Strenuously adhering to its one New Year's resolution to not piss me off entirely and in a wholesale fashion at all possible moments during both my wakeful as well as my sleepful hours, The Roswell Show finally does something right in featuring the music of John Doe (whose set I so enjoyed when he opened for Aimee Mann at House of Blues a few Mondays back) tonight, rather than some crappily derivative over-before-they're-over band like Matchbox 30 or Bride Of Smashmouth or Majandra And The Kit Shickers or whatever. But then they at The Roswell Show go terribly, terribly wrong by airing a brand-new episode on New Year's Frapping Day, while I'm on a plane and on Valium. Which is a mistake larger than any John Doe could correct. Which is a mistake larger than any anything -- up to and including the Roswell production staff somehow arranging for the cast of Ocean's 11 to come to my house to perform the entire film, in my bedroom, completely in the nude -- could correct. Especially if they sent Elliott Gould. Ew. Hey, Elliott? Keep those pants on, friend.
Geoff "Slackjaw" Parker (I just learned that his name is actually spelled "Geoff." Actually, I pretty much just learned that his name was "Geoff") sits in the empty Crashdown, strumming a guitar and singing contemplatively about postcards and three little words and pictures and pathos and America and the nature of all things true, real, and right in the universe. While this song vamps into an instrumental bridge, we cut to a tight shot of a hand putting a key in a door, and a caption that reads in Microsoft Word Font Alien Bold, "New Year's Day 7:31 AM." I have never understood the need for that possessive apostrophe. Who is Mr. New Year and why is this his day? Really. And is Mr. Easter upset that no one remembers that it's his Sunday? Right. I thought not. Anyway, we learn that the key belongs to one Jesse "Should Auld He's Gay Not Be Forgot" Ramirez. He opens the door to discover his blushing bride, Isabel "Should Auld Acquaint Ourselves With Her Loser Plot" Evans sound asleep on the couch, snuggled in the lap of one Kyle "Should Short Acquaintance Wear Lifts In His Shoes A Lot" Valenti. Jesse stares and stares. He wonders if maybe an annulment to this whole sham is the gift his wife forgot to give him on Christmas's Day. For those of you who haven't been keeping up, that's the day that's owned by Mr. Christmas.
Over to another bed, we discover a sleepy (and I believe shirtless, which wouldn't be my first choice, necessarily, but it sure has this whole Elliott Gould thing squarely beaten, at least) Michael "Should Auld Acquaintance Be For Pot Belly" Guerin trying to wake up. Into the room walks Liz "S.H.O.U.L.D. A.U.L.D. A.C.Q.U.A.I.N.T.A.N.C.E. B.E. ROBOT" Parker, and we discover -- horrors! -- that Michael has been sleeping in Liz's bed. Swathed only in a bathrobe, she sits on the bed and wishes him a hearty but firm "Good mornink." In turn, he offers a detached "Hey." She asks him how he is feeling, backstorying for the good of an audience about to watch Michael have "quite a night" in heinously hackneyed flashback, "Quite a night you had." Michael notes that she had herself quite a night as well, quickly turning the conversation by asking, "What about Maria?" Liz responds that "she and Max spent the night together." But it's not what you think! Because you think it's good. And you're quite, quite wrong.
Max "Should Old And Gay Flex Pecs A Lot" Evans and Maria "Should Blah Blah Blah Snotcakes" DeLuca walk through a dusty field under the cover of darkness, as the words "Seven and a half hours earlier" captionate beneath them. That's 12:01 AM, for those of you playing at home. How effortlessly we vault through space and time! How fractured, the narrative! Before Max has a chance to rip off his shirt and tattoo the words "John G. raped and murdered the integrity of network television" on his chest, he asks Maria cryptically, "You ready?" Maria responds we're-not-talking-about-sex-here-ily, "I have been waiting for this my whole life. I am so ready." Max rallies them with a "Let's go." They walk up a hill. The end.
Not. Fuck.
Opening credits: More like "Di-don't."
It's "6:32 PM" on the eve owned and operated by Mr. New Year. At the Ramirez hiz-ouse (hey, there's finally a minority of some kind on this show…can't we be just a little street about it all?), Isabel wears a slinky red dress and sets a dinner table to Martha-Stewart-y perfection. She looks around the room to note that the candles have not been lit, so she waves an arm and they all blaze to life. Up to and including the one to the far left of your screen (well, my screen, because you're not watching this train wreck anymore, are you?), which ignites several seconds before she raises her arm in the first place. Now that's a power, right there. The power of crap effects editing. The phone rings just then, and Isabel picks it up to hear her hiz-usband on the other end of the line, pleading, "Don't be mad." As a tape of airport sound effects whooshes up, we cut to Jesse on an airport payphone (because what high-powered lawyer with a house and wife of his own has ever used a cell phone?), telling Isabel that he's in "Houston. And I just missed my connecting flight." Gay slang, of course. She sighs that it's "okay," but he realizes it isn't, and tells her, "Do me a favor -- don't just sit at home alone, okay? Go out, have a good time, enjoy the night for both of us." She's unconvinced, but he tells her that it's bad enough he'll be "stuck in an airport" (there's that slang again), and that she should go and paint the town a rosy shade of non-gay-husband for both of them. But what a nice and caring hiz-usband he is, no?
Crashdown. Liz is morose, leaning over the back of a chair like she's waiting for a Samantha Fox video to begin spontaneously choreographing itself around her, muttering, "This isn't fair." Maria affirms that whatever "it" is, is, in fact, unfair. But Maria doesn't care much, telling Liz, "In about three minutes, I'm out of here." Liz snaps back that Maria is never going to find "it," leading to a banter-y exchange between Slackjaw and Michael that yields the information that "it" is "Enigma," which Slackjaw describes as a "secret New Year's Eve party that's been going on since before I was your age." He wistfully reflects upon a time when he found the secret location of the party "once," and I wistfully reflect on how much cooler this scene would be if Slackjaw went all Johnny Dangerously on us and tacked an overly arcane second "once" to the end of that thought, for the benefit of those of us cool kids at the back of the bus. In 1987. But Lizbot is on the case, making sure no cool dialogue is to disrupt the usual river of muddy brown bad dialogue. Liz informs her father, "You don't really need me to be doing this." It. This. What are you people talking about? But Slackjaw is nostalgic, noting that tonight's party at the Crashdown is "a family tradition." Liz garbles something about geriatrics or jamborees or Jell-O Pudding Pops or something, and Slackjaw attempts to clarify the actual nature of tonight's event: "When you're finally a member of the Desert Inn Retirement Community, then you don't have to come here for New Year's Eve." But won't Mr. New Year be lonely?
Maria cheerily makes her way to the back to punch the clock, but on her way bumps into Michael, who is sneaking in through the back door. Michael already knows the backstory we were so unmercifully non-spared, asking, "So, Enigma, huh?" Tragically on the defensive, Maria lobs back, "Yep. And no, I don't think it's lame or stupid or any of the other fifteen insults you're about to spew out." Jay-sus. Someone feeling a little self-conscious about her plans to scope out the set of Go, or whatever passes for a secret party in a corrugated shack here in the new millennium. Maria asks what Michael will be doing tonight, and after she deduces he'll be by himself, she asks, "What about Max? Why don't you two go look for a party or something?" Michael sarcastically derides Max and his boring character construction as "the original party animal" (Spuds Mackenzie, meanwhile, is all, "Whatever"), and wishes Maria a "have fun" before faking out the door. Maria stops him and asks if he'd like to come with her, but Michael fears that might affect their non-dating status. "It's not a date," Maria backstories upriver, paddling as hard as she can. "It's not a date. It's a scavenger hunt, looking for party clues." Michael takes nine seconds of dead air to agree. Meanwhile, we're a full segment in here, and all I've got over at my place is Carl Reiner, and who I think is Bernie Mac pulling up in a cab. Get on it, Roswell. We're wasting valuable Pitt time here.
Den Of Porno. Kyle is on his knees in front of a large Buddha statue. He meditates in continued silence (Jesus, people. If there's not enough material to fill a whole hour, I'm sure Mr. New Year would be happy to give you the damn day off), until finally deigning to speak the line, "Now that my immortal soul has been cleansed" -- he takes two quick hits of Binaca and coughs slightly, which would be vaguely amusing were it not so darned odd -- "on to more terrestrial concerns. It's been a dry couple of years. I need a woman. I need her badly. I need her tonight." 'Cause he's not sleeping. There's something about her, girl, that makes him sweat. But the doorbell at the Den Of Porno would rather sound off noisily than hear me wail through another measure of INXS, and Kyle responds to the distraction by telling the statue, "If that's a Jehovah's Witness, I'm coming back here." Kyle walks to the door to find Isabel, smiling and informing Kyle that it's his "lucky night." She then holds up a VHS tape and announces as perkily as she's got it in her, "Rudolph's Shiny New Year!" But Kyle is going out "to that Enigma thing." Isabel would rather chill with Rudolph, and her repeated entreaties for Kyle to stick around are accompanied by a series of ghastly shiny Tom Cruise-esque smiles that only drive him further away. He tells her that his night is entirely concerned with "sex and death," and allows her to tag along.
Why don't these people actually have a conversation about what they're doing on New Year's Eve before New Year's Eve? Who goes out alone on New Year's Eve? What's Enigma, and wasn't this show once about aliens? I am the one with many, many questions. We're on Liz's roof, Liz apologizing to Max and Max sadly responding, "It's all right. I had a feeling he wasn't going to let you get off work." Well then, why not just go ahead and make some other plans, or…oh, never mind. She asks what he's going to do instead, and he all haughtily responds, "Go back to Michael's and avoid New Year's Rockin' Eve." Okay, first of all, it's called Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. Everything possessive. Everything in that title either owns or is owned by something else in that title. Just like the New Year itself. Second of all, that show is an institution, and making fun of it is both anti-American and anti-lunar-calendar. So cram it, Commie. Liz suggests that Max could just go out with Maria and Michael, and Max asks all quizzically, "To Enigma?" Jesus. Does that word have a deal with the network to be product-placed four billion times a scene until it outpaces its closest synonyms of "mystery" and "paradox"? But Max claims that he's not really a party guy. He's more of a "one-on-one" guy. He kisses her smackily, and she goads him into going out, telling him exactly what Jesse told Isabel about him not having a crappy New Year's on her account. Except she uses the word "crummy," so I guess the UPN acquired a Standards & Practices Department at some point in the last twelve minutes. Max says that he'll go, but "with one condition: midnight comes and we're together." But how? HOW? "We'll find a way. Somehow, some way, we'll make it happen." Liz agrees, which is good for more tongue-y tonguing. Max finally takes his leave, leaping off the roof and sadly using the ladder.
Porno's band warms up for another local homespun gig, as a crowd of eminently mockable elderly folks (put 'em in the cloying Christmas episode and they'd all be the saintly aged, though) makes their way through the front door of the Crashdown. Liz stands out front, handing out small cardboard alien heads and announcing quite forlornly, "Make a resolution and stick it on the cactus." Yeeps. "Stick it on the cactus." Sounds just like something Jesse Ramirez might be saying during those long, lonely nights waiting for his "connecting flight." But Liz's self-important dreariness is soon to be interrupted by the approach of a pleasant older woman, who bids Liz hello and reminds her that she is "Jane Covendall," who Liz met at "a couple of months ago, remember, the movie thing?" Eh? Please tell me that this is a plot thread picked up from one of those episodes I didn't recap because we all go a little crazy sometimes, and not just some character invented out of blue hair and dusty old Velamints who just appeared out of nowhere from "that movie thing." I hate this show. She and Liz chat about Porno's band, Mysterious Jane (one might even go so far as to call her an…enigma?) showing her piss-and-vinegar side in noting, "I hope those bastards can play!" Ew. Sassy old broads. I do not prefer them. Slackjaw appears then, and Liz plays another card in the get-out-of-Crashdown-free Community Chest, asking, "How about a compromise? I will stay for the party, but then once we do the whole stupid pretend-it's-midnight-at-ten-thirty thing, I'm outta here, okay?" Slackjaw is angry, initially telling Liz he doesn't want to get "stuck doing all the clean-up," then coming clean himself and admitting, "I don't want you and Max catting around the desert all night." He adds that her "plans for the evening are set." Yawn. I liked him better that time the curtains came back up and he had turned into Aimee Mann.
This week's wholly undramatic, undetected, un-hasn't-happened-ever-on-this show breaking and entering into a convenient place for breaking and for entering occurs as Maria, Max, and Michael climb through a window and into a darkened (but well populated) classroom. Maria shines the flashlight toward the board and concludes, "This is the first clue." The blackboard, regrettably, does not read, "Hey, Melio. Fagabefe." Instead, it reads, "Hut-hut zero twenty-four seven zero hike." Another girl appears to Maria to comment that "hut-hut" might indicate that the party is on the football field, to which Maria essentially concludes, "Fagabefe." Also, she thinks that's just "too easy." Meanwhile, Michael asks Max what he's really doing there, accusing Max of "chaperoning." Max unconvincingly retorts, "Hey, I know how to party." Maria, meanwhile, cracks the code to the clue, which she believes is to be found at a college frat party across town. Well, thank goodness we'll all have the opportunity to go to one of those. On their way back out the window, Maria pulls Max aside to let him know, "This chaperone thing. I know Liz put you up to it, but Michael and I…we're clear this is not a date." Max reasserts that he's only just going to a party, and Maria offers a casually patronizing, "Right." The gag lies down and takes a long nap, tired as it is from all that running.
Random garage on the outskirts of town. Isabel watches Kyle take the protective sackcloth off what appears to be some kind of sports car. Where are we, and what's going on? Kyle tells Isabel that the car belongs to his boss, Toby. Toby? Who? Wha? Where do these people keep coming from? Is Toby also Jane Covendall's boss? Kyle is also in mysterious possession of the keys, and Isabel thoughtfully changes the color of the car from black to (gack) yellow to avoid detection in this "chick magnet." Kyle notes that "yellow wasn't my first choice, but that's cool." I hope she remembered to wave out those candles.
The Kit Shickers kit their shick (or would that be "shick their kit"?) all over the Crashdown dining room, as the octogenarian crowd grooves all, "This music is so good I could pee myself -- and now have." Mysterious Jane tells Liz that the band is awfully good, but that "you wish you were someplace else." Liz tries to assure her that that's not the case, but Mysterious Jane chides, "Don't shick a shicker." And then, quite intrusively, Mysterious Jane looks deeper, asking, "Boy trouble?" Liz confirms that her parents "don't really approve" of her boyfriend, and Mysterious Jane takes the same conversational approach Liz so often does, making it All About Her in responding, "I'm having the same problem." She points to a grizzled old couple sitting at a nearby table, and we learn that they are her parents, and that they still won't leave her and Frank be. Which one, Liz wants to know, is Frank. But we learn that he's not there. So who, then, is Frank, and why are we supposed to identify with him? He could be fourteen. Or a goat. Or a cardboard cutout of Greg Kinnear. So I don't really side with ol' Jane and Frank either, despite the fact that we're supposed to think that this is one classy broad who's gruff on the outside but teaches us a valuable lesson about loving old people who smell vaguely like cheese. Whatever. I refuse to be learned. And then, we line dance.
Fagabefe. We join Kyle hopefully not going 88 miles per hour and ending up in 1955, leaning against his midlife-crisis-mobile and explaining to two much-taller-than-him girls, "Easy clue. See, the hut-hut meant the Waffle Hut across the street," and then something about the 24 and the 7. From nowhere walks a slightly taller (like, five feet three, maybe) guy, and tells Kyle he's going to ask him "a question from the future: those your teeth lying on the ground?" This Archie Comics guide to courtship causes the girls to abandon poor Jughead when the bullying tactics of that bully Big Moose drive Betty and Veronica back into the arms of their rightful suitors. Or maybe that guy was Reggie. Stupid, stupid Reggie. Isabel blazes over with a speech about how Kyle lacks confidence, telling him, "Women want an alpha male." Kyle says that he was a "fun guy" before the "alien invasion," and Isabel drags him off with the promise of finding him a "new social life," which certainly won't be found in any capacity at…
…the cheesy-ass frat party across town. Max, Michael, and Maria walk in, and Max fends off a go-nowhere advance by a woman who asks Max why there's no more beer. So he walks over to the keg, where increasingly angry frat boys freak out that the brew is cashed. And why wouldn't they? Without it, date rape just seems so dowdy and moralistic. So Max touches the keg and it overflows with the roofie juice, and much celebration is enjoyed by all. All except for Maria, that is, who asks some guy named "Dave" if he knows any clues for Enigma. Like, say, Fagabefe. Said Dave grabs her ass, causing a suddenly jealous Michael to ask randomly, "Where's the keg?" And over to him, sitting alone at a table, sucking down the silty remains of every beverage everyone else in the room has touched. He's all drunk, like. Max takes Michael's arm and tells him that they're leaving, but Max's grip hurts to the touch, and Michael freaks out that there's something on him, soon taking to screaming, "There's something on me! I'm on fire! I'm on fire!" Then he falls over. Because of how he's on fire.
Outside the frat house, Max, Maria, and Michael continue their endless stroll down Exposition Blvd., Michael holding his hand up to his ear and grimacing all, "We Are The World," and Maria grousing continually, "So I guess our search for Enigma is over." Which, I guess, on Planet Self-Centered Bitch, is translatable to, "Gee, plastered ex-boyfriend. I'm, like, really sorry you're, like, on fire. And stuff." Max attests that it's "still early" and that there's a party to be had somewhere, but Michael wails about Maria's "stench," inspiring Maria to angrily call Michael an "ass" and end two consecutive sentences with a defiant "man." Michael then collapses, and Max demands Maria's help in getting Michael "into the car." Man.
Liz is calling bingo numbers, and suddenly…she loves the aged and infirmed! How they teach us such valuable lessons about life and love. Porno strolls through the dining room and takes a seat at the counter to Slackjaw, who tells Porno, "An hour ago, you'd have thought that she was sentenced to work here tonight." Which she was. And so I would have thought it. In reality, we all would have thought it together. In fact, we're all thinking it right now. WAKE UP, DAMMIT. Sigh. Sorry. The New Year is making me itchy and unpleasant. Anyway, talk soon turns to the popular topic of Max Evans, as a slowly obsessed Slackjaw asks Porno what he "thinks" of Max. Awwwww. Middle-aged men and their crushes. Personally, I think Max likes Slackjaw. I just don't think he like likes him. You know? Of course you do. Either way, Porno blinds me with his and-then-the-Graceland-gift-shop-tried-to-kill-and-eat-me black button-down shirt with two gold embroidered guitars on it, before responding, "Honestly, I think a great deal of him. I think he's a very special kid." Slackjaw says he used to feel that way as well, but no more. But Porno is a defender of Max's honor: "Max screwed up big-time. He put your daughter in danger, and there's no excuse for that. But since you seem to be asking my opinion, I think Max is a good kid who made a big mistake. And I truly believe that he's learned from it. And I think he really does love your daughter. He deserves a second chance." Mysterious Judy then wins bingo because she's the only typecast bingo-loving old broad the UPN can afford to pay. Then she thinks about how much she enjoys bridge and mah-jongg as well. But she's hip, too. Because they always are on TV, aren’t they? But as soon as she starts jiving around the Crashdown to "Rapper's Delight," I'm leaving. Fuck it. I'm leaving anyway.
Liz sees Maria at the kitchen door and runs back to see what's the fuss. "Night from hell," Maria bellows twice, and Liz chokes out a half-heartedly concerned I'm-only-helpful-in-the-animal-emergency-room-really, "What's up?" Maria gives her back a convenient, "Michael's up. Very up." Because of how Liz asked, "What's up?" So, ha. They enter Liz's room to find Michael levitating several poorly-CGIed inches above the bed, Max holding a hand above Michael's abdomen because -- well, I don't know why at all.
Okay! I get it! Isabel and Kyle have chemistry! Uncle! Uncle, already! Now give them something real to do. And this right here ain't it. They enter a house (is this the same fraternity house from five seconds ago?), Kyle announcing, "This is a college party. A frat house. Why am I here?" Isabel tells Michael that he has to set his sights "a little higher than high school," and they go about scoping the room for a score for Kyle. As such, Isabel eschews "Bernadette Tahoe" on the basis that she is "dumb as a fencepost and only likes girls," which is a finely phrased line in a lot of ways. Isabel indicates a blonde hussy named "Bitsy" who Isabel calls "the girl of [his] dreams," and Isabel introduces them. She is the girl of his dreams. She's four eleven if she's an inch.
Floaty Michael sweats floatily above Liz's bed. He's got no strings to hold him down. Except for the six miles of cable you can see suspending him six inches above the bed like Gretchen Cleevely in the Turtle Creek Middle School production of Peter Pan. Maria asks Max hopefully if Michael is going to live, and Max notes that he's made it through the "rough stuff." So they retreat downstairs, Max asking permission to use the Crashdown bathroom. Liz and Maria take to having the discussion they've shared each of the last ninety times they've spoken to each other, in which Maria confides, "My evening is set. I'm just gonna be stuck here, babysitting a drunken alien." But upstairs, Michael, lying in bed, sorts through the static and can hear with perfect clarity the entire conversation going on downstairs. Maria: "Is my life really gonna be like from this from now on? I mean, no matter what I do or say, it ropes back to some kind of an alien crisis. I can't even get one night off to find a stupid party." I. Know. Just. How. She. Feels.
Back at the frat, Kyle is telling wacky jokes, and Isabel guffaws at every word. She volunteers to Bitty Bitsy that "Kyle is a Buddhist now. It's really inspirational." Bitty Bitsy worries that Kyle is "some guy with a fat Buddha statue who prays to get laid on Friday night." Kyle laughs guiltily, as if to say, "By the many arms of Vishnu, I swear it is a lie!" But then he comes clean about the Buddha and the Friday and the praying, and Bitty Bitsy is happy at least for his honesty, if not his isolated and antisocial disconnect from an integrated society that doesn't need a god -- a confusing and cryptic Eastern god, no less -- to get some lovin' on New Year's Eve. Isabel sees a spark between them and takes off. Kyle thanks her for her Yenta-ish help, and stares Isabel down and down and down as she walks away. What are these feelings he is having?
Back in the Crashdown kitchen, Max pretends to keep caring about finding Enigma, but as he gravely tells them he's running back to the school for more clues, Slackjaw enters the kitchen and finds the three of them (Liz, Max, and Maria) together. Max tries the old drama exercise of "if I can't see them, they can't see me," trying to avert his eyes and pretend he a wax figure or a hologram. But Slackjaw don't slack, catching Max in the act and changing heart: "What kind of boyfriend isn't with his girl at midnight? Don't you have any class?" Rebirth! Kind of a burn on Frank, though, y'know? And outside to the dining room we go, where the kitschy midnight countdown goes off by the count of Porno's watch at 10:30 sharp. Much cheering and singing of that song that I don't understand begins.
And now, mysteriously, the party is over. Max wheels out the last of the party guests, and Maria helps Liz clean up until Michael comes down and asks if he can talk to her. Meanwhile, Slackjaw lets Liz off KP and tells her to go out with Max and "have a real New Year's." Hugs and loving between a bot and her Slackjaw are lovingly exchanged. And, back in the kitchen, Michael tells Maria that she deserves "a night off from all this alien crap." Maria can't believe that Michael heard her from all the way upstairs, but is all the more shocked by his self-sacrificing nature and his desire to let her go and find -- sing it loud if you know the word -- Enigma. She hugs him big, which should hurt him like a mofo but certainly doesn't seem to. And we're back in the dining room, where Liz pledges her commitment to helping out her father, and Max and Maria conspire to find Enigma together now that they've shaken off the shackles of their annoying mates and fallen instead into the annoyingness of one another. I find that exchange program uncute.
Back in the garage, Isabel changes the car from yellow back to black, and Isabel asks Kyle if he's feeling disappointed. He's excited, he says, that he got a college girl's phone number. Kyle asks what happens now, and Isabel asks, "How much do you love me?" And then they kiss and kiss. And then they don't, because it was a nine-second dream sequence. What "love" and its proving refers to is Isabel's continued need to watch the Rudolph movie.
Back at the chalkboard, Maria figures out in a super-hurry the location of the Enigma clue, and they're off to the 24/7 that Kyle previously tossed casually off as the clue. That's kind of excellent. Suddenly, Maria whispers a hushed, "Max!" She thinks she's found another clue, on a restaurant menu that is -- or isn't -- an actual restaurant menu. It turns out the party is at "Blue Moon Canyon." Two whole clues and exactly no "Fagabefe"? What's the big deal about finding this non-bash?
And back again to the Crashdown, where Liz enters the kitchen to find Michael floored. She tells Michael, "I thought you told Maria you were okay." Michael tells her in agony that he lied, and that his body feels "like one big bruise." Slackjaw enters the kitchen just at this moment, and demands to know just what's going in. Liz doesn't have to lie a smidge when tells her father, "He drank too much." So they transport Michael back to Liz's bed, as we join Max and Maria currently in the process of Maria telling Max, "Should have seen him standing there, all brave and noble. It was enough to make you fall in love with him all over again." Max stands accused, as if the second person "you" referred directly to him. It was just a general "you," Max. But Max is not convinced.
Montage! Kyle and Isabel fall asleep on the couch, Max and Maria walk into the enigmatic Enigma, which appears to be the result of a lifelong search for sparks and an open field. And, as John Doe's music strums up again, we find ourselves back in the Crashdown the following morning, Michael and Liz deciding they won't tell their respective mates about the bed-swapping that could once have made for an interesting narrative. Max and Maria stumble in, promising to tell the whole story of the best night of their lives that we will never get to hear. Abrupt credits. See you -- and this show -- again sometime around Easter's Sunday.