Episode 3 of Roswell, New Mexico, Tearin’ Up My Heart, is a big improvement from episode 2, and puts the series back on track with what the pilot led me to expect. The show still has issues, but if it can avoid the WTF inconsistencies and the terrible characterizations from episode 2, along with so much blatant misogyny, it could develop into a compelling story of its own.
This week, the couples continue to play games with each other, which will get annoying very soon, especially in the case of Michael and Alex. If you want me to care about a couple, there has to be something there to actually care about. Max and Liz have been given montages and flashbacks, conversations between themselves and with others about their feelings and memories, and we’ve seen them take risks for each other. It’s been driven home that they have real feelings for each other but were forced apart.
Michael and Alex have had a few brief conversations, mostly made up of insult-filled arguments, and Alex had one short conversation with Maria in which he talked about Michael, but kept him anonymous. It looks like Alex uses Michael when he needs a boost to his self-esteem or to get off, then drops him when he comes to his senses. Why would I want Michael to be with a guy who doesn’t have a personality, has never publicly acknowledged their relationship, is embarrassed by Michael, and is psychologically abusive toward him?
Sure, I feel bad for Alex, with his lousy father and post-military baggage. And I’m sure Tyler Blackburn brings many fans to the relationship, since he was on Pretty Little Liars. That doesn’t mean he has the right to treat Michael badly. Alex has jerked Michael around too many times for a 3 episode relationship. He’s a grown man. He should be able to take a stand on issues like his relationships and sexuality with his family.
Max and Liz are ridiculous, to the point where I assume Max imprinted on her when he was a child, like a duckling, or a werewolf from Twilight, and he has no choice but to mindlessly love her forever. He must secrete some hormone that affects Liz when she’s near him that makes her love him back.
Thus, there’s no point in analyzing why these two f**ked up people would want each other, or in lamenting how obsessive and stalkery Max is over Liz. They wouldn’t love each other without the imprinting hormone, so they betray each other constantly, while being inexplicably, inevitably drawn back together. I fear that this also explains Isobel’s obsession with having Max all to herself and Michael’s devotion to Alex.
Supernatural soap opera explained. When they’re young, each alien imprints on someone for life. 😜
It’s the only explanation I can currently live with, so that’s what we’re going with. Maybe the show will do better later, and it will stop being a showcase for undiagnosed mental health disorders.
When they weren’t hunting aliens, avoiding being hunted, or taking part in a bad romance, the characters settled into the theme of family dynasties this week. It seems the show plans on establishing four main family groupings: The Ortechos, illegals with hearts of gold who run the Crashdown Cafe; the Valentis, Latinos who came to America legally and support tough laws against illegals; the Manes, a military family with 4 soldier sons and a dad obsessed with aliens to the point of ruthlessness; and the Roswell aliens, Michael, Max and Isobel, who arrived in the 1947 crash, but were in stasis pods until they hatched 20 years ago, when they appeared to be 7 year old children. According to Jesse Manes, there were/are more aliens who survived the crash, but whether or not they’re still alive and where they might be is unknown. Wyatt and Katie Long’s family of racist ranchers appears to be a peripheral family as well.
Recap
Liz tells us:
‘The scientific method requires the scientist to eliminate all personal bias and outside influence. So it doesn’t matter that Max Evans saved my life or that ten years ago, he was the only person who made me smile after my mom left. Or how I feel when he looks at me now. What matters is the science.”
Good luck with that.
She continues:
“Observation: In the hours or days after my sister died, a strange mark, shaped like a handprint, formed on her corpse. Observation: It’s the same mark as Max Evans left on me, the night he saved my life. Observation: Max Evans lied to my face about the last time he saw Rosa alive. Prediction: Max’s ability to manipulate electromagnetic energy gives him the power to heal, and also to harm. Hypothesis: Max Evans killed my sister.”
While she’s been sharing her science notes, Liz has packed up her scientific equipment and driven across town to Max’s house, where he’s anxiously awaiting her. When he opens the door, she says, “Hey, lab rat!” With a big smile on her face. The aliens aren’t the only ones who know how to live a lie.
As Liz sets up her equipment, she promises the tests won’t hurt, and suggests that maybe she can figure out why Max has felt sick lately. Max jumps in and says that he doesn’t exactly feel sick. In fact, he’s never been sick. What he’s feeling is flashes of rage.
Well, that’s comforting. I’d say someone should take away his gun until he calms down, but the gun is the least of the problems.
Liz suggests that it might be stress and anxiety. “Chronic low-level anxiety keeps the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis activated.”
Liz orders Max to unbutton his shirt, then she attaches the sensors for the medical devices she’s using. She thinks his heart is racing because he’s scared of the tests, but Max says that’s not the reason, implying that he’s excited she’s touching him. They stare into each other’s eyes, then Liz stares at his lips. Then she remembers she’s a scientist, d*mn it, and shakes it off.
Jesse Manes interrupts Kyle’s morning jog to harass him about Project Shepherd. Kyle’s running intervals, so he gives Manes 30 seconds, but he does wonder why Manes can’t play alien hunter with one of his own 4 war hero sons. Manes explains that he doesn’t need an airman for this job, he needs a Valenti. Manes got Kyle the photos from Rosa’s real autopsy, now he wants access to Kyle’s father’s research. He vaguely threatens to destroy Kyle’s life if Kyle doesn’t cooperate.
Liz is amazed that the aliens benefit from drinking nail polish remover, which consists of acetone. Trace amounts of acetone help plants with active growth and regeneration. She asks if it heals them. Max says it’s more like it kills pain. They don’t heal “superfast or anything”.
I think that’s a half truth.
Liz bombards Max with questions about his history and powers, including Michael and Isobel in the questions. Max doesn’t want to talk about them, but he would like her to help him stop affecting electrical systems every time he gets emotional. She purposely keeps pushing his buttons with the questions, looking for a reaction that affects the tests.
He tells her that they don’t know how their powers work, or how much Isobel’s and Michael’s powers work on the same principles as Max’s. She tells him that there are animals and plants that use electricity as a defense mechanism, even a weapon. So, can he harm with electricity the way he can heal?
As she asks the last question, she grabs his hand, which he holds to his chest. The combination of closeness and negativity cause him to overload and burn out the medical testing device. His hand glows and Liz’s forearm is burned, with a pattern of lightning fractals, also known as Lichtenberg figures, branching through the scalded area.
Liz doesn’t seem to be in any pain, despite the serious burn on her arm, which, in real life, would require a trip to the hospital. The test devices are still smoking. Max is worried about her, but Liz tells him not to touch her, which is at least a normal reaction. Maybe the jolt of electricity through her system made her numb.
Cowgirl Isobel enters at that moment, in a terrible shirt that rivals last week’s tablecloth. Someone in the costume department hates Lily Cowles. They didn’t even give her a cowgirl hat or a ribbon for her hair to finish off the outfit.
I’m waiting for the horses to start grazing in the middle of main street, any episode now.
Max and Liz look like she caught them playing doctor, which I guess she basically did, but they’re two consenting adults. Playing doctor with real medical equipment is way tamer than Isobel’s kinks.
Liz packs up her equipment and leaves, to go play doctor with the real doctor. Max didn’t even offer to give her a little healing assist with the burn.
Let’s watch Isobel, the master manipulator, throw a bunch of random facts together and use them to make Max feel guilty:
“I have the entire air force here for the veteran fundraiser and you’re out here, what, playing alien autopsy?”
Playing alien autopsy sounds fun to me. What does Isobel’s event planning job have to do with how Max conducts his personal life, in his own home?
Max notes that Liz knows they’re aliens and maybe she can help figure out what’s going on with him.
Isobel: “Michael and I told you we’d help. Look, whatever’s wrong with you, I’m pretty sure Liz didn’t take a class on it at CU Boulder.”
They’ll help in the way we’ve seen Michael and Isobel be unhelpful so far, basically by trying to shut down everything Max is going through. That seems to be their long-standing, go to solution, and might be why Max is now at the point of exploding with rage.
Then there’s the slam at Liz’s education. Liz may not be an alien, but she understands how life processes work and likely had to acquire a reasonable understanding of the other basic areas of science. The aliens function closely enough to human to pass, and they did even when they were children who didn’t know how to fake it. Pretty sure Liz can make some educated guesses about their biology. Michael seems to have some understanding of alien technology, but Isobel and Max don’t seem to have explored much.
Max tells Isobel that he trusts Liz and has a connection with her, so he’s comfortable working with her to answer his questions.
Isobel finally gets to use the information she’s been sitting on for days:
“Do you? Liz and Kyle hooked up at the Wild Pony the day after she got into town. Did you know that? Hank and Lindsey saw them. Your handprint was still on her chest.”
Max is teary and hurt. He and Isobel descend into vicious personal attacks. I wrote about the difference between Liz’s make out session with Kyle at the Wild Pony and Max’s booty call with Jenna in my episode 2 recap, so I won’t go over that farce again. Suffice it to say, Max has no right to be upset about anything Liz does. NONE.
Liz gets her favorite make out partner local doctor to make a house call and bandage up her burn. Kyle is pretty worked up about seeing both her arm and the medical device so fried, straight up telling her that the amount of voltage it took to do that to the device could have been lethal.
He wants to turn Max in to someone, anyone, but Liz doesn’t think there’s anyone who makes sense, and she wants to keep investigating. Besides, Max is only dangerous when provoked. He seems so sweet most of the time, so how often could that happen? And what could Rosa have done to provoke him?
Notice how she’s subtly beginning to shift the blame to her sister already?
Then she gets distracted by a copy of Pride and Prejudice on her bookcase, realizing that it was one of Rosa’s hiding spots. She opens up the hollowed out book and finds a baggie with a few leftover pills and a joint inside.
Liz is disappointed that it’s only drugs, though that would be the most obvious thing for a teenage drug addict to hide. Kyle asks what she was hoping to find. Liz says she needs some new clues to help her solve this murder mystery.
Kyle: “You have a clue. You just keep ignoring it because… Is it because he’s tall? Nevermind that he explodes expensive things with his brain.”
Liz says that she needs to understand Max’s motive and what happened the night Rosa died, before she explodes his life and makes her suspicions public knowledge.
Alex and Kyle are still in bed, though it’s a few days later and Michael’s trailer has been moved to the junkyard. Michael is surprised that Alex stayed all night this time. Happy times are about to ensue, when Isobel shows up to wreck her other brother’s morning. Alex panics and makes it clear that he doesn’t want Isobel to know that they have anything to do with each other. Michael patiently puts on his pants and goes outside to talk to his sister, but he’s genuinely and justifiably hurt.
Isobel tells Michael about Liz and Max playing doctor, getting him all riled up again, and they begin forming evil plans, again.
Liz visits Maria at the Wild Pony, looking for more inside information on Rosa. Though we were told that Maria was Liz’s best friend, she seems to have been closer to Rosa, while Liz was the younger, tag-along sister. Maria’s first loyalty is definitely to Rosa, not to Liz.
Maria sends Liz to look behind one of the bar signs, where she finds a mixtape CD case labelled with some of Rosa’s favorite songs. Liz realizes that the song titles are messages, a treasure map to Rosa’s little hiding places all over town. Rosa marked each hidey hole with a little black heart. ♥ Liz and Maria head out on a treasure hunt.
Jenna/Cam finds Max beating up his computer and makes him stop, then gives him a thank you gift for the mediocre sex. It’s a first edition book that she saved from the police auction, knowing it would give him a “nerd boner”.
Max decides that a girl who’ll give him thoughtful gifts in thanks for booty call sex, during which he was thinking of his soulmate instead of her, might just be the kind of girl he should lockdown as his backup plan. Consider: Just how desperate do you have to be, and how self-loathing, to keep pursuing that guy? And to keep acting like you don’t care whether he wants you or is using you?
Kyle stops by his mom’s work, aka the police station, to ask about the letters his dad wrote while he was dying of cancer. Sheriff Valenti tells him that the cancer changed his father and the letters were full of wild ramblings. He’s better off forgetting about them and remembering the good times. While she turns around for a moment, he slips one of her keys off the ring.
Maria seems nervous about what Liz might find under the bridge. Liz looks under the heart painted on the rock wall, and notices a few loose stones. When she pulls them out, it reveals an old lunchbox, with a couple of cans of spray paint inside. There’s also a typed note: “Dear Rosa, You will never be alone. Ophiuchus”
Maria explains that Ophiuchus was the 13th sign of the zodiac, but it’s controversial. Liz connects it to “a fraudulent zodiac”, the lyric Rosa had written on her hand the night she died. Liz thinks the note is romantic and asks Maria if Rosa was secretly seeing someone. Rosa didn’t tell Maria about anyone, but Maria slept over that week, and Rosa snuck out to meet someone. She figured there must be a boy.
The next mixtape title is Small Town Saturday Night. They decide to start the search for Rosa’s hiding place at the drive-in.
Michael and Isobel have evil planned to mind warp Liz ASAP, hopefully tonight. Michael calls Isobel on all of her ish, including not wanting Max to have a serious girlfriend because then she won’t be number one in his life any more.
Then Noah shows up and calls her on her codependence with Max and inability to just be with her husband. She promises to spend time with him once the fundraiser is done.
Alex finds Michael and convinces him to stay for the movie, with the promise that they’ll split a 6 pack and watch together from the back of Michael’s truck.
Kyle uses the pass key to search his mom’s desk for the letters. He finds and photographs them. They’re disorganized and covered with large illustrations. As Kyle is leaving the building, Max grabs him and shoves him up against the station wall. He threatens to have Kyle arrested for making out with Liz being in the file room.
It’s pretty hilarious, since Kyle’s mom is Max’s boss, and it was the file room, not even the evidence room, where he might have gotten something good. How far does Max think that’s going to go?
I’ll probably say this every week- Max is an out of control cop who should be thrown off the force. Then deported back to another galaxy.
Kyle talks about Liz and easily provokes Max into a little electrical show, and the acknowledgement that he’s close to hitting Kyle. The situation is saved by Cam, who stands at the end of the building and asks if they’re still going on a date.
No, sweetheart. Your date is busy considering violence against a guy who looked at the woman he really wants. You’re better off without someone who’s that possessive and aggressive, trust me.
Wait, I’ve figured it out. Max is going into Pon Farr and that’s why he can’t control himself. They are all actually deformed Vulcans. Mystery solved. You’re welcome.👽👽
Spock Max follows Cam. Kyle looks relieved that he’s not dead.
Back at the drive-in, Jesse Manes stops Alex to tell him that he’s a disgrace to God, country, motherhood and apple pie because he’s gay hanging around with Michael, who has the audacity to drink, fight and gamble. Apparently men in the Air Force are known for being quite straight-laced and would never do those things. 😂
Isobel makes a speech to the crowd, thanking them for their generous donations, then introduces Jesse, so that he can make a longer speech.
Maria and Liz linger near the edges of the crowd. Maria gets Liz to admit that she really wanted to come to the drive-in to check out Max and his date. She doesn’t think Cam looks like his type. Maria goes to acquire proper sustenance for stalking.
Isobel notices that Liz is alone, and enters her mind, but she finds Rosa instead of Liz. Rosa says, “Why are you being like this? I thought we were friends?”
Isobel blinks and Rosa becomes Liz. She tells Liz to leave town and to make sure it’s for good this time. When Liz answers, she’s Rosa again, “I wish it could always be like this.”
Isobel shakes Rosa off again. Liz says that she can’t leave, because of Max. Isobel pops back out into normal reality and runs to vomit behind the stage.
Michael gives her some nail polish remover. She explains to Michael what she saw, and that she realized what Liz and Max really are to each other, so she couldn’t do it. Max interrupts before she finishes. He’s realized that Isobel might be right about Liz. He figures he’ll try to have a relationship with Cam, since Liz doesn’t want him.
Alex buys a snack from a food truck, then spots Michael making an illicit cash sale of some wire from the junkyard. Alex walks away.
Liz and Maria’s next stop is the roof of the Crashdown, where Maria and Rosa used to go to get high. Maria pulls out a joint. They talk about their lives and remember Rosa. Maria dated a Chad while Liz was away. Liz was engaged to a Diego, but she broke it off 3 weeks ago, because she felt numb, and like she wasn’t connecting with him.
Maria points out the constellation of Pisces, which was Rosa’s zodiac sign. Liz lets her eyes follow to where the stars are pointing, and finds Rosa’s hiding place on the roof. She just needed a stoner’s eye view to see it. Inside, Rosa had hidden a love letter.
Max and Cam are still at the drive-in, making out in the car. Cam lists all of the parts of a teenage dream date they’ve fulfilled, then goes for Max’s crotch, suggesting they cross the missing piece off the list. Max is surprised, perhaps because they are in public, in the open jeep, with the movie still running, but he agrees.
A moment later, Liz is standing in front of the jeep, pounding on the hood, demanding to talk to Max, now. Cam tells her he’s busy, but Liz’s eyes don’t stray from Max. He follows Liz.
She accuses him of sleeping with Rosa and hands him the letter.
Kyle is also at the drive-in, trying to call Liz. His mom finds him and wants her stolen key back. He explains that he’s in a love triangle with Max and Liz, and he wanted to get some dirt on Max. There wasn’t any.
The sheriff wants him to stay away from Liz, because her family isn’t good enough for the Valentis, who came to the US the right way. They struggled in poverty for years in order to follow immigration law, and she resents the bad name that people who don’t follow it give to all of them.
Kyle thinks she sounds like a bigot. She thinks he sounds naive. When Rosa killed those two girls, the town was split in two and his father almost lost the sheriff’s election. Even Jesse Manes supported a white candidate. Kyle says he thought Jesse and his dad were friends. The sheriff tells him that, “Jesse Manes doesn’t have friends, Kyle. He has soldiers.”
Max looks at the letter for a moment, then Liz grabs it back and reads excerpts from it:
“I feel like I’m disappearing until you look at me, and then I’m so completely seen.I’ve never liked that feeling before.”
“Somehow you always stand in the part of the room that the sun hits first.”
“You touched my lips, and I stopped breathing for a week.”
Max tries to explain that he wrote the note for her, and Rosa must have found it. Liz argues that it can’t be about them, because they’ve never kissed. Max says that in April of senior year, he had hot sauce on his lip. Liz wiped it off with her thumb in science lab. Liz realizes that was the day they got sent home early because there was a school blackout. Max defends his writing style, saying he was 17 years old and he wanted to be a writer.
Liz doesn’t actually care who the letter was for. She knows about his lies and that Rosa was murdered. She wants to know if Max is the murderer.
The movie ends and Michael prepares to leave. Alex shows up again, so Michael offers him a ride. Alex breaks up with him instead, because he’s an airman, he can’t be with a criminal. He tells Michael that he knows about Michael’s big wire theft ring, which must be bringing in $20 a week or so. Michael says he’s always been at the mercy of criminals. Now he’s just trying to survive. He thinks Alex is just looking for any excuse to walk away from him. Alex says that Michael keeps giving him reasons to walk away.
Max admits that he lied to Liz about the last time he saw Rosa. After they came back from the desert that night, he sat nearby and wrote his letter to her, then slid it under her windshield wiper. Rosa was there, drunk, high and angry. She started yelling and shoving him. Liz asks if that’s when he killed her, but he denies it. He says he drove away, and has felt guilty ever since, for not telling Arturo or someone how intoxicated she was.
Liz still doesn’t understand why he lied to her. He says that she has enough painful memories of that night. He’s loved her his entire life, including every day that she was gone. He could never kill someone she loved. Everything in his life is about her. But the past is the past. There’s nothing that can be done to change it.
He walks away.
I assume he’s going back to the jeep to finish having sex with Cam, while Liz platonically tells Maria what happened. Kyle has taken Maria’s place as Liz’s confidant in these initial episodes, but it must be about time for Maria to find out, or to reveal that she’s known about the aliens since Rosa died.
Isobel goes home to her extremely patient husband, who can see that she’s completely frazzled. She tries to put on a good face, but he wants her to tell him what’s going on, before they go any further with their evening. She spills that Max is in love and the woman loves Max back, deep down. Max has always been her person, and she’s sorry she’s so codependent with her brother, but now she’s afraid she’s going to lose him. Plus she’s just realized that he’s been unhappy for years and it’s her fault.
Noah tells her that he’s going to be in charge for tonight, so she needs to stop worrying and relax. He knew that he was marrying Max and Michael, too, and he accepts it, but maybe it could just be the two of them in Isobel’s head this evening. He takes her into the backyard, where he has a cosy movie night set up, with The Land Before Time, candles, and piles of pillows.
Max told him she might need some cheering up. She and Max just need a little space from each other. Noah says that she’s his person, and he’d really like to be hers.
Liz goes back to the Wild Pony and, over a drink, tells Maria what happened with Max. Maria is surprised that Rosa would try to keep Max and Liz apart, because “he’s so harmless,” then looks surprised that he told Liz he loves her. Could he be the “Chad” she dated? Liz tells Maria that she doesn’t trust Max.
Kyle pays another visit to Jesse at the bunker, to give him copies of his dad’s letters. Kyle believes in innocent until proven guilty, so he’s not going to turn anyone over to Jesse. Jesse tells Kyle that there’s a fatal flaw in the justice system: “Innocent until proven guilty means justice can only be served after disaster has struck.” He goes on to describe every terrorist ever as an introvert whose neighbors thought they were nice or at least harmless.
Jesse’s description is intercut with Max losing control. He tries calling Isobel and Michael to come help him. They don’t answer, so he runs out into the desert behind his house, then pounds the ground in emotional release, sending a shockwave toward town and taking out the power grid, again.
Then he sits on the ground and weeps.
Pride and Prejudice and Aliens
According to Rosa, who I think might be an oracle, the show is doing Pride and Prejudice, instead of my favorite, Persuasion. (I’d already figured out that they weren’t going to stick with Persuasion, although they did bring a lost letter into it this episode.) The idea is supposed to be that Max, our Mr Darcy, is actually an amazingly perfect man, but right now he doesn’t appear that way because of whatever healing Liz did to him. Liz, who already has the correct P&P name, will have to work past her initial judginess to discover his true nature.
I think Kyle is a friendlier counterpart to Mr Collins, but he could turn out to be Wickham, since he’s always disliked Max. But he seems like the steadfast, dependable, slightly boring guy who gets overlooked for the men who seem more exciting. Sheriff Valenti has elements of Catherine de Bourgh, Mr Collins’ patron and Mr Darcy’s aunt. I think Mama Evans (played by Claudia Black) will, too.
Maria was definitely acting like Jane Bennet in this episode, all wise and quiet and serene, but she also could be Charlotte Lucas. Michael is being positioned as Mr Bingley. Rosa could have been Jane or she could have been Lydia. The things she said to Isobel in this episode were very Jane-like, as if Isobel has befriended her, then betrayed her.
I suspect that Isobel has befriended and betrayed a lot of people.
Alex is also a mixed character. He’s another possible Jane, the decent person that everyone wants but no one takes very seriously. But so far, he has the most in common with Wickham. He’s friends with Liz and Maria, in the military, and appears to be liked by everyone. Yet he’s conducting a secret affair with the wild sibling, who believes he’s sincere, but that sincerity is in doubt.
Isobel is, without a doubt, Caroline Bingley. Possessive, scheming, snobbish, destructive- she has all of Caroline’s qualities and is positioned between Darcy/Max and Bingley/Michael. Whether it’s Isobel or Caroline, her goal in life is to control their lives.
Jenna is a wild card. She could be any of the minor female characters who are young women: Charlotte Lucas, Mrs. Hurst, Kitty or Lydia Bennet. She’s most like Charlotte Lucas, the practical woman who doesn’t let her pride get in the way of going for what she wants. I’ll be interested to see if she eventually chooses a side, and whether it’s the Bennets Ortechos or the Bingleys aliens.
Random Thoughts
This show is portraying its Latina lead as a slut for having a make out session when she was a single woman who didn’t owe anyone anything, while the white man is just considered sensitive and sexy when he actually sleeps around. The writers are promoting the slutty Latina stereotype, while they say that this show is trying to help the cause of Latinx immigrants.
Writers, you need to rethink your attitudes about race and misogyny, because they aren’t making sense.
The Spanish colonized New Mexico starting in 1598. When is Roswell, New Mexico going to show some Hispanic families who have been here for many, many generations? That is the reality of Hispanic people and culture in New Mexico. Other than Native Americans, who also have a strong, visible presence which has yet to be represented on this show, Hispanic people have been here longer than anyone else. They also make up approximately half of the population, so the show is still underrepresenting the Hispanic population.
The science isn’t making sense either, but I guess that’s a CW and Roswell tradition. I’m considering this a supernatural show rather than science fiction, to be honest.
I kind of love that Michael is a secret nerd hipster, doing his rocket science inside his airstream trailer at the junkyard, where he is, of course, the best mechanic in town, and he uses his dry wit like a lethal weapon on unsuspecting townies.
Maria is keeping secrets. Some are Rosa’s. Are some her own? Do Maria and Michael already have a past together? She was close to Rosa, and is hiding something, and he has burn scars on his hand. Was she more involved with Rosa on the night of her death than she’s letting on, and was Michael with her?
At least part of the story that Max told Liz about his encounter with Rosa on the night of her death is true, because Liz saw it in his memories when he wasn’t controlling what she saw (Ep2). What did Rosa know about Max (and the other aliens) that prompted her to push him away from Liz? Was she just pro-Kyle? Did Isobel plant the idea in her head?
What was up with Isobel’s memories of Rosa talking about them being friends and wishing it could always stay like that? Were those memories from Liz’s head or Isobel’s?
How did Liz know that Max was on a date at the drive-in? Did Kyle tell her? Was Max’s real purpose for taking Cam to the drive-in simply to make Liz jealous? He made sure that he and Cam made out in a car in a public parking lot, just like Liz and Kyle.
More on Ophiuchus, who was a mythological snake handler and healer, known for turning snake venom into a potion able to bring the dead back to life. The sun is in Ophiuchus from November 29- December 18. At EarthSky.org At Time.com
Lightning Fractals= Generally known as Lichtenberg figures (German Lichtenberg-Figuren), or “Lichtenberg dust figures”, are branching electric discharges that sometimes appear on the surface or in the interior of insulating materials. Lichtenberg figures are known to occur on or within solids, liquids, and gases during electrical breakdown. Lichtenberg figures are named after the German physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who originally discovered and studied them. Lichtenberg figures may also appear on the skin of lightning strike victims. These are reddish, fernlike patterns that may persist for hours or days [or cause permanent scarring]. They are also a useful indicator for medical examiners when determining the cause of death. Lichtenberg figures appearing on people are sometimes called lightning flowers, and they are thought to be caused by the rupture of capillariesunder the skin due to the passage of the lightning current or the shock wave from the lightning discharge as it flashes over the skin. —Wikipedia
Could the aliens’ handprint mark be a form of Lichtenberg figure? Given Liz’s handprint’s iridescence, there has to be more involved in healing than just electromagnetic energy, but that seems to be part of it. Killing could be simply intense electrocution, if the handprints are black, charred burn marks like they appear in the black and white photos. The true appearance of the killing handprints is still in question, but Wyatt Long should have one.
While I assume Isobel erased Wyatt’s memory of everything that happened in the alley, I also assume the writers are going to pretend he won’t get a handprint on his chest, or they’ll make up a lame excuse like his shirt was in the way. But everything in canon from all three iterations of Roswell says that he should get a big, fat, shiny handprint, and what we saw Max do to Liz in this episode tells us that Max should have burned a hand-shaped hole in Wyatt’s shirt.
Images courtesy of The CW.
Metawitches 
One thought on “Roswell, New Mexico Season 1 Episode 3: Tearin’ Up My Heart Recap”
Comments are closed.