Fade up on a nondescript exterior establishing shot of a glass-and-chrome building that once held an impromptu Nelly Furtado concert when the building used to be in Las Cruces, I think. The building has now been re-designated "Meta-Chem Corporation, 11:29 PM," as we learn from the subtitle written in MS Word font Alien Bold Sans This Show's Future On This Network Or Any Other Please Oh God Please For The Love Of God In Heaven Already Bold. Inside the building, a wall's worth of video surveillance screens goes unmonitored, and we pass the surveillance equipment to discover Michael "Time To Call Your Agent…Wait, What Agent?" Guerin sound asleep on his security console deep inside Sector 7-G. One of his worker drone pals to whom we were introduced in "Michael, The Guys, And The Great Snapple Caper" -- and about whom we totally forget somewhere in the length of time it takes to fight through that episode's title -- hits Michael on the arm and rouses him from his drooling, bloated slumber. Michael looks up to discover "Lenny" or "Carl" or whoever attempting to balance a pen on his chin. Michael lazily asks, "You woke me up for that?" Lenny/Carl defends himself that he "had it a second ago," and I rewind the tape just to confirm that, in fact, Lenny/Carl never had this so-called "it" at all, ever, even for a second. Michael regards Lenny/Carl and whines, "Man, I miss those other guys. These two-man shifts are boring as hell." Lenny/Carl speaks as the Greek chorus for us all, soothsaying, "Harsh economic times." So everyone else has been fired? Didn't we spend, like, a whole episode a couple of weeks back watching Michael have a "One To Grow On" moment in trying to keep one of "The Guys" employed so he could pay for that surgery little Timmy has been needing? Where did they all go? Can't we make Michael go there with them?
Blah. Michael lifts a crusty Band-Aid off the knuckle of his right hand in close-up, courtesy of Crusty Band-Aid Cam. Lenny/Carl asks the second most important question ("What happened to your hand?"), while the rest of us shriek in frustration and go for the more obvious, "Why didn't you heal the tiny boo-boo yourself and, same question, subsection B, why would you even keep Band-Aids in the house if you could heal a flesh wound or maybe have some interstellar alien brother come over and do it the fuck for you?" But that continuity-laden logic would deny us of the remainder of this scene, so Michael answers the question with a simple, "Put it through a window." And why? "Maria issues." Lenny/Carl considers this for a moment, manfully responding, "No chick is worth it." Says the pen-balancing minimum wage security guard with no chin whose girlfriend prospects include "gathering up the courage to one day buy porn." But Michael agrees, and male bonding is rampant. Lenny/Carl then pauses a moment before awkwardly transitioning, "So, do you wanna hang out this weekend?" when what he clearly means is, "Will you please go somewhere this weekend and buy me some kind of porn." Michael looks all, "No, dork. Roll that ninety-sided Dungeons & Dragons die yourself," but agrees that he wouldn't mind taking advantage of Lenny/Carl when we learn that he has acquired a video game entitled, I think, "Madden 2002." They banter about games and gaming systems I don't understand. I haven't had a home game system since "Dig Dug" on the Commodore 64. Once I dared to use the words "Crash Bandicoot" in the presence of someone I respected, and they thought I was cursing them out in Bulgarian. Sorry, Grandma. It's just a video game, I think. Anyway, they make plans for the weekend to play Commodore 64. Because "Dig Dug" rules the world. And because, well, that confounded Carmen Sandiego could be anywhere.
Time for rounds. Michael and Lenny/Carl rise and exit the office for a thorough search of Sector 7-G. The room they vacated remains empty for exactly three-fourths of one second, before two people in full-on biohazard suits with those big scary Luke-I-am-your-plot-contrivance filtration masks enter the room and turn it upside-down. They open up briefcases of equipment and put everything left in the room -- hats, chips, crusty leftover Band-Aids (ew, Michael) -- into Ziplocs and vials and things. They're so scary, like when the bad men came to take back E.T. I always hated that scene. Thank goodness this one could come along and remind me of it.
Opening credits: Shut up, bitch.
Crash Bandicoot, I don't think we're in Roswell anymore. Stock footage of The First Chartered Bus In The History Of Earth (if you look really closely at that ancient, decrepit thing, you can always make out that its intended destination is "Prussia") accompanies some long-lost voice-over narration compliments of Liz "Time To Call Your Agent…(310) 273-6700" Parker. And here is what it says: "Dear Maria: Spending a week on a cramped, smelly bus was one of the most liberating experiences of my entire life. The further away I got from Roswell, the more I felt like myself again." Like Shiri Appleby? Neglected and unemployed? "Like a normal teenager." Oh. "In fact, when I finally got to the Winnaman Academy, it was like…coming home." Dear Liz's Endless Internal Monologue: Wasn't this the very same hackneyed script convention that almost got your show canned in the first damn place? I can just see the "writers" sitting around the "Writer's" Room, brainstorming for ways to reinvigorate the action, listening in rapt attention as Jason Katims stands up, indicates the glowing light bulb shimmering just above his head, and quietly but intensely intones, "I know the way to save this show! We'll…we'll make the whole thing epistolary! It's the literary wave of the future! Why, look at how many copies of Howards End have been sold!" The "writers" ponder whether there are any staff positions left open on As If as a way to stifle their otherwise incessant sobbing.
Accompanying said narration, Liz carries a suitcase made up of a poly-blend of "every gaudy couch cushion in the greater Boca Raton area" up the stairs of Chilton -- er, "The Winnaman Academy." Catholic school girls in plaid uniforms (oh, hello, absent male audience…welcome back, temporarily) carrying textbooks entitled I Was A Teenage Gilbert Gottfried USA Up All Night Movie Cliché walk past Liz. Liz walks up the stairs of the main building and places the letter she was just writing to Maria in the mailbox. Even though she's mailing a letter describing the feelings she's experiencing right now, which means she was writing the letter before she was to be experiencing those feelings for the first time. She smiles a shiny-haired smile. Awwwww.
Liz is easily able to impress people in positions of authority who sit behind desks and judge silently. Last week it was when she got herself into Harvard by being all, "Me Liz like book," and this week it's when she responds to the initially imposing "Dean Hackett's" speech about "strict rules here at Winnaman" with a deadpan, "That's exactly what I want right now." Liz walks through the hallways of Winnaman, hearing what those rules are: "Curfew is at nine, no boys allowed on campus. There will be no smoking, no drinking, and drugs will not be tolerated." There's one quick, artsy shot of floor upon floor of staircases looming above Liz's head, but the "director" quickly thinks better of it and returns to the safety of pointing one camera directly at Liz and hoping that she can somehow make it from one end of the hallway to the other without tripping or quitting or forgetting she has legs. Such a natural, this one is.
Knock knock knock. The door opens at Room 19, and Liz informs the initially-tough-but-I-think-when-we-bond-we-can-be-just-best-friends-and-I-mean-best-friends-in-the-whole-wide-world (of course, I'm just guessing, here) girl on the other side, "I think this is supposed to be my room." Blondie With Roots tiredly replies, "You think?" And so, Liz thinks. Roots knew that her single "was too good to last." Liz tries to remain upbeat, asking, "Are you Eileen Burroughs?" She tries to confirm that that is, in fact, her name, but I think you and I know for sure that her real name is Chrissy Seaver, lovable afro-ed shark jumper from the waning twelve minutes of Growing Pains. As a refresher to those of you who were born after 1980, here's the recap-within-a-recap to get us all up to speed: Growing Pains, starring Alan Thicke, was the greatest sitcom in the history of television and was in no way at all a shameless and wholesale rip-off of Family Ties. It chronicled the life and times of the Seaver family, a perfect nuclear family unit from Long Island who may have had some problems, but nothing so earth-shattering that it couldn't be nailed down with some words of encouragement from Dad in approximately twenty-three minutes' time. That is, however, until adorable tyke Jeremy Miller, who played adorable tyke Ben Seaver, went through a sudden and willful puberty -- featuring large glasses, a chronic and untamable mullet, and an endemically greasy condition that popped up pretty much anywhere that bodily grease simply wasn't expected to go -- that never quite ended. Panicked, the producers went back to their Adorable Tyke Gene-Splicing Vault and plucked from it runaway vagrant Luke (played by a young Leonardo DiCaprio) and a Ronald-McDonald-haired baby girl named Chrissy. The show got axed, Ben got greasier, Leo dated supermodels and then snack food, Alan Thicke wrote and performed the theme song to Animal Crack-Ups, and Chrissy…well, here she is again. Which is perhaps part of her apprehension upon opening the door to Liz for the first time, what with her staring over Liz's shoulder and registering a look of, "Oh, my God! What the hell is THAT? Oh, wait. It's just a camera. Haven't been in front of one of those in a while."
But Chrissy remains pissy. She steps aside for Liz to enter the room and sighs deeply, "I'm the welcoming committee." Ah, come on, Chrissy. Show me that smile again. Don't waste another minute on your crying. Liz apologetically asks, "They didn't tell you I was coming?" But she drops her inflection at the end of the sentence, because she's very European, suddenly. Chrissy says "they" did not, sitting on her bed and taking out a cigarette and an ashtray because she's a bad girl, people. Not that she's not up for oh-we'll-bond-eventually-and-become-best-best-friends small talk: "So, Elizabeth. What should I call you?" Liz reaches for the power of her shiny, shiny hair to show her the way, and she comes up with the answer: "Beth. I go by Beth." Which is so weird, because when I moved across the country for a change of pace, I told everyone that I go by "Iel." And suddenly people thought I was frickin' awesome. Chrissy asks where Beth is from, and Beth responds, "California. Not too far from Disneyland." Boo, Anaheim. Booooooo. But Chrissy sincerely responds, "Lucky you." Because it totally fits her character to be wowed by cheesy theme parks, as if her parents were finally like, "We're sending you to boarding school. You smoke, you drink, you carouse with boys. You're on a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride we can't get you off of!" Or something. Asking all the right questions, Chrissy continues the inquiry with, "You leave a boyfriend back there?" No. No, she didn't. "Lesbian?" Yeah, this is pretty much exactly how people talk to each other in high school. Liz apologizes, but Chrissy is all, "No, I wasn't asking for a date. I mean, there are plenty of girls who dabble with the whole…thing…" Hmmmm. If I promise not to register comment on one word of this pointless tangent, does it make it possible that it never really happened? There's a pause in the action (called Roswell), and Chrissy asks Beth if the smoking makes her uncomfortable. Liz says it does, which seems like the perfect cue for the dean to knock on the door and for ensuing wacky hijinks to ensue. It's exactly like that scene in Magnolia where John C. Reilly meets Melora Walters for the first time, except that in this sequence there's no Aimee Mann, drama, or viewers. Because she's not at all into the whole "dabblink" thing, Liz rips off her shirt in a frenzy and screams that she's "changing her clothes." Chrissy makes with the air freshener and Liz lights a candle, tearing open the door to find the dean asking, "Do I smell smoke?" Liz claims, "I lit a candle." Which smells as much like cigarette smoke as it does like fabric softener, not to mention the fact that candles don't quite yield the same quantities of billowy, well, smoke as smoking. And also because said dean has never seen this exact kind of ruse before in her tenure as Clichéd Stern Authority Figure With The Heart Of Gold. She has forms for Liz to fill out. She leaves. The scene ends. Chrissy is late for lunch with Tracey Gold.
New! York! City! Um, three years ago. The Stock Footage Film Festival takes us to its destination, where a shot of Times Square reveals such bustling, cutting-edge Gotham-esque images as posters for the Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls and the all-new The Capeman. No, really. Meanwhile, fashionistas rush by sporting pink pashminas and the latest fall fashions from Isaac Mizrahi, and suited Y2K specialists bustle to work via the D train from Broadway-Lafayette. Maria does her own voice-over response to Liz's letter, which got into Maria's hands…how, exactly? Anyway, she rants, "Dear Liz: You know, they say New York can be overwhelming at first. The crowds, the noise, the restless energy. It's supposed to be intimidating for first-timers. Not me. I love it. This is my kind of town. I feel like…I don't know. I feel like I've come home." Because she is home, back on a set in Southern California, with one faux-brownstone building propped up behind a subway stop. Looking even more scraggly and homeless and Jack-Black-esque than before, Maria's icky friend Billy plays a forlorn (but oh-so-pure, artistically speaking) acoustic guitar and stares into the public transportation he's at present too artistically uncompromised to afford. Behind him, a white limousine pulls up, and out from the top pops Maria "Time To Call Your Agent…(323) 866-0900" DeLuca. Who's all pumped up that I work in the same building as Majandra's agent? Lemme hear it? The limo comes to rest in front of that famous Gotham store, that New York institution known the world 'round as "Books." Sigh. I love that store. Billy's all, "Eh?" and Maria tells him not to look so shocked. He expresses some surprise at her wheels, and she recaps the whole of last week's episode with the talent scout and the New York and the demo and blah. Jack Black looks stunned -- it's 1997 and he's Duncan Sheik and she's Cher so he's still cooler for the nine seconds, and it's just not fair! She promises to pass along a copy of his demo, which embarrasses him because you can't live in a demo tape and he's already homeless.
Meta-Chem. Michael and Larry/Carl stroll the halls, teeming with skulking, indiscreet robbers, and Michael proclaims it "secure." Lenny/Carl notes sealed metal doors and exposits, "What do you think they have behind all these secret doors?" Michael, normally the most paranoid one-note alien, plays it cool: "Can't say I think about it. Or give a damn." Lenny/Carl does, positing, "Meta-Chem is too secretive. I'm telling you, they have some crashed alien spaceship in there, and they're using reverse engineering to steal all of their cool technology." Astronauts to the moon? Ha ha ha ha ha! Michael sets him straight that "Meta-Chem is a pharmaceutical company. All they have in those classified labs is some top-secret formula for a new cough syrup." Or…DO THEY? For suddenly we're through the looking glass, people, behind the silver door to discover a vial reading, in no uncertain terms, "Guerin, Michael blood extract." Dude, the grad school intern going for his Ph.D. in "Overly Literal Label-Maker Use" so gets an A+ in plot development for that one. And the blood in the vial looks all white and milky, while the actual wound Michael exhibited earlier in the episode was, well, bloody. We pan back to find a masked, lab-coated man (who I thought was Michael the first nine times I watched it) asking, "Are you sure about this?" And who better to answer that question than…TV legend Morgan Fairchild? No, I'm not kidding. It's really her, decked out in nineteen layers of lip glass and her fourth nose, resolutely telling lab guy to "Do it!" Lab guy pulls back a curtain and inserts "Guerin, Michael blood extract" practically into the camera.
Michael and Lenny/Carl fight about whose hair is greasier. Or video games. I don't know. They are interrupted by a totally inoffensive beeping sound that means a "breach" in the building. On the surveillance cameras appears…nothing, I think? Michael tells Lenny/Carl to call the police while he goes and "secures the area." He walks down to an emergency exit and shines a flashlight, reporting into his Fisher-Price walkie-talkie, "This exit is secure; I don't see anyone." But there's a window broken in the door. Michael notes something on the floor and leans down to pick it up just as all the lights go out. Through his walkie-talkie, Michael hears Lenny/Carl call out, "Stop! Don't move!" And then gunshots. Michael runs back down the hallway to find Lenny/Carl lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Michael runs to comfort him as Lenny/Carl threatens to break into a rousing chorus of "A Little Fall of Rain" before Michael breaks down at Lenny/Carl's glorified demise.
And then, with no advance warning, like a bat out of southern California, Morgan Fairchild was on Roswell, the poor thing. Sitting in a conference room with two incidental heavies and Michael, Morgan wears a vintage Falcon Crest suit she spent years trying to auction on eBay and, failing to do so, had to wear during a cameo guest-starring role on Roswell, a cruel final irony. Morgan asks Michael, "Now what happened immediately after the alarm was tripped?" Michael attempts to let her know that they "found a breach," but his voice is so overcome with emotion that it becomes more detached and monotone than usual. I know. I didn't think that was possible, either. And neither did Morgan. She elicits details of the untimely demise of Lenny/Carl, even though we saw her nine seconds before it happened, so we already know she is in some way completely responsible. Morgan tells Michael that she has enough information and that he's free to go. Michael asks, "Don't the police want to talk to me?" Because if Michael's character has garnered trust in one branch of authority lo these past three years, it's law enforcement. Morgan's agent's number is (310) 273-0744. You need a pen? Yeah, sure. I'll hold.
Knock knock knock. Michael is over at The Den Of Porno, where Kyle "His Agent Will Get In Touch With Him, Thanks" Valenti opens the door and tries to express sympathies that go ignored. Short people and their unrequited kindnesses. Y'know? Michael marches over to a seated Porno and begins bellowing, "I need your advice. I'm trying to catch the guy who killed my friend." Porno was clever enough to avoid watching the last scene, regurgitating, "Aren't the police investigating?" Michael rants that "that's the problem. I'm the only eyewitness and Meta-Chem doesn't want me talking to the cops." Michael tells us for the first time that he caught a glimpse of the killer but that it was dark. Michael's only vague recollection is that the assailant was "kind of tall, I guess." Just at this moment, Kyle walks over and leans over the back of the couch, secure in the fact that this simple description at least gets him off the hook for the crime. Porno asks after video surveillance, but Michael notes that "the power went out and the cameras shut down." Because he has a season-long quota for the total amount of spoken lines he's assured of, I guess, Kyle pipes in with a surprisingly colorless, "Doesn't sound like there's a lot to go on." Porno offers to help. Everyone seems sad and concerned. But no one seems mindful of Liz's absence.
Thank goodness, then, that we the audience are allowed to chaperone her on the aforementioned cramped and smelly bus all the way to the other side of the soundstage -- er, "country." We're back at Chilton, Chrissy Seaver on the hall payphone insisting, "There is no Liz Parker on this floor." I know it, Chrissy. She really is just that unmemorable, isn't she? Liz/Beth walks past her at that point, and Chrissy holds out the phone, all I know-your-name-and-now-also-your-agent-ily, accusing, "Liz, um, there's somebody on the phone for you." Chrissy walks away and Liz takes the phone to find Max "Time To Call Your Agent…(310) 859-4000" Evans on the other end. He misses her. She's over it, kinda. She's sorry that she didn't call. He just wants to know that she's okay. She's really good because Chilton "has a biology club." No lie. That's really the first thing she tells him. Gay, isn't it? He asks if she's had any more symptoms, and she tells him she hasn't. "That's great," he responds. "So maybe you can come home soon." We cut from Max back to Liz to find her holding a Spencer Gifts novelty clown phone handset, which we're not supposed to see until she hangs up the phone. Her hands start burning with that green static electricity, and she hastily ends the call with him and hangs it up, at which point we discover that the phone has become a Spencer Gifts novelty clown phone. All melty and misshapen. And it's smoking, too. Won't the dean be angry? A girl walks toward the phone, and Liz tells her, "The phone doesn't work. It's out of order." Damn. And with all those agents to call.
I must never, ever, ever hear this song again. We're in NYC '97 with Maria, Jack Black, and Dominique in a recording studio that is so much more state-of-the-art than that piddly New Mexico recording studio Lazar just couldn't get over last week, except for the fact that it's the same damn recording studio, people. Dominique notes that the song is "so working," and Billy looks away from the Music Machines all, "I must avert my eyes from the machines that create the drum beat that make the perversion of my friend's pure art." Whatever, people. If it worked for Joe Jackson in "Steppin' Out," it can work for Maria DeLuca. Maria introduces Billy to Dominique (who in crap are all these people?), and she tells him, "Get me a demo. I'd love to hear it." Billy eagerly tells her that if she's really interested, he could play her something right now, and she lets him know in no uncertain terms that "a demo is best" so that he can act all offended and petulant and tell his other homeless guitar-playing friends later, "She wanted a demo. The demo. In this business, it's all about the demo." Which it kind of is, okay? She doesn't know his music. She's never seen this hippie freak before. I know we're supposed to be siding with the disenfranchised artists in this scene, but Dominique has to be a ball-buster cliché because it's so damn difficult to work with the talent. So get her a demo or shut up. Or write better music. Or go away. Oh, how I suffer. Dominique sits down with Maria and tells her, "This song. It's good. It's really good. I'm just not sure it's a home run." She tells her that "the label might want to go with something a little lighter." They want her to sing a song written by someone else. Maria laments, "But I didn't write this." Billy sits in the back like the angel of artistic purity on Maria's shoulder. She regards the lyrics and says, "I don't even think like this." Dominique promises that if Maria doesn't like this song, then they'll go with her song. Oh, my God. I literally have no idea what's going to happen !
Liz arrives back in her room from -- what, biology practice? -- to find Chrissy sitting on her bed reading. Another mark of a bad, bad girl, people. Late-night erudition. Clearly we're heading down a rocky road here. Chrissy wants to clear up a few things: "Is it Liz? Or is it Beth?" Liz sits down on her bed and decides this whole "Be someone else. Be someone cooler" campaign should be reserved exclusively for someone else cooler, and she comes clean. Her name is Liz. She's from Roswell, New Mexico. She has a boyfriend. Oh, really? Oh, really? OH, REALLY? Chrissy seems satisfied with her psycho pathological liar roommate, thawing the ice with, "See? Just be yourself. We'll get along just fine." And then they throw an animated cartoon ball to each other and turn into one animated cartoon vacuum cleaner and then we're back to Muppet Babies because this, again, has been one to grow on.
Meta-Chem after dark. Michael, in uniform, is joined by Porno, in uniform. Oh, dude. He works for Meta-Chem. Michael asks, "You drop my name?" Porno retorts that he didn't have to, seeing as he "used to be the Sheriff and all." Yes, until he was disgraced and fired because the rational world watched him chase aliens all around the desert southwest and thought he'd gone ding-dong crazy. Sheriff or not, there are some positions you just never return to after that. Like the position of "standing near sharp objects without a police escort," for instance. But yay, Porno's got the job, so the investigation can continue unabated. Because Morgan Fairchild orchestrated a murder in that building not two full nights ago, so why not hire a former POLICE SHERIFF with ties to the town, access to privileged information, and an obvious relationship with the only person on Earth interested in employing the help of local law enforcement to investigate a mysterious murder. Think, Morgan. Think! Porno wants to start right in: "Wanna show me that crime scene?" Cut to the broken window behind the yellow police tape. Porno immediately deduces from the breakage of the glass that no one broke into Meta-Chem that night, but that whoever perpetrated the crime wanted to make it look like they did. Cut to Morgan, watching this incredibly obvious scene on a video monitor. She's had eleven more nose jobs since we saw her last. Who's watching the detectives now, Porno?
Den Of Porno. The mysteriously ambiguously non-evil Deputy Hanson sits at Porno's kitchen table, telling him, "I brought that autopsy report you asked for." Porno casually asks if there are any leads in the case, and Hanson says that he can't discuss the case. And then he overshares the whole case: "We found this shoe print at the scene. I've been waiting for a report back from the FBI lab, but they're so backed up it could take weeks." Back at Meta-Chem after dark, Michael responds to the scene, telling Porno, "This footprint is useless. The floor's already been scrubbed." But he forgot all about the secret, secret tool. From seeming nowhere, Porno unearths a blue light that he shines on the floor to display footprint residue matching exactly the one Hanson had given him. They lead to one of the secret silver doors, and Michael lays a hand on the security panel and opens the thing up. One test tube sits in a, um, test-tube holder, and Michael picks it up. Of course, it reads, "Meta-Chem." And on the line "Guerin, Michael." Different vial. He shows it to Porno, who asks, "Do you think they know you're an alien?" Well, Mouthy. They sure know now. Michael shines his flashlight a little farther across the room and they discover a bit of a Michael Guerin time capsule, from empty bottles of Tabasco to the crusty, crusty Band-Aid to Liz's dress in which she was shot. Michael starts to collect the belongings, but they are interrupted by two lab-coated folks. Porno hides for a moment but then springs to action, taking control and asking them, "Can I see your ID badges?" They don't have them. In the future, they should. From another door, Morgan and her two heavies enter, and Morgan smiles at Porno: "Hello, Mr. Valenti." Oh, man. Could you guys imagine if she's been behind this thing, like, the whole time?
Attempting to put out the fire caused by the friction of a) attempting to maintain autonomous artistic integrity while b) starring on Roswell, we find ourselves back in the NYC '97 recording studio. Dominique and her recording studio heavies (on loan from a temporarily sidekick-less Morgan Fairchild, no doubt) watch Maria fight rather tunelessly through lyrics that rhyme "fire" with "desire," leading to the refrain, "Touch me the way that you can/The only way that I want to see." Which really differs so radically from the words "We get along but only half the time/The other half you ain't no friend of mine" how, exactly? But as Billy averts his eyes, Maria once again comes to her conscience, stopping mid-verse and asking, "Can we cut it?" Dominique stands up all mad, admonishing, "Okay, darling? You don't cut. I say cut." Because that up-and-comer Leah Andreone has the slot booked, and if you keep her waiting, she gets pissed, man. Wait, who? Exactly. Maria tells Dominique that "this isn't working for me." She feels weird singing other people's lyrics, that her words are personal to her, that you can only be a true artist if you're singing words that you've written yourself. Just ask anyone who's ever been a lead in a Broadway musical. Or Frank Sinatra. Or Maria when she was a professional Christmas caroler. That's so crazy. I didn't know she wrote "Deck The Halls." Dominique gets all mad: "Are you gonna sing the song or not?" Maria wants to sing her own song. But she's not being given a choice. "Oh, no. You always have a choice. See, you can finish recording this demo. Or you can head back to Roswell." Maria chooses to "head back home to Roswell," walking out with Billy The Great Unwashed and leaving the recording studio flacks in shock. Wait until she gets to tell this story on her own Behind the Music. Except she'll never get to tell that story. Because opportunity is all outside, slamming its head against her door, begging to be let in, and she's treating it like the guy who came to her house to sell encyclopedias.
Does anyone else think that Chrissy Seaver all grown up looks a tiny bit like Elka from The Real World: Boston, or am I the only person on the planet unfortunate enough to have such immediate access to both of those references? So, it's just me, then? Sigh. It's Girls' School After Dark, Liz and Chrissy lying in their separate beds, talking about prison. Liz tells Chrissy, "It's not that different from being here." But I thought she liked it there, and…oh, never mind. I'll stop trying to analyze the bizarro dream logic of where this show has taken us. Chrissy assures her, "This place isn't so bad. You just haven't been to the Rat." To the wha? "It's a place we go to get away. I'll take you there tomorrow." Liz suggests that they go there now. Chrissy balks; it's way past curfew and I see the jinks of all highness developing! And so they're dressed and on the run, as the chase music from the soundtrack of Beverly Hills Cop accompanies their running through the building. But wait! It's Dean Clueless! Has she caught them? No! No, she hasn't! Stupid Dean. I'm rooting for all the bad guys this week. For they have spent far fewer hours poisoning my TV and co-opting my Saturdays. Like the giggly non-lesbians they are, Chrissy and Beth run up a final flight of steps and into…another room that looks a bit like their room. But this one's in the attic. No wonder Chrissy was able to navigate them there so elegantly, after her many years of practice walking from the main house up to Mike Seaver's makeshift apartment he created above the garage beginning with lackluster Season Five. You just knew as soon as they started doing the theme song a cappella that the show was running out of new avenues for creative exploration. Liz can't fight her way through the line, "Why do they call this place the Rat? Are there rats here?" Chrissy clarifies, "No, it's short for Ratskellar. Like, a bar." Chrissy throws down a panel in the wall and shows Liz several bottles hidden behind it. Chrissy then unearths a flask and drinks from it first. Smooooooth.
Max, Michael, and Isabel "Time To Call Your Agent…It's The Same Number As Maria's" Evans hide out in The House The Government Subsidy Built, worrying about being aliens. Michael frets that Porno still hasn't shown up, and Isabel coughs up her one line about needing to go "back in there." Knock knock knock. It's only Kyle, and he asks where his dad has gone to. Max counsels that they need to "go in now," and Isabel breaks it to Kyle that they think his dad is in trouble. Are they about to be found out? What a strikingly innovative plot they've come up with this week.
Chrissy and Liz, underage Catholic school girls, lean against a dirty mattress in an attic with a flask of liquor between them. If they're not exceedingly careful, a Calvin Klein photo shoot might accidentally flare up right there where they sit. Chrissy asks after Max, who Liz responds is "such a big part of my life, you don't even understand." Chrissy asks if Liz would like to talk about it, and Liz volunteers only that "it's complicated." But she tries anyway: "He was with this other girl." Chrissy tries to coin some street language, asking, "He stepped out?" Shut up, white girl. Liz keeps right on going, explaining, "She got pregnant." Chrissy can't believe that she would have stayed with him, claiming, "Once a cheater, always a cheater." Which, come on. It's true. But to Liz it's not that simple. "There's all this stuff that you don't know about." Chrissy says that everything else is just rationalization for the fact that boys always treat girls like crap. Chrissy throws open the window to the Rat and inexplicably yells, "I am not afraid! Screw guys who cheat!" Liz cries along in agreement, "I! Am fine! On my own!"
Max wears a black turtleneck and thinks about asking people if they want to touch his monkey. Trust me, Max. They so don't. Kyle tells Max he has to stay outside while they go in to save Porno, offering him the directive to call Hanson if they're not back by dawn. Cut to a shot of Isabel sneaking out of the house, and a shot of Jesse running to the window to watch her leave that I totally, totally missed the first time I watched this episode. This episode just got docked a half a grade. Cut to inside Meta-Chem, where Max walks in on a tied-up Porno. Max radios to Michael that they've got Porno, but on their way out of the building, gunshots rain from nowhere again and Porno goes down. Max, giving it away like it's Christmas candy, heals Porno in a flash. They look a lot like they want to, er, dabble, but only for a moment. For just as they threaten to consummate their healing, Morgan Fairchild steps in and notes, "So you're the healer. You have no idea how long we've been looking for you." Men with guns surround them. Because we've just learned how threatening guns are to Max.
Isabel busts into Sector 7-G and yells, "Where are they?" As they run into the hallway, Morgan accompanies Max behind a silver door. Max asks, "What do you want from us?" Morgan clarifies, "Not 'us.' Just you. The healer." Michael and Isabel, meanwhile, skulk into the room that Michael had been in the night before (wait, is it the same room? Is this plot actually convoluted, or do I just not care?) and pull back the curtain on the bed. Empty. Wha?
Liz sits in bed reading and wearing headphones. She hears a knock on the door and asks, "Eileen?" Who? Oh. Right. She wonders if her dunderhead roommate has locked herself out again, opening the door to find…Maria! Guh? There is a lot of very confusing information going on here. Maria smells alcohol and asks, "So you're drinking now?" I guess she's drinking all the time then, even when she's studying and the like. Liz tells her that there's a place she's "just got" to show Maria, and we're back at the Rat, Liz speeching, "It's the first time in years I've felt like a normal teenager." Maria asserts that she too is happy to be away from the "alien chaos." Liz offers to have Maria stay there. School? Money? Parents? Anyone? Liz? You're a wino, and you can't take care of Maria until you learn to take care of yourself.
Alien chaos. Morgan instructs a heavy to "bring him in." Said heavy directs a wheelchair -- occupied by an exceedingly fossilized fossil wearing an oxygen mask -- into the room. Morgan points at the wheelchair and stares down Max, putting forth the directive, "Heal him." Who is he? "My husband. Clayton Wheeler. He owns all this." How odd that they should be married and yet his last name is not also Fairchild. Liberated women nowadays. Porno steps forward in his shackles and accuses her thusly: "And you're just a few days from inheriting his millions?" Morgan tells him that she doesn't care about all that. She asks him if she's ever been married, and Porno tells her, "Once. It didn't stick." She tells him that she's been married for twenty-two years, and that after a while "motives change." I have absolutely no idea what's going on right now. People, the impossible has happened. Roswell has finally outwitted the recapper. This show has dumbed me down to the intelligence level of a smooth, shiny rock. Max asks Morgan what's wrong with him, and she lets us know: "He's old. Unfortunately, all the money in the world can't stop the aging process." They'd tried everything, until they heard about a girl in Roswell who was magically healed after being shot. And about some kids in Phoenix who were molested back to health a couple of Christmases ago. They thought Michael was the so-called "healer," but after Lenny/Carl didn't make the cut, it was back to the drawing board for Morgan and, um, Captain Morgan. Morgan again insists, "Heal him." But Max responds that it doesn't work like that, that he can't "save someone from a natural death." Yay, continuity! Who remembers that one? Who can guess? Oh, all right, I'll tell you. It was "Leaving Normal." Season One, Episode Four. Airdate October 27, 1999. See? I'm not retarded. I can remember things that happened two years ago! But, um, only if they're related to Roswell, I guess. Someone please remove me from this hell.
Except that it does work like that, apparently. The heavies put guns to Max's and Porno's neck, causing Max not to throw at his hand and toss everyone into corners, creating enough of a distraction for him to turn tail and run his ass off. No lime green jelly walls for him this time, nuh-uh. That's why that shot is no longer in the opening credits. Or perhaps it is. I have not watched them in close to a year, after all. Instead, he folds. He walks up to the old man and lays a hand on him. Lights and scary music. Max grows older than his already sixty-odd years. Porno yells for Max to stop, so a heavy takes a gun to the back of his neck and Porno goes down. Max ages a Dorian Gray age in no time, takes to the floor, becomes enveloped in a circle of light and fire, and dies. Porno crawls through the CGI fire yelling his name, but just as Porno gets close to him, Max poofs away in a cloud of dust -- just as we have wished would happen to him so many times -- and dies. Meanwhile, somewhere on the Vermont soundstage, Liz awakens in the Rat in a tizzy. Maria asks, "What happened?" Liz already knows: "Max is dead." That, and a week off. These truly are the salad days. Enjoy women's figure skating, folks. I'm, like, totally sure Max would have greatly enjoyed it.