Busted

Crazy props to the brilliant Pamie, whose iBook password dies with me. And to Stee. And to Ray. And to my roommate, wherever she may presently be.

Dear Diary. It's October 9, 2001. My name is Liz Parker. And three years ago, this show died.

Fade in on a dusty expanse of neglected, maligned, general forgotten-i-tude known the world over as "UPN not during Moesha." The Smackdown music supervisor is all, "You should check this tune out, Roswell music supervisor, what with us sharing an office and all," and we are greeted by a rather pounding electric guitar befitting The Rock at his most bastardized. The camera pans from a storefront sign reading "Sam's Quick Stop," panning down, down, down (psssstcameraman. Wake up! Poor cameraman. For he is already so sleepy) past neon signs advertising dusty outpost convenience store truisms like "Open 24 hours" and "Coffee" and "My show went all the way to Sam's Convenience Store and All I Got Was This Stupid Recap" and what have you. Panning, panning, panning. And finally to our end-of-panning destination, where the camera comes to rest on Liz "Unplugged Performs Not" Parker and Max "Ungainly Pencil Necked" Evans. The Bot is oiled and lubed well past a rusty machine's natural abilities to just sing "If I Only Had a Heart" and go about its normative metallic capabilities, for she straddles Max in the front seat of a convertible, tonguing his face as if this motion will remove even one layer of Max's three-months-accumulated, did-I-say-bad-boy-oh-I'm-sorry-I-must-have-meant-Bar-Mitzvah-boy facial hair. A caption appears below them in MS Word font Alien Bold Sans Djb Sleeping Late On Saturday reading, "Salina, Utah 2:04 am." Long after good taste and the power of the Mach 3 have slumbered. And you totally know the caption guy was recruited from the set of Blind Date just to toss that one caption up there, and you know he fought the good fight to at least jazz this sequence up with a pop-up caption reading, "Nookie in Utah! Utah says 'Mormon' but this couple says, 'More, man!'" Because he's the Blind Date caption guy. And the Blind Date caption guy is the best in the business, is why.

Max, clad in the black leather cat suit of someone who forgot that summer is now over and with it his stint at Freddie Mercury Fantasy Camp, breathes all heavy, "You ready?" We're supposed to think they're talking about sex. But we know they never are. He tells her, "You don't have to do this," but she pledges her allegiance: "No, Max, we are in this together. That's what we said." Max offers a final glance of concern that all but screams out, "Fine, but time I get to be Bonnie. You ALWAYS get to be Bonnie," kisses her stage directionally (why will they not heed the convenience store's simple directive and just "quick, stop"?), and they both pull black ski masks over their too-pretty-for-TV faces. They must not be recognized. A well-executed, much-practiced response after a summer's worth of strangers approaching them on the street and asking point-blank, "Isn't that the network where they, like, sell fake pearl necklaces and stuff? You do know they're not real pearls, right? Right?"

"Who needs the Quik-E-Mart," Max and Liz seem to ask, busting through the front door of the joint. Liz enters first, gun blazing and yelling, "Down! Down! Down!" like a crazed square-dance caller with "Rock Lobster" the only song in her arsenal. Max molecularly manipulates the surveillance camera while Liz brandishes the gun at the store's overnight proprietor (is that Sam? Would he be working the night shift in his own store?). Max, moving toward the back of the store, warns Maybe Sam, "Better do what she says. She's crazy." Sam hits the bricks as Liz vamps about staying on the floor, staying down, down staying, and staying down with downness. Max heads right past the Chupa Chups and the Mint Milanos, muttering something about "a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips" in his stoic alien way, toward the back of the store. He reaches the back, throwing a rack containing various bread products angrily to the side (take that, Dr. Atkins, his remaining strength seems to say). He holds his left hand in front of a bare wall, creating a red beam that looks like those laser pointers kids started bringing to school in eighth grade until you weren't allowed to bring them to school anymore because people who had those in other towns meant it was because they were in gangs. One can only hope Sam isn't at home, watching helplessly while his night guy is all getting shot up. Oh, wait. What am I talking about? Ain't nobody watching this at home.

Back outside, a mysterious car sits in front of Sam's House Of Sudden Endless Relevance. Inside of said car, an older man in a fedora speaks with an Italian-esque patois into a cell phone, "Yeah, I, uh, wanna repawt an awmed robbery in prawgress. At Sam's Quick Stawp on Highway 65. Yeah, hurry." Thank you for your contribution to the Glorified Extra Fund, Mr. Sin-NOT-tra.

Moving away the wall panel he red-laser-beamed so effortlessly (damn gangs, tearing this city apart), Max reveals a metal wall safe, which he opens easily. Another door opens, revealing a singular light and a staircase leading down. What's going on with the complex hall of mazes? Did I sit on my remote and accidentally switch over to Zork: The TV Show? For the love of all things, Max, switch your lantern on down there or you'll be eaten whole by a lurking grue! Sigh. They never listen. And thing you know, lurking grue. Anyway, banter continues upstairs, as Liz keeps Sam's Henchman on the floor and the two perform the wholly original "I have a family!" passion play. Down the flight of stairs now, Max enters a huge room containing what looks like a giant spacecraft of some kind. He takes off the ski mask and gazes upon it. He then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a crystal, which immediately begins to glow. He holds it up, and against the side of the Good Ship Tin-Foil-Pop appears a symbol, a sign, an insignia of some kind. Awwww. Mysteriously glowing orbs and the language of Zapf Dingbats. You'd better believe it's the same show, all right. As police sirens blare upstairs, lights blaze from the ship. Liz runs downstairs to fetch Max (referring to him by the secret armed-robbery name of, well, "Max") and the two leap into the car and take off. A police car rages behind them. Liz barks, "The gun," and Max takes the weapon, drops it onto the floor in front of him, waves a hand over it, andturns it into mustard! Okay, no he doesn't, but conventional show wisdom dictates that he could if he wanted to. Sorry for the egregiously first-season reference there, folks, but on my honor, I had to stretch back that far because I couldn't remember one damn thing that happened on this show for the entirety of last season. And I think the "writers" would agree that that's probably all for the best, wouldn't you agree?

The chase is on! Up and down Dark Alley Boulevard, under The Covered Bridge That Time Forgot, through The Pre-Fab Corrugated Metal Warehouse District. Who knew that Utah was so seedy and asbestos-filled? From the commercials, you'd think the whole place was a paradise of fair-faced blond children playing happily on rocks with their nine teenage mothers. Well. Live and learn. Max holds up the mysteriously glowing orb, and Liz backstories a warning: "Max, they can't find out about the diamond!" Can we, you think? Max chucks the diamond out of the car, and it rolls back towards a dumpster containing the real script for this episode, as well as the notion of continuity that dictates Max could have, like, temporarily turned the diamond into a chicken and then changed it back later, or some such thing. More police cars come out of nowhere, and the convertible comes to a stop, surrounded. A cop leaps out of one car screaming the usual blah blah about hands where they can see them and whatnot. They violently muscle the couple out of the car, Liz cracking, "You got any powers for this?" Ooooh. A jokester! The sound of what I briefly think is my own laughter turns out to be the VCR in my bedroom, giggling at Gilmore Girls, then sighing contentedly, commenting just loudly enough for me to hear, "What on earth are you doing in there," and humming along to Carole King.

Opening credits: I guess the look is different enough, but the sound of the theme song is drowned out by the damn dueling St. Clares bellowing from the bookshelf, "Wait, isn't this the one with Eminem?" Get with the times, ladies.

And now, mystifyingly, are the previouslys. I half expect them to show the opening sequence again and be all, "What do you want? That was ." Hey, crack Roswell editing team? Find a stick. Then get on it.

Cut to interior Gritty Utah Police Station, night. Max and Liz are shepherded past other Wrongdoers Of The Heartland, past those caught with the controlled substances of caffeine and monogamous matrimony and dragged to the Mormon jail. You police are animals! This hell is no place for children! As the fingerprinting and the mug shooting get underway, we're clued into the flashbacky nature of this episode, as Max's voice-over kicks in: "So I was wondering if you wanted to, y'know, see me." Liz VO responds, "You mean, on a date?" Spacey VO Max: "Just somewhere we could talk. I really want to start over, Liz." Is this a song cue? It sounds like he's about to congratulate her on the skillful way she beats the other girls to the bride's bouquet.

And speaking of doing the time warp again, the Blind Date Captioner For Hire lets us know that it's suddenly "Three Months Earlier," and we cut to Max walking up to the front door of the Crashdown and handing Liz a bouquet of white roses. She's decked out in a pink twin set. He thinks she looks "amazing." I think she looks like the bastard child of Mary Kay and a pack of tropical Starburst. What a stark difference of opinion we're having. Liz smiles moistly and asks Max -- moistly -- "So, where are we goink?" Max whispers, "It's a surprise." Liz does not take the prevailing advice of millions and respond, "Surprise me by being uncreepy enough to at least tell me where the hell we're going," instead following blindly and taking us along for the ride.

The big "surprise" is that he takes her to an empty, pitch-black boating dock on the edge of town in the middle of the night. Why, this certainly is a so-called surprise. And thus comes the moral of our story: only date guys with a lot of money. Liz shrugs, I guess rating this date on a sliding scale against the-night-we-burrowed-for-grubs and the-one-with-the-hand-shadow-animals-on-the-wall-of-your-living-room, and smiling meekly. And she only has one white rose left, because I guess they let him keep the deposit on the rented roses. Get a job, future boy. Liz looks around fearfully and notes, "It's kinda dark." With a wave of the hand, Max molecularly manipulates Christmas lights into the trees, inciting in Liz a very "opening credits of Full House" reaction, where she realizes something wacky has been done, realizes the camera is there to preserve the moment forever, and smiles knowingly in resignation. You're wacky, Uncle Jesse! Liz turns back to Max, who begins back up on the dock, solemnly intoning, "Liz, I just want to put everything that happened behind us." Liz recaps the entirety of last season's developments, retorting, "I would too if I had impregnated an alien who killed one of my best friends and then left the planet with my unborn child." Whoa! Take my contract! Please! Max asks if she's still not "over that," and Liz responds that Max hurt her, and she doesn't know what to do blah. They walk and talk; Max tells her, "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. Isabel, Michael, and I. We've lost our only way home. There's no way back." Blah blah. "I want to be with you." Liz asks about the son and the pregnant and the Tess and the nagging, nattering matters that yielded twenty-one cumulative hours of television, sixteen virtually interchangeable blondes, and something called "the Skins," and Max boils it all down to the truth we'd all suspected: "[My son] is going to be born into a world I have nothing to do with. I've accepted it." He turns to her: "Liz, you've paid a lot to know me." He pauses, as if suddenly remembering that the checks for the "Give Liz Some Damn Friends Fund" are actually cut by her parents, and changes the subject straightaway. Har har. Instead, he tries this approach: "You've been hurt. You've been put in danger. Now I want to make all that up to you. I want to make your dreams come true. Will you let me do that?" Blue Fairy?

We chung-chung to present day, inside the You-Once-Were-Nice-To-A-Minority County Jail (Utah has some really strict laws, people), where Max's parents walk toward his cell looking extremely concerned. Philip "Monopoly Nazi" Evans and his beleaguered wife, Bangs, enter the cell. Max flashes the pearly yellows and quips, "In the neighborhood?" Why, look who's taking really well to jail, eh? Mr. Evans, who smiles inappropriately way too much throughout this episode, smiles (see that?) and gives Max a hug. During the juuuuust-a-moment-too-long embrace, Merry Mason (because he's a powerful lawyerand he smiles a lot, see?) whispers in Max's ear, "If you want to get out of here while you're still a young man, don't say anything to anyone unless I'm present." Translation: "If you want to get out of here while you're still a young man, time try and get arrested in 1987." He continues on, "I'm not your father right now; I'm your lawyer." Bangs follows with a hug, asking, "What is going on? Who are you?" He's "2! 4! 6! 0! Ooooooooooooooone!" Pipe down, Max.