.
UFO Center. Isabel, Liz, and Max walk through the empty exhibits toward the empty office, Isabel recapping her Crashdown meeting with Mel and telling the others that, concerning his work in Frazier Woods, "The common thread through each one is the water table." The water in Frazier Woods is less than three feet below the surface of the ground, so Liz posits that if the parasites are waterborne, they might be found in the water table. Max asks, "But how would alien parasites get in the water table in the first place?" That line really takes me back to Season One-level quantities of Boring Plot Development. Bring back the WASPs, I'm sayin'. Inside the office, Liz shows the other two a map of the water tables in Frazier Woods on the Mac, and expresses some surprise that a stream runs right through Pohlman Ranch, which, you'll remember (because someone has to, and I sure as hell didn't), was the original site of the '47 crash. The parasites might have been on their ship. What's going on? Liz takes it away: "Somebody kidnaps a girl so a bunch of alien parasites can do what to her we don't know. And then how does he know about these parasites? Is he human or is he alien? Are these things dangerous to normal people in Roswell?" Liz? You're so hired. Isabel wants to know how to continue, but Max is out of ideas. Just then, Simon from Go (well, welcome back, you fair-haired freak, you!) enters and bids everyone a hello. Max apologizes that they were all using his private computers inside of an empty building with confidential information that makes Simon look like he's completely crazy. But he doesn't mind at all. Just like he didn't in "Meet The Dupes," when he freaked out and told everyone to get out. That must have been some breakfast Maria bought him. Simon takes off, and Isabel remembers that an alien at the summit "reached out and possessed Brody's body." She proposes trying to reverse that flow and send a message back. Wow. The ideas are really clicking now.
Den Of Porno. The defeated man of the house sits in a corner holding his unsanded baseball bat when Ball-Breaker busts in the unlocked back door with her latest report: "That rifle was reported stolen by a hunter in Newcastle, Wyoming, in July." Turns out, all of the numerous raw materials that contributed in their own way to the celebration of Laurie's own personal Boxing Day were all acquired by illegal means whenever Mel Glibson was found to be in the vicinity. Porno could have told her that: "Chalk up another one for the woodworking detective." Oh, hello, Roswell spin-off idea number six hundred billion. Ball-Breaker can see that Porno knows more about this case than anyone, and proposes a bit of a compromise: "I need to settle this case and you want to be Sheriff again. You help me close one case and I will make it my business to get you your job back." Porno: "I guess the bats can wait." And that would so be the spin-off's tagline. And it will be called Wood It Please The Court, and the swinging gavel of justice that lands on the judge's desk with a resounding thwack in the final shot of the opening credits would be sanded by Porno himself. Sigh. Sorry. See? Told you I took Home Ec.
Back in the WASP's Nest, Michael and Maria stand outside by a pool when Harvey The Gay WonderWASP walks onto the patio, flanked by two henchmen (hey, maybe they know where Carmen Sandiego is) in black. Harvey thinks it's just darling when he makes them all wear black. Maria stares: "This can't be good." Harvey puts a brown paper bag in Michael's hands and informs him of the contents: "Fifty thousand dollars. And that's all you're gonna get. You may look like our father, but we'll fight any further paternity and inheritance claims every step of the way." Maria and Michael are escorted off of the property. Hey, Billy Joe? Bobby Sue? Take. The. Money. And. Run. week's her last episode, anyway. Sigh.
Back at the UFO Center, Simon tells Isabel, "I've been put under hypnosis before. It's never helped me remember anything about my experiences." Isabel assures him that she's "a little psychic," and even Max smiles (Shudder. The children! Why won't anyone think of the children!). Simon consents, and Isabel takes his hand and gives him the old "close your eyes and clear your mind" routine. He warms them, "The last time I was put through this, I was a very difficult subject." She puts her other hand over his, and an extra slo-mo shot allows us to see the fake mechanisms -- the damn individual Sandy-Duncan-is-flying strings -- of Isabel and Simon flying backwards and hitting the opposite walls of Simon's office. Max runs over to make sure Isabel is okay, but abandons her soon after when he hears Brody's monotone "I. Am. An. Alien" voice, informing the rest of the crowd that they shouldn't have done that, seeing as Simon's "body has not been prepared for communication." Max asks "Larak" about the parasite, and he waxes technical for a moment ("You mean the Gandarium from your ship have escaped into the ecosystem?") before going all high-drama queen, telling them, "Earth has become infected. You're no longer safe there. Get off the planet now." Bye. Simon then goes down hard after his bout with the crazies, so detached were his words from a coherent understanding of what it is he was actually saying that I half-expect him to rise up, take a cursory, glassy-eyed glance around the room, tear open an envelope, and announce, "Gladiator!" That, it turns out, doesn't happen so much. Simon comes to, grabbing his chest, and looks at Max and asks just what the hell happened, exactly. They help him up and ask if he's okay, and a shot from outside the room focuses on a plastic alien display as the words "to be continued…" fade up in Alien Bold MT. Oh. It will?