Roswell 2.21: "The Departure"
Written by Jason Katims
Directed by Patrick Norris
In which the hybrids say their last goodbyes as they prepare to leave Earth for their own homeworld, but things get complicated when the truth about Alex is revealed…
Status Report
From the very beginning of this episode, it’s clear that the shuffling of episodes damaged the dramatic narrative flow. Maria and Michael’s voiceovers assume that the audience has just dealt with the fallout of Max and Tess being together and the news of a way back to Antar; unfortunately, the audience was more likely wondering what the hell Maria meant when she said that “Off the Menu” held the “key to everything”.
If “Off the Menu” is cut out of the sequence, the story builds nicely into the beginning of this episode. But it’s still not enough to repair the damage done by the network’s back-stabbing ways. “The Departure” was originally written and edited for a two-hour slot. After the episode was already prepared for broadcast, the network went back on their word and demanded that the season finale be cut down to one hour. By then, the network had already long since decided that “Roswell” wasn’t going to be renewed, and the producers had created the finale as a means of bringing the open plot and character threads to a relative close.
The effect of cutting out 44 minutes of an 88 minute story is staggering. It doesn’t take much to recognize that a lot of good material was ripped out of the episode; there are moments that feel like they were carved down to one or two critical lines of dialogue. There is, apparently, a bootleg version of the original two-hour version, though it’s hard to confirm. If that’s the case, then it should have been restored and presented on the DVD set, to give the fans what they really wanted and (from a studio perspective) to recoup some small measure of what was lost when the episode wasn’t aired in full.
The network decision was public enough that fans should have been more forgiving when the episode didn’t quite deliver on every level. The producers were forced to take certain liberties with the resolution of ongoing plot threads. A lot of decisions made by the characters feel rushed and illogical because much of the process of getting to those decisions had to be removed. The producers went with emotional payoffs rather than strictly logical ones, and it’s on that level that the episode succeeds.
The episode begins with the hybrids discussing their final 24 hours on Earth. It’s logical to assume that this is how both versions of the story began. The scene cuts almost immediately to Max and Michael asking to speak with Liz and Maria, so they can prepare to say goodbye. This scene also includes the real visual clue, completely missing from “Off the Menu”: Kyle’s finger drumming, which matches the same unconscious habit that Alex acquired in “Cry Your Name”.
Brendan Fehr has always given Michael a very realistic and uncompromising personality, so when he becomes serious and openly emotional, it hits home. Maria’s reaction is exactly what it ought to be: she’s probably been waiting for the next hammer to fall since Alex’s death and the revelation that aliens really were behind it. As has been the case since “Cry Your Name”, Michael and Maria take solace in each other, even as events promise to tear their worlds apart.
The conversation between Max and Liz is far less satisfying. For Liz to claim that she never blamed Max or the others is an outright lie. How many times did they remind the audience of Liz’s angry words at the end of “Cry Your Name”? Why would Max have reacted so strongly to Liz and her investigation unless he felt like she was holding him responsible? Perhaps Katims realized that the writers had gone a little too far in how polarized the characters had become, and this scene was meant to bring them closer to a meaningful rapprochement than otherwise possible.
That said, Max is still not thinking clearly. It makes sense given how conflicted and worn-out he was at the end of “Baby, It’s You”, but the shuffling of the episodes makes it harder to sympathize with his situation. Max is under a deadline, so he makes the assumption that killing Leanna is the easiest way to ensure the safety of his human friends. Liz definitely has a stake in the outcome, but her inclusion seems more contrived (thanks to the deeply cut scenes) to ensure that Max doesn’t make a fatal mistake.
All season long, Isabel has struggled with the desire to strike out on her own and escape the edicts set down by Max. Never has that inner conflict been more obvious than in the past few episodes. The deadline presented by this finale provides the writers with a clear resolution to that character arc: does Isabel betray her brother (metaphorically, anyway) by refusing to return home at his side, or does she stand by him and make up for the past indiscretions of Vilandra. Isabel’s inner conflict is well depicted, making the time spent to portray her grief worth it. This is an example of where the producers chose the emotionally satisfying scenes over plot exposition.
One challenge of the episode was making sense of Tess’ motivations. It’s not overly harsh to say that this goal was not achieved. Tess had been given a strong sense of direction up until “Viva Las Vegas”: her cold alien side had been partially melted away by the love and support of the Valenti clan. The scene between Tess and Jim seemed to be designed to demonstrate how honest she had been in her affections, because the ending wasn’t going to give her much in the way of sympathetic portrayal.
But Tess’ motivations, beyond getting Max to mate with her and then return home to Antar, were never clear. The suggestion is that Tess, until around “Max in the City”, had assumed that Max and Liz would be together, despite her best attempts to follow through on Nasedo’s deal with Kivar. The suggestion is that without Nasedo, Tess had doubts about the viability of the plan. When she decided to use Alex and several others in Las Cruces to translate the book, was she firmly acting out of desire to ensnare Max? Or was she getting that information because she thought it might be useful? She was at the summit, so she knew that Kivar had been ready to accept the granilith and presumably the heir to Max’s throne; was her decision to translate the book and find a way home based on the assumption that the result of the summit and Nasedo’s deal would work in her favor?
One wouldn’t have expected Tess to tip her hand if she had always been evil, but her efforts to gain Max’s trust and to integrate with the Valentis had seemed sincere. Did the writers backtrack on the original plan to integrate Tess as a love interest for Kyle when the writing was on the wall? Did the network’s decision to end “Roswell” give the writers the idea that making Tess a true enemy wouldn’t need to be addressed in the future?
Villains are compelling when they believe that they are doing the right thing. Tess didn’t need to be in concert with Kivar, via a vague deal with Nasedo, in order for her “betrayal” to make dramatic sense. She could have accidentally killed Alex and still returned home in much the same situation as shown. Without the reference to the deal with Kivar, the entire story would have hinged on the warring desires and imperatives within Tess herself. That would have been far more satisfying in terms of the season’s theme.
On the one hand, Tess would have wanted to do what was necessary to convince Max that he should follow his destiny. That would logically include giving him knowledge of his Antarian heritage, the lack of which has always been a gap between them. Mindwarping Alex into performing her bidding would have fallen into that category. On the other hand, Tess would have been getting closer to her more human side, thus coming to terms with life beyond Max and Antar. Tess’ decision not to reveal the translation could have been justified as her decision to abandon the thought of going home, and Alex’s death could have been explained as the side effect of her efforts to hide her previous motivations. Tess would have been a more sympathetic and tragic figure had that been the case.
The writers frame the Leanna question in rather simplistic terms: either Leanna is a killer alien, or she’s human. This is the other downside of placing “Off the Menu” out of sequence, just before this episode. It makes Max and Liz look incredibly stupid. Why don’t either of them consider the possibility that Leanna has been “possessed” like Brody? For that matter, why not have Leanna be “possessed” by one of Kivar’s allies, who then poses Tess with an offer or ultimatum after “Max in the City”? The Skins were out of commission, the summit didn’t work…Kivar could have sent someone within Leanna to threaten the lives of the hybrids’ human allies. That’s a second option for giving Tess a more reasonable and logical motivation.
While Michael gets to say goodbye to Maria and Max gets to find some sense of closure with Liz, Isabel is left to visit Alex’s grave. Had this been the series finale, it would have been a nice capstone to the whole Alex/Isabel relationship. As it stands, the concept is revisited in the beginning of the third season in a less satisfying way. (But then, the third season adds Jesse, which was a bad idea all around.)
Once Leanna is cleared, Max and Liz are left with the fallout of the entire season. While specifically the issues in “Cry Your Name” and “The End of the World” created their current crisis, it originated in “Destiny”. Liz didn’t want to stand in the way of Max’s destined path, and one way or another, events forced both of them to live with that decision. It makes perfect sense, in retrospect, that Max and Liz would reach their darkest hour at the end of the second of three seasons. The third season is essentially the process of healing necessary for them to come together.
Liz and Max don’t really know how to deal with the situation they find themselves in. Max has already decided to leave, but he wasn’t expecting the killer to still be loose. (Keeping in mind that Max is completely ignoring the fact that aliens can attack Liz and the others even after they leave.) Liz, in her pain over Tess’ pregnancy, has little desire to give Max credit. But she’s not really angry with him; she’s equally angry with herself. She knows, on some level, that she had always assumed that sooner or later Max would still come to her, no matter how hard she pushed him away.
This is in counterpoint to Michael and Maria’s “dinner”, in which one of the older questions in the series’ history is finally answered. Michael makes it clear that the “flashes” between Max and Liz had everything to do with Max’s desire to open himself up to Liz. Both Liz and Maria seemed to share flashes with their hybrid loves, but Maria never had flashes herself. Michael, it seems, consciously held back. But now, at the end, he doesn’t want to hold back, and he gives her everything. And sure enough, as anyone might have guessed, Maria is at the center of his universe.
Max and Liz feel the same way, but events have driven them apart instead of together. By the time Max tells Liz that he wishes it could have been different, he’s speaking for everyone in the audience. When it comes to Max with either Liz or Tess, things could have been very different. The battle between destiny and free will has left all of them in tatters; the third season is therefore quite a battle to reclaim what was lost (which is inevitably one of the themes of that season).
It’s at this point that the episode really begins to show signs of massive editing. Michael’s admission of his impending departure takes its time, but it’s not as satisfying as it could have been. Max and Isabel barely get to discuss her misgivings, emphasizing the choice she must make, before things move on. And then there’s Liz and Sean.
Sean was always developed as the character of “Not Max”, and once again, that’s the purpose he serves in this episode. Liz goes to him, and almost instantly, she rejects him. It’s incredibly jarring, and it’s clear that there was supposed to be more to it. It’s not a horrible edit, but the pacing is disrupted and the point is somewhat lost in translation. Liz looks like she’s using Sean again, but the audience doesn’t even get to delve into her complicated emotional state.
When Max and Isabel sit down to record their goodbye to the Evans, it really begins to drive home the fact that this was the end of an era. If this had been the definitive end of the series, this is all constructed very well. Given that the departure never actually happens, it becomes a source of immense complication in the third season. For all that, it’s interesting to consider that they recorded a farewell despite faking an accident. Why not just fake the accident and be done with it?
When Tess sees a flash of Max kissing Liz, it has more than a few implications. For one thing, taken in context with Michael’s previous comments about “opening up”, it suggests that Max has fully accepted that he will be with Tess for the rest of his life. Otherwise, how would she get that memory? For her part, Tess acts a bit too catty. After all, she’s won the contest, forcing Max to follow his destiny instead of his heart’s desire. Why rub it in?
Valenti’s farewell to the hybrids is about what one would expect, and it certainly brings a tear to the eye. It’s a little awkward, though, because Valenti’s role as father figure for Max and Michael never really materialized this season. Indeed, Valenti’s place on the series was never the same after the first season, when he was written as a complex semi-villain. In the second season, he was symbolic of the cost of the hybrids’ secrets on the humans around them; in the third season, his character took a major turn for the worse. For all that, Valenti’s words to Max speak to his compassion. He could easily have been bitter about how his life has fallen apart since the beginning of the series.
One element of the finale that is completely dropped is the mental instability caused by Tess and her mindwarping. The extent of the damage seems rather inconsistent. For humans, it can apparently be harsh from just one exposure; Amy is a basket case, and Alex found himself falling apart at the seams. But Kyle is still relatively normal, and “Leanna” seemed all right. And what about Max, who was the recipient of extensive mindwarping himself? One might use that to explain the depth of his emotional breakdown over the previous few episodes, but it’s still not clear.
The whole process of uncovering the effect of Tess’ mindwarping and the truth behind Alex’s death looks like it would have been far more extensive. There are signs of quick and dirty editing all over the final act, in fact, and it takes something away from the impact. It also gives the audience the false impression that the explanation makes sense as presented. It doesn’t take long to realize that the Cliff Notes version of the story doesn’t really answer the burning questions of method and motivation. (Perhaps the issue of why Liz asked Kyle where the pod chamber was would have made more sense in the extended version!)
Michael’s character arc comes to a very satisfying conclusion when he decides not to go to Antar with the others. It’s entirely consistent with his journey this season, and it feels incredibly satisfying. Ultimately, Michael went against his destined role and made a human choice to remain on Earth. Isabel makes the similar choice: choosing to remain with Max rather than abandon him. Tess, of course, is firmly rooted in her desire to fulfill destiny, because she has always been the incarnation of Max’s “preset” role. Max is the only one still in play.
Like the quick and truncated investigation into Alex’s death, the confrontation with Tess is missing a lot of critical information. Even the dialogue feels like it was chopped up and rearranged. Tess’ motivations are all over the map. As mentioned earlier, she could have stopped at the point where she regretfully admits that she didn’t mean to kill Alex, and that it was all about hiding what she was doing. It would have made Alex’s death and Tess’ part in it more tragic. But the writers tacked on that bit about Nasedo’s deal with Kivar, which complicates the situation needlessly.
One has to wonder when and why Nasedo made the deal. Tess says it was 40 years earlier; that would be prior to the emergence of the hybrids, while Nasedo was still on the run. So why would Nasedo see the Skins on Earth as a threat? As noted in reviews for the early episodes of the season, the Skins seemed to be acting on their own, based on a mandate set around the time that the hybrids were sent to Earth. That might account for why they were willing to cross Kivar and why they wouldn’t know about a deal between Nasedo and Kivar made years after their arrival. But it’s all far too complicated and unexplained.
The very ending is equally rushed. The special effects are not at all impressive, though the budget restrictions were what they were, and little could be done about it. But there’s not much time for Max to ruminate on the fact that he needs to find a way to save his son from his enemies before the episode comes to a frantic halt. One gets the feeling that the ending would have been a bit more measured had time allowed; as it was, the story barely gets a chance to end before the episode fades to black.
Looking back at the episodes beginning with “Baby, It’s You”, the effect of the network interference on the story was clear. Instead of a well-paced and consistent plot arc, the producers were left with episodes that took place in wildly different points in continuity and half the time they expected for the season finale. It’s even worse when one considers that the producers weren’t positive that the series would be renewed; the ending was constructed on the hopes that some other network would save the day.
As a result, the season ends on something of a down note. It’s hard to give the writers credit when much of what they wrote never made it on screen, but much of what happened to make this episode lackluster came out of network interference. Those words become somewhat of an unfortunate mantra for “Roswell”, because for much of the series’ run, the true vision of the writing staff was held back by attempts to make “Roswell” to something it wasn’t.
On the whole, the second season tried to be many things to please many people. The network demanded more sexual tension, more focus on Max as a leader, and more sci-fi action. The writers and producers wanted to continue with the delicate balance of the first season’s best moments: melding character drama with philosophical exploration of self-identity. In the end, the various demands (and the ever-changing episode commitments) made it nearly impossible for the episodes to be consistently well-received. As the fans would discover, the concessions made going into the third season made the situation even more precarious, leaving the fans wondering if the renewal was a victory after all.
Memorable Quotes
DIANE: “Do you realize there are people teaching cooking classes naked? There are talking politics naked!”
PHILIP: “Politics? Really?”
ISABEL: “Alex, that night…that night at the Prom when we danced…it was one of the best nights of my life and I never got to tell you that.”
ALEX: “My Lady?”
LIZ: “I trusted you! I gave you everything, I jumped off bridges for you, I broke laws for you, I risked getting shot for you, I trusted you, and you go off…God, Max, I saved myself for you!”
MAX: “Saved yourself? You slept with Kyle!”
MICHAEL: “…I want you to see me...”
MAX: “I wish…I wish it could have been different. I wish that so much.”
VALENTI: “It’s been an honor to know you, Max. It’s been an honor.”
MICHAEL: “I finally found home. The weird thing is, it’s here, on Earth.”
MAX: “You of all people…”
MAX: “Home to what, Tess? To Kivar? To our enemies?”
TESS: “They’re not my enemies, Max.”
ISABEL: “What happens now, Max?”
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode would have been much better in its original two-hour form. The deep editing required to remove half the story crippled the final product. The producers did everything possible to cram in all the emotional content; after that, there was little time left to explore the more subtle points of plot resolution. In the end, this episode is much like the second season as a whole: flawed, but mostly for reasons beyond the control of the creators themselves.
Writing: 1/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 1/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 6/10
Season 2 Final Average: 6.7
Directed by Patrick Norris
In which the hybrids say their last goodbyes as they prepare to leave Earth for their own homeworld, but things get complicated when the truth about Alex is revealed…
Status Report
From the very beginning of this episode, it’s clear that the shuffling of episodes damaged the dramatic narrative flow. Maria and Michael’s voiceovers assume that the audience has just dealt with the fallout of Max and Tess being together and the news of a way back to Antar; unfortunately, the audience was more likely wondering what the hell Maria meant when she said that “Off the Menu” held the “key to everything”.
If “Off the Menu” is cut out of the sequence, the story builds nicely into the beginning of this episode. But it’s still not enough to repair the damage done by the network’s back-stabbing ways. “The Departure” was originally written and edited for a two-hour slot. After the episode was already prepared for broadcast, the network went back on their word and demanded that the season finale be cut down to one hour. By then, the network had already long since decided that “Roswell” wasn’t going to be renewed, and the producers had created the finale as a means of bringing the open plot and character threads to a relative close.
The effect of cutting out 44 minutes of an 88 minute story is staggering. It doesn’t take much to recognize that a lot of good material was ripped out of the episode; there are moments that feel like they were carved down to one or two critical lines of dialogue. There is, apparently, a bootleg version of the original two-hour version, though it’s hard to confirm. If that’s the case, then it should have been restored and presented on the DVD set, to give the fans what they really wanted and (from a studio perspective) to recoup some small measure of what was lost when the episode wasn’t aired in full.
The network decision was public enough that fans should have been more forgiving when the episode didn’t quite deliver on every level. The producers were forced to take certain liberties with the resolution of ongoing plot threads. A lot of decisions made by the characters feel rushed and illogical because much of the process of getting to those decisions had to be removed. The producers went with emotional payoffs rather than strictly logical ones, and it’s on that level that the episode succeeds.
The episode begins with the hybrids discussing their final 24 hours on Earth. It’s logical to assume that this is how both versions of the story began. The scene cuts almost immediately to Max and Michael asking to speak with Liz and Maria, so they can prepare to say goodbye. This scene also includes the real visual clue, completely missing from “Off the Menu”: Kyle’s finger drumming, which matches the same unconscious habit that Alex acquired in “Cry Your Name”.
Brendan Fehr has always given Michael a very realistic and uncompromising personality, so when he becomes serious and openly emotional, it hits home. Maria’s reaction is exactly what it ought to be: she’s probably been waiting for the next hammer to fall since Alex’s death and the revelation that aliens really were behind it. As has been the case since “Cry Your Name”, Michael and Maria take solace in each other, even as events promise to tear their worlds apart.
The conversation between Max and Liz is far less satisfying. For Liz to claim that she never blamed Max or the others is an outright lie. How many times did they remind the audience of Liz’s angry words at the end of “Cry Your Name”? Why would Max have reacted so strongly to Liz and her investigation unless he felt like she was holding him responsible? Perhaps Katims realized that the writers had gone a little too far in how polarized the characters had become, and this scene was meant to bring them closer to a meaningful rapprochement than otherwise possible.
That said, Max is still not thinking clearly. It makes sense given how conflicted and worn-out he was at the end of “Baby, It’s You”, but the shuffling of the episodes makes it harder to sympathize with his situation. Max is under a deadline, so he makes the assumption that killing Leanna is the easiest way to ensure the safety of his human friends. Liz definitely has a stake in the outcome, but her inclusion seems more contrived (thanks to the deeply cut scenes) to ensure that Max doesn’t make a fatal mistake.
All season long, Isabel has struggled with the desire to strike out on her own and escape the edicts set down by Max. Never has that inner conflict been more obvious than in the past few episodes. The deadline presented by this finale provides the writers with a clear resolution to that character arc: does Isabel betray her brother (metaphorically, anyway) by refusing to return home at his side, or does she stand by him and make up for the past indiscretions of Vilandra. Isabel’s inner conflict is well depicted, making the time spent to portray her grief worth it. This is an example of where the producers chose the emotionally satisfying scenes over plot exposition.
One challenge of the episode was making sense of Tess’ motivations. It’s not overly harsh to say that this goal was not achieved. Tess had been given a strong sense of direction up until “Viva Las Vegas”: her cold alien side had been partially melted away by the love and support of the Valenti clan. The scene between Tess and Jim seemed to be designed to demonstrate how honest she had been in her affections, because the ending wasn’t going to give her much in the way of sympathetic portrayal.
But Tess’ motivations, beyond getting Max to mate with her and then return home to Antar, were never clear. The suggestion is that Tess, until around “Max in the City”, had assumed that Max and Liz would be together, despite her best attempts to follow through on Nasedo’s deal with Kivar. The suggestion is that without Nasedo, Tess had doubts about the viability of the plan. When she decided to use Alex and several others in Las Cruces to translate the book, was she firmly acting out of desire to ensnare Max? Or was she getting that information because she thought it might be useful? She was at the summit, so she knew that Kivar had been ready to accept the granilith and presumably the heir to Max’s throne; was her decision to translate the book and find a way home based on the assumption that the result of the summit and Nasedo’s deal would work in her favor?
One wouldn’t have expected Tess to tip her hand if she had always been evil, but her efforts to gain Max’s trust and to integrate with the Valentis had seemed sincere. Did the writers backtrack on the original plan to integrate Tess as a love interest for Kyle when the writing was on the wall? Did the network’s decision to end “Roswell” give the writers the idea that making Tess a true enemy wouldn’t need to be addressed in the future?
Villains are compelling when they believe that they are doing the right thing. Tess didn’t need to be in concert with Kivar, via a vague deal with Nasedo, in order for her “betrayal” to make dramatic sense. She could have accidentally killed Alex and still returned home in much the same situation as shown. Without the reference to the deal with Kivar, the entire story would have hinged on the warring desires and imperatives within Tess herself. That would have been far more satisfying in terms of the season’s theme.
On the one hand, Tess would have wanted to do what was necessary to convince Max that he should follow his destiny. That would logically include giving him knowledge of his Antarian heritage, the lack of which has always been a gap between them. Mindwarping Alex into performing her bidding would have fallen into that category. On the other hand, Tess would have been getting closer to her more human side, thus coming to terms with life beyond Max and Antar. Tess’ decision not to reveal the translation could have been justified as her decision to abandon the thought of going home, and Alex’s death could have been explained as the side effect of her efforts to hide her previous motivations. Tess would have been a more sympathetic and tragic figure had that been the case.
The writers frame the Leanna question in rather simplistic terms: either Leanna is a killer alien, or she’s human. This is the other downside of placing “Off the Menu” out of sequence, just before this episode. It makes Max and Liz look incredibly stupid. Why don’t either of them consider the possibility that Leanna has been “possessed” like Brody? For that matter, why not have Leanna be “possessed” by one of Kivar’s allies, who then poses Tess with an offer or ultimatum after “Max in the City”? The Skins were out of commission, the summit didn’t work…Kivar could have sent someone within Leanna to threaten the lives of the hybrids’ human allies. That’s a second option for giving Tess a more reasonable and logical motivation.
While Michael gets to say goodbye to Maria and Max gets to find some sense of closure with Liz, Isabel is left to visit Alex’s grave. Had this been the series finale, it would have been a nice capstone to the whole Alex/Isabel relationship. As it stands, the concept is revisited in the beginning of the third season in a less satisfying way. (But then, the third season adds Jesse, which was a bad idea all around.)
Once Leanna is cleared, Max and Liz are left with the fallout of the entire season. While specifically the issues in “Cry Your Name” and “The End of the World” created their current crisis, it originated in “Destiny”. Liz didn’t want to stand in the way of Max’s destined path, and one way or another, events forced both of them to live with that decision. It makes perfect sense, in retrospect, that Max and Liz would reach their darkest hour at the end of the second of three seasons. The third season is essentially the process of healing necessary for them to come together.
Liz and Max don’t really know how to deal with the situation they find themselves in. Max has already decided to leave, but he wasn’t expecting the killer to still be loose. (Keeping in mind that Max is completely ignoring the fact that aliens can attack Liz and the others even after they leave.) Liz, in her pain over Tess’ pregnancy, has little desire to give Max credit. But she’s not really angry with him; she’s equally angry with herself. She knows, on some level, that she had always assumed that sooner or later Max would still come to her, no matter how hard she pushed him away.
This is in counterpoint to Michael and Maria’s “dinner”, in which one of the older questions in the series’ history is finally answered. Michael makes it clear that the “flashes” between Max and Liz had everything to do with Max’s desire to open himself up to Liz. Both Liz and Maria seemed to share flashes with their hybrid loves, but Maria never had flashes herself. Michael, it seems, consciously held back. But now, at the end, he doesn’t want to hold back, and he gives her everything. And sure enough, as anyone might have guessed, Maria is at the center of his universe.
Max and Liz feel the same way, but events have driven them apart instead of together. By the time Max tells Liz that he wishes it could have been different, he’s speaking for everyone in the audience. When it comes to Max with either Liz or Tess, things could have been very different. The battle between destiny and free will has left all of them in tatters; the third season is therefore quite a battle to reclaim what was lost (which is inevitably one of the themes of that season).
It’s at this point that the episode really begins to show signs of massive editing. Michael’s admission of his impending departure takes its time, but it’s not as satisfying as it could have been. Max and Isabel barely get to discuss her misgivings, emphasizing the choice she must make, before things move on. And then there’s Liz and Sean.
Sean was always developed as the character of “Not Max”, and once again, that’s the purpose he serves in this episode. Liz goes to him, and almost instantly, she rejects him. It’s incredibly jarring, and it’s clear that there was supposed to be more to it. It’s not a horrible edit, but the pacing is disrupted and the point is somewhat lost in translation. Liz looks like she’s using Sean again, but the audience doesn’t even get to delve into her complicated emotional state.
When Max and Isabel sit down to record their goodbye to the Evans, it really begins to drive home the fact that this was the end of an era. If this had been the definitive end of the series, this is all constructed very well. Given that the departure never actually happens, it becomes a source of immense complication in the third season. For all that, it’s interesting to consider that they recorded a farewell despite faking an accident. Why not just fake the accident and be done with it?
When Tess sees a flash of Max kissing Liz, it has more than a few implications. For one thing, taken in context with Michael’s previous comments about “opening up”, it suggests that Max has fully accepted that he will be with Tess for the rest of his life. Otherwise, how would she get that memory? For her part, Tess acts a bit too catty. After all, she’s won the contest, forcing Max to follow his destiny instead of his heart’s desire. Why rub it in?
Valenti’s farewell to the hybrids is about what one would expect, and it certainly brings a tear to the eye. It’s a little awkward, though, because Valenti’s role as father figure for Max and Michael never really materialized this season. Indeed, Valenti’s place on the series was never the same after the first season, when he was written as a complex semi-villain. In the second season, he was symbolic of the cost of the hybrids’ secrets on the humans around them; in the third season, his character took a major turn for the worse. For all that, Valenti’s words to Max speak to his compassion. He could easily have been bitter about how his life has fallen apart since the beginning of the series.
One element of the finale that is completely dropped is the mental instability caused by Tess and her mindwarping. The extent of the damage seems rather inconsistent. For humans, it can apparently be harsh from just one exposure; Amy is a basket case, and Alex found himself falling apart at the seams. But Kyle is still relatively normal, and “Leanna” seemed all right. And what about Max, who was the recipient of extensive mindwarping himself? One might use that to explain the depth of his emotional breakdown over the previous few episodes, but it’s still not clear.
The whole process of uncovering the effect of Tess’ mindwarping and the truth behind Alex’s death looks like it would have been far more extensive. There are signs of quick and dirty editing all over the final act, in fact, and it takes something away from the impact. It also gives the audience the false impression that the explanation makes sense as presented. It doesn’t take long to realize that the Cliff Notes version of the story doesn’t really answer the burning questions of method and motivation. (Perhaps the issue of why Liz asked Kyle where the pod chamber was would have made more sense in the extended version!)
Michael’s character arc comes to a very satisfying conclusion when he decides not to go to Antar with the others. It’s entirely consistent with his journey this season, and it feels incredibly satisfying. Ultimately, Michael went against his destined role and made a human choice to remain on Earth. Isabel makes the similar choice: choosing to remain with Max rather than abandon him. Tess, of course, is firmly rooted in her desire to fulfill destiny, because she has always been the incarnation of Max’s “preset” role. Max is the only one still in play.
Like the quick and truncated investigation into Alex’s death, the confrontation with Tess is missing a lot of critical information. Even the dialogue feels like it was chopped up and rearranged. Tess’ motivations are all over the map. As mentioned earlier, she could have stopped at the point where she regretfully admits that she didn’t mean to kill Alex, and that it was all about hiding what she was doing. It would have made Alex’s death and Tess’ part in it more tragic. But the writers tacked on that bit about Nasedo’s deal with Kivar, which complicates the situation needlessly.
One has to wonder when and why Nasedo made the deal. Tess says it was 40 years earlier; that would be prior to the emergence of the hybrids, while Nasedo was still on the run. So why would Nasedo see the Skins on Earth as a threat? As noted in reviews for the early episodes of the season, the Skins seemed to be acting on their own, based on a mandate set around the time that the hybrids were sent to Earth. That might account for why they were willing to cross Kivar and why they wouldn’t know about a deal between Nasedo and Kivar made years after their arrival. But it’s all far too complicated and unexplained.
The very ending is equally rushed. The special effects are not at all impressive, though the budget restrictions were what they were, and little could be done about it. But there’s not much time for Max to ruminate on the fact that he needs to find a way to save his son from his enemies before the episode comes to a frantic halt. One gets the feeling that the ending would have been a bit more measured had time allowed; as it was, the story barely gets a chance to end before the episode fades to black.
Looking back at the episodes beginning with “Baby, It’s You”, the effect of the network interference on the story was clear. Instead of a well-paced and consistent plot arc, the producers were left with episodes that took place in wildly different points in continuity and half the time they expected for the season finale. It’s even worse when one considers that the producers weren’t positive that the series would be renewed; the ending was constructed on the hopes that some other network would save the day.
As a result, the season ends on something of a down note. It’s hard to give the writers credit when much of what they wrote never made it on screen, but much of what happened to make this episode lackluster came out of network interference. Those words become somewhat of an unfortunate mantra for “Roswell”, because for much of the series’ run, the true vision of the writing staff was held back by attempts to make “Roswell” to something it wasn’t.
On the whole, the second season tried to be many things to please many people. The network demanded more sexual tension, more focus on Max as a leader, and more sci-fi action. The writers and producers wanted to continue with the delicate balance of the first season’s best moments: melding character drama with philosophical exploration of self-identity. In the end, the various demands (and the ever-changing episode commitments) made it nearly impossible for the episodes to be consistently well-received. As the fans would discover, the concessions made going into the third season made the situation even more precarious, leaving the fans wondering if the renewal was a victory after all.
Memorable Quotes
DIANE: “Do you realize there are people teaching cooking classes naked? There are talking politics naked!”
PHILIP: “Politics? Really?”
ISABEL: “Alex, that night…that night at the Prom when we danced…it was one of the best nights of my life and I never got to tell you that.”
ALEX: “My Lady?”
LIZ: “I trusted you! I gave you everything, I jumped off bridges for you, I broke laws for you, I risked getting shot for you, I trusted you, and you go off…God, Max, I saved myself for you!”
MAX: “Saved yourself? You slept with Kyle!”
MICHAEL: “…I want you to see me...”
MAX: “I wish…I wish it could have been different. I wish that so much.”
VALENTI: “It’s been an honor to know you, Max. It’s been an honor.”
MICHAEL: “I finally found home. The weird thing is, it’s here, on Earth.”
MAX: “You of all people…”
MAX: “Home to what, Tess? To Kivar? To our enemies?”
TESS: “They’re not my enemies, Max.”
ISABEL: “What happens now, Max?”
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode would have been much better in its original two-hour form. The deep editing required to remove half the story crippled the final product. The producers did everything possible to cram in all the emotional content; after that, there was little time left to explore the more subtle points of plot resolution. In the end, this episode is much like the second season as a whole: flawed, but mostly for reasons beyond the control of the creators themselves.
Writing: 1/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 1/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 6/10
Season 2 Final Average: 6.7
posted by John Keegan | 19:28
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