Fade up on the freakishly boring, robotic, glowing orb of a…oh, dear God. There's no opening, pre-credits sequence at all, is there? We've just gone straight to the credits! And here's me, caught without even the vaguest notion of a wacky, anti-Dido opening credits quip! Damn. Wait, here's one: Shut up, bitch. Whew. Dodged a bullet there.
Fade up on a colorless split-level location shot on the corner of Pico and Fairfax (er, I mean "a charming adobe manse in the alien -- illegal and otherwise -- section of hipster downtown Roswell"). Isabel "Samantha Stevens" Evans opens the front door to discover Michael "Larry Tate" Guerin and Max "Tabitha Stevens" Evans bedecked in painting paraphernalia. Max holds buckets and rags, while Michael hauls in a ladder, brushes, rollers, more buckets, more rags, and an ostensible "painter's cap" that I believe he may well have picked up at the well-trafficked "French Lesbian Tennis Player In The '70s" tag sale going on near the farmer's market just around the corner. With mock wifely duty (for she is merely a mock wife), Isabel turns from the door and announces, "Honey, the painters are here!" Michael proclaims said wifely duty "funny" in a way that means, "I don't have time for your dumb cracks. At midnight, this hat turns back into Martina Navratilova and I can't be accountable for what kind of mood she'll be in." Max and Michael muscle past her, just as Jesse "Hi. My Name Is Jesse. This Is My Brother Darrin. And This Is My Other Brother Darrin" Ramirez enters the room and offers his help. Max offers that their painting the living room is "a housewarming gift from us to you," and Michael tacks on that it's also "a wedding gift. It's combined." Isabel laughs gamely before doing that [Insert Significant Landmark Day] Nazi thing she does so well, turning on Michael and deadpanning, "The wedding gift will be separate." Jesse confirms that "it's just very generous of you to take your Saturday out to paint our apartment," an essential recap of this episode's first eighteen seconds that confirms for us that Max and Michael are there to paint the apartment. Or else we would have had no indication, save for the brushes and rollers and lesbian hats and everyone already having said the word "painter" sixteen distinct times. I swear, if that Jesse didn't call me eighteen seconds into my morning each and every day and remind me, "Dan, wear pants," it's entirely possible I would just forget to wear pants. Thanks, Jesse. Now, back to the…wait, what are they doing? Oh, that's right. Painting. Wait, what? Oh, that's right. Painting.
Disappointed that he won't have a chance to hang out with the Dutch Boy (if you know what I mean, et cetera), Jesse nevertheless hops to attention when Isabel reminds him, "My dad hates late." He grabs some golf clubs (oh, dads), and takes off. Michael waits less than a second after the door closes to report, "You know, you could have probably done this yourself." But Isabel's a sucker for realism, chiding, "Jesse's gonna let his wife paint the apartment all by herself." By which she means that he would not allow that to happen. Ooooh, sarcasm. "Writer" Ronald D. Moore, growing up right before our eyes! Max asks Isabel if she knows what color she wants, and she holds up two cards and compares, "Tucson ochre or New England brick red." She wants to see them both, so she gives Max and Michael each a color card and has them carry them to the wall. As the plucked strings of the familiar "Aliens Painting (Paint Paint Paint)" theme song kick up, Max and Michael retire to their respective portions of wall and give the color cards the consideration they deserve. They then put up a hand and turn the previously white wall two different colors. Michael quips that he is "exhausted" from the strain and retires to the couch. Max volunteers to Isabel that he "like[s] the ochre," and I briefly wish Jesse were there to offer his opinion on the garishness of the ochre, because Max's interior decorating skills (wink wink) are clearly not as honed as they should be. Not to mention the fact that those two colors are way too dark for that room, and that Isabel should consider going with a rose-tinted white that would turn a more pinkish hue when the light came in from the west-facing window, and…well, never mind. I'm just saying.
Michael hits the couch and turns on the TV, becoming awfully excited awfully quickly because "Nickelodeon is having a marathon of Bewitched! My weekend's set!" Isabel retorts with the never-clichéd "who are you and what have you done with 'X,'" cleverly inserting Michael's name in place of "X." Max explains that it's "the whole Maria thing," and Michael excitedly reports, "This is the one where Samantha turns Darrin into a goose." Max chides (so much chiding this week. That poor Ronald D. Moore must have had a very antagonistic childhood), "You need a hobby, man." Michael chides back, "You mean like golf? Riding around in some stupid cart?" Well, failing that, how about elegant plot development? Be a trailblazer. How does he know it's a marathon, anyway?
But hark! The front door begins to open, and Isabel freaks that Jesse is home ("The front door? Dammit, I thought this was the closet door!"). She runs over and grabs the door out of his hand, claiming that there is a ladder in front of it. Max and Michael, meanwhile, peel the color right out of the wall, and Isabel allows Jesse entrance to the house. What's the matter? Did he forget something? "Yeah. My balls." Max and Michael titter like eighth-graders. God, I love it when they keep the tone of this show consistent. Jesse senses an awkward silence and asks if they've been talking about him. Isabel proclaims him "paranoid," and chides (weep for Ronald D. Moore! Weep for him!), "The whole world doesn't revolve around you." Max passes the chide baton: "Yeah, it revolves around Michael." Michael goes back to the couch. Jesse leaves. I buy Ronald D. Moore a session on the couch.
With Jesse gone, Isabel joins Max and Michael in the living room. Seeking deeper meaning through the learned teachings of noted social scholar Elizabeth Montgomery, Isabel notes, "She had it so easy." Michael disagrees, retorting (which is really just a more pedantic form of chiding), "Samantha takes pride in her witchcraft, and she's made to suffer for it in an uncaring, secular world. She's a modern-day Athena." Isabel doesn't get the reference, so she makes with the all-about-her-ness, opining, "Think about how much easier my life would be if Jesse just knew who I really am." Michael suggests, "You could call it I Married an Alien." Perhaps she will, Michael. Perhaps she will. Hey, where are we going? Isabel stares back into the TV, which we see in close-up. On it is a shot of Isabel and Jesse in the pre-Technicolor shades of Nick at Nite's entire programming slate, driving in an obviously fake car while blue-screen scenery rolls out behind them. They're decked in fully Samantha-and-Darrin (or Jeannie-and-Major-Nelson) clothes and hair, Jesse smiling hugely in his dapper Eisenhower-era business suit and slicked-back hair. Campily, in the style of all those '50s television shows not one person in Roswell's demographic has ever actually seen, Jesse takes out a silver oval and smiles at Isabel, asking, "How many times do I have to tell you not to leave your alien orbs in the car?" She's all "sorry, dear." The laugh track bellows its approval at the cruel irony of a third gay Darrin. Today's Isabel stares into the TV and notes, "Yeah. That would be some show." Well. Let's go find out if she's right!
Opening credits. Very I Dream of Jeannie music accompanies an animated graphic of the night sky and a full moon, over which the words "I Married an Alien starring Isabel Evans" appear in a MS First Original Notion This Show Has Ever Had Sans Bold font. A Jetson's-y spaceship flies into the frame, circles once, and takes a plunge. It steams down towards Earth, and crashes into the desert. The whole run of the series until this point is successfully rendered in one animated minute.
The raucous applause track welcomes Samanthabel Stevans into her deco '50s living room. She notes a dirty kitchen, puts her hands disapprovingly on her hips, and speaks the words aloud, "Well, this is certainly no way to start a morning." She waves a hand and the dishes appear in the drying rack all clean and shiny because, well, he married an alien. She stands surveying the kitchen one ill-timed moment too long (though for all I know that could be intentional; the early days of the three-camera sitcom were not pretty ones. Even into the '70s, they were hardly considered high art, and my brother has a favorite story of having seen a rerun of Three's Company in which everyone leaves the living room and it literally sits vacant for upwards of twenty seconds before the hairy-chested used-car salesman wacky neighbor in waaaaaay too tight shorts for a man remembers to make his entrance), finally speaking the words, "I think we'll have French toast and sausage." A wave of the hand sends a loaf of bread floating from atop the refrigerator and into Samanthabel's arms, and the eggs come flying out of the suddenly open refrigerator. On another shelf of the fridge sits a plate of sausage links, which look all strange and yucky and meaty when they come flying through the air. But that's none of my business, really. Sausage is Jesse's favorite! And Darrin's, too! Both of them!
Speaking of whom, Jesse rounds the corner into the kitchen in the same dapper business suit and a smile to throw some sunlight off on the North Pole in January. Entrance applause. Nice touch. He looks sternly upon her, asking, "Isabel, how many times do I have to tell you: no alien powers in the house." Man. Is there a rule somewhere in The Cold War Guide To Domineering TV Husbands that every sentence has to start off with "How many times do I have to tell you"? Actually, I guess there kind of is that rule. And studies show that 90 percent of the time, the second half of the sentence is, "…that you cannot play in the band." But this time? Alien powers, and the fact that she shouldn't be using them in the house. So that's different, then. He smells the French toast and smiles broadly enough to accidentally swallow six nearby planets and a large mug of coffee that seems to have mysteriously disappeared from my desk, excusing her with, "Well, maybe just this once."
And we're back in Roswell, 2002. Boo! I hate it here! Gone are the exposed brick wall behind Isabel and also my will to live. Jesse enters the kitchen wearing a suit that I think is supposed to be the hyper-modernized version of the one he was just wearing. But, really, it looks exactly the same. He bids Isabel a good morning. She carries (no floating! Poor Muggles!) a mug of coffee to the table, and as she makes her way back to the stove, she tells him, "This time, I think I have really…" She opens the cover on the French toast and sadly reports, "…burnt it again." Banter about the fresh-squeezed orange juice that he says is perfect but isn't (where's the laugh track to remind me to find this gag hee-larious?), and suddenly he has to run to a [dialogue obscured by my lack of desire to hit "rewind"] meeting at 9:15. He's out the door. The walls have been painted. I think they decided to go with the too-dark "wall of plums" shade, rather than the way-too-dark "wall of blood" shade. Good call.
Jesse's gone, and we're back in time. So take me away. I don't mind. The kitchen door opens and in walks Kyle "Squiggy" Valenti, bedecked in black leather pants, jacket, and hat, and I have no doubt that his cowboy and policeman friends down at the Gay Biker Costume Depot will all, when the song is written twenty years hence, find it fun to stay at the YMCA. He enters with a boisterous "Hello!" to wild canned applause, and shows Samanthabel a metal contraption of some sort, asking, "Know what this is?" She hazards, "A carburetor?" He leaps on her line, "No, it's a carburetor!" Pause. Laugh. Set-up. Punch line. Continue: "How did you know that?" She responds that she's a "modern woman." And yet she still can't play in the band. Squiggy Valenti sits down at the table and lays out Plot B: "It may look like a carburetor, but in reality it's a gold mine." He tells her that it could be a "special carburetor. One that made it possible for a car to get three hundred miles to a gallon!" She looks at him disapprovingly. He amends: "Two hundred?" The laugh track loves it. Loves it! Isabel reminds him and us, "You know Jesse doesn't like it when I use my powers in your get-rich-quick schemes!" Poor bondage-bound Squiggy Kyle looks mournfully at his carburetor, sad in the dawning knowledge that he was forced against his will fifty years into the past, and all that remains of his once-promising character is that he is a car mechanic and sometimes people think he's gay.
And we're back to today, and this is already tiresome. I thought this site had a policy against recapping sitcoms. And, also, Picket Fences. In the kitchen, Isabel asks Kyle, "Why do you always come to me with these things?" Kyle tells her that it doesn't even have to work well; all it has to do is work. She waves a hand over it. I guess it's fixed. Plot B resolved. Bring on the wacky neighbor.
It's boys-will-be-boys-o'clock at the Ramirez place, Jesse and Scoop catching up and drinking beer and WHY WON'T HE JUST TAKE THE DAMN SWEATER OFF ALREADY? Interestingly, I have a sneaking suspicion that Jesse is thinking the exact same thing. Scoop investigatively sleuths out a CD from the rack to the CD player, laughing at the couple, "I don't believe you guys still have this CD." What outdated chestnut could it be? Is it the Dido CD? Scoop hits play, and "Everybody Dance Now" by C+C Music Factory fills the room. Jesse is all, "Shut up, I do my jazzercise to that album," as Isabel escapes to her bedroom and wonders why the script tells her to feel so unsettled about all this.
Later. Oh, so very much later. The FootCam captures a highly unflattering shot of Jesse and Scoop with their feet on the coffee table and thousands of empty beer bottles strewn around them. Scoop observes, "Just like the good old days, man. Where's the bong?" I was so just asking that very question. Jesse shushes his friend, telling him, "She doesn't know I used to get high." Oh, come on. We all know someone who went to college. Now shut up, both of you, so I can better hear The Divinyls' "I Touch Myself" playing oh-so-imperceptibly in the background. I want you. I don't want anybody else. And when I think about you. I touch myself. Oooh. Oooh. Oooh oooh. Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah. But no luck, as they just keep talking. Scoop finds it wrong that Jesse is keeping secrets from Isabel, but Jesse says, "We're still getting to know each other." Jesse explains that he thinks she has a lot of secrets, like that "every once in a while something weird happens." He tells a riveting tale about trying to fix the icemaker, which he cannot fix but she does with merely a touch. Scoop thinks the story is pointless and boring. Scoop and I finally have something to talk about. "Well, what about her brother, Max? He breaks my nose the night before our wedding…" Scoop interjects, "He broke your nose?" I interject, "'Our' meaning 'your marriage to Max'?" Jesse promises, "It's a long story. I'll tell you later." Oh, whatever. Just read the recap. Scoop cracks himself up and posits, "Maybe she's an alien. Jesse, man, you married one of the Roswell aliens. It's like I Dreamed of Jeannie for the new millennium." I thought we were doing a Bewitched thing. And dude, it's not I Dreamed of Jeannie. It's Dream. Present tense. Still dreaming. Currently dreaming. Nearing REM as we speak. Zzzzzzzzzz. There. Report that, jackass. Sigh. Shut up, Scoop.
Sitcomsville, USA again. Jesse enters the bedroom with two twin beds (another nice touch), puffing madly at a pipe and scream-whispering, "We're in trouble! He wants to stay the night!" Samanthabel promises, "I won't use my powers while he's around. Everything's going to be fine!" A very Brady Bunch-esque scene change riff brings us back to the future and an incredibly odd shot of Jesse taking off his pants and kicking them onto the floor. Ew. He climbs into bed, and Isabel wakes up. Jesse cracks up and tells Isabel that "Eric" (who? Oh, yeah) "went off on this whole story about you being one of the Roswell aliens." Hey, look. Tang. Isn't that what the astronauts brought to the moon? Astronauts to the moon? Ha ha ha ha ha!
Cut to the following morning at The House That Government Subsidy Built (with post-war socialist programs developed shortly before the likes of I Married an Alien took the airwaves by storm). Michael sloths all over the couch watching Bewitched, and Max just lets himself in, thanks, and observes, "Okay, this is officially not funny anymore." As opposed to when Michael Guerin was the undisputed king of comedy. Michael mumbles back a snark, and Max holds up a hand and turns the TV off, counseling Michael, "You have got to get a life." Max turns it off. Michael on. Max off. Michael on. Max off. Michael notes that it's his apartment. And though his Uncle Sam would beg to differ, I think Max should get the hell out and stick to his knitting if he doesn't like what Michael's doing on his own damn turf. Michael holds up a hand to turn the TV back on, and shorts it out with a whole shower of sparks. Mad. "Great, thanks." Endless pause. Max: "Oh yeah, this is my fault." Isn't it?
Okay. We get it. She can magically clean. She's magic in the kitchen. Her frosted lucky charms are even more magically delicious than everybody else's. Do you believe in magic in a young girl's heart. Oooh, have to believe we are magic, nothing can stand in our way. And so on. She cleans up the mess that Jesse and Scoop made last night with her '50s housewifely ways, except then she doesn't really. Back to the future, where Jesse apologizes for the mess they've made of the place, promising he'll clean it up when he gets back. Scoop comes out of the bedroom wearing The Hat and another in the long line of Structure's finest '80s castoffs. He tells Isabel (who, as many of you have noted, he repeatedly refers to as Isa-bel) that he's thought of his story idea: "It's a story about how two people marry in a hurry and have to do all the 'getting to know you' stuff later." Isabel thinks it sounds boring, which is does, but Scoop knows the flava of things and assures her, "My editor loves that kind of crap." Well, Scoop, if you're so in tune with what your editor loves, how come you're on the hook to get fired and how come he's got you paying for your own gas to cover a chicken harvest in the middle of winter in Saint Paul? Aren't people like you supposed to have, like, a desk?
A knock on the door reveals Max. Hello. Hello. Scoop shakes his hand and notes, "You're the guy with the special healing powers." And then '50s Max, wearing a green tablecloth of a sweater vest, registers a look of concern, waves a hand, and turns Scoop into some kind of a dog wearing a similar hat to the one he was wearing last night. Except this time it actually does have the "Press" card on it. Sorry. I missed a bunch of this episode the first time I watched it, on account of kind of forgetting to watch the entire first half. You know how that totally happens sometimes? Darrin/Jesse tells Max, "You can't just go around turning people into dogs." Max wonders how he knows "our little secret" (hello, no comment. Whatcha knowin'?), and Jesse thinks maybe it's because "he's seen you flying around the neighborhood in your saucer again." Max tells Jesse that Michael broke the spaceship, so he had to put it in their basement. Jesse wonders how they got said spaceship in said basement, and Isabel patronizes, "He used the time/space flip string, dear." Max tacks on a "duh," which I don't think was so much in vogue as a word back in the day. But then, he seems to be playing the fussy alien who thinks he's smarter than all the people, so maybe he has advanced knowledge of word origins and morphology in advance of those pesky humans. Jesse picks Scoop up just as Max changes him back, and he turns back into Scoop while being held in Jesse's arms. Perfectly done gag, for oh so many reasons. Back to the future. Max sheepishly tells Scoop that it was nice to meet him. They leave. Isabel tells Max that Jesse told Scoop (whew) about the steak incident, and that they've been "yukking it up" about how was an alien and so on. Max laughs. The dramatic tension is just that dumb. Max offers to buy Isabel breakfast before her first class, and she asks where. End of scene. But no, really. Where? Hello?
Aw, crap. We're golfing. With Isabel's dad. And Jesse's boss. All of which makes for, then, a fine opportunity for Scoop to pull out a flask of liquor and asking Jesse, "So, was she still jail bait when you first met her?" Oddly, into the frame walks Michael, who is playing golf mysteriously. Mr. Evans pipes in, "Michael, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're not a member of the Glenhill Country Club." Not so much. Mr. Evans offers to let him stick with them. Someone's still feeling a little guilty about that whole Monopoly fracas, now isn't he? Well, as well he should be.
Crashdown. Isabel and Max enter what quickly becomes Alice's Restaurant, John Doe standing behind the cash register wearing a Good Humor Man outfit and a gay paper hat and thinking, "This really is the end of the road for me, isn't it?" Liz is wearing a girly version of the same outfit almost as literally cardboard as she is. Max and Liz exchange doe-eyed "Max. Liz. Max. Liz" blah-dee-blah for nine minutes, until Liz notes Isabel and modifies her non-acting non-style not at all in asking, "You must be here to have breakfast with Max. Because he's certainly not here just to see me. Are you, Max?" He's certainly not. They sit down at the table together as we're…
…back to the future at the prestigious Glenhill Country Club, Scoop grilling Michael, "So, how long have you known Max and Isabel?" A long, long time, we learn. Michael hits a ball and announces, "Aww, slice," Jesse reporting (like Scoop does), "It's in the trees," and we're…
…to the modern-day Crashdown, Isabel telling Max, "I've been doing some more thinking about this whole Bewitched idea. And the more and more I think about it, the more convinced I am that it would be in everyone's best interest to bring my Darrin in on the secret." Say "more" again. I dare you. I double dare you. Max offers "to think about it," because it somehow remains his decision. Liz comes over and asks after her table, and Max offers up, "We were just talking about how much easier life would be if we lived in a sitcom." Liz hazards through the haze of sheer stupidity, "You mean like Frasier?" Yes. Yes, Liz. Frasier. Max then orders up another sherry and speaks with a twee hint of a British accent, even though no one's watched it since 1997 and it continues to win all the Emmys anyway. Yes, Liz. Just like Frasier. And then Slackjaw wields a meat cleaver from behind the cash register and tells Max that he doesn't want to see his hands on her daughter. Slackjaw advances on him with the cleaver, and as he swings it back to hit Max, they turn into a bouquet of roses that Max takes from Slackjaw's hands and says, "Thanks, Mr. Parker!" Oh. Did I mention that that was part of the sitcom? Do you really care anymore?
Scoop keeps scooping: "So that kid is an emancipated minor?" Yes, Jesse responds: "Our firm handled the case." Scoop then asks if he can smoke the ganja right there on the green, and Jesse tells him that this is his "father-in-law's private club," delivering a raging invective against all rich people and their prim exteriors with the instruction, "Go in the bushes like everyone else." And so he does, arriving just in time to see Michael shooting his way out of the bushes by molecularly manipulating the trees to allow him to play through. Scoop sees him and looks down at his lit joint. Dude. What a degenerate. No wonder he's getting fired.
Cut to Pico and Fairfax, where Jesse pegs Scoop as the stoner asshole he so surely is. Jesse cracks up, telling Scoop, "No one -- I mean no one -- is going to print that." Scoop knows his tabloid fodder, responding, "Maybe not The New York Times, dude, but definitely the The Post." No, not even the The Post. Besides, they're way too busy these days trying to find bin Laden in a bowl of soup; they've been leaving the "Potato Shaped Like Jesus" and "Elvis Dances Jig at Own Funeral" and "Roswell Show Still Not Fucking Cancelled" far-out stuff to the supermarket shelves. Scoop knows it sounds outrageous, but he saw what he saw. Isabel comes in the kitchen to find the two in merriment, and wants in on the joke. But here's a better one for you, wifey…you ARE the joke! Bwah ha ha ha ha! Scoop explains, "You know your friend Michael? He waved his hand and it was like he had superpowers or something." Jesse puts two beer bottles on his head like antennae and giggles like a schoolgirl and wishes he could be wearing the dress as well, while Scoop continues on that "one thing is for sure: Michael Guerin is definitely not of this world." Okay. He's not that bad of a reporter after all. Can't wait to read that Saint Paul story.
Isabel lays into Michael on the phone for using his secret powers to improve his golf game. And worlds collide. Isabel and Michael from the past and present-day Isabel and Michael have a four-way conversation in Brady Bunch split-screen that includes repeated iterations of the word "what?" Michael is on the same black ancient phone in both of his shots. The canned studio audience wants to applaud raucously, but they've never seen a cordless before and they don't know what to do.
Crashdown. Scoop and Jesse sit across from Michael and Isabel, Scoop peering into a laptop and insisting, "I know what I saw, Michael." Michael asks incredulously, "You saw me wave a magic wand and bend a tree?" Scoop clarifies, "No, it was just your hand." Michael shoots back, "What was really in the flask?" Scotch. Scoop tries to lie about his reasons for being in the bushes in the first place, and Michael busts him on the 420. Hey, Makisupa Policeman. Policeman came to my house. But Scoop insists that "it wasn't like the fat ones you used to roll in the old days." And then back in time, where Samanthabel asks, "The old days," and Jesse defends himself, "You know, it was college. Rah rah sis boom bah!" The rallying cry of straight frat boys everywhere. Back to the future. Michael puts a hand on Scoop's computer, which goes dead. Isabel asks to speak with Jesse outside, where Jesse begins, "Look, I stopped smoking a long time ago." Isabel is all, "Oh, silly, that was just a wasteful plot contrivance being developed since Act I to add reasonable doubt to Scoop's argument so you can escape this scrape unscathed, for a change." Or she says something like that. But she doesn't care about the pot thing, is what. What she does care about is "no more digging into my past." She wants it to stop. Why? "Because the past is something that I'm trying to leave behind. It brings up a lot of issues for me. Max and I were just dumped in the desert when we were little kids by our real parents. I mean, what kind of people do that? What kind of family am I from? I don't want to know the answer. I don't even want to ask the question." When the neon words begging "Emmy clip! Emmy clip! Emmy clip!" stop blinking at the bottom of the screen, Jesse reaches awkwardly in and hugs her tenderly. Awwww.