It's Puffy In Repose at The House That Government Subsidy Built, where we join Michael "Michael Motorcycle" Guerin lost in thought (that thought being "I should have also ordered the cheesy bread") and staring blankly at The Black Cone Of Ambiguous Black Cone-ness. Into the room walks "Baby Got" Max Evans, who puts on his Marty McFly life vest coat ("Hey, kid. You jump ship?") and commences adventures in aimless antagonism: "Michael, you've been staring at that thing for hours." Michael, shoveling sunflower seeds off of the not-often-washed-I'm-sure kitchen counter and into his mouth like Cletus The Slack-Jawed Alien, shoots back, "It's part of a crashed alien ship, Maxwell." Max, a card-carrying member of the radical anti-staring-at-black-cones-for-hours party, continues his anti-cone launch with the non-plot non-developing, "I don't think it makes it any more interesting to watch." More interesting to watch than…what? At least he's not watching the UPN. Actually, he's in New Mexico and this network is run out of a garage, so maybe that cone is their local affiliate. If so, Michael had better exercise care. They say the cone adds ten pounds. Michael wants to know why Max won't take "this whole thing" more seriously, and Max attempts to draw a fine line between taking something seriously and obsessing. But Michael isn't interested in such semantics when ConeTV is putting out such pearls, and he spits back a theory for Max's approval: "Maybe there are enemy aliens on that ship." If there were, Max posits, they all probably died in the crash. But again Michael has a zinger at the ready, noting, "We didn't die in our crash." Oh, the things they teach on Cone these days. Michael asks what he should do with the cone, and Max facetiously retorts, "Keep watching. Make sure it doesn't hatch and release an army of enemy aliens." Michael replies that he liked Max better when he was "brooding and paranoid." Hey! Who said you could talk to your king like that? Where did you learn that kind of language and backtalk? Did you learn that from watching Cone?
Over at Ambiguous Science Locale, men in white suits and those giant biohazard hoods circle around what appears to a big mound of crystals. One man in giant black glasses that are about to become artistically significant notes, "I don't know how this thing flew." Drills and saws and other scientific-when-science-means-power-tools poke at the crystal ship, Black Glasses cautioning people to "be careful." He approaches a silvery nub on the end of the ship and puts a hand on it. Pause. Pause. Pause. Zzzzzzz. Whir. Wait! Something's happening. After a crashing sound that inspires Black Glasses to ask, "What the hell was that?" ("Well, sir, it seemed to be some kind of a crashing sound of some sort."), the alien Zapf Dingbats symbol appears on a panel of the ship, and the panel then slides open. Behind it is a blue glow, and inside of a tiny room is what appears to be a baby, wrapped in what appears to be ethereal interstellar tin foil of some kind. Good cooking tip to keep them wrapped in foil. That way they plump when you cook 'em. The baby, who from what I've heard has been seen on numerous television series, including Angel or Smackdown or My Guide To Becoming A Rock Star or some such thing, stares around as if to say, "I'm a baby. And I'm a star." He needs dark sunglasses and a catchphrase, STAT. He then watches patiently as may-fuckin'-hem suddenly breaks out in the lab, when the scientists experience a slo-mo "Aaaaaaargh!" and then they're all lying on the ground, dead. Blood everywhere. Is it Star Baby that's doing it? A shot of the black glasses, one lens smashed, lying upside-down on the floor, underscores the tragedy of numerous dead geeks. Even though I kind of have those glasses. A shadow moves in front of Star Baby, and whisks it out of its nestled little spot on the ship. I saw a show just like this last week on Cone. Oh, wait. I'm actually thinking of this show.
Opening credits: Hey, Ringo? I thought I told that bitch to chill!
Candles. Moody lighting. Er, excess panning. I don't like where this scene is going at all. And where it's going is over to Liz's bed, which contains an intertwined Max and Liz "Bot To Get You Into My Life" Parker, lip-smacking the lip mics to ten. Augh. Nasty nasty nasty. Nasty boys don't mean a thing. Just make it stop. And the worst part is that the whole ghastly spectacle is scored by a song I completely adore called "Destiny," by a band I used to think was kind of cool, Zero 7. I had it on really good authority from people whose musical sensibilities I trusted until recently that, and I quote, "Listening to Zero 7 makes you cool." Now Roswell listens to Zero 7. Let "cool" try and shake off the stink of that. But before I renounce the band forever, let me share with you the lyrics to the chorus of this song, which are extremely cool and make me not have to think about Max's boner for at least another few seconds:
When I'm weak I draw strength from you And when you're lost I know how to change your mood
And when I'm down you breathe life over me
Even though we're miles apart we are each other's destiny.
Also recommended are "I Have Seen" and "In The Waiting Line," the latter of which is quite possibly the coolest song ever written about thinking waiting in line is stupid and confusing. Download it tonight. Go home happy. Thanks for your patience. I now no longer like Zero 7.
Right. Anyway. Boners. Finally disengaging herself from his mouth long enough for me to forget the deafening roar of Max's pearly yellows clacking against Liz's Aluminum Teeth Module Replica 5200s, Liz starts in, "It's really nice to be able to get close to you again. Y'know, without…" Max finishes it off (ew, not like that), "Without setting something on fire?" Blah blah blah something about flaming. Moving on. Max hooks an arm around her back and rolls right on top of her, and I find it disturbing beyond words that the credits choose this exact moment to display the name of a guest star containing the word "Woody." Augh again! Woody. At least he got the part over "Big Throbbing Cock Jones," though. I guess his look was just more right for the part. More of same. Max asks if "this is safe," and Liz assures Max that Slackjaw is "downstairs, working the grill." Now everything sounds like sex. Max's cell phone rings, and Liz reaches into the pocket of his jeans and finds it, sans even a simple "or are you just happy to see me" line of any kind. How restrained of the "writers" to sidestep it. Liz's room phone begins to ring then, and they let the machine pick it up. The outgoing message is Liz's voice informing the caller, "You got the Parkers, but we're not here. Leave a message." If that's their house answering machine, why is it based in Liz's room? And why did it only ring once? Sorry. I know this tangent is a bit boring and unnecessary, but I just can't look at what's going on right now. This is my version of thinking about baseball or the Queen or whatever. So I don't throw up. Anyway, it's Bangs on the machine. She's "trying to find Max. It's an emergency." Liz finally rolls off of Max and gets the phone, handing it off to him. He asks Bangs what the damn problem is, and she's no longer audible to us through the phone, so Max has to do that thing like, "What's that? You say that you want me to come over for a family dinner? You say it has to be tonight? Well, all right then. I will see you tonight for a family dinner at your house." In ten minutes. Fastest family dinner scheduling ever. Sadly, Max will have to take some time out from, uh, chomping Liz's metal. But he needs tungsten! Tungsten to liiiive!
Jesse "Jokin', Smokin', Midnight Token" Ramirez sits in the kitchen nook inside his mysteriously furniture-free apartment, eating the same crappy TV dinner that Max turned into such a fetching TV dinner two weeks ago. He looks mad; tater tots just inspire that kind of chemical reaction in some people, I guess. Isabel rants around the kitchen on the phone, informing her mother, "I don't want to argue about it. Is it really that big of a deal?" More ruzzah ruzzah and maybe even a few "peas and carrots peas and carrots peas and carrots rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb" later, Isabel is relenting and letting Bangs know, "Fine. We'll come over." She gets off the phone and tells a recalcitrant Jesse that they're going to her parents' house in ten minutes for dinner. Jesse notes the steaming giblets and puzzles out the logic problem, figuring, "I'm already eating." Isabel tells him to stop eating. Jesse levels that he doesn't want to see her parents, as he is "sick and tired of pretending." He stands up from the nook table, hunched over and screaming, while Isabel argues that she didn't want for him to have to deal with this and that's why she didn't want to tell him and blah. He practically pokes her in the ribs with his accusatory, "But you did, Isabel! You did!" And this will only become an archetypal UPN couples argument when she pokes him back and is all, "You think I did? You think I did? Oh, no you di-in't. Oh, NO you di-in't." For the love of AFTRA, everyone calm down. The two continue their arbitrary overlapping yelling, and the camera pulls back to show them framed in the arc of the kitchen nook from far across the room. Is this that middle dialogue section from the "Voices Carry" video? I guess we'll know when Jesse stamps his foot down and simmers out something about "this little hobby of yours."
William Sadler directed this episode. And he wanted you to know.
A passel of Military Guys takes pictures at the crime scene and listens to an audio recording of things breaking and one woman screaming. A "sir" asks, "So we lost all sixteen?" Another uniformed man, who I believe was in last week's episode, confirms that they have, but conveniently shows the first military man that "an automated security camera snapped this as it was leaving the building." Other man demands, "I want Roswell locked down and searched until this thing is found and destroyed. Do you understand me?" Shutting down Roswell until it's destroyed? He wouldn't be the first one to suggest it. Maybe this whole episode is an allegory for the show's cancellation, where the military men are the greedy network execs and the trapped aliens are the poor disenfranchised viewers. Fuck. I have got to stop reading Animal Farm right before I go to bed. I hear that the pigs represent indentured migrant sweatshop workers and that everybody else is supposed to be the French. Or something.
Den Of Porno under the stars. Jim "Porno" Valenti and Kyle "What's Vishnu, Pussycat?" Valenti enter through the front door, each carrying one brimming shopping bag, midway through a conversation that finds Kyle blah-blah-ing, "…the way home tonight," and Porno responding, "Yeah, but…" They're talking about how they're the only actors on this show who are ever going to work again. I just know it somehow. But hark! Their house is destroyed. Everything's broken, overturned, or stolen, and there appears to be blood smeared on the wall. Porno reaches into what must be some kind of gun tote on the wall and pulls out a gun. He rounds a corner just as the door to Kyle's room slams shut. Pause. Pause. Pause. Porno opens the bedroom door to a flash of light, and then there's a giant hole in the wall of the house and no one to account for it. Great. Structural damage. Why not just use a five-second mindwarp and walk out the front freaking door, if you're on the run and trying to avoid arousing any suspicion? Good God. No wonder none of these idiots can't fly to earth without crashing the damn thing.
The enterprising production assistant that found a copy of Now That's What I Call Sound Effects on eBay hits play on "Helicopters Hovering." The track is the exact length of the remainder of this episode. A shot of a helicopter against a pitch-black night sky cuts to Monopoly Nazi looking through his window, assumedly at a helicopter. It's broad daylight. He's looking at helicopters in the future, I guess. Helicopters hover above Fortress Evans, but no national security is strong enough to bar the stilted dialogue that creeps in despite their best efforts to contain it. Here's some now. Max waits until everyone in the room has hit his or her masking-taped marks before inauthentically launching into The Reason We're Here: "So, Mom. What's for dinner." Bangs informs the living room assemblage of Jesse, Isabel, and Max that she's not cooking tonight, and also that it's not delivery, it's not DiGiorno, it's not diddly frapping anything. She wants to talk. Jesse's TV dinner, all wasted for nothing. Monopoly Nazi leans forward and picks the remote up off the table, hitting play to show Isabel's centrifugal display from last week. Bangs turns off the tape. Then she appears to turn it off again. Old people never know how to program the VCR. Isabel pauses a moment and then rises in a huff, all incredulous that her parents were spying on her. They argue that she left them with no choice, and Monopoly Nazi asks, "Can you please just tell us what this means? Who are you?" Max stands up and valiantly offers, "We're your kids," before hearing a noise in the kitchen and getting the hell out of the living room before he has to explain more than just a few spinning items in a bedroom. Like his current hairstyle, for instance, and why muttonchops can't be molecularly manipulated.
Kitchen. Max walks in alone and hears the whispered word, "Max." In walks a haggard-looking Tess "Mother Non-Earth" Harding, holding Star Baby in swaddling clothes and asking Max, "Hold him." She hands the kid over and collapses. No one rushes to help. The rest of the family runs in then and sees Max holding the baby. Who is that? Max has the answer at the ready: "It's my son." Poor Emilie DeRavin. Welcome back, Ms. Couldn't Even Get A Neutrogena Commercial So Here She Is Again.
I hate car commercials on general principle, but…would four dudes in a car ever ever EVER sing along in unison to a Barenaked Ladies song? Ever? Oh, wait. Maybe this commercial is, like, set in Canada or something.
A bandaged Tess lies asleep on Max's bed. She's decked out pretty much exclusively in brown, including an unbuttoned checkered shirt over a white tank top, meaning that when she upped and left her planet she was either just finishing milking the space cows or was on her way home from a Dar Williams concert. Now, she's sleeping. Max is watching. And then she's up in a start, asking, "Zan? Where's Zan?" Oh, sweetie. You named him Zan? Well, then I can tell you where he is -- getting his alien ass pre-kicked on an elementary school playground somewhere. Because his name is Zan, and so it might as well be "Kill Me At Dodgeball" or "My Lunch Money Is In My Left Pocket." Poor kid. Tess starts to rise, but Max slams the door to the room shut, leaving Tess rather trapped inside. She's sure he has a lot to say, and we have a lot of quickie plot refusal and rationalization to take care of, so let's get right on that. Max asks how she can be back on Earth with her baby, seeing as you, me, and the guy at the corner deli all know that Tess left in the first place because her baby couldn't survive in Earth's atmosphere. Yeah, but forget about all that, says Tess: "It was a mindwarp. Something I needed you to believe. I had to do whatever it took to get you to activate the granilith." Cheesy sci-fi buzzwords from a much simpler time. Max holds up a hand and warns, "I should kill you right now." But Tess has an obviously disprovable lie at the ready, although we're not allowed to know it's a lie for at least a few more minutes: "If you kill me, you kill Zan. My son. Our son. We're linked, Max. Physically." Max doesn't believe her, and she gives him the physical challenge to try it out and see how high the body count goes. He doesn't take the bait. Tess's buttondown hangs suggestively off of one shoulder, because on her planet she's an extra in a Samantha Fox video. Because Samantha Fox is still really big overseas. But not Earthside, because one continuity-challenged shot later, the shirt is back on her shoulder. You know what else they could have named her son? They also could have named him "Pick Me Last For Everything."
Bangs and Monopoly Nazi coo over Star Baby in the room, videotapes of unidentified flying bedroom furniture completely forgotten about, because when women are around babies they can't think tactically, except in terms of the baby. Thanks for the script doctoring, Dr. Spock. Monopoly Nazi tries to engage Bangs in discussion, asking, "Where do you think Tess has been all this time? And why do you think she suddenly walked into our house now? Do you think Tess is somehow linked to what's going on with Isabel?" Bangs is no longer interested. Bangs is not alone.
Brooding. Quiet introspection. Shadowy corners. Isabel stands in one of them, brooding and introspecting quietly. Jesse walks up to her and asks if she's okay. Isabel is not: "Max is with Tess. My parents think I'm some kind of freak." And they do, actually. Jesse assures her that everything will be "all right" (because that's as good as he's ever seen it get), promising, "Your parents will love you regardless." Isabel shoots a zinger, just to see if it will stick: "I don't know, Jesse. Do you?" How come nobody will think of the children?
More staring. Max, out the window. He asks Tess what brings her back this way ("Well, the spoilers said I was coming, so I guess I kinda had to come"), and she spins some more nonsensical mythology for our viewing needs: "Khivar betrayed me. He rejected Zan as the heir and he was gonna kill him so I escaped." Well then, why not another planet? They have five planets in their solar system alone. We have, like, nine or something in ours. That's gotta be almost fourteen. Go to another one instead. Max brilliantly surmises that Tess is the one who crashed last week, and Tess confirms that there was "an accident." The Air Force jet was trying to shoot them down, which Tess writes off as "a typical human response." Oh, don't start getting all overly evolved and I-do-not-understand-your-crude-earthling-ways, okay, Mr. Spock? Wow. Two references to two different Spocks in one recap. I have referenced every Spock I've ever known. Max knows that Tess killed all of those people, and Tess merely defends herself: "I protected my son." Max can't believe he ever cared about her. "Well, you did," Tess snipes. "And that was not a mindwarp." Ooooooooh! Oh, no you di-in't! Max invalidates a full season of activity with the gingerly delivered, "Well, none of that matters now." Okay. New central focus for the show. Everybody ready? Here it is now: "We have to get our son out of Roswell." Check. We're with you. As long as there is no more talk of Khivar. And provided Zan can be allowed to change his name to "Mike."
Knock knock knock. Back at the Den Of Porno, Military Men and two camouflaged individuals show up at Porno's house and say that their sniffing dogs sniffed them to their current location. They're going to have to search the place. Porno's all guilty-sounding, but really he didn't do anything wrong. He looks at the surveillance glamour shot of Tess and denies ever having seen her. Then he lies and says no one else is in the house. Why lie about that? No matter. There's a gaping hole in the plot -- er, I mean "wall" -- to attend to.
Monopoly Nazi finally wants to talk about the tape. The phone rings; Isabel makes to answer it, but Jesse says he can be on phone patrol and that she can stay and talk to them. He answers the phone to find Kyle on a pay phone, warning Jesse that the Air Force will be there at any moment and to get the hell out of there. Jesse proclaims this "a really bad time," terminating the call, and that's the end of that. You just can't get good temps anymore. Jesse bolts into the living room and steals Isabel away from her self-serious parents. Once in the kitchen, Jesse tells Isabel that the Air Force is on its way, and Isabel tells her parents that they have to leave before "bad people come for Max's baby." Knock knock. It's the Air Force. Isabel breaks the ice: "Max's baby is an alien. So am I. That's how I was able to do the things on that tape." Max begs for their help. Monopoly Nazi hops to, answering the door and telling the military personnel that they aren't allowed to come in without a warrant. And then they come in without a warrant. So good to have some authority at the top.
Max and Tess and "Cheat Off Me" creep through the front door of The House That Government Subsidy Built. Michael spots her straightaway and puts out a hand for killing purposes. Max briefly re-explains the whole "kill her, kill my baby" platform, just so more people can't believe it when it turns out not to be true. Michael is not happy to see her. But he doesn't take up arms against her. Which makes it even more bizarre when, out of absolute nowhere, Tess goes flying backward and into a wall. A voice comes from the door: "Get up, bitch." Liz is glowing green. She says "get up, bitch" in the way a bad actor might.
And she means it. Tess rises from the corner, and Liz takes her down again, threatening to murder the murderer and shrieking, "I'll kill you!" Max restrains Liz, who asks Max, "What, do you trust her now?" Max spits out a please-don't-make-me-say-it, "Far from it!" He tells her the physically linked story again, and Liz reasons, "That's convenient." I can't even tell who's being sarcastic anymore. "She killed Alex!" Who? Liz makes Max promise that, "when this is all over, Tess will pay for what she did." Right. When it's over. Like Liz's scene, which comes to an end when she hands the baton to an entering Kyle. He hates Tess too. Kyle wants to know why she left in such a hurry. "I was protecting my son." Oh, that old saw again? Kyle remembers that her son wasn't in any danger, and she flow-charts all the way to, "Your father had a gun. Instincts take over. You're lucky I didn't kill you." So much misguided emotion. Such a typical human response. Kyle rails that after all that good, good Porno hospitality she was given, she thanked them by making a brainwashed Kyle carry Alex's dead body. Good times. Tess wants to share her side, which includes the Oprah-friendly rationale, "I was raised by a killer, Kyle. A sick and twisted man." He tells her not to play the victim, which is the most appropriate Dr. Phil response to the aforementioned Oprah-esque problem. That scene played pretty real. Yup. They're still my two favorites.
Where on earth are we? Somewhere with tables. Jesse and Isabel sit across the table from the Evans parents, Bangs looking for pamphlets for the PFLAG For Aliens brochure, all the while grappling with queries such as the following: "This doesn't make any sense, Isabel. You don't look any different." Isabel notes that she's "half-human," and Bangs coughs out a question that actually makes a lot of sense: "And the other half?" Monopoly Nazi asks how long Jesse has known, and he confirms that it's been "about a month." Monopoly Nazi asks if he's okay with that, and Jesse mails in a Hallmark reply: "She's still the woman I fell in love with." Isabel's parents smile warmly. I believe all problems are now qualified and rubberstamped as "solved."
Fortress Evans. A hand finds the videotape of Isabel's Ring-Around-The-Bedroom Extravaganza and puts it in an evidence bag. Which I could barely see through those cleverly concealing camouflage uniforms. Clever military, they.
Crashdown. Liz and Maria don't work there. Not when there's gossiping about boys. Maria thought Liz's "power flare-ups" were a thing of the past, but Liz affirms that's only true when it's convenient. But when she saw Tess, she got all mad with rage and jealousy and had to put her ass to the floor. Maria says that if Liz truly wanted Tess out of her life, she could just tell any one of the military flacks surrounding their homes and table.
Helicopters hover over The House That Government Subsidy Built. Max, Michael, and Tess hop in Max's car and make a break for…where? A checkpoint where a lot of people can catch them, I hope. Tess sits in the back with "Kick Me" and mindwarps herself out of the picture as a military folk approaches the car, shines in a flashlight, shows Max and Michael the glam shot of Tess, and asks to check their trunk. It goes on too long, and Tess can't maintain the warp any longer. She appears, crying baby in tow, in the back seat. Kids today.
There's a lot of crying. And sometimes it's even from the baby! Tess materializes, kids and tears and swaddling clothes and all, in the back seat of the Bitchin' Camaro which Max has of late called home. Max stares into the glare of a flashlight affixed to the end of a very long gun. Oh, cool. The Shaper Image has given corporate sponsorship to the war against the aliens. From the back seat, Tess sweats her way out of the mindwarp, apologizing in I'm-better-than-lowly-illogical-humans-because-of-this pants, "I'm sorry. I couldn't hold it." Yeah, that's what Max said. And then you got pregnant. It's all the big ol' circle of life, Simba. But Michael's all right for fighting, and his survival instincts kick up first. He howls, "Go go go go!" when a mere "go" might just as well have sufficed, and holds out a hand that sets aflame a military vehicle of some kind. This allows for those crucial "Huh? Wha?" reaction moments so crucial to Michael's effective power-mongering ("Run away! Or I shall make further sparks!"), and the Bitchin' Camaro peals out. The sharpshooters shoot sharply at three idiot kids in a convertible, and miss because this is television. Tess howls the totally necessary "Let's get out of here!" without which Max might have felt compelled to pull the car over and undertake some lovely crocheting. Too bad. He could have made himself a really lovely cat's cradle.
Fortress Evans, where the Evans parents and Jesse and Isabel clean the post-house-check rubble in strangely exaggerated pantomime. In total silence. Is this a drama game? Are they going to play trust exercises? I swear to God, as soon as one of them closes their eyes and falls backwards into their partner's arms, I'm totally out of here. But until then, Isabel will walk to answer the ringing phone. Kyle is on the other end, reporting, "They didn't make it." Which in common parlance during times of distress means, I thought, "They're all dead." So, yippee! But he only means they didn't make it…past the pre-established police barricades in order to get Tess's baby to safety. So, modified yippee. Kyle repositions the troops and says they all need to meet at Jesse and Isabel's apartment, as "it's the only safe place left." Why? No prop furniture to topple on the hunt for a missing space baby? Because that's totally the only explanation that makes sense at this late date. Bangs looks endlessly bereaved and begs them to be careful as Isabel RSVPs right away that she'll be there. I withhold my own response until I find out if someone's bringing beer.
Whatever. No one's bringing beer. There's a baby or something, so everyone's gone all wellness corridor on me. Max carries Star Baby -- still wrapped in his silver foil suit, because on his planet everyone grows up to be a Solid Gold dancer -- into Jesse and Isabel's bedroom and lays him down. Tender moments ensue. Max stares and smiles, the pearly yellows flashing in ghastly exhibition of his joy.
Back outside, Max tells an awaiting Porno, "He's sound asleep." Porno's eyes glint in a way that communicates to the astute viewer, "Look at me! I'm directing myself! Look, Ma! No director! Except me! I'm player and manager! Master and servant. I'm directing! And I love it!" But what he says is, "We're running out of time, Max. We need a Plan B." Tess provides it from the shameless exile of…a nearby comfy couch. She tells them, "Go. Go without me. Just get Zan to safety." But they're after the baby, too. And why didn't any of those military folks who had personnel enough to seal off the entire town try and, y'know, follow the car back from the checkpoint? Isn't that why you have aerial backup? Oh, my God. I almost cared again for a moment. It's so weird when that starts to happen. Kind of a tingly feeling, but followed quickly by shame. But Max has another bone to pick: "You said he couldn't survive without you. Another lie? I knew it." More tricks, monsieur? More violence? But clearly Max didn't know any such thing, else why would he let this obviously false charade go so damned far to begin with? It all falls into place for Max: "So the baby's not linked to you? At all?" No, Tess affirms: "Zan is completely human." Well then, by lordy, change his name to "Sam" immediately and just tell everyone you made a mistake. Tess tacks on that that's why Star Baby wasn't wanted on Planet Arium, and why Tess was forced to come back to Earth. That makes sense for exactly negative twelve billion reasons. No one in the cast can understand that knotty plot point either except for Liz, who gets it right away: "It's genetics, Max. You're half-human, she's half-human, you both have the DNA, it makes sense." I don't know where the punctuation is supposed to be in that sentence. Oh, and nice alien back-up system. No wonder you cross-breeds keep crashing your ships into rocks. Try turning the helmet forward time you get behind the wheel of one of those. Jesus. I'm just saying.
It dawns on Michael just then (with yet another "Let me get this straight" kind of transition) that "if the baby doesn't need you to survive, we can kill you." Isabel bargains Michael down to turning her in, as that will satiate the Air Force's appetite for an alien. Kyle senses that this is just the Plan B that they've been looking for. But Max doesn't like it. "They'd throw her in a white room and study her like a lab rat for the rest of her life. I've been there. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy." Isabel reasons that this is not a decision Max can make alone, and Maria suggests that, since Tess was responsible for Alex's (who?) death, they all get to vote. And the stakes are pretty high: turn her in or…not! What happened to death? Wasn't that just being discussed as a viable option? And so they turn to their Model Congress form of dramatic climax, each one of them casting his or her "cake or death" vote. Um, cake, please. Well, we're out of cake! And so they put it to a vote. Maria wants to turn her in. Porno no. Isabel yes. Max no. Michael yes. Jesse doesn't even have an opinion. Kyle no. Liz casts her vote to break the tie: she votes no. With no explanation. I thought it was a mindwarp. I wish it were three years ago so she could be voted off the island and have that be topical.
Late night. Liz stage-sleeps, and is soon to be woken by Tess, who asks why Liz didn't vote against her. Liz fake-sleep-voices, "Because I'm not a killer, Tess." But alas, Tess needs another favor: "I need you to drive me somewhere." Cut to the Scoping Fjords of Sandy Land, where a brief heart-to-heart ensues about Max always loving Liz and never Tess. Tess exits the car, and then something big blows up. Apparently, that makes everything better. Interesting.
In the kitchen of Fortress Evans under broad daylight, Max sips from a giant white mug. Monopoly Nazi enters and asks, "Don't you need sleep?" Max deadpans, "Didn't I tell you? Aliens don't need sleep." Guffaws all around. Monopoly Nazi won't be laughing much when the aliens…eat his brains! Max says it's hard to tear himself away from his son, and Monopoly Nazi attests that that's the same kind of love he and Bangs feel for Max and Isabel. But Max frets that an ambiguous "they" is still after an ambiguous "us," and Max weeps, "I just want my son to live a normal life." Monopoly Nazi promises that he will, but Max notes, "He's human. He deserves a normal human life." All he wanted was to find Zan (and rename him, God willing), and now he feels that he must give him up. "Right now I have to ensure his own safety." Monopoly Nazi, brandishing his own giant white mug, asks if Max is "sure about this." Monopoly Nazi has "a law school buddy who handles things like this." Things like what? Max wants him to have parents "just like you and Mom." Awww. I'd cry if I still had a soul.
Max stares more. Stop scarring the child. Bangs and Monopoly Nazi walk out onto the stoop of Fortress Evans, Monopoly Nazi telling Max, "It's time." Max waves a hand across Star Baby's forehead, displaying the symbol of the five triangulated planets in his sizable, Dawson-esque brow. Bangs asks untrustingly what that was. Max says, "Just a memory," which is something poetic that doesn't really make any sense, kind of like "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina." The car pulls off. Star Baby is off on tour. Max and Liz hug. Because, well, these two losers aren't going anywhere.