|
||||||
There's no mind warping us into forgetting the existence of the entire second season this week, but the "writers" sure do give it all they've got with the spontaneous reintroduction of the gone-but-not-forgotten-enough character of "Sulky Introductory Voice-Over Narration." We open on a shot of the Crashdown's exterior, with a banner hanging underneath the neon sign reading "Good Luck to the Class of 2002." Which is a helpful visual reminder for those among us who have somehow forgotten the title of this episode and begun to think that the Roswell series finale was going to focus on some other one-word rite of passage like "Purim" or "Audit." If you thought that, you're wrong. It's still about graduation. Sulky Voice-Over Narration has this thing that it thinks we should know: "I'm not religious, but I've been to church." And she's not an actor, but she's played one on TV. Hi, I'm Liz and I like long walks on the beach, pretending I'm human, and dichotomies. But wait, there's more: "I know right from wrong. And I know it's wrong to benefit in any way from someone else's passing, but I won't deny that Tess's death has freed me." Bitch. "Like a dark shadow passed over the sun before the light came flooding back." Wow. I had to look at that metaphor in the reflection of a shoebox with a hole punched in the middle. Because that's what happens to eclipse metaphors. Even if they're secretly really similes.
She continues rambling like a morphine addict misquoting Ginsberg at a poetry slam, and we cut inside the Crashdown to find Liz "Rest In Pieces" Parker turning the placard over on the front door to tell us that the eatery is now "closed." To drive her point home, a wrecking ball descends just away from the camera's gaze and blows three more sets to bits so that the debris can be recycled into decorative picture frames and spice racks and all sorts of lovely, useful things. Liz picks up a copy of the famed Roswell Tribune, keeps her thumb squarely over the paper's boxed front-page credo, "All the news that's fit to be fake news," and smiles wistfully at that wist-inspiring headline, "USAF Investigates Devastating Explosion at Rogers Base." Ah, mass death. So fantastically helpful to Liz's puppy-dog teen crushes. Below it is a photo of the aforementioned destruction, which I think is in reality an AP file photo of the ruins of the Roman Coliseum. She throws the paper down and thinks aloud so that only we can hear, like Garfield does in that wacky fat cat cartoon, "It's a brand new day. Full of possibilities and hope. I haven't felt like that in a lonk, lonk time." Well, not since October of 1999. If you're me. And you're not. Which is lucky for you. Because I am a tortured, tortured soul.
Liz's reverie turns to Max "Anti-Social Security" Evans, as the camera swoops around and we find him sitting at the counter eating fries and Tabasco (because remember how they�with the�oh, never mind). All-In-Her-Head Barbie wants just us to know, "It's different for Max." It's different for all the boys like Max. "He lost more than his son." He also lost his car in the Costco parking lot, as doddering old men just seem to do. "He lost his sense of direction to his life." See what I mean? "His purpose." Oh. Well, Lizcissus, Queen Of Self-Preservation, it really is all about you, isn't it? Liz continues, "He puts up a great front, but�I know." Well, just as long as you're fine. That's all that really matters to, um, you.