Props to Wing and Glark and my perpetual traveling companion, "Baby, You Can Drive My" Sars. And I'm recapping this week's episode on Niki's computer. Thanks, Niki. ["Anytime, man." -- niki] Wing's across the room. Hi, Wing.
Under the cover of Roswell darkness, Earth's newest graduate from "The Michael Guerin School Of Covert Skulking: Facile Plot Development Division" jimmies open the front door of an as-yet-unknown house. Said intruder shines a flashlight on a mess of books strewn around a table, remembers that reading is for suckers, and takes an angry swipe that sends the books floorward. Guerin's Clumsy Ingénue makes for the fridge, on the front of which is a poster advertising a concert which will feature the musical stylings of both Pearl Jam and Metallica. And though the casual viewer of this show is as yet not supposed to have figured out just exactly where we are in these lightless opening moments, if forced to take the planet's current musical climate into consideration, I would guess we're probably inside the house of someone who cares most for the musical stylings of Pearl Jam and / or Metallica. That being -- and this is just the context cues talking -- the house of one of the members of either Pearl Jam or Metallica. I sincerely hope Said Intruder hasn't come for the Napster downloads. He would have gone ahead and skulked all this way, and for what? Crackers and other top-of-the-fridge food items are also deemed as belonging squarely in the For Suckers category (Damn you, foul Cheese Nips. Daaaaamn yoooooou!), as The Least Mysterious Intruder Since Jon-Benet's Dad (it's Grant, okay? Is there anyone who doesn't know that by now, you think? It's GRANT, people) takes a swipe at them and tears open the fridge. Inside the fridge, It's Definitely Grant stares down four boxes of product-placed Carvel cakes ("Dear Sean Fanning, Thanks For Everything, Lars Ulrich"), decides that, temper tantrum be damned, no man taunts Cookie Puss, and shuts the door without further use of his now-patented, highly dramatic Arm Swipe Of The Angrily Cluttering Burglar.
Maybe Not Grant But It's So Grant then makes his way over to another table, on which lies the ill-concealed spoils of skulking he seemingly came for: the black-and-white cover of the 1935 edition of Appalachia Wear Daily, featuring Grandpa 1935 with his hayseed and his overalls and his brother-can-you-spare-a-dime glare, a photo of the WASPs Nest Of Bel-Air in Tucson, and some newspaper clippings in which the expression "Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals" probably appears with far more regularity than anyone has interest in seeing at this point. Napster joke recall. I don't know. Maybe Not Grant's black-gloved hand makes its way to a color photograph of Laurie "In A Box" DuPree, taken during that heady time when you didn't get your ass kicked into an open locker for buying your knitwear at Aeropostale, and the latest in trendy hair fashions was spelled T-O-P-S-Y T-A-I-L and available only in this special TV offer, not available in stores. Too bad Laurie wasn't one of the first twenty-five callers to order this revolutionary hair styling product and also receive her free Bedazzler, though. That pink Aeropostale sweater could really stand a couple of well-placed rhinestones. Grant Sorenson, Skulker Emeritus of the Covert Skulking Academy and current "Figure 1-1" textbook exemplar for Best Supporting Skulker In A Late-Night Skulking Sequence, thinks so as well. I'm sure.
A stock footage shot of a three-quarter moon illustrates quite clearly that it is night, apparently in a bid to stem the high number of worried viewers staring into the otherwise dark sky, stumbling off their couches, and flailing about their homes screaming, "It's all dark! My eyes! I'm blind! I'm blind! I'm…oh, the moon. It must just be night. Thanks!" On the outskirts of the grounds of The WASPs Nest Of Bel-Air, Michael "Vidal Spitoon" Guerin stares through binoculars as his usual partner, Maria "My Name Is" DeLuca "I Live On The Second Floor," maintains her static look of disinterest in any topic that doesn't somehow include repeated use of the words "our relationship" and "my Jetta." Michael espies Susan from Seinfeld and her gender-challenged brother, Harvey The Gay WonderWASP, inside a lighted window, and turns to chastise Maria for dialing a cell phone. She responds that it's "official business," and awaits an answer from the other end before launching in, "Liz, how do you get tree sap out of fabric? I think I ruined my top." I guess I missed the episode where Lizbot's "more input, Stephanie" included a perusal through the finer points of Hints from Heloise, but she reads the damn things so fast it's just hard to keep up with what she's flying through this time, I guess. Or maybe it's just one sap to another. As always, it's difficult to say for sure. Maria blathers about which sweater was ruined and oh-what-a-pity-that-thing-called-life, and after a stern, manly warning of "You're wasting the battery," Michael tears the phone from her hand and disconnects the call. Girls and their phones. Tee. Hee. The lights go off in the house, and Michael grabs Maria's arm and insists, "Let's go." Ah, the true Master Skulker, finally ready for work. He and Maria skulk (masterfully, of course) down toward the pool, laying eyes on a security guard kind of fellow also skulking (someone cue the sun, stat, or all this defensive, furtive slouching is going to give this whole damn cast scoliosis already) in the bushes. Maria asks Michael, "You got any cool powers to take care of him?" Michael obliges by grabbing a rock and hurling it off in another direction to capture the security guard's attention while they make off past him. Whatever. It's a skulk thing. You wouldn't understand.
Every self-respecting town needs a sinister dark alley, and, well, seeing as it's already nighttime and all. Cut to a compromised one-lane road so darn versatile it was once referred to as "Lexington Avenue," which the set designers have thoughtfully adorned with two neon signs on opposite sides of the street reading, respectively, "Pawn Shop" and "Bail Bonds, 24 Hours." Oh, this is so gritty and Mean Streets that I don't even need to wonder after the location of the scantily-clad woman of the night wearing a multimedia t-shirt adorned with blinking neon letters reading, "I am a crack whore who loves crack. I am a crack whore who loves crack. I am a crack whore who…" to wonder how deeply in The Bad Part Of Town we've landed. Because we've landed, people, and we've landed hard. Let the skulking commence in earnest, then. A beat-up SUV that looks like it might just belong to a skulking archaeologist who may or may not (or may) be on his way back from a skulkfinding mission at The House Government Subsidy Built pulls down said alley, followed by an unmarked car with a blaring siren on the roof, pulling the SUV over. Agent Ball-breaker and Porno step out of the car and demand that the shadowy Still Not Quite Grant Sorenson do the same. Finally, Grant "Mel Glibson" Sorenson emerges, asking the two, "What the hell is this about?" Hey. No more h-e-double-hockey-sticks on the WB, okay? You kiss your mother with that mouth? Do you, skulky? Eh? Porno holds up a piece of paper and celebrates, "I've brought you something you've wanted for a long time." Porno finds time in this insanely busy script to pause extravagantly, while Grant's eyes light up in that hey-is-that-the-newest-volume-of-the-So-You-Wanna-Be-A-Skulker-pamphlet-I-see-before-me kind of way (y'know, that kind of way) before Delta flies a commercial airliner through the hugeness of this pointless break in the action before responding, "A search warrant." Grant looks disappointed. That's not what he wanted at all. And Skulking for Dummies remains on someone's Amazon Wish List for yet another day, it sadly seems.
Ball-breaker steps in then, asking after car rental receipts that Mel Glibson signed for in a variety of cities over the past year. He gets all snarky and divisive, and when Porno pans for corroborating evidence inside of Mel's car and thinks he's found it when he pulls out a pair of gloves, Mel regards Ball-breaker directly and makes with the pathos: "Agent Duff [Who? Oh, yeah], I have no idea what this man has told you or what he has against me, but he's been persecuting me practically since the day I set foot in Roswell. And now he's planting things in my truck." What he has against you is the sunken eyes and the caveman forehead and the perpetual, like, nine o'clock shadow and the Roman-Polanski-esque dating strategies and the blinking neon arrow that looms just off your left shoulder blinking, "Bad guy. Bad guy. Bad guy." Just like the crack whore's neon sign. But with different blinking words. But the good guy side has got an ace, and with the admittedly "clearing the shelf" nature of this episode the producers seem so proud of, the good guy side is not afraid to use it. Ball-breaker notes some deep, yucky red scratches on Mel's neck and inquires, "How did you get those scratches on your neck?" Mel puts a hand up to them and stage directs a vague look of surprise. "I have no idea."
Get that Moon Continuity Expert back from his other job on the set of The Night Sky. Because, well, the moon is inexplicably full now. The tides, the seasons, and my menstrual cycle all have questions this scene now seems patently unable to answer. Michael and Maria stride purposefully down a hallway deep inside the WASP's Nest, opening up the correct door (go figure) to find Laurie In A Box inside, lying on a stripped bed (which is total shorthand for egregious parental negligence) and surrounded by two blazing candelabras (which is total shorthand for egregious negligence of the existence of the last two centuries). They lean over her and ask if she's okay, Michael assuring, "We're gonna help you." Well, you're certainly doing a wonderful job so far. Laurie, crazy, lies curled in the fetal position (which is total shorthand for…well, you know) and almost-whispers, "My aunt and uncle need me to be crazy." Well then, their Christmas wish came true early and often this year, didn't it, Freakzilla? But just as Michael furrows the brow and purses the lips and many other patented Brendan Fehr acting techniques of the thwarting-Hair-and-Makeup's-every-best-intention variety, the threesome is interrupted by the arrival of Harvey The Gay WonderWASP and Susan from Seinfeld, Harvey bellowing from inside the birdcage, "Mr. Guerin, you and your accomplice with the lips are trespassing." Heh. "With the lips." Cat-tay, snooty gay man! Susan from Seinfeld (not to be confused with the equally unimaginative nickname for Simon from Go, of course) adds, "That money we gave you was intended as a going away present. As in take the money and go away." She then commissions one of her many goon-like assistants to escort Michael and Maria off the property, closing the door behind her as she slams out and leaving Laurie In A Box writhing on the bed like everyone else is acting in a show called Roswell and she's all trapped in the rejected shooting script for The Yellow Wallpaper. Because she's crazy. And because she's a girl. And because boxes can be metaphorical too, people.
Opening credits: Oh, I'm sorry. I though Doomed Generic Blonde appeared in every episode of this series so far. Why not give her a slot in the credits, then? All twelve of her.
It's the middle of the afternoon at the Crashdown. Perhaps someone on the set might think that this time of day would be adequately indicated by, say, four moons in the sky? All full? Max, Liz, Isabel, and Tess sit around a table in the completely empty restaurant, Isabel for some reason sporting a brown bandana on her head that makes her look like she's on her way from this set straight back to town to ask Tevye permission to marry outside of her religion before she's forced out of the village and far from the home she loves. Tell Hodel and Tzeitel I love them. Meanwhile, Tess's hair, speaking of which, is looking a little flat and bangs-y itself, which is really the meanest thing I can think of to say about her just at the moment or ever. Max and Liz continue sucking with the same impressive consistency we've come to expect. For those of you who hate surprises or genuine displays of non-robotic character interaction. Anyway. The four of them make like the Swiss Family Backstory, Max kicking things off with the reminder, "His final words were to get off the planet." Word to whoever's idea that was. If Max and Liz decide to pilot, I'll build the damn space shuttle myself. I'll even paint the name on the side with my own brush. "Challenger." Then I'll make really tired jokes about them vacationing "all over Florida." Because it's 1986. Tess asks, "When Larek said that Earth was infected, what exactly are we talking here? A couple of acres? A couple of miles?" A couple of hectares? A number of furlongs and just a few parsecs as well? Don't worry, Tess. They'll volunteer the information eventually; no need to resort to measuring the length of contaminated Earth on the bushel-and-a-peck-and-a-hug-around-the-neck scale, okay? Anyway, Liz clarifies that neither nautical mile nor light year adequately describes the amount of infected Earth resulting from this week's we're-ruined-we're-all-ruined scourge of evil, responding, "I think he was speaking a little more globally." And, speak of the doppelganger, Simon from Go (or...is it?) slides in and informs the crew that he has once again taken on the Wondertwins Power of Larek The Overenunciator, letting them know, "Although I've had a little more time preparing this body for communication, I'm still having trouble keeping its heart beating, so I'll get right to it." And so he does: "The Gandarium are a genetically engineered life form, designed to bridge the DNA and RNA resequencing during third-stage amino acid synthesis." Pause. Pause. Earth girls are dumb.
Even Liz's ever-vague characterization as Lab Partner To The Stars is stumped by this description, and they ask Larek to dumb it down for the WB crowd. Frink gives it a try: "Let's say you want to create an alien / human hybrid. First you get some alien cells, then you get some human cells. Normally they don't mix very well. You need something to help bridge the differences. That's where the Gandarium come in." In a controlled environment, Larek filibusters onward towards sundown (and the sliver of a continuity-challenged new moon that will doubtlessly appear in the cloudless night sky), the Gandarium are harmless. But as soon as the dangling sci-fi elements of a plot line in peril need to be wrapped up in time for the end of sweeps (er, I mean "as soon as the Gandarium mix with the Earth's fragile ecosystem"), the Gandarium will infect human cells. But not every human is a candidate for this "hybridization" (Boo hoo, Larek The Enunciator, you had me then you lost me), and he continues on that a rare number of humans possess a mutated cell that allows the Gandarium to infect one person, who will in turn infect the rest of the planet with a "universal virus," who will in turn infect another person, who will in turn infect another person (and then they tell two friends, and then they tell two friends, and the they tell two friends...) until the human race is killed en masse, nations fall, the core of the Earth melts, the sun goes so very very cold, Menudo reunites with a new look including only band members exceeding forty years of age who play all their own instruments, the Crocodile Dundee franchise reclaims its mid-80s foothold on box office returns, Chicago plays Boston in every World Series, and all your bases are belong to us. The future: not so bright. Shades optional, though not required. Liz finally gets to know something, filling in, "That's why they're going after Laurie. She must have the defect." It dawns on Tess that "the Gandarium didn't finish infecting Laurie" (well, she says "Lah-rie," but it's Tess, so all is forgiven), and Liz knows things about science, "That's why they're still comink after her. To complete the process." Should I even bother to mention the dangling "k" anymore? "Comink." Shut up, Liz. But Larek then realizes that he has to go and exposition awkwardly on any number of other shows, leaving the rest of this episode's resolution to the far chancier tactic of something called "elegant plot development" (I've read something about it mythology textbooks, but that's all I know...don't goooooo!). But before he takes off, Larek The Overenunciator thinks to tell them, "The Gandarium are hive-like. With workers, drones, even a queen. The queen is the only one who can infect a host. Find her, kill her, and the whole hive will die." Larek somberly wishes them luck and takes off. King Max leaps into action after Larek's departure, suggesting that everyone "collect all the digging equipment [they] can" and meet in an hour for another trip to Frazier Woods. That's right, king. Why call a shovel a shovel when you can call it "digging equipment." Max? Shut your "lip-containing facial orifice" and remain off-camera until you're good and ready to remove your "clothes-oriented torso concealer" and give us a reason to like you again. In the meantime, Max is also going to "call Kyle and Alex for more help." Sigh. What's the country and city code for Obsolescence, Sweden?
Ah, the skulkmaster at work. Michael and Maria stand at a desk inside of an official-looking building (The Federal Department Of Skulk, 'haps?), Michael claiming, "This is a stupid idea," because whatever idea he deems as stupid is being deemed as such for said idea's simple though terrible crime of not being his idea. Maria responds that she has a hunch concerning what Laurie In A Box meant in her assertion that her aunt and uncle needed her to be crazy, and a clerk whose idea of "public domain" and "downright, thieving bribery" are assumedly interchangeable, hands off a manila folder to Maria, who opens it up and demands, "Just start applauding, right now." Michael offers the Sarcastic Clapping Family version of congratulations ("Nice sleuthing, Maria."), and she tells him what she's so damn self-satisfied about: "The DuPree Estate is in Laurie's name." That's Laurie In A Box, for those of you playing at home. "Left to her by her grandfather." Grandpa 1935. For those of you playing at...well, you know. He asks what this knowledge offers them insofar as having any damned relevance on this world or any other (I'm paraphrasing here), and Maria smirks, "A little something called leverage." A multi-axle truck filled with razor blades, hot wax, and a Price Club's quantity of bulk-packaged Nair fails to plunge out of the sky and land on Michael's head at this moment, shearing him clean of the foul locks, and the scene is thus deemed a failure of the highest order. Apropos of nothing besides the fact that I had no joke about the word "leverage."
Back at the WASP's Nest Of Bel-Air, Maria stands behind the gate and rings a really pedestrian-sounding buzzer (I'm quite partial to that eight-note "bum-bum-bum-bum [beat] bum-bum-bum-bum" chiming doorbell that seems to inspire the richie-come-running Pavlovian approach in its highfalutin owners. And that's also the doorbell Wing and Glark have, so, oh la la). A voice bids them hello, and Maria introduces them as "the team of Guerin and DeLuca again." The voice grows hostile just then (so is that surveillance camera, like, a planter or a bird's nest or just for show or what?), warning them, "Wait right where you are. The police should be by to scoop you up in approximately ten minutes." Yeah, well, trick or treat to you too, asshole. And ten minutes? And "scoop"? Prosecution moves to strike that last line of dialogue in its painful entirety. But Maria isn't taking any Blind Man's Guff today, and she turns to the topic to ask if Harvey and Susan are around, and if they are, "Could you just have them come outside so they could take a look at this?" She holds up the deed or whatever. The Declining Career Opportunities Of Vincent Price pauses a second and responds, "Just a minute." Because that camera -- which five seconds ago couldn't even detect the presence of two human-sized humans standing at the gate -- is now able to make out a piece of paper claiming that Laurie DuPree owns their entitled asses. Curious surveillance camera, indeed. Michael notes, "If it was me [sic], I'd tell us to get screwed and call the cops anyways [sic]." Oh, noble indigent beast with your product-placed designer wear and your fully furnished (well, not at the moment) multi-room house and backbreaking part-time job. Maria feeds the finance martyr's fire: "That's because you don't have any money, Michael. People who do tend to get a little nervous when it's threatened." The gate slides open. Maria holds out her arms and gives some self-satisfied spirit fingers. "Leverage"-oriented humor remains dormant for yet another recapped scene.
Peripheral Characters With Sadly Squandered Talent Convention, going on right now in Frazier Woods! I guess Alex got lost on his way back from the airport. He shouldn't be at that convention at all. Alex "Wilson's Prototype" Whitman and Kyle "Waste Not, Want…Always" Valenti stand waist-deep in a hole in the middle of dang near nowhere, using Max-sanctioned "digging equipment" to, well, dig. Kyle kicks things off, asking, "So is this the sixth or seventh hole we've dug today?" He says this to put way too fine a point on the fact that they've been digging. Digging a lot of holes, that is. He continues on, bonding, "I always kind of wondered what the hell you people were doing sophomore year." Alex tries to make the whole of last season far more intriguing and MacGyver-esque than it, in fact, really ever was (unless you mean the part about how Colin Hanks's future career prospects stack up against those of Richard Dean Anderson), and Kyle asks what the humans really have to gain in all this. He's part of a club he never much wanted to join, one that "bears a striking resemblance to a chain gang." Well, there's one Pretenders song I'll have stuck in my head for the rest of my life. Whatever. Not like it hasn't been there since I was twelve anyway. Dig. Dig. Dig. But then! Alex's digging equipment hits a soft spot in the ground, underneath which is a large, dark expanse filled with blue, at-play-in-the-fields-of-Gandarium-crystals light. Kyle looks deep into it and observes, "It seems to be some sort of a cave." And, as always, you've gotta give the guy credit for recognizing the inherently Ed Wood quality of the line and taking a little something off the top. Recognizing the manifold benefits of such brilliant self-satire but patently unable to work that angle on his own crappy dialogue (they say the very same deficiency also destroyed the career of one Richard Dean Anderson, I might stop and mention here), Alex throws his arms up and reacts with a jubilant, "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!"
And so, for reasons that continue to elude me, they climb right on down into the hole. They gawk at the land of Krypton and the blue within, Kyle wondering, "What do you suppose alien crystals are going for on eBay?" Ooooh. Thud. Sorry, Kyle. We love you 'round these parts and all, but you can do better than to try and mine even the smallest amount of comedy gold from that genre known as the, er, information superhighway. As it was called when that joke was funny. For nine seconds. In 1997. But in all fairness, they say that if the technology keeps developing at such a pace, one day we'll be able to play video games on our television sets! And then the Internet will make us all really, really rich. So that's, y'know, something to look forward to. But just as Alex suggests they climb back out and report their findings to the others, the dirt above them predictably fills in, the some-kind-of-cave goes dark, and they're trapped underground. With nowhere to turn, no way out, and not a bargaining chip left to leverage.
Max, Isabel, Liz, and Tess step lively through the Nonchanted Forest, their digging equipment in tow and all four of them wearing some strain of headgear that would put Joan Cusack's character in Sixteen Candles to shame if these characters weren't so handily taking care of the shaming thing all by themselves. Seriously, Tess is one "Too Cool For This Planet" button away from getting her ass kicked at a Marley tribute concert. Lose the Rasta Gear. It may save your life. But that's not my problem. Max notices that Kyle and Alex have gone missing, and the four of them note an aboveground growth of the crystals just as Liz's cell phone rings. From a call being made. Underground. My cell phone pretty much ceases performing when I'm within fifty feet of a kid with braces. I find it a little on the specious side that it would work when surrounded by a non-Earthly substance come to destroy the human race and take precious cellular technology right along with it for the ride. My anti-Verizon picketing rant notwithstanding, Kyle screams at Liz that he (oh, no!) and Alex (kind of yay) are trapped right below where the other four are looking at the crystals. Liz asks those who are not pointless if they would be able to step in and make an openink of some kind. An openink. The Currently Present Alien Three lean down and try and work their palm magic (hee. But not like that) on the crystals, but are unable to do a damn thing about them. Liz questions their molecular manipulation abilities, and Tess snipes in frustration, "You're welcome to try." Heh. Kyle asks after the non-expansion of the hole, and Liz vamps that they're "takink a break." Click. Or, "beep." Max commissions another hole and Isabel sets off to track down some further advances in digging equipment from the UFO Center. The hats run aimlessly.
And back we go to the WASPs Nest Of Bel-Air, where Susan from Seinfeld sits by the pool and pours a tall glass of red wine that clashes ever so terribly with her pink, Trekkie pantsuit. Put down the collar, dear. You're not a Trans Am. You've no need for a rear spoiler. She tries to make nice with Maria, ever so demurely warning her, "We could have you and the beatnik removed from here any time we want." The, um, who with the what, now? Note to Susan from Seinfeld: a rigorous adherence to styling your hair with mayonnaise does not constitute a central tenet of the beatnik ideology, I'm afraid. You can cram your Discman full of sitar music and carry your pocket-sized book of Ginsberg poems right there in your drawstring meditation pants held together by a belt made entirely of hemp, but if you show up for a meeting with the Maharishi with the haircut that boy is sporting right now, they won't even let your ass off the plane at Delhi International Airport. Got it, Mulleteen Rabbit? Get. A. Haircut. Just calling it greasy is an insult to grease. Plotward, Maria volleys back, asking why they haven't tossed her ass onto the street, then pulls out a mysterious ledger (Conveniently Appearing Incriminating Information Count: six billion) and supposes, "Maybe it's, I don't know, because of the one million dollars you donated to the Pinecrest Psychiatric Institute to get them to say that Laurie was crazy?" Awkward pause. Susan asks where Maria tracked down this helpful information, and Maria responds, "Laurie told me that I could go anywhere in the house that I pleased. So I looked through your desk." Maria smiles. Susan smirks back. And she's WASPy. And we get it.
Michael is being a lying sack of crap upstairs under the soft glow of afternoon sunlight (two half moons and a constellation shaped like a question mark) and the dulcet tones of matchbox thirty kicking on the soundtrack. He's telling Laurie In A Box, "So I realized I had to find some kind of leverage." He fails to leave the recapping to the professionals, replacing Maria's name with his own while spouting off her manifold accolades, right on down to the quote about people who have money feeling nervous when it's threatened. Now that's just mean, man. Michael gestures toward his eyebrow (something flopping annoyingly down onto your brow you'd like to consider taking care of? Please? PLEASE?), and Laurie In A Box notes, "Grandpa used to scratch his eyebrow just like you did." Whatever. Maybe his 1935 mullet was a hit with the flappers down at the speakeasy after the ribald burlesque show before a late-night trip to the talkies at the nickelodeon, but things have changed, old-timer. Michael asks what Grandpa 1935 was like, and Laurie In A Box says the same nice generic ol' shit everyone feels inclined to say about dead people, responding, "A lot like you. Hard to read, lived in his own head. But kind." Anti-social bastard, then. And, for good measure, Laurie In A Box calls her own sanity into question once more, asking Michael, "Would you like to meet him?" Uh-oh. Still crazy after all these…
…Psych! She's fine. We were led to think that she forgot he was dead once more, but ha ha on us. Down in some stark, barracks-ish basement with a bunch of beds with their own stripped mattresses, Laurie In A Box guides Michael to a bunch of old crates and books. She pulls out an article of clothing from one box, holds it under Michael's nose, and asserts, "You can still smell him." Oh, gross. Maybe I accidentally fast-forwarded through a few lost moments of screen time, but I sure don't remember Michael requesting a spirited game of "Smell My Grampa." Do y'all? Ew, Laurie In A Box. Try asking before you do some whacked out shit like that. Damn. Michael, however, is suddenly preoccupied by one of Grandpa's notebooks, which, between scribblings, includes pages of pencil illustrations of Judy The Time Life Operator aliens. Michael notes that Grandpa 1935 "had an interest in aliens." Raise your hand if you're perceptive. Down, Mr. Guerin. Down. Laurie In A Box explains, "Grandpa said they took him. He wouldn't talk about it. He would just come down to the bomb shelter and read for hours." Oh. Bomb shelter. How "Duck and Cover" of them. Anyway, as he grew older, he wanted to know what happened to him, so he started talking, and Harvey and Susan used this obvious foray into insanity to put him away. Michael notes some really fucked up blather written in spirals and all upside-down, and Michael again brilliantly surmises, "It drove him crazy." Laurie In A Box responds, "That's what I got from Grandpa. Well, that and some bad blood." Whoa. Looks like it's time for the Department Of Sensical Segues to take their own little mental vacation, no? Laurie explains to Michael that she has "a bad chromosome. It's called a recessive genetic defect." I'm sorry. Did she just tell him she's retarded? Michael does the mental arithmetic and puts two and, like, zero together, muttering, "That's why they want you." What? Nothing. Laurie pulls out something of her grandmother's. Banter about not fighting who you are inside. "You're grandpa's legacy. And I'm crazy." Word. Michael tells her that whatever she has experienced is real, and that Susan and Bobby have no right to take her life and her house away from her. Though he's no optimist, believing that "life sucks, people suck," he knows that she shouldn't be locked up just because it's convenient for someone else's plans. A bit of doe-eyed gazing ensues. Sincere acoustic guitar strums mindlessly away. The pungent mingling scents of mothballs and expired Depends Undergarments hang heavy in the air.
Speaking of crazy. Isabel skulks (duh) through the UFO Center, but is soon to be apprehended by the same ski-masked Grant Sorenson (er, I mean "man") we saw in the opening scene, who puts a rag over her mouth and she goes down. Chloroform? How Victorian. Why not just put the retiring woman in her drawing room and wait for her to die of consumption? Cut to the two of them in a car, Grant muttering absolute crap gibberish that I think would be best recapped with a verbatim transcript of Harland Williams freaking out under similar circumstances in There's Something About Mary. It's still funny. No, really: "Seven's the key number here. Think about it. Seven-Elevens. Seven doors. Seven, man, that's the number. Seven chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office." Why? "'Cause you're fuckin' fired!" Word.
Isabel wakes up. Mel undershoots the situation horribly, telling her, "I'm not doing so good [sic], Isabel." He tells her that the agent (whose name he refuses to say for the very same reason I won't. That being, he has absolutely no recollection of what it is.) has been asking him questions he can't answer. He needs help. He doesn't remember being shot in "To Serve And Protect," inspiring Isabel's completely overdramatic, "That was you." Except when it was fully that dancing guy on the Pringles Can. Except that it was ALWAYS GRANT. I mean, c'mon. The Pringles guy doesn't even have a body. He also doesn't know where the scratches on his neck came from. Grant. Not the Pringles Guy. Who has no neck. And here's another one: "Why am I driving to Tucson? I don't know." He breaks down and begs Isabel for help, before launching back into the crazy talk. Isabel tells him that she will help, but that he has to pull over. For the love of all things holy, Isabel, don't ask him what will happen if someone should invent Six Minute Abs. Instead, Isabel asks him how long his general craziness has been going on, and he conveniently tells her that he started to feel just a little bit ookie since his early days of digging at Pohlman Ranch. Because he is no kind of man, he sputters, "Why is this happening to me? I'm a good person." She tells him that she knows that. Which was the right thing to say, apparently, because, after the Pause Of Ages, he cops to trying to kill her. He gives her his cell phone and pulls over, ditching her on the side of the road. Because he's changing. Chaaaaaaanging! Okay, that transformation had about as much dramatic heft as Michael J. Fox insisting of the liquor store proprietor, "I said I want a keg" in Teen Wolf. They wanted us to be afraid, very afraid. But instead, I just wanted a keg.
Den Of Porno. Isabel puts in a call to Porno, screaming into Mel's cell, "Grant is definitely the kidnapper, but it's not his fault. The queen possessed him somehow." Porno sputters, all ignorant. Hee. I love it when Porno's in the dark. But then, with the endless array of shut, slatted shades in every room he ever seems to enter, is Porno really ever in the light? She continues on that "he's after Laurie [In A Box], and he'll be in Tucson in a few hours. You have to stop him." Porno sees fit to commit this information to print on a pad affixed to his wall. The hell? "Step 1: Track homicidal killer to Tucson. Step 2: Stop homicidal killer from getting homicidal on a girl in a box. Step 3: Leave paper trail of my daily interaction with trans-planetary beings from abroad. Step 4: Write very slowly. Let homicidal killer think he has a killer's chance. Which he doesn't. Not if I get all this down." And then, just below it, "Porno and Amy DeLuca 4Eva!" Anyway. Isabel, meanwhile, tells him to get a move-on, and that she'll hitch a ride and meet him at the house. Which both of them inherently know how to get to at this moment, for some reason. Porno warns her against taking rides in the rainy middle of the night with people she barely knows. She huffs, "Sheriff, I am the last person on Earth who has to worry about getting in a car with strangers." Because I think we all see just how well that worked out for her last time. Five minutes ago.
Okay, kill me. We're back underground in the Frazier Woods cave of blue. Kyle and Alex, damn near bored enough that they're about to go about propagating a new race of humans to live underground (now that right there is what I would call me a Sweeps Event, but to each their own, I guess), sit and sit and sit and sit. And then. They sing. The third most categorically annoying as hell song in the history of American songwriting, shortly after Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" and just about every note ever penned by Harry Chapin. It's "American Pie." Drive the Chevy to the levy. And go careening off the damn edge. With Alex in the trunk and me behind the wheel, cackling. During the singing, Kyle lights a match (an excellent tactic for conserving oxygen, if I'm not mistaken) and drops it into a bottle containing a bit of the Gandarium crystal. Where he would like to save time. In the bottle. If this scene could be even a little more annoying, somehow. Those two. Just like bosom buddies. Anyway, the Gandarium shoots like mad around the bottle and then disappears completely. Kyle phones it upstairs to tell Liz about his discovery, and she considers it news that heating the crystals and containing them deprives the crystals of oxygen and kills the crystals instantly. Tess surmises, "Now all we need to do is get this oxygen out of there." But King Max frets, "But then they die, too." A well-timed thunderclap inspires grave fear. Of horribly contrived thunderclaps.
Poolside at Club Med: Psychoneurotic Institute For The Very, Very Nervous. Michael and Maria sport some matching, monogrammed bathrobes and lie watching Laurie frolic about in the pool. Awwww. Michael asks, "What do you think I should call her? Granddaughter? DNA clone?" Ew. She's so, like, colonized. And they're only hanging out with her because she's the rich girl with the pool. Maria admits to Michael that "the whole granddaughter thing really creeps me out," and Michael agrees to "sister." He muses on that for a moment. "I have a sister. That's so weird." Looks like someone will be needing a shampoo and cut for the ol' family reunion. No, really. Please? Maria pulls him out of his revelry and catches him up on some other stuff you would just think he'd heard by now, telling him that Harvey and Susan are "evil. They're E. Vil. They paid Pinecrest to keep Laurie [In A Box] out of their hair. Can you believe they would ruin her life so they could live here like rich bastards?" Michael deems that whole situation "shallow," before Rosario The Maid comes over and they inform her of their plans for dinner and a movie. Juxtaposition Hilarity Alert! Michael wants to watch Braveheart. Shout-out to Mel Glibson? Duh. Yes. Rosario also hands Michael a phone. Max is on the other end, because aliens don't need to call 411. Recaps from each on that which you have read above.
Agent Ball-breaker sits in Porno's Office Of Slatted Lewdness. Porno bursts in and leans in too closely, insisting, "We need a plane. Sorenson is halfway to Tucson, we gotta get there before he does." She asks how he knows and he gets all smokescreen-y, insisting that he doesn't have time for all these questions. The fourteen-stanza love sonnet he composed in Amy DeLuca's name on the "Garfield: I Hate Mondays!" notepad hanging on his kitchen wall so begs to differ. Ball-breaker offers to call for back-up, but Porno refuses that too, insisting, "Before this is over, you may see some things that you won't be able to explain. As a matter of fact, you won't want to. You told me once you appreciated honesty. Well, here it is. If you tell the Bureau what we're about to do, you'll kill your career." Who she should be telling is a friend, neighbor, or trusted member of the clergy, because this is a wood-paneled room away from the back of the bicycle shop and ew, okay? Ew. He tells her to follow his lead. Pause. "Now get us a plane."
Dinnertime at the WASPs Nest Of Bel-Air. Michael, Maria, and Laurie [In A…oh, fuck it] sit around a grand table under a ridiculously ornate chandelier (the set designers have been doing well so far, but that's a little over-the-top for the WASPs, I think) eating. Maria cracks up the crowd of me, polling the crowd, "This food is delightful. Michael, isn't this food delightful?" Michael confirms that the food is, in fact, "delightful." Laurie In A Weird Grandpa Complex says something about feeling comfortable at that dinner table "for the first time since [her] grandfather died." Michael complains about the "puny" nature of the chicken, and Harvey and Susan enter just then to tut-tut Michael's inability to recognize "squab" when they see it. Blah fine crystal blah WASP. Buh-bye, Susan and Harvey. Maria rings a dinner bell on the table for a root beer refill, but when Rosario fails to surface, Michael sets off in the darkened hallways (there's no moon now, of course) to find her throat slashed in a grandly Clue fashion. Commercial break and subsequent paragraph break be damned, Michael hightails it back to the dining room and insists Maria conceal Laurie. Then he skulks some more around the empty house, tuning toward a flight of steps down a seemingly empty hallway. Footsteps. Dramatic music. Then a gunshot, and Mel Glibson appears behind Michael, who goes down hard. Uh-oh. Michael's dead. Maybe in heaven, everyone will have the urge to herbal.
Outside, a car pulls up and Isabel looks in. "If I could just get a ride to Tucson?" Done and done.
Laurie and Maria run around the house looking for a place to hide, and we cut back downstairs to find Porno and Ball-breaker tending to a downed Michael, who has taken a bullet in the shoulder. Michael insists they turn on back and save the distressed damsels, who are now face-to-face with Mel Glibson back in some other area of the house. Mel grabs Laurie and holds his gun to her head, and Ball-breaker insists he put the gun down. Mel wails, "I want to! But I can't! You have to help me." Porno insists that they will help him, but Mel insists that they'll have to kill him, and he holds the gun up again as if to show that he's got it bad, so bad, and they should just go ahead and put him -- and us -- out of his -- and our -- misery. So Ball-breaker shoots him. Let the tertiary-character shelf-cleaning begin! Ball-breaker leans in to check if he's dead, just as a mess of Gandarium crystals erupt from Mel's heart (oh yeah, he's dead), and we are faced with some CGI the likes of which I haven't seen since I picked a card, any card, and then it turns out that it was the very same card that rose to the top of the deck. The card trick looks like it may have cost more. A Gandarium-topped flying object with long, dangly, tentacle legs bursts out from inside Grant, and Porno shepherds everyone out of the room in a hurry. Michael remembers what Max told him, holding up a hand and watching the card-trick technology batter its way around the place, knocking over pans and plates and a product-placed can of Campbell's soup. Porno asks what he did, and Michael explains, "Max said they need oxygen to live. So I just sucked all of the air out of the room." Card Trick takes one more shot, reeling up and flying toward a window that blocks the door between it and them, and it smashes into the window and goes all pulpy blue. Laurie, Freed From Box Bondage, notes, "So it's over." Porno, the voice of reality, knows that that's based on "what happened to the crystals." Let's go see!
Here's, um, what happened to the rest of the crystals. Kyle and Alex lie on the floor of Blue Cave, convinced that their time for dying has grown nigh. Nooooo! Alex puts too fine a point on it with his observation, "We not only met aliens, but they killed us." Kyle agrees that he wouldn't give up this experience for anything, just as the crystals begin to liquefy and the faithful diggers shovel them out. A tear is shed for the digging equipment. Hugs are exchanged (including the questionable lovin' between Liz and Tess which, as the forums have pointed out, is so very far from acceptable), and Kyle figures out that Michael found the queen and they've saved the world. Again. General jubilance. Alex notes, "Our job here is done! And it's time to take a shower." Lizbot bellows, "Let's go home," less out of satisfaction with a world saved than a fearful plaintive wail about the state of the desert as being an ideal arid environment to avoid repeated rust-proofings. Until something really profound like this happens of course, and it starts to freakin' pour.
Bomb shelter. Isabel enters alone to spot Mel Glibson's lifeless self. She covers his splayed figure with a blanket and crouches down against the wall. She sighs and apologizes to Grant, telling him, "I'm just gonna sit here a while, okay? Just sit here so you're not alone." She's sad. And the bandana stays on. All Isabel ever wanted was for someone to find her a find, catch her a catch. Perhaps after the pogroms are over they'll have better luck in America. Where, as I hear so often in the village, the streets are paved with gold.
Porno and Ball-breaker sit, um, somewhere, Ball-breaker considering the options: "Tell the truth about everything I've seen. Or write a false report and commit a felony." Porno notes that neither of those options seems particularly desirable, but dénouement's a bitch and everybody knows it. Porno remembers when he used to be an honest man: "I always took a very legal approach to my job. If I couldn't put it in a report or swear to it in a court of law, it never happened." Ball-breaker asks if she should just "walk away," and Porno agrees that "sometimes it's better just to walk away with your victories." Ball-breaker adopts a look that plainly communicates, "My most memorable role to date was Cocoa in the TV version of Fame. Dancing on rooftops never, ever, ever trained for a future of such knotty moral dilemmas! How's that for a damn victory?" No, you guys. It's totally true. Thanks, Wing.
And, finally, to Michael and Maria inside the WASPs Nest Of Bel-Air, while the domestic help lies in the room with her throat slit, killed by blood loss, a contusion to the neck, and the WB's continuing general disinterest in their treatment of minority characters. Maria pecks him rather extravagantly over and over and over, which is apparently the best medicine for that temporary medical condition known to Merck-oriented experts as "a freakin' bullet hole in the shoulder, people!" He's anticipating getting back to Roswell so Max can take care of his shoulder (though Michael would do just as well to sneak into Roswell County General and steal himself a band-aid and a session or two with a physical therapist), but first he has a question for Maria. And here it is: "What would you think if Laurie moved in with me?" I would think it was almost as creepy as the fact the he's macking on the doomed blonde to begin with, so it's really a push. Especially on this show, where "she's my sister" and "we're not sleeping together" aren't automatically assumed to be mutually exclusive conditions. So, clearly, Maria's jealousy alarm should be sounding. Michael recognizes that Laurie needs some time to herself to really let her I'm No Longer Crazy Conditioner set in and remind us just how not crazy she is now that she's maintaining that healthy hair shine again, but he also understands that she can't live with Harvey and Susan in Ambiguous Genderland for one more damned second. Cut to a brief shot of Laurie's Independence Day, where Harvey and Susan sign some form indicating that she is lord of the manor.
Maria and Michael hug back in his house, happy as all punch they've worked off their community service hours for general hair crimes propagated daily against society (Maria was finally tagged for her first-season offenses; now she's just an accessory), and they hug all self-satisfied as The Hybrid Chronicles draws to a close, answering all of the questions asked by the people who didn't ask any questions.