Y'all, I'm seeing shrimp colors, I'm experiencing shrimp emotions, I don't know what way is up right now. Holy moly. Let's discuss.
Cons:
Let's start with Clyde. He sucks. He's a boring villain and a waste of time! I'm sorry, but it's true! I kept thinking that all of the core emotional beats between our principal characters could have been accomplished without him even existing. Instead of Liz getting literally kidnapped, continue the narrative of her being stolen away by her addiction to the alien mist. She could be trapped in a prison of her own mind, instead of Clyde causing unnecessary extra obstacles with his fanaticism. It's all just such an anticlimax, to have this follower of Jones be our villain for season four, when we already dealt with the man himself last year!
I'm also underwhelmed by Vanessa's inclusion in this story. I think we're meant to see Liz has having gained a mentor and a mentee this year, Shivani and Vanessa respectively, but they didn't do nearly enough to establish Vanessa as a character before using her here as the means of Liz's capture and control. And I'm not advocating for more Vanessa screen time, quite the opposite! Do this story without her. Have Clyde use Kyle as the bait. It works better in every way: it's someone Liz cares about, that the audience has a vested interest in, and then Rosa gets to use her superpowers to save her brother's life, instead of some random woman she doesn't know.
And a quick detour into the realm of "things I wish would have happened"... these aren't exactly problems with what was presented, but more me wishing for more of certain elements. In the Liz-centric plot, we get just one mention of Alex and Michael, when the intervention gang says that Maria is staying to watch the portal entrance. I wish that we could have followed that up with Isobel and Max talking about Michael later in the episode, when Max is giving his sister a pep talk about Kyle. Something about how their brother is trapped and they don't know how to get him back... something about how Max is torn in two, worrying about Liz and Michael, two of the people he loves most in this world... I don't know. Could have used a bit more sibling feels. I hope we get to have a bit more of that in the final two episodes!
Obviously I will be doing considerable Malex-related gushing in a moment, but a quick detour into nitpick land first...
So, a part of me wanted their actual reunion moment to be more dramatic and intense, but ultimately I understand the choice to lean into the joy/relief aspect of it, as that makes the twist hit all the harder. So, fine, they can be all soft and sweet with each other, I can very much get on board with that. My problem is a small one, but pervasive over the course of this season, and even a bit in season three: I find all the shoulder grabbing and squeezing to be kind of... awkward. It's like... okay, Vlamis and Tyler have really good chemistry, obviously, but their scenes this season have I think pointed out to me the importance of good direction/guidance for actors. I love, love, love that Michael's instinct is to always want to be touching Alex, but the way he kind of claps him on the shoulder and squeezes feels like this really self-conscious and unnatural way of going about it? I told you this was a nitpick. I just want them to be more cuddly and affectionate and happy without the same physical gestures of the face touching and shoulder grabbing to get repeated over and over. Also just, generally speaking, it's a travesty that this show doesn't let itself be steamy at all any more. It hardly qualified as anything particularly raunchy even back in season one, but this season in particular has been soooo low on the romance/sexy quota for alll the characters. Think about how little Kybel smooching we actually got to see. And then Michael and Alex just get these little sweet pecks for all their kisses, and don't get me wrong, I love those kisses, but nothing deeper, a little more sustained? Sigh. Let the boys kiss each other! Where's the season one energy up in this joint?
Pros:
Let's start with Kybel, my beloveds! There's this sliver of me that's annoyed at the back and forth: the love declaration, Isobel deciding maybe she does want more, Kyle shutting it down, yadda yadda. But that's kind of par for the course on this show, and honestly I feel like it makes a lot of sense for Kyle and Isobel specifically. Isobel has such a take-charge personality; she's worked so hard to learn what she wants and how to articulate it. I love that with Kyle, the thing she wants is so overwhelming and scary for her that she kind of doesn't know how to deal with it. And Kyle, meanwhile, is doing his best to compartmentalize and preserve their friendship. It's so sweet and awkward and strained. I only hope that we have enough time to give them some sort of hopeful ending, even if we don't get to see the full development of this relationship.
Rosa and Kyle scenes for the win! I couldn't believe we actually got to see them interacting as brother and sister. I've wanted so much more of that, ever since the show started, honestly. I loved how reciprocal they seemed, the way Kyle encouraged Rosa to think about all the growing she's done, and how Rosa picked up on the weirdness with Isobel and encouraged Kyle to communicate. All of it was just so wonderful!
And Rosa and Liz's story had some wonderful beats as well. Liz says some awful things to everyone in the course of her addiction, but she's the worst to Rosa, using Rosa's own addiction and recovery in order to invalidate her attempts to help. As annoyed as I am that Clyde kidnaps Liz, I did really enjoy the way in which Liz is portrayed as still herself, still a loving sister, at the end of the day: she doesn't actually physically assault her sister to get a fix, and when she wakes up in Clyde's clutches, the first thing she does is ask about Rosa. So there's some good tension here, but also some excellent care and love that still shines through despite it all. When Liz is recovering in bed at the end of the episode, she asks Max if Rosa hates her, and I thought that was just such a lovely, sad moment. I hope we get a nice long hug between the sisters in the next episode, we could really use that.
This has been a season of some seriously annoying Liz and Max developments, like, honestly, the two of them have just been exhausting all year in the worst possible ways... but this episode on its own? I kind of liked it! Liz being so single-minded and in this bad place, and Max keeping his shit together, maintaining his cool and focusing on getting Liz the help she needs, it really made him seem like a good man who actually wants what's best for the woman he loves. You've got the wonderfully dramatic moment where he catches Liz as she faints into his arms, and I'm just kind of like... yes, give me alll the cheesy romance, Roswell, that's literally why we're here.
I really liked the time we spent with Dallas and Bonnie this episode, too. It didn't pull focus away from Malex, but it added some important character beats to these two. Bonnie ruminates on the family she always wanted, and Dallas tells her the pod squad is her family now. And Dallas talks about chasing his father's clues, and how that's made him lose sight of other things in his life. I really dig their soft sibling vibes, and Bonnie is such an adorable Malex shipper, she's all on board for Michael and Alex to reunite and then get some quality alone time together... same, girl, same.
Like, okay, the Malex stuff in this episode could be an essay all on its own, but I'll try to keep my gushing to a minimum. Overall, I'm thrilled. As I was watching through their scenes, I was of course enjoying all the gushy romance quite a lot... but personally, my favorite Malex stuff is always going to be the earlier sharper scenes, where things are still so bad between them and their love is obvious even through all the obstacles and anger. Narratively, it feels super earned to me that they're all soft and sweet and gushy with each other now, but as I was watching, this small sliver of my brain was missing the angst... only for Alex to come out of nowhere with "hey by the way I'm DYING." It's like Christmas come early, tbh. I'm prepared to eat my words if the show does something really stupid in the final two episodes and gives us a tragic or even a bittersweet/undefined ending for Malex, but I really don't think that's where they're going. I think we're going to see Michael fight to save Alex, I think they're gonna get a wedding, I think we're going to get the full overwhelmingly sweet conclusion I almost didn't dare to hope for. So ultimately? This was the best of both words for me. All the happy kisses and the call-backs to iconic Malex moments, and then the angst plot twist, where now we get to see Michael fall apart at the thought of Alex's imminent demise... yum. This is some good food.
Despite my somewhat irritated wish that they were allowed to kiss each other a little bit more... deeply... I still adored most of the physicality and intimacy between Michael and Alex in this episode. Michael is just overwhelmingly joyful, his eyes shining, and Alex can't stop touching Michael, putting his hand on his thigh, grabbing his hand, tangling their fingers together, resting his head on Michael's shoulder. I love how relieved they both were, how clear it was that Michael had been holding his breath waiting for this moment. They've only been apart a little over a week or so, but the stress and drama of those days is apparent as we see them finally relax with one another again.
Just to compliment the acting choices that most delighted me and also broke my heart... I love how Michael's voice cracks when he confesses to Alex that he was distracted by the thought of getting to go to Oasis. He just feels so bad and yet the wanting for answers is still such a big part of who he is... and then on the flip side of this, there's this one reaction that Alex gives, when he finishes Michael's sentence, realizing that there's a way for him to go back to his planet. He gets this sad little smile on his face and nods his head, as if trying in that first initial moment of reaction to reassure, to hide any hint of pain Michael might be causing him. It really reminded me of a lot of Malex moments in season two, where Alex had this resigned "it's okay if I'm not happy, as long as you are" energy. And given that Alex believes himself to be dying, it makes sense to me that he'd not be too alarmed at the thought of Michael leaving. It might even comfort him, the thought that Michael will have something new to fight for, once he's gone. Yikes, this is making me so emotional...
Other moments I've got to shout out include: Michael teasing Alex about their supposed first date at the drive-in, the lead-in to the proposal being Alex listing science fiction tropes... and then Michael immediately laughing at the thought of Sanders in a tux, the way he's got a single tear escaping him as he and Alex kiss after he says yes, the way he asks about how far away the trees are, so he knows if they have time for sex, the teasing, joyful way he says "I gotta wait for the honeymoon?" And the line about how he was thinking about wedding vows and now suddenly Alex wants him to write a eulogy... OUCH, that got me good.
I also loved where we left them in this episode. Michael is still in the midst of an initial reaction; he's kind of cold and disbelieving, trying to reconcile his overwhelming happiness at getting engaged, with the horrifying revelation that Alex is dying. And Alex is meanwhile singularly focused on getting to marry Michael before he dies. I can just imagine him, stuck alone in this alternate dimension, realizing that his time is dwindling away. His priorities have sharpened to only what's absolutely essential, and to him, what's essential is spending his life with Michael. It's a lot, y'all. I'm having trouble processing everything I love about this and synthesizing how I really feel.
I'm scared, because god knows I've been hurt in the past (pour one out for my dude Quentin Coldwater; if you know you know), but I honestly do think we'll be okay and we'll get our sappy cheesy happily ever after. Come on, Roswell, don't fuck this up!
Just two more episodes until it's time to say goodbye. It's gonna be a looooongggg couple of weeks.
8.5/10
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