Who Died And Made You King

Previously on Roswell: Seriously, y'all, I don't remember any of this shit. Even though the "previously" section is 377 minutes long this week. Seriously, we get it. We're reminded. No need to play the entirety of all human history just because it happens previously to the start of the episode. Max jumps out a window. Max dies. Max gets old. Liz cries. Max looks in a mirror. Farrah Fawcett overacts. Man climbs from primordial ooze. The Crusades are fought. God invents jam. And we're all caught up. Thanks. It all happened previously.

Jesse "Memories of a Gay, Sure" Ramirez all but acts his way out of his festive lavender collar as he tries to look pensive. He stares with longing. Cut to a shot of another man, staring longingly back. All is sufficiently explained. The end. Cut back to Jesse, staring and waiting. Waiting and staring. The producers consider some more previouslys. Wooly mammoth roams the earth. Depeche Mode records their first album. God invents another flavor of jam. Waiting and staring and waiting and waiting and waiting. Yep, this is the same show all right. Finally, after a bit more waiting and not a little staring, the "writers" show up and decide to pick up an old drifting scrap of a Mad Libs that brushed against the wall of the "Writer's" Room, cross out "Bill's Trip to the Circus" across the top, and replace it with "Roswell 315: Who Died and Made You King." And from that high-class pedigree comes our first scripted line from Jesse: "They're looking at me differently." The man to whom Jesse speaks -- a funhouse-mirror doppelganger of Mr. Evans, if anyone remembers who that is -- volleys back, "That's understandable. They're curious to see how you'll react to this new information." Come to think of it, that's a pretty lame Mad Lib. If I were writing this episode, that line would have been, "That's understandable. They're curious to see how you'll react to this new whoopee cushion." But alas, no job offer has as yet been tendered. I guess Jesse is in therapy. When in doubt, therapy. Jesse frets, "I don't think they trust me. I think they think I'm a threat." Think think I threat I think threat threat. Elegant prose, indeed. Melfi lobs back from the safety of his armchair, "Do you think they're worried that you'll tell the truth about them?" Think you they they think you worry? Jesse's not quite sure what to make of the question either, so he hazards a response of any kind, "If they found out that I was talking to you..." Melfi flaunts his TV MD and reassures Jesse that "you can talk freely, as long as you don't tell me anyone's in trouble." So Jesse cops to being "scared," and Melfi doesn't miss a beat before responding, "Your anxiety is completely normal." Thanks again, Dr. Agreesalot. Your shameless pandering is highly constructive. Jesse continues on that "Isabel is a good person." Except that she's not. A person. "I love her. It's just them. She suffered protecting their secrets." Which are her secrets as well, considering her previously established non-person status. The "writers" never should have written in "person" when the Mad Lib asked for a noun. Here's one that would have been better: "Isabel is a good fart." Because someone always chooses "fart."

Dr. LiedTo goes full-tilt Melfi when we find the story he's been fed: "You told me they were in the mob." Dude. That transition was so smooth it almost sliced my head off. But Melfi victimizes by the book, asserting, "You're suffering too, Jesse." Jesse nods. Because he is suffering, too. Melfi wants to fix that suffering and also Jesse's marriage as well. Jesse nods. See that? Being the victim isn't so hard after all.

Jesse leaves the un-crazy-making offices of Weiss, Ohanneson, and D'Arcy (actually, he leaves the office door to those, which leads me to the conclusion that the only reason we got such a lingering shot of those nameplates is because they're the names of people who work for the show or some such look-I'm-a-grip- and-I-got-my- name-on-the- nameplate kind of way) and thinks, "Lavender is manly." He disappears down a hallway and escapes being discovered partaking in this heathen scourge known as "mental health." But after just a moment, Max "On A Steel Horse I Ride And I'm Wanted -- WANTED -- Dead Or Alive" Evans and Michael "Livin' On A Prayer...And Two Dozen Glazed Chocolate Donuts" Guerin appear around a corner, skulking skulkily. Max quietly counsels an already-boiling-over Michael, "If he's in therapy, he's obviously upset." Michael plunges us back into the previouslys with a helpful reminder, "I'm not going to sit back and wait for something to happen...like you always do." Max promises to "take care of it," and then suddenly develops a moral compass that didn't stop him from entering that building in the first place nine seconds ago. He storms off. Michael lingers behind, and after just a moment, an area just above his heart begins flickering. Michael, any excuse to take his shirt off and dance to Patrick Swayze in that hilarious Saturday Night Live sketch now some years hence, unbuttons the top few buttons on his shirt and looks more closely at the skin. Glowing on the flesh in a whitey-purply-bluish shade is the five-dotted triangle of their home solar system. What? This is not explained. I think we require a bit more in the way of previouslys.

Opening credits: shut up, bitch.

Crashdown Caf Of Quickly Disassembling Set. In the back room where no one actually seems to make the food anymore, Max follows Liz "New England Proved Too Much For The Girl" Parker around like a mangy puppy dog with really big ears asking, "So, what are you doing tonight?" Liz noncommittally responds, "Working, studying, lights out by eleven." "Lights out," huh? Ninety months of hiatus, and she still can't get those boarding school/summer camp phrases out of her voice. With all that working and studying, when on earth will it ever be time for free swim before lights out?

In a subtle show of we've-reached-a- tenuous-truce-because- we-ran-out-of-things- to-make-them-fight-about, Geoff "Slackjaw" Parker stumbles through the room just then, offering a measured, "Hey, Max." He seems far more excited to see Max than Liz is. Liz damage controls that she'll be "right up," and offers to Max that Slackjaw has been playing the role of "total saint" since her return from Chilton, even though the school "wouldn't give him back his deposit." Note that plot point. It foretells financial ruin. And, for some reason, it's mentioned eleven more times, dropped unsubtly from the sky in the form of giant cloth sacks of cash with dollar signs across them, much like those the little guy in Pitfall would collect after swinging on a vine. Y'know, like that. Max doesn't care either. He changes the subject back to him, because if not him, who? "So, it seems like you're pretty busy tonight." He thought it might be fun if they went out. But Liz vetoes, recognizing, "Things can't go back to the way they were." You mean, "On the television schedule?" No. No, they sure can't. He asks if they can "hang out like friends," and she ignores his reading from the text of Pick-Up Lines And Social Etiquette For The Seventh Grade Dance in lieu of mumbling something about her "orders backing up." Ew. That happens to me when I go a while without dating also, Liz.

Ramirez House Of Lies. In the bathroom (of Lies), Isabel "Beard" Evans stands in front of the mirror while a radio behind her inexplicably broadcasts a commercial for the Roswell Desert Spa. The commercial says something about a haircut, and Isabel waves a hand in front of her plain, straight hair and turns it into a new 'do that is glamorously Liz Taylor-esque (present day). The commercial tells us that the Roswell Desert Spa also specializes in manicures. Isabel waves a hand over the other and gives her stumpy nails the red shine of Color #634: Ketchup Before Being Turned To Mustard. Because we've seen this all before, see. She smiles, a bit self-satisfied, before noticing that Jesse has been staring at her from the hallway. She changes everything back. Straight hair, no polish. Who the hell goes to a spa for a haircut anyway? Wrap me in seaweed, smear me with mud, and leave me alone, or don't even bother sending the brochure. The radio instinctively knows this moment is serious and mystifyingly turns itself off. Morose music begins to play. Isabel notes that Jesse is "home late." He's got his excuse at the ready: "I was at the gym." Yeah. There's a word for guys who stay at the gym that late, lingering around the locker room and what have you. And I would tell you what that word is. But then you'll all want to go to my gym.

Jesse lies in bed, hankering for a dream sequence. And wait! Here's one now! Isabel kisses him on the cheek and whispers a "good night," and the big red lipstick kiss morphs into Color #974: Bad CGI. It becomes a weird, gray, veiny cocoon thing that envelops his body and leaves him screaming for help. Help! My wife's veiny pod is trying to suffocate me! Help! Too true, brother. He wakes with a start. Isabel is concerned that he had a bad dream, but even more so when he gets dressed and tells her, "The McAdams Case is really weighing on me. And I figure, if I can't sleep, I'll get some work done." To the office with him. She asks him if he knows when he'll be home, and he says he does not. He tells her to go back to bed. He's sweating so much I can see her planet in his reflection. Perhaps he needs a facial. I know just the spa.

Jesse's car. Driving, driving, driving. And then, the car breaking down. How odd. Jesse mutters two detached "damn it"s that both mean "I don't care," and we cut to him barking "yes" and "no" and "my darn car quit on me, see" into a cell phone. But just then, Max appears and Jesse gets all freaked out, asking, "What are you doing here? It's two in the morning!" Max flatlines, "When I can't sleep, I walk." Which is so odd, because when I can't sleep, I watch my screener of The Shipping News. Max and I are just like each other. Max offers to fix the car, reaching for the hood, but Jesse offers that "there's a tow truck coming," finally admitting, "I don't want any part of that alien crap, okay?" Max assures him, "I've taken auto shop, Jesse." No he hasn't. He had an elective and he chose Home Ec. It's fine. Max offers, "I know that all of this probably doesn't seem real right now, but if you need someone to talk to..." Jesse says he's all set, but Max prods on, "A doctor isn't going to help you deal with this. Trust me, Jesse. I've been in therapy before." Why do these people hate therapy so much? Jesse tells Max to stop spying, and Max tells Jesse that if anyone finds out, they're all in trouble again and they all risk exposure again and they will all surely die a cruel, horrific, alien-probe-type death again. He slinks back into the shadows. And then the tow truck guy finally arrives. And this is when things really start getting hot. I think I own this movie somewhere, actually. In my private collection.

More naked Michael. We're in The House That Government Subsidy Built, Michael entering with a wooden (those sake sets are such a cool, practical gift) box and a pursed-lip look of pursed-lip concentration. The box contains several different orbs of several different shapes and sizes, other assorted alien paraphernalia, and the Zapf Dingbats journal. Michael notes the suddenly significant five triangulated planets on the front cover, notes the flashing lights on his chest, and speaks aloud in an almost Shakespearean-aside kind of way: "I knew it. I'm in charge." Thank you, Iago. And now, a sennet of trumpets, followed by the entrance of a stately king of some kind.

And now, having failed at all else, yelling. Isabel, big bouffant on, walks into the living room to find Jesse coaxing on some clothes over his sweaty wifebeater (it's gay porn, people. I'm recapping gay porn. Why, then, do I find it so unpleasant?). So convinced of her marital bliss is Isabel that she walks in to the room with the wifely, "Jesse, would you like me to make you s--" Soup? Spam? Sigmund Freud papier-mach dolls? Perhaps we shall never know. But Jesse doesn't want to make anything but tracks (cheesy segue alert!), apologizing, "I'm sorry, Isabel. I can't stay here and pretend like everything is normal when it's not." But she's got a retort at the ready, and she's not afraid to use it: "But normal is sneaking out of our house while I'm still sleeping?" It is in his culture. The culture of gay porn. Perhaps she should have reconsidered phrasing it in the form of a question. She begs him to talk to her.

And then a knock on the door kills any momentum the scene might have been building, and the action goes from potatoes to wooden box to knocking of door in nine thousand seconds flat. Surely the human mind cannot move at such a pace! Isabel enters, ranting on the last line of dialogue spoken, "Please stop spying on Jesse." God, gay porn is so boring in the third person, ain't it? Instead of the proper reply of, "Oh, big boy likes it when I look" that would precede the inevitable, Max goes with the drabber, "He's seeing a therapist. I don't have to tell you how dangerous that is." Isabel informs Max about Jesse's permanent relocation to the feted Travel Inn, and then sits on the couch and mournfully rues (well, she does), "Everyone said this would happen. I'm such an idiot to think that I could make it work. That I could be happy." Max comforts her that Jesse was at least trying to get help, which he translates to mean, "That means he thinks there's something worth saving." Well then, it's a good thing her ass-y brother put a stop to that. Jerk. Isabel can't talk about her own pathetic life anymore, so she turns the topic to Max's pathetic life, asking, "How's Liz?" He deadpans, "Cautious." Dude, that's so not a personality description. She's cautious? Like, she's making sure her eggs are fully cooked and she's not crossing against any lights and she's waiting an hour after she eats before she goes swimming? That kind of thing? Well, good to know she's temperate.

It's serve and volley time in therapy again. Question, answer, question, answer, as the eyes of the viewer move slowly back and forth across the court. They're following me. Who is? My brother-in-law. To what extent? He knows I'm coming here. Are you in danger? Declarative answer. Probing question. Declarative answer. Probing question. Declarative answer. Guh. Shake it up, people. How the eyes tire. Melfi tells Jesse, "You're not helpless," and Jesse finally admits, "I want out." Melfi assures him with the staunch, machismo-drenched conviction of his faggy Mr. Rogers sweater, "Then we're gonna figure out a way to get that." Jesse thanks him before noticing the time and apologizing, "I have to get back to the office." Which marks the first time in both real or televised history that the patient, instead of the doctor, terminates the therapy session. People, it just does not happen.

Jesse leaves and Melfi sits at his desk, answering a suddenly ringing phone. It's his "honey," who he tells he'll be "home in twenty minutes." Which he still will be, I'm sure, but not before he hangs up and has a hand come up behind him and take his head down on the desk. Holy bald spot, Dr. Melfi. Anyway, it's Michael, and as Michael holds him down, he stage-whispers (so Shakespearean, indeed!), "What kind of man listens to another person's secrets for a living?" Those with, um, professional degrees? From whence comes the sudden, healthy dislike for the mental health industry? Is this Mumford? Everyone calm down. Iago counsels Melfi to "drop Jesse Ramirez" and then he disappears back into the night. Melfi, shaken, picks up the phone again and dials the police, demanding all sheepishly, "I need the police. No, uh, make that the FBI." So then, good thing he called the police.