Four Aliens and a Baby

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 thanwhat? 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, butwould 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."