There are many ways to interpret the title of Roswell, New Mexico’s penultimate episode of its freshman (and perhaps only) season. “Creep” is most obviously meant to refer to Isobel’s wayward alien husband, Noah, who reveals some secrets in this episode, but holds others hostage, hoping to exchange them for his own life.
Then there’s our leading man, Maximo Evans. Always at least a bit of a violent creep, he outdoes himself with creepiness in this episode, from the way he dismisses Cam from his life by telling her she’s been a good “friend” after she’s just given up her job to save him and his loved ones, to the way he possessively fights with Noah for ownership of Liz and Isobel.
There’s the creepiness of Caulfield prison, a horror show worthy of the Nazis, where Michael finds and loses his mother and has his feelings about the nature of humanity confirmed. I’m not convinced that the explosion will kill the aliens inside the prison, but if that moment was all Michael has with his mother, I’ll support any and all killing sprees he embarks on. I can’t stand that they not only fridged an important female character (and the other aliens), and but they also used Michael and his mother as a plot device for Dramatic! Prefinale! Effect! What a waste of potential.
And now, by the way, we discover that Noah is, hilariously, an alien vampire who needs to feed on the life force of humans, and sometimes other aliens, to keep his body from deteriorating. That’s why I don’t think all of the aliens at Caulfield are dead. I think some will be rescued, and will be able to not just survive, but regain their lost youth, using the same method as Noah. You don’t introduce just one alien vampire, then kill him off and forget about the concept.
Especially not when you made your name in the Vampire Diaries franchise.
Bringing in a complex alien vampire family for season 2 would be strikingly similar to the way the Original Vampire Family joined Vampire Diaries. And they have Liz to work on a cure for alien vampirism. The aliens kill to live, and some will have grown addicted to how powerful it makes them, so they won’t want a medical cure. But Noah is also definitely able to lie/avoid telling the truth in the psychic space, so he lied about why healing people weakens Max, and maybe more.
Recap
June 14, 1947
Noah’s opening voiceover: “We were all hopeful once. We left behind a war-torn, desolate planet in search of a better place to call home. We were refugees, together. But the ship was hijacked. Driven into the ground by a stowaway. We crashed in a foreign land, trading one kind of violence for another. I listened, all night, as humans slaughtered our comrades, our families. What is it you call them? Pods? Well, mine wasn’t built like yours. I was traveling with the peasants. My pod was flimsy. It cracked on impact. It wasn’t built to last. But it was my only option. I just wanted some quiet, to silence the screaming.”
2004
We return to the night of the infamous birthday campout at the crash site, where Isobel went outside to pee and was accosted by a strange man. Max discovered he could kill people with his hand. Isobel blacked out for the first time. The trio covered up their first murder.
Noah’s voiceover: “That broken pod kept me alive, but barely. Turned me into some rotted, mangled version of myself. No one ever came for me until you, Isobel. You and I were both alone that night. And then, we weren’t.”
That’s what Noah meant when he said they’ve been connected ever since the first time he heard her voice. He meant they’ve been psychically connected since he picked up the psychic screams in the desert that went along with her vocal screams.
In the present day, the trio stares at Noah, who’s in stasis in Isobel’s pod in the mine, since Liz’s serum would quickly kill him otherwise. It’s been three days since they discovered the truth about Noah and, predictably, the aliens disagree about what to do with him.
Michael wants to use Liz’s antidote to cure Noah of the serum damage, then inflict some pain to help him answer their questions. Max wants to leave Noah in the pod for a while or forever. Isobel isn’t ready to make a decision about Noah and may never be. Max insists that they don’t rush her.
I’m not sure why either Isobel or Max would have to be involved in the questioning, other than because of their own control issues. They don’t ever have to see Noah again, no matter how long he lives or what he does. Give him an alien restraining order as part of his punishment, then give one to Max.
Kyle has a cup of coffee at the Crashdown and gets a kick out of seeing brilliant genetic researcher Liz Ortecho back in her waitress’ uniform, antennae and all. He assures her that she’ll find another research job soon.
Then he notices a silver alien handprint on her shoulder. This time it’s from Noah, not Max. Liz and Kyle are both still getting used to the idea that Noah was the killer all along. He just didn’t seem like the type.
Every character has said so, from Arturo to Isobel. That still seems suspicious.
Kyle tells Liz that he’s going to visit his Dad’s grave this weekend and asks if she’d like to visit Rosa’s grave together. Liz agrees and tells him that Rosa always liked him. Kyle knows that Rosa didn’t, but points for effort, Liz. Maybe this weekend Kyle plans to tell Liz that Rosa was his sister, too.
Alex finds Michael sitting on the back of his truck and already drinking, even though it’s still morning. He tells Alex that it’s been that kind of morning, and Alex wisely moves on to talking about Project Shepherd, which, on second thought, maybe isn’t a better subject. His research keeps bringing him back to the prison that Kyle brought up last week, Caulfield. Alex has discovered heat signatures there that “are inconsistent with human body temperature.” He has Michael’s attention now. “You do run hot, Guerin.”
Michael thinks he’d already know if there were other alien survivors. Alex figures there’s no harm in a road trip, then. But Kyle, the third of the Roswell science bros, is coming along on this trip, while Liz, the science sister, gets left out. She has to babysit the other 3 aliens this time.
Kyle asks who’s driving. Not the guy who’s already started on his daily six pack. Also, why would Michael be so sure there aren’t any more aliens, when they’ve recently discovered two? There’s Noah and the alien healer who stayed on the Indian reservation until about 20 years ago.
Max fondly remembers Isobel’s time in the pod, when he could talk at her all day and she couldn’t argue with him. Isobel doesn’t remember any of that. Max doesn’t think Noah deserves to hear the sound of Isobel’s voice ever again. But he thinks it might feel good for Isobel to talk into the void at Noah and get a few things off her chest.
Max: “I’m gonna wait in the car. I want to get you home before the storm comes in, but I’ll give you some time.”
Max leaves Isobel alone with Noah and the premium grade pods. A shiver goes through Isobel.
This seems like a good moment to review what we’ve seen so far. According to Noah, the ship was carrying a group of refugees from a planet that had been ravaged by war. They were looking for a new home where they could live better lives, together, presumably in peace. But the ship was sabotaged and crashed by an enemy, then almost all of the surviving passengers were killed by the native people of this new planet.
Despite the hopefulness and togetherness of the passengers, there was socioeconomic stratification of some type. This resulted in Noah “traveling with the peasants”, which sounds like he wasn’t actually a peasant, but maybe a guard or staff stationed in that section for the trip. He ended up with one of the peasant-grade pods after the crash, but it was damaged. It wasn’t the superior model pod that the trio were placed in.
Noah dragged the pod out of sight and got into it anyway, in order to hide from the humans and to avoid hearing the slaughter of his people, which he couldn’t stop. The pod was too damaged to do more than keep him alive, barely- which sounds like it’s possible for the premium pods to heal.
Since no one found where he’d hidden, he stayed in the pod for decades, until Isobel’s psychic scream penetrated his dreams. After that, he was able to view the world through her eyes. During the blackouts that she was having anyway, he could psychically enter her brain and possess her body. He didn’t cause the blackouts. He only took advantage of them.
Once again, Max treats Isobel like an object that’s his to protect and control, just like Noah does. He wants to get her out of the storm before it hits. Fun fact- if you live in any other part of the country, you’d barely get fussed at the storms they worry about in southern New Mexico.
As a competent adult woman, Isobel should able to make decisions about storm safety for herself and then take the actions she needs, all by herself. Remember that time that Liz moved Michael’s trailer all by herself? But Isobel can’t drive herself home when it’s clouding up. Because a scary man came after her once. Just like most of us have had happen to us by the time we’re thirty. Michael lived with the scary men for years, when he was younger than Isobel.
Noah wakes up and pushes his way out of the pod. Isobel, who pushed her own way out of the same pod when she was 7, can’t believe this is possible. Max runs back into the cave, gun pointed at Noah. Isobel tells him not to kill Noah. Max assumes that’s actually Noah talking, since Isobel is disagreeing with him. Isobel tells him again not to kill Noah, because they need answers.
But answers might make Noah seem better than Max in some way. Max is all about the alpha dog competition and Noah already has him beat on looks, education, income and strength of powers. He doesn’t want Noah to look smart, too, or for his alien knowledge to be important.
The costume designer does Noah a favor and puts him back in last week’s silver suit, maybe to remind us he’s a silver-tongued devil, while Isobel is wearing a horrible outfit that proves Noah’s been picking her clothes whenever she looks good. I assume the fur vest is meant to make her look like a rabbit/prey animal.
They take Noah back to Max’s house and cuff him to a chair. Liz rushes right over. Noah begins to tell the story from the opening voiceover. Continuing from where the opening leaves off:
Noah: “I’d been in silence for so long, and then I heard something beautiful.”
Max: “Michael wanted to camp out at the site of the UFO crash that night. Were you lurking there?”
Much as I’m loving the image of Noah rolling back to the crash site while still inside the pink alien egg, he’s already clearly stated that he couldn’t exit the pod, Supercop, and couldn’t even move. That’s your own history talking, as the guy who lurked after Liz for ten years before she noticed you at the end of high school.
Noah: “I wasn’t lurking. I crawled into that pod in 1947, just to get some rest before someone came for me. But it was defective. Broken in the crash and I couldn’t get out. I wasn’t in stasis like I should have been. I was aware of every miserable moment. Paralyzed. Weakened. I shriveled. No choice but to wait for something I knew may never come. Isobel’s psychic scream that night was the sweetest sound. If you hadn’t left her alone, I never would have heard her voice.”
Max: “She was 14 years old.”
Liz (to Isobel): “Max said you blacked out after the assault.”
Isobel: “That’s how he got in. You crawled in through some crack in my psyche.”
Noah: “Yes. And I stayed.Through the years, every time you were triggered, every time you were afraid, you left your body and gave me space to borrow it.”
Max hits Noah in the head with the handle of the gun and knocks him unconscious. There was no need to hit Noah in that moment. If Max wanted Noah to stop talking, they could have gagged him. He’s already dying, they can’t make the pain and punishment worse.
Noah, Refugee from a War Torn Planet
Through all of Noah’s story in the voiceovers so far, he hasn’t committed any violent acts. Not like what we see in Max, where his first, automatic reaction is dominance, control and assault. So far, what we’ve heard and seen is that Noah’s natural reactions are opportunistic. He does what he needs to survive and risks as little as possible. He’s made no move to take over from Max. He just wants a share of the spoils (Isobel), to secure his future. Noah eventually becomes violent, out of self-preservation, but he doesn’t even fight back as his people are slaughtered around him.
Disclaimer: I’m not going to be arguing that Noah is good or right, but I do want to look at things from his point of view, because I think it’s important. How and why did Noah become what he is today? Max has had zero struggles in life. None. Top of the food chain, other than one girl rejecting him, who eventually came back. And he’s a violent, whiny misogynist.
Noah is played by Karan Oberoi, who is an Indian-American actor. They are using Noah to show us a different immigrant experience from the typical Mexican-American ones of the Ortechos and Valentis. Noah isn’t just coming from poverty and gang/drug violence. He came from a place he couldn’t return to and almost literally smashed into a wall (disguised as the ground) when he got to earth. For decades, he lived the half-life of the undocumented worker who has no community or hope, the equivalent of a homeless person.
Then Isobel gave him a toehold in his new world, because he could see through her eyes and learn about his new home. But according to Max, literal white male and government authority, this completely non-sexual behavior was illicit. Noah had sexual feelings toward Rosa, but there’s been no indication he did anything more than express his desire for her, hug her, and maybe kiss her, while in Isobel’s body. And no indication that he had any sexual feelings toward Isobel until they started dating, whenever that was.
Noah wasn’t being pervy when he said Isobel’s voice was beautiful or a sweet sound. He was saying she saved his life, like a drink of water in the desert. I’m sure he didn’t mind that his phrasing also yanked Max’s chain, but Max put the sexual connotation into the words.
Think about Max’s treatment of Cam this season and compare it to what we’ve heard of Noah’s story so far in the voiceovers, but forget everything else you know about Noah.
Who’s worse? If Noah could have been honest with the trio at this point, what might have happened? Could they have put him in stasis one of the good pods until the science team had the skills to fix him? And who are the trio?
Noah seems to know, and he specifically knows about Max and Isobel. He’s left Michael out of his manipulations so far. The way he acts with Max and Isobel makes it seem like they were adults who were dying, so their consciousnesses were sent to grow in new bodies. But maybe they were normal children and Max is part of a family of guards or soldiers, like Alex, and Isobel is royalty.
Isobel rushes outside. Liz tells Max that, if left untreated, Noah will die by the end of the day. He looks guilty but doesn’t answer. She tells him to be careful and leaves to tend to Isobel, who’s lost her husband she thought she knew.
Alex and Kyle stand out in the open and scan Caulfield prison one more time before going inside to investigate. Project Shepherd has ways to mask the data that can be scanned from the site, but Alex has more advanced ways of detection. He even detects Michael peeing nearby.
Before they go in, we get another reminder that Kyle was a jerk in high school. (Rosa is rolling in her grave-you really can’t escape your teenage image in Roswell.)
Kyle tells Alex he’s looking for evidence that will prove something alien caused his father’s fast-growing brain tumor. Alex scoffs at him that aliens don’t cause brain tumors.
Then Michael concentrates and uses a little alien psychic power to listen for others. He can hear his relatives screaming.
Kyle has never seen Star Trek or Star Wars. I believe that makes him a mythical creature.
Noah wakes up and Max starts the interrogation/torture in earnest. Except he skipped that day at the police academy and screws it up immediately. He must have also skipped negotiation tactics and anything that didn’t involve shooting someone.
Max: “Where are we from?”
Noah: “You don’t know? You’ve got a map tattooed on your shoulder.”
Max: “Is that what that is. What does it mean? How do I read it?”
Noah: “You know, on second thought, I don’t mind the pain. Reminds me I’m alive. Plus, if I’m going to die, might as well do it watching you twist in the wind.”
First, Max gave Noah leverage by admitting there was information he wanted from Noah, and second, the only bargaining chip Max can come up with is more pain, which is meaningless to someone who’ll be dead in a few hours.
Isobel tries to call Michael, but he doesn’t answer, so she leaves a message telling him that Noah will be dead in a few hours. Liz joins Isobel outside to offer some support, but as soon as Liz starts talking, Isobel diminishes the tragedies in her life in favor of Isobel’s own. Nothing is ever as bad as an alien problem. She acts like Rosa’s murder was an identity crisis and her mother’s abandonment was simply an inconvenience.
What Noah did to Isobel was mindrape and terrible, especially since he used her to commit murder. Now Isobel is depressed because realizes that she never knew her husband at all, after she was so smug at the gala about having her successful, attractive husband and her settled marriage.
But she lied to him from the beginning as well. As far as she knew, he never knew her either. Isobel is grieving a marriage that she knew was a lie, because she created it that way. She doesn’t get to act like an innocent victim. She’s also mindraped anyone she wanted, anytime she wanted. She gleefully made racist Hank make a fool of himself at the Wild Pony when she was practicing her powers.
And she made Hank donate money he might not have been able to afford to causes he didn’t agree with. It’s not a different crime because Isobel is a woman or Hank is a racist. The writers may have changed their minds about the extent of her powers in the last few episodes, but they clearly showed her forcing Hank to do things he would never do in public. Maybe they’re his secret desires, but he was coerced into revealing and acting on them.
Liz is much more patient with Isobel than she deserves. Isobel asks Liz if anything helped her feel better about Rosa’s death. Liz tells her that learning the truth helped.
Michael, Kyle and Alex follow Michael’s sense of the other aliens into the prison. They reach a point where the locks become alien proof and Michael can’t open them. They’re discovered at the same time. Alex tells Kyle and Michael to run while he deals with whoever’s approaching.
It’s one of Alex’s brother’s, Flint, played by Native American actor Kiowa Gordon. Tyler Blackburn, who plays Alex, also has Native American ancestry, so this puts a whole new spin on the Manes family. Mama Manes must be Native American. Is she connected to the tribe who hosted the alien healer for decades after the crash? And the grandmother-granddaughter fake healers who the gang met on the road trip to Texas?
Fun Fact- Kiowa Gordon played a werewolf in the Twilight film series. Is this a nod to the upcoming space vampire story?
Alex disarms Flint, then Flint takes him to the supersecret alien science lab where they’ve developed every cool thing since the 40s. Flint is supposed to be stationed in Munich, so Alex wonders why he’s in this backwater. Jesse sent Flint there 5 years ago to develop an effective weapon that would act like a wall to stop an alien invasion. He’s beta testing a smart bomb based on alien DNA. It’s harmless to humans but lethal to aliens.
Alex questions why they’re breaking UN treaties to create weapons capable of genocide, but Flint and Jesse feel the law doesn’t apply to anyone from off-planet. These aliens are perfect killing machines, according to them, and need to be stopped before they commit genocide against humans. Alex notes that Flint is as nuts as Jesse. Flint realizes that Jesse didn’t send Alex. Cover story blown.
When Isobel and Liz come back inside, Isobel tells Max that she’s going to communicate privately with Noah. He refuses, twice. She tells him she wasn’t asking permission and sits down opposite Noah. It only takes a moment for both of them to drop into psychic space. Noah is relieved to have a chance to talk to Isobel and calls her “my love”. She tells him to knock it off.
It’s hard to judge what Noah’s motive is. Does he actually care, even a little, or is she solely leverage for him?
On the outside, Max is determined to pull Isobel out. And to manipulate Liz. He takes Liz’s explanation of how Isobel feels about the end of her marriage and accuses her of sympathizing with Noah. I don’t know how you get from Liz’s sympathy for Isobel to advocating for Noah, but that’s typical of Max’s aggressively abusive behavior.
Isobel: “I need to know why.”
Noah: “I was barely alive, physically, but my mind was sharp. That’s what made the decades so agonizing. Then I had the chance to see this world where we landed through your eyes. Your beautiful eyes.”
Isobel: “You used me like a sock puppet to prey on a lost teenage girl.”
NoH: “Rosa wasn’t prey.”
ISOBEL: “Tell that to the headstone at the Frontier Valley Cemetery, Noah.”
Noah: “She couldn’t be trusted.”
Isobel: “Don’t blame her. You faltered. You were the one who dropped your harmless facade. When she caught a glimpse of your truth, she was too smart to love you. And she died for it. Me, I believed your lies. Lucky me.”
When Isobel says Rosa was too smart to love Noah, he takes in a long gasping breath, sits back, and holds his tongue. He stops trying to convince Isobel of his relative innocence or that he cares about her. You can’t lie in the psychic space, but I bet you can withhold the truth. I bet you can speak around the truth and make it seem like something else is true. I bet experienced psychics are good at that.
That moment makes me wonder if he was somehow able to help Rosa fake her death and get out of town, the way she wanted, and he’s been seeing her since then, without having to hide his identity from her.
Ten years ago, Rosa didn’t want him because he was in Isobel’s body. Since then he’s been Noah, and that would be a whole different story. I thought it was strange that Noah didn’t mind Isobel staying over with Max and Michael so often. Maybe he has someplace to go on those nights. I’ve assumed that Rosa was being held hostage if she were still alive, but maybe not. Maybe Noah helped her escape from her high school identity after all.
Ugh, back to the bad Omegaverse fanfiction that is Max and Liz.
Liz reveals to Max that the lowly Beta, Noah, dared to mark her with his handprint, but, even though it happened three days ago, the timid little Omega has been afraid to tell her big, bad Alpha boyfriend, Max, because she was afraid of setting off his temper again. Max’s brown eyes smolder and simmer as he tries to control his temper, so that he doesn’t drive his sensitive Omega away again.
Liz goes on to say that because of the mark, she can feel what Noah feels and he doesn’t want to die. And Liz doesn’t want to become a killer, she tearfully tells him. Max knows that he has to cool his hot Alpha blood before he does something he regrets. He needs to focus on helping his Omega through this difficult time, then he can put all of his energy into grinding Noah into dust.
The Beta must pay with his life for daring to touch the Alpha’s most precious possessions- Liz, his newly mated Omega, and Queen Isobel, his beautiful Alpha sister, who Max has sworn to guard with his last breath. How dare Noah, a Beta and a peasant, dupe Queen Isobel into thinking he was a strong Omega who was worthy of her love?
Just thinking about it made Max so angry that he nearly melted the gun in his hand with his powers, but he remembered himself in time. He’d promised Sheriff Valenti that he’d be more careful with his service weapons, after he’d melted three weapons in a week last month. The Alpha needed to hit something instead.
😘😘😘😘😘
I’m tempted to rewrite the whole season as a ridiculous Omegaverse fanfic.
Noah gets visibly sicker and asks Isobel what’s happening to him. She explains that the serum is killing him. His mind and body are deteriorating.
Noah: “You don’t want to watch me die. I can tell you where the antidote is. You can bring it to me. We can go back to how things were before.”
Isobel: “How things were when we were both pretending to be human?”
Noah, screaming: “Yes! (He takes her hand.) We were good at it. We could do it again. Pretend this all away.”
Isobel pops back out of psychic space. Noah’s offer was probably a little too tempting. She made a big deal at the gala about how happy she was that she had a husband and didn’t have to worry about dating. Then there’s the way she wanted to fuse their skin together. If that was true.
That’s the ironic thing here. She’s not angry with him for the murders. She’s angry with him for the lies. Which she was also telling. Literally, the exact same lies, down to covering up murders and other alien crimes she and her brothers committed. It was a marriage of convenience before. It can be one again.
Michael and Kyle find cell block 7A, which was mentioned repeatedly in Jim Valenti’s letters. Michael is busy amusing himself by harassing Kyle, but he agrees they should check out the lead.
Flint and Alex have descended into a sibling argument that’s laden with insults, though Flint says he tried to protect Alex from Jesse. He also puts his hand on his gun and tells Alex that he can’t let him leave the facility. Take note- one human brother threatening the other human brother with a gun for wanting more information about aliens.
Down in the cell block, Michael and Kyle find several elderly aliens imprisoned in alien-proof cells. Michael can feel their anger, fear and other negative emotions. Kyle notes that they’re covered in bruises, scarring, and needle tracks. Their behavior is consistent with prolonged torture. Approximately 70 years of torture.
Michael wants to rescue them, but Kyle is concerned about where they’d bring so many feral aliens. He tells Michael that his dad wanted him to find N-38. Michael has stopped listening, because he recognizes one of the prisoners, a woman who’s asleep. When he stands in front of her cell, she feels his presence and wakes up.
They’re interrupted by one of the guards. Michael hides, while Kyle pretends to be a lab tech who needs to see N-38. The guard tells him he must be mistaken, because any living thing that goes into the cell with N-38 develops cancer and quickly dies. Only one human has ever gone in.
Isobel and Max hold hands so she can bring him into the psychic space with her.
Noah: “Well, I didn’t think this awful ménage à trois was inevitable, but…”
Max: “I can make your slow and painful death more slow and painful.”
Noah: “You’d like to kill me, wouldn’t you. You’re hungry for it. Come on Maximo. You can’t lie in here. I’m sure you’re wondering why I stopped borrowing your body after Rosa died. How I healed, how I got out of that pod finally? I didn’t want to kill Katie and Jasmine Rosa, but there’s the cruel irony. Killing her, channeling her exquisite life force, it brought me back. I changed shape and my mind sharpened. Kills make us stronger, don’t they, Max? Destruction makes us feel better. Physically, at least.”
Isobel: “That’s why the bodies piled up. You keep killing because it makes you strong. that’s why your powers are so much stronger than ours.”
Noah: “It’s simple practice. You could be strong, if you weren’t so afraid of yourself. I kill to keep my body alive. After all those years in that broken pod, it wants to disintegrate, and I won’t let it.”
Max: “You’re a parasite.”
Noah: “And you’re an aberration. When you heal people it nearly kills you because it’s unnatural, downright freakish, but h-ll if you didn’t feel like a force of nature when you killed the creep in the desert that night. You felt like a God. You got a tiny taste again this year, didn’t you, blowing out all the power in town? Destruction is chaos, is entropy is energy is power is victory.”
Isobel and Max are silent. They’ve both enjoyed using their powers and feeling Godlike this season. But Michael doesn’t seem to get the same rush from controlling people that Isobel and Max do, which makes me wonder if, Omegaverse aside, there are different kinds of aliens. There were two warring sides, after all. And there is social stratification of some kind. It could have a biological basis.
But Noah really talks like Lucifer, out to lead them into temptation. He doesn’t have to take Max and Isobel far.
What Noah says about powers, practice and killing is a bit jumbled, but it sounds like what he tried to say was that he’s more expert at using his powers because he’s had much more practice and also uses them with confidence. Most of his strength comes from greater expertise.
But Noah also has greater health and vitality because of his kills, which extends to his powers as well. Max also has access to increasing his power, health and vitality through sapping the energy of others. This must be one of the specific powers they both have. If Max can discharge energy, then of course he can absorb it.
While by human standards, Noah is certainly a serial killer, by vampire standards, his kill rate of averaging one kill/meal about every 9 months is probably starvation level for most. It’s just a matter of perspective.
It sounds like Noah can get into Max’s mind, or at least feel his feelings. He also talks about Rosa’s death very matter of factly for someone who’s still in love with her. Either he dissociates or she’s not dead. And no one ever remembers that Katie and Jasmine’s exquisite life force was also available for his use, to bring him back from the nearly dead. Does Noah throw off some low level mental suggestion to keep people focused in the direction he wants them to look? Like a vampire’s glamour? 😘😘😘
Speaking of Lucifer, Alex figures out that Jesse must be blackmailing Flint into staying at Caulfield, because that’s how the devil their father operates. He wants to know what Jesse has on Flint. Kyle interrupts the conversation. Flint is extra annoyed that Alex brought him along.
Kyle: “This place is a nightmare. Guantanamo for innocent people, and our fathers facilitated it. Aliens have been tortured here for decades.”
Kyle, Guantanamo is Guantanamo for innocent people. It’s literally what Guantanamo is infamous for.
Flint mentions subject N-38. Alex realizes that, against all odds, there’s an alien who causes brain tumors. His world view of a benevolent, logical Science God is crushed.
Flint goes on to say that their research proves that the aliens get stronger when they kill. Kyle tells Flint that if his dad participated in the research that starved, dissected and isolated aliens, then he deserved his brain tumor. Alex looks at Kyle like he’s found a kindred spirit.
Isobel feels left out, because her life force wasn’t good enough for Noah to feed on. Noah says that he’s needs the trio for leverage. Max wants to know more. Why were they in the upper class and protected during the crash? Noah will only share the truth in exchange for the antidote.
They pop out of psychic space. Isobel tells Liz what just happened. She says that the truth didn’t make anything better for her, and she’s ready to go home. Liz gets up to drive Isobel home. Max stops her and makes her give him the cure. By his reasoning, if he withholds the cure from Noah, he becomes Noah’s killer and Liz is relieved of that burden. Liz doesn’t want to do that to him, but Max insists, out of the coldness goodness of his heart.
The truth might have helped Isobel if she’d actually let Noah give it to her. She’s heard about 5% of the truth.
Max’s Addiction to Power
Max tells Liz that he’ll selflessly relieve her of the burden of killing Noah. Uh huh. Let’s review again. Noah killed Rosa, Katie and Jasmine while possessing Isobel. He didn’t even use his own body. That gave him enough strength to heal his body and break out of the broken pod, after being trapped in it for 50 years. That was some powerful energy that he gained from 3 indirect murders which happened an unknown distance from his physical body.
Noah also taunted Max with the power outage, saying Max got a taste of the power that comes with killing when he put the whole town in a blackout. What did Noah mean? People died during the blackout, in traffic accidents, from medical equipment shutting down in their homes and such. The writers slipped that information in and pushed past it quickly, but it was there and I haven’t forgotten that Max indirectly killed those people.
Saving one child by restoring power to the hospital didn’t undo the other deaths. Max got a zing of power from indirectly causing those deaths, and he and Noah both know it. The next morning, Max even said he felt much better after he’d felt a rage building in him for weeks. He discharged some negative energy, and topped up his positive power.
Lately, we’ve been watching Max became more angry and violent again. He’s looking for another fix. If he can indirectly kill Noah, and the universe accepts that judgement, he’ll get another dose of power. And he won’t have to feel guilty about hurting someone to get his fix.
Noah said that he uses the life force of the people he kills, in order to maintain his own health. His victims are the descendants of the people who killed Noah’s friends and family. He’s using them in a way that’s the equivalent of a vampire feeding on humans. In a CW TV universe, I can’t get too fussed about Noah’s reasoning. He’s traumatized, fighting for his life, and feeding on a different species from his own. Humans eat other mammalian species to stay alive, too. I guarantee you Noah’s glowing hand is more humane than a slaughterhouse.
But, other than his first kill in the desert, Max is hurting and killing because he’s out of control and addicted. He overdoes it in every situation that calls for him to subdue someone, which makes me wonder if he can actually feed on any act of violence or domination. He turns to violence, domination and submission even when they have no place in a situation and makes the outcome of a power struggle the priority in his interactions, rather than whatever the interaction was supposed to be about.
His smarter adversaries, like Noah, have learned how to use that against him. Liz and Isobel are falling down into this rabbit hole with him, subconsciously altering their behavior according to his mood, the way abuse victims do. He brings down the intelligence level of the group dynamic, so that the rest have begun shutting him out of the more important conversations and operations, such as, you know, anything that doesn’t involve brute force. He must get a zing of power even from arguments with people who pose no threat to him, like Michael and Kyle, since that’s the level he keeps those relationships at.
While Kyle is in the Neo-Nazi science lab with Flint and Alex, Michael is in cell block 7A trying to figure out who the female alien is and how to break her out of her cell. He has no luck with hot wiring the cell door, so he decides to “do it the old-fashioned way”, using his telekinesis.
He asks the alien why he recognizes her, but she’s unable to answer him. She just watches him empathetically. It’s hard to believe that this woman is a killer who’s waiting for the next victim she can use to increase her power.
Michael puts everything he has into breaking the clear material of the door open. As soon as it cracks across the middle, a prison-wide alarm is activated. Female alien looks pained. Up in the lab, Flint tells Alex and Kyle that there’s been a quarantine breach. “We have 10 minutes to get out before this building turns to dust. That would be your cue to leave.” He grabs three thick, color-coded binders, and walks out.
That’s it. That’s Flint’s entire reaction to the demolition of the structure where he’s worked for the last 5 years. Where supposedly countless amazing inventions have been created. All that he needed to save were a few notebooks, and there was no need to get emotional about losing his test subjects or disappointing his father.
Alex hands Kyle a backpack and tells him to grab anything he can that looks useful, like hard drives, but to make sure he makes it out in time. Kyle gives Alex instructions for finding Michael in cell block 7A.
Cam brings Max some extra cuffs and whatnot for his game with Noah. She walks away from him without saying much. He follows her, saying thanks for the supplies, then baiting her into arguing with him, as is his modus operandi. Cam thinks there’s a better way to deal with Noah than toying with him and killing him, the way a cat would. Max insists it’s too late now, but it isn’t, is it, because Max has the antidote.
Max: “Aren’t you on duty? Why are you in civies?”
Cam: “I’m permanently off duty. In the melee after the gala, I discharged my service weapon. Small town. People notice gunshots. And I couldn’t exactly tell Valenti I was rescuing you from a body snatching alien who was wearing your sister.”
Cam told the Sheriff that she was tipsy and decided to show off with her gun in the middle of town, which is suddenly a thing that she does. Unlike the show, I’m going to spare us all the rest of the details and leave Cam her dignity. Cam was a misused character who could have been great, but her character, like so many others on this show, changed according to the whims of the individual script writers and the needs of the moment.
She was a sharpshooter in the pilot, but not at all irresponsible. We’ve seen nothing to change that image since. We all know who the irresponsible one is. Ironically, that part of her characterization has been consistent. There were better ways to write Cam off the show. And better ways for them to write an unrequited love storyline, which didn’t demoralize and humiliate the woman involved.
At this point I’m sure it’s not a shock that I find Max repulsive. There are at least 5 guys in this episode on this show who are better than him, probably including racist Hank, who’s at least loyal to Wyatt Long. Why on earth are these women falling for someone as gross as Max?
Max gives Cam a cold-hearted kiss off, then she moves to Ohio to be closer to the prison where her sister is now incarcerated.
Michael has given up on using his powers to get the female alien out of her cell and is banging a fire extinguisher on the door instead. Alex runs up to urge Michael to get out of the building, now, but Michael doesn’t want to give up on her.
Alex: “The alarm is not a suggestion, okay? Nothing gets out alive.”
Michael: “They’re my family, Alex!”
The alarm announcer gives a 2 minute warning.
Alex: “Alright, maybe. But you are mine!”
Michael: “What? No. You gotta go, Alex.”
Alex: “I don’t look away, Guerin.”
Michael: “No. Go! Go! I don’t love you! I don’t! We’ve been holding onto this thing. And it’s gotten us nowhere. Just let go.”
Alex: “You’re a miserable liar.”
Michael looks at Alex, wide-eyed, but then there’s a whoosh sound from behind him. The female alien, Mara, has put her glowing hand up to the glass of her cell door. Michael presses his hand to hers. The glass disappears, they clasp hands, and both appear as they did before the plane crash, with big smiles on their faces.
The moment ends. Michael turns to Alex and clutches his shirt. Haltingly, he tells Alex that Mara is his mother. She told Michael she loves him, and to run. Alex holds onto Michael as he and his mother take one last, long look at each other. Then the two lovers race for the exit.
Kyle finishes grabbing whatever tech he sees, then all three guys reach the exit at the same time. They duck behind a car while the bombs explode, then stand up to view the destruction. You can see that, in order to get through this, Michael is drawing on every survival skill he’s developed in his tragedy-filled life.
Max and Noah are alone at last, just as Max has been dreaming of all day.
Noah: “Want to grab a brewski?”
Max, who had been standing across the room, strides forward and chokes Noah with one hand, putting his face up to Noah’s.
Max: “You were right, earlier, you know. All day, I’ve been telling Isobel that it’s her call, what we do with you. That I’d back her play. But I want you dead. And I want to be the one to do it.”
Noah: “Is this about the possession, or the kills, or the mark I left on your girl? I knew that would make you crazy. All your books. The stories you write. Humans spend their lives looking for meaning, but they have none. We have a purpose. You and me. And if you let me die, you’ll spend the rest of your life on this dumb planet never knowing what it is.”
Max holds up the antidote, then puts it in his pocket. “I got this far. I think I’m better off just being a guy from Roswell.”
When Alex drops Kyle off at the junkyard to pick up his car, Kyle wonders if the aliens are as bad as their fathers thought they were. They all have powers that can be destructive. Alex says that Michael’s a good person, but Kyle suggests the good immigrants Muslims aliens might be the exception.
Alex: “You just watched your government blow up a building full of elderly people. Your brain is trying to justify the slaughter, so that your government can be right. You want to believe that we’re safe. That goodness prevails. That’s the coldest reality about war. Sometimes, you’re just doing what you’re told, then all of a sudden, things are burning, people are screaming, and then you look around and you realize that the evil is you.”
There’s lightning and thunder in the distance.
We return to Max and Noah, sitting face to face only a foot or two apart. Alex’s speech about becoming the evil you thought you were fighting could apply to both of them. Noah accepts it, while Max is lying to himself and everyone else.
Max asks if Noah has any last words. He tells Noah that some people like to repent before they die. Max has no idea what these words actually mean, or he wouldn’t say them. He’s a sanctimonious shell instead of a real person.
Noah scoffs at him. Why would he repent to a human God or to the humans who viciously slaughtered his people, who came in peace, were wounded and in need of aid? Max doesn’t seem to care about the murders, only about the affronts to his own ego. Since the murders were in his jurisdiction and he was unable to solve them, I suppose they could count as affronts to his ego, too.
Bu he has a killer’s instinct and he knows how to hit Noah where it hurts. He gets up to walk out, planning to let Noah die alone unless he shares information from their past. Noah begs Max not to do this. After decades alone, he can’t bear the thought of being by himself at the end. But he also won’t trade his only leverage for anything less than his life. Max throws more insults at Noah and walks out.
What’s the rush with killing Noah, anyway? What are Isobel and Max so afraid will happen if they keep him alive? He’s only been killing to stay alive. Find him a cure so he can live in peace while teaching them about their home planet.
Michael returns from Caulfield just as Max enters the living room. Max asks where he’s been and Michael asks where Noah is. Max tells Michael that Noah is within minutes of death. Michael tries to head toward the room Noah is in, but Max stops him, insisting that Michael needs to talk to him.
Michael tells Max that he doesn’t want to talk to him, he wants to talk to Noah. They need to give Noah the antidote. Max refuses to even discuss it. Michael punches him and picks up the antidote using telekinesis. He tells Max that he’s not letting another alien die until he gets some answers and finds out the truth. He turns to take the antidote to Noah.
Michael stops when he hears a gun click behind him. Max is pointing his gun at Michael’s head, threatening to kill Michael if he tries to give Noah the antidote. Michael asks Max if he’s really this stupid. Max says yes, he really is so stupid that he thinks he can win a gun fight against a telekinetic whose powers are stronger than his own.
Meanwhile, the thunderstorm that Max has been dreading all day has arrived, so I guess next week we’ll see what that means. Does he act like a lightning rod and get really annoyed by the number of lightning strikes by the end of the storm? Is he scared of loud noises? Will he get supercharged by the atmosphere and get a static electricity shock every time he touches something?
Or will he absorb the lightning, finish turning evil, then try to take over Roswell as King of the Aliens, while singing a power rock ballad about everything he’s had to overcome to achieve his greatness?
My money’s on that last one. I think the song should be modelled on Man Up from Book of Mormon, but Max has no sense of humor, so it won’t be that good.
Commentary
Noah and Michael (And a Little Isobel)
What if Noah is Michael’s father? They’ve carefully kept those two separated and didn’t have Noah mention Michael, other than in passing, in this episode or the last. Noah said he wants to keep the trio safe. He said he wants Max and Isobel for leverage. He said he and Max have the same purpose, and implied that Isobel is particularly valuable. But Noah has said almost nothing about Michael. Michael and Noah are both intelligent with sharp sarcastic senses of humor and are both in fields that require skill in logic and analysis.
Since Michael’s mother was alive, there’s a good chance she was also upper class, meaning Michael should also have some value. So, what if Noah didn’t say much about Michael because Michael is his, but he hasn’t been in a position to claim him yet, and he didn’t want Max to know that he could use Michael as a weapon against Noah?
Or maybe Noah’s just a deadbeat dad. Or Michael’s older brother. This show loves it’s brother stories. ROSWELL AND THE CW LOVE THE BROTHER PARALLELS. In this episode alone, we got Kyle/Alex, Alex/Flint, Michael/Alex (are they meant to end up as brothers or lovers?), Michael/Max and Max/Noah (Cain and Abel dynamic, for sure, but which is which? Michael is Seth, the good 3rd child of Adam and Eve. Alex said so.).
In other words, every male character was positioned in a brother dynamic with at least one other character, including Michael and Noah, but they were kept separate from each other. That has to mean a huge reveal is coming.
And is it me, or are Isobel and Noah a much more interesting couple now? Noah just took a turn from bland good guy into troubled, ambiguous bad guy, much like my beloved Grant Ward on Agents of SHIELD, who, at the end of season 1, went from being the most forgettable regular character to Hot Ward, one of their best characters ever. Hot Noah is bringing out a more interesting side of Isobel, too.
Some General Thoughts and Speculations on Noah, Isobel, Max, Michael and Other Aliens
Last week, Noah gave Liz a mark. After a short, non-fatal period of using his glowing hand as a weapon. That means that Rosa could have the mark on her face even if she didn’t die. That also means that Wyatt would have had a mark on his chest after Max tried to kill him outside the Crashdown. So why hasn’t Wyatt said anything to anyone? Why didn’t they notice at the hospital? More proof that either Wyatt or someone in his sphere is another alien, or knows about aliens.
I think Noah does deserve some sympathy, once you’ve heard his whole story. That doesn’t mean I think he should go free. I think he has some serious issues from his time in the pod, which was the equivalent of decades of solitary confinement, a form of torture. Before he went into the broken pod, he listened to his people being ruthlessly murdered and his dreams of a new life being destroyed. Before that, he survived the war that devastated his planet.
Noah has mental health issues from the trauma he’s experienced and is justifiably angry with humans. How many aliens did he hear murdered on the night of the crash? How many of the people he loved, who were all he had left, did he lose? Those 14 murders on Ranchero Nights through the years may be a form of slow revenge for his people’s deaths. Their life force keeps him alive, but their deaths also bring him a sense of justice.
Speculation- Noah will have latched onto Isobel because she’s the Crown Princess or someone of equally high value in the political world. Keeping her safe and on his side guarantees his own safety. Max could be her brother, but he’s so possessive that he must have been meant to guard her.
Or maybe mental illness runs in their family and manifests as power madness, so there’s a tendency to become mad kings.
That would explain the destruction of their planet and Max’s increasing mental instability and violence. His violent tendencies and need to be in control in particular are escalating, but he’s also losing his grip on reality and falling into paranoid delusions. I’d blame it on Noah, but Max seems capable of spiraling out of control all by himself. His powers may be such that the energy builds and causes madness if he doesn’t discharge it in some way.
There’s still a chance that Max is working up to going into Pon Farr. Please let the finale be some combination of Pon Farr and alien vampires battling each other for dominance. That would so bad that it would turn into campy fun. If they’re going to use awful, outdated tropes like having Liz ask Max to make her come back to him if she tries to leave, (and oh by the way he’s a megalomaniac, so that’s just the kind of thing he needs to hear) then they could at least include more of the fun tropes.
They were so close to sex pollen last week with the yellow powder, but then they put Max in the shelter with Michael, instead of Alex or Maria. Or, better yet, sex pollen, combined with Michael, Alex and Maria. Another waste of potential. Let’s have some characters work their issues out in a productive way for once, using positive communication skills. While locked in a fallout shelter and drugged with an aphrodisiac.😘
Alright, let’s get serious. They really aren’t going to let Max kill Noah and make it so that the trio are the only surviving aliens. That’s a storytelling dead-end.
Other aliens will arrive or survive. The trio will have to choose whether or not to side with their human killing countrymen. It’s obvious Michael will choose the other aliens, at first, and Max will choose the humans, mostly because if there are more aliens it threatens his control of his women and his pack.
Isobel is a bit of a wild card, but even without Noah’s influence she doesn’t think much. She does what Max tells her, or what Michael tells her if Max’s opinion goes against her instincts and desires. Noah did her wrong and humiliated her, hurting her pride, so she’ll turn against all aliens.
Right and wrong don’t actually play into decision-making for Isobel or Max, though Max pretends that they do. It’s only about themselves and each other. They don’t even make sacrifices for Michael, in reality. He sacrifices for them.
Eventually Max will come to realize what he can gain from the aliens and will switch sides, not caring about how selfish he’s being. Since Max doesn’t actually have morals beyond protecting Isobel, and now, possessing Liz, he can live with a little murder if there’s something in it for him.
Michael, on the other hand, does have morals, and eventually he won’t be able to handle the way most of the aliens treat humans. He won’t become anti-alien or an alien hunter. He’ll become neutral and a man without a country again, because that’s frequently the tragedy of a truly good man, as his injured hand is meant to remind him. Sometimes, both sides are so flawed that there are no good guys, and the best choice is to become a lone wolf.
Even More Random Musings
What kind of world is this, where Kyle exists and can’t seem to even get a date, while an a–hole like Max has women falling all over him? Since when do we pass up the cute doctor for the Elvis-impersonating small town cop? I don’t think I’ve actually said it in a recap, but Nathan Dean Parsons drove me crazy in the first few episodes, when he was doing Elvis so intensely that he included the lip curl and jutted out hip. Thank goodness he’s toned it down since then.
Max is supposed to be so bookish, even a writer, yet he speaks almost exclusively in single syllable words with an occasional 2 syllable word. This episode he was resorting to grunts and growls by the end. Maybe he’s turning into a werewolf. Isn’t that what he was in The Originals?
Meanwhile, we have Noah throwing in French sex references like ménage à trois. 😘 He managed to go from dying, solo alien to law school to successful attorney in a respected firm. Max may not have written his novel, even with all of the advantages he was given, but Noah made something of himself. He didn’t do that during the short periods of time he spent in Isobel’s body. That was his own hard work and persistence as a lone alien.
Project Shepherd, Basements and Indestructible Aliens
Anything is possible on this show. But under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be the last we’ve seen of the Caulfield aliens. Most storytellers wouldn’t introduce those aliens, including Michael’s mother, only to kill them off in 5 minutes. What’s the narrative point?
There didn’t need to be so many who were still alive. They could have just found evidence of the torture and murders. The only one who had a reason to be alive was Mara, Michael’s mother, and even she could have been a hologram who he determined had been his mother, for all he got from her.
Flint worded his evacuation warning to Alex very carefully- the building will be turned to dust. Not everyone will die or be destroyed. Just the building. And that’s what we saw. The building disintegrated. It was so contained that it didn’t affect any of the guys. No ash fell on them, no hot blast of wind, no flying debris. Did it explode at all, or do the Manes have an alien who can make illusions for them?
But even if it did explode, the aliens were in cells that were like bomb shelters. There’s a good chance that their cells protected them from the blast. The cells may have even been meant to withstand an alien attack or rescue mission. The guys didn’t go back to check how bad the damage was, which seems strange. Was that an alien suggestion in their minds?
Then there’s the fact that every iteration of Project Shepherd, whether it’s the books, the previous series, or this series, invariably builds its facilities in basement bunkers, not above ground. That Lab and those cells were probably decoys, meant to scare off intruders, while the real labs are underground. Especially if they’re working on biological weapons in that facility. You don’t leave that stuff lying around and explode it randomly. The alien prison cells may have even dropped back into the underground cell block after the explosion.
The odds are high that those aliens are alive and as healthy as they were before. They just need to be rescued or to realize there’s something out there worth escaping for. Mara got a good look inside Michael’s head and can pass what she saw to the other aliens.
It appears that they might all have some level of psychic ability that just needs to be developed. That’s what Noah told Isobel in the psychic space, that he was only stronger than her because he’s used his powers so much more. If that’s the case, Michael might begin receiving messages from his mother.
Cam Is Set Free (For Now)
Goodbye, Cam. I hope that in Ohio you find better storylines and men, since you were given a raw deal here.
It’s stomach-turning that she sacrificed herself for Max, after the way he’s used and mistreated her all season. The way that she left the Roswell force will go into her employment record and follow her, affecting, possibly ruining, her career.
Cam became pathetic by the end, continuously coming back for more rejection, giving and giving while getting nothing in return, a male fantasy of pure, unconditional love from a woman. She couldn’t sustain a negative emotion toward Max for more than about 10 seconds, because he’s the woobie and the Bad Boy God that supposedly all women want.
(On one review podcast, she was actually described as an example of pure womanhood, which the reviewers wished they could have in their own lives. Barf. Sadly, I will never be a fantasy of pure womanhood, though I am a devoted partner. My husband somehow survives being married to a person instead of The Giving Tree, and neither of us has become a stump.)
Let’s note here- Fandom has embraced Michael as the woobie and Alex as his designated comfort provider. The show writes Max as the woobie, and Max thinks of himself as the ultimate woobie, who needs vast amounts of comfort for his barely there injuries. Let Go of the Woobie looks at a few other shows where fandom and writers had different points of view about who we should sympathize with.
Carina is definitely into Michael and Malex, but the scriptwriting itself points us at Max and Liz as the epic, unbreakable couple, with Max as a tortured, poetic, heroic but misunderstood soul. A woobie. He gets framed in epically posed and backlit shots in his cowboy and sheriff outfits, he gets lush, nostalgic songs played in the background, he gets a will they or won’t they kiss? story, he gets a nice house. They want us to swoon over Max, the broken fairytale prince.
Alex and Michael: Star-Crossed Lovers
This episode highlights how much Alex and Michael love each other, no matter what else is going on with them, but it also shows how star-crossed they are, because of their own and others’ actions. They are both very damaged individuals who had abusive childhoods and parental abandonment (Not blaming Michael’s mom. He also never found a steady foster placement.)
There are healthy aspects to their relationship, such as their instinctive ability to alternate who’s giving more, according to current need. But they’re so damaged that their dynamic keeps turning into one of them running away while the other wants closeness. We’ve mostly been shown Alex running from Michael, but I have a feeling that Michael has done his share of distancing as well, since he had a giant secret to keep and then some resentment over Alex listening to his father after graduation, rather than choosing Michael.
Over the course of the season, they’ve very slowly circled closer to each other, then jumped even further away. Discovering the alien conspiracy seems to have been some kind of turning point for Alex, since he’s now more open toward Michael than we’ve seen him since high school, but it’s not that long since he brutally and publicly dropped Michael in the Wild Pony.
Michael’s love for Alex has never been in question, but he seems to be tired of the “on and off” shenanigans, at least for the moment. Alex has turned away from Michael’s confessions of love too many times. Michael can’t trust him anymore, and love without trust won’t work.
That’s been an underlying theme of the season that I think might get pulled to the surface for the last episode. If this show has been building toward anything, it’s the culmination of that theme. We spent this episode having everyone explore how they felt about new revelations about the people they love, revelations that affect the trust they have in the basic foundations of their lives.
Alex realized that Michael could have been one of the people in those cells, tortured for 70 years, about to die, and that he’s still at risk from a genocidal bomb. He had his moment of truth, which brought home the fact that he needs Michael. For him, it was a huge, overwhelming step to admit that out loud, since he comes from a family where to admit any vulnerability, including love, is to give the other members a weakness to exploit. But, as abusive as Alex’s family is, he’s still part of them and still receives some of the benefits of being a Manes man. Never having been without them, he doesn’t realize how much support he’s had from his family.
But Michael can see the subtleties, because he’s watched the differences between him, Max, Isobel and Alex. He knows that as a child and teenager, he, himself, had no one. There was no extended family to turn to, no parents, no siblings, no foster siblings who traveled the same road as him. No home to return to, no one to bail him out of trouble or give him advice.
None of the underlying, steadfast parental love that even Jesse feels for Alex. None of the underlying sibling love and loyalty that Alex has with his brothers, and Max and Isobel have with each other, no matter how much they disagree. Those touchstones can keep a person going on their worst days and Michael doesn’t have them. He was alone in the universe until today.
Michael values steadiness in his relationships. He doesn’t look away. He lets almost no one in, because almost no one can live up to the standard of truth and loyalty that he needs. Alex started out giving Michael loyalty and truth, but then Jesse got in the way. Max was Michael’s brother, but then the murders got in the way. Isobel has been the only one who stayed close through everything, even though they all had their secrets.
Michael was willing to keep giving Alex chances right up until that cutting, public break up speech in the Wild Pony. He’d been noticing Maria before that, but it was that night that they slept together. Since then, he’s pursued Maria the way he used to pursue Alex. He’s been open to friendship with Alex, but seems to be more guarded with his heart than before.
This show has a weird thing for showing casual sex in the midst of a couple’s intense relationship drama, so Michael’s thing with Maria could ultimately be meaningless. But it’s clear that it’s not meaningless to her. These writers also love to show women debasing themselves over men they can never truly have, so that’s probably what’s up next for Maria.
Then Maria can be dispatched off to live near a distant relative while Michael and Alex live as soulmates. Isobel and Liz can reign supreme as the only two female characters left on the show, with their IQ points bleeding out the longer they spend in Max’s sole possession.
Please Save Isobel’s Wardrobe, I Beg You. Her Clothing Is Undermining the Character You Are Trying to Create.
OMG, Isobel’s outfit is the worst. If this show is renewed, please replace the costume designer. Nobody looks great, and Isobel is a tragedy. Seriously, put her back in faux Western gear if you must, just stop making it so Laura Ashley fussy. Make it look like she’s actually ridden a horse at some point in her life. Or gotten dusty by going out for a walk. Or make her look more urban, since that’s the way most of the kids dress here. Or dye her hair blue or pink. Just stop with whatever this is. Isobel’s not cool enough to pull off high fashion in Roswell or quirky enough to pull off weird hipster combinations.
I know no one is asking for my advice, but for work Isobel would wear classic, tailored outfits with a Western, artsy touch, but nothing too out there. This state is proud of its multicultural heritage and it frequently shows up in jewelry and accessories. Since she’s a local events organizer in a town that thrives on tourism, she’d be especially careful to support local businesses and artists. When she’s off work, she might go with a lived-in Western look that has a bit of Mexican and/or Native American influence or she might go with every day, standard American leisure wear. She wouldn’t do whatever this is.
Carina Adly MacKenzie is the showrunner. She frequently explains the episodes on twitter after they air for viewers who don’t understand what they’ve seen. Here are some from this week. A few have spoilery stuff for the finale or the potential season 2. If you’re very spoiler phobic, don’t read any further.
She mentions that this is the first appearance by Kayla Ewell, the actress who plays Young Mara, Michael’s mother, which suggests there could be more. The song that played over Cam’s goodbye scene and Michael’s scene with his mother and Alex was a song by Tyler Blackburn, who plays Alex.
I don’t know why Twitter is embedding two texts each time, instead of the one I’m asking for. Carina replied to herself when she posted each time, so maybe that’s the reason. Sorry it’s confusing.
Images courtesy of The CW.
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