#anyway Dallas Haines I love you

[lovecolibri]

Things that did NOT Spark Joy-4x09

*deep sigh* I started these episode posts on Wednesday night after I finished the episode and then just...didn’t look at them again until today because I’m just...so, so tired. So tired of the disappointment and bad writing and waiting for anyone to be allowed to care about Alex for more than a second or two at a time. Anyway, if you want to see the gems plucked from the muck, that post is here, otherwise, welcome to my salt gremlin din of despair. 

First up on the List Of Sins, Liz is alone in the lab with Shivani when the episode ends, but the next one starts in full panic mode with NO explanation of how they even knew anything was wrong. It would have flowed better I think if the previous episode ended with Max calling and hearing his voicemail asking where she is playing over the scene of her laying on the ground inhaling the mist, or have a cut of the rest of the group trying to get ahold of her or something and being worried and bursting in and seeing Liz and Shivani collapsed in the lab. It would have made starting with them in the middle of the rescue make more sense. YES it’s nitpicky but this is the pacing issues people are always talking about that that the show has always struggled with and it’s irritating that it’s never been even attempted to be addressed.

It’s nice to see that everyone is allowed to know something is up with Liz and drop everything to deal with her (except Kyle which, honestly good for him) while Alex has spent the last eight weeks in a hole in the desert without anyone being allowed to care or drop anything to go rescue him. Plus everyone was allowed to worry about Bonnie and Dallas going missing and Heath is allowed to drop med school to come help Liz and hear news about Dallas he could have gotten at home and then chose to leave med school for but it was that important to him to get news in person about his soulmate brother while Michael is still guilt-tripped for leaving a room full of people working on Liz to be the sole person to go look for his boyfriend who easily could have died of dehydration by now. I hate it here.

Also we find out that the writers DO know how phone calls work and how to work in a missing character when the actor isn’t available, they just actively chose not to do so with Alex. Love that for us 🙄

I enjoyed the “Wild West” theme, but rather disappointed they didn’t lean harder into the Cowboys and Aliens genre instead.

The absolute double standard of Michael being shamed and guilt-tripped these last two episodes every time he tries to care about and go after Alex, vs the show allowing Max to do exactly the same thing is...VERY loud.

I guess Alex got a little shout out in the missing posters but it’s kinda gross seeing him on the same level as a member of the dark triad who made Michael sick (which with basically no immunity to human viruses could have killed him but I doubt we’ll even get an explanation on why Michael was the only one to get sick since Max didn’t and Bonnie said it never happened before since it was clearly only an excuse to have m*ria taking care of Michael and to give Liz something to do, instead of having her and the whole group working this whole time on how to get to the other dimension to save Alex. ANYWAY, I digress), and it’s also weird that either a) the writers forgot they gave Dallas a last name (it’s Haines), or b) that Liz never bothered to learn his last name. But that would mean admitting that almost none of these people actually care about each other because the show would rather have pointless drama with guest stars than focus on building relationships with their mains and instead just tell us these people care about each other while often showing us quite the opposite.

Why would you die in the real world if the person's mind you're in dies, instead of just getting ejected? I know that was a thing for *drama* last season when they were trying to save m*ria, though instead of it being used as a reason to pull m*ria out, it was actually a way for her to continue to put people in danger for selfish reasons and to get info Alex already had, so ya know? I guess that tracks for why it’s happening again now 🤷🏻‍♀️ Liz apparently needs to have Max be in danger in order to get anything done which is...certainly A Choice for a show that tries to claim it’s soooo feminist. 

As nice as it was that we got Heath back for a minute the WHOLE premise of this is so, SO stupid. He has to drop everything to help Liz while people are keeping from him what happened to Dallas (though at least he’s allowed to be mad about it) but also there’s this whole Rosa connection? Why do they even need that when he HAS a connection with Dallas and that should have been a good enough reason to contact him and get him involved!  I think it would have been more fun for someone to call him about Dallas and mention what’s going on with Liz, and then seen him pacing around his house, and then an airport or something, split screen with Michael, or Isobel (since she’s been doing surgery with Kyle and all, and Heath talking them through what he thinks needs to be done. I’m so baffled at this show constantly inventing random connections between people out of nowhere when they don’t need them!

I absolutely get the urge to have Sanders show up in the Old West theme, but if they were gonna do that, then the bottle breaking should have involved Michael as well as Liz which would also have given us a reason for Michael NOT going after Alex. Otherwise it was just so random having him in LIZ’S mindscape when she’s never spoken to him before on the show!

The “Kyle as a horse” thing has been mentioned before but I’d be remiss if I didn’t put it here, that the writers accidently gave us the perfect visual of how Liz has since the very beginning, thought of Kyle as a tool to be wielded. It’s also interesting how Michael shows up as basically a lackey to help Liz with whatever she needs because he’s just soooo grateful for how her and Max have looked out for him all this time, but also how he acts impulsively, and his hotheaded, cocky attitude about avenging someone he cares about leads to his death. I’d say this was purposeful but the writers have proved over and over again that anything good that comes out of this show was entirely by accident and they work very hard to then undermine that stuff so it’s far more likely they are just as tone deaf as Liz when it comes to what is happening here. 

 Again, far more eloquent people than me have talked about how ridiculous the scene is with Rosa and Michael. First, guilting him into staying to help save Liz when he’s not actually needed (they called Kyle before, call him again, and let the two actual medical people hash out what needs to happen. We don’t even see Michael working with Heath so what even was the reason for all this?), and when he IS needed to look for Alex since NO ONE is currently doing that, and 5 people, 6 including Kyle, are there to help Liz. Second, throwing how they as terrified kids who thought they were the only 3 aliens on the planet and had ZERO support and quite a lot of fear about being discovered handled covering up her death. While it’s something she does have every right to be upset about the ramifications of, it’s something that wasn’t done with malicious intent and something Michael has been the only one to really apologize to her about. But also, it’s something that has absolutely zero bearing on what is currently going on because third, Max just made an impulsive decision to jump into the mindscape after Liz but gets a pass while Michael is told that HIS impulsivity (which would really be impulsive as he has for sure been working on a plan since the night before when they told him he couldn’t go right that second) would help “no one”, when he’s actively going to look for 3 people who are missing! It sure AF would help them! And fourth, the reasoning that she needed to go to Heath, he sisters ex hook-up for help on her powers is SO far out of left field! a) when would either of them, but especially Heath being in med school and all, have time to meet up and train regularly, and b) I get her not wanting to work with Liz, Max, or Isobel because they were never able to really help her, but Michael did! He was the one to really help her get her powers under control last season and they worked SO well together! AND that would have been a great way to keep Rosa’s name mentioned and what’s going on with her in episodes Amber wasn’t available to film for if Michael was talking about working with her and what they’re working on. Because again, Heath is already connected to them through Dallas and Dallas has gone missing! There wasn’t a need to connect him further through Rosa and it’s really freaking weird seeing every be cool about it when Rosa is barely out of her teens, Heath put her brother Kyle into a coma and Rosa was never allowed to react to that and has clearly just been forced to forget about it, and Heath was actively sleeping with her sister within the last year. 

Was Shivani supposed to be Allie all along, but Shiri was too expensive/busy? Because it would make sense for the two of them to end up in the mindscape together then and explain why she’s the only one who isn’t fully “in” this world and knows what Liz’s quest is supposed to be. It would also explain why Shivani was conveniently not affected or around while they worked to save Liz. But also, I’m a little confused about Allie being the “reasonable” one trying to get Liz back on track to confront her issues when a few episodes ago Liz was told by Shivani how Allie was so buried in the science she forgot everything else, and it showed Liz a mirror to her worst impulses and what she didn’t want to be. So which is it? Is Allie the wise mentor telling Liz to face her issues, or a cautionary tale of what Liz could become if she lets her fear take over? Either way, we only needed one of them (Shivani OR Allie) and waaaaay less screen time for whichever one we got.

Love that neither Isobel or Kyle are allowed to talk to people who actually love, support, and care about them about what’s going on with them and instead get stuck with m*ria as another invented thing for her to do 🙄 we should have seen Kyle talking to Alex last season, and Isobel talking to Michael or Max this season instead. This show comes up with the WEIRDEST pairings for important conversations instead of focusing on the dynamics we know and love.

 I’m still cackling about the show still trying to force this narrative that one of the most selfish characters they have is the “heart”. Sure Jan. Also, love that this group of people is dubbed “family” when she’s never spoken to Sanders before (and if they needed someone to be “grit” why not have ALEX who can certainly show up in her mind even if he’s missing in real life?), and Heath is her ex that she used and then treated terribly, and never mentioned again (also isn’t SHE the brains?). 

I am IRRITATED that we got that cool shot of someone snapping Clyde’s neck, and I couldn’t even fully enjoy it because it was all about “boss babe” m*ria when we didn’t even get to see Rosa putting up a fight, she just dies off screen.

I’m confused when they spent all this time on Evil!Liz making it clear that Max was holding her back, why they’re telling us that Evil!Liz loves Max too and the argument is Evil!Liz needs to win so she can protect Max. 

Liz being worried about making the perfect life and having it taken away so she’s just keeping herself from being happy is...just a touch hard to sympathize with right now when we’ve seen Malex from the start just wanting to be together and being forced apart by circumstance (NOT by differing opinions and moral stances like Echo always seem to be), and wanting to not waste any more time, and then Alex getting quicksanded for weeks. 🤷🏻‍♀️ And maybe both her and Michael being “powerless” (her figuratively, him literally) to protect their soulmates would have been a cool story to tell IF we had them going on in tandem all season but alas, that would require having a plan, and allowing our main characters to work with each other instead of guest stars and apparently we can’t have that.

I actually didn’t totally hate Max this episode (I hate that the writers made me hate him at ALL, but here we are). He’s always at his best when he’s helping Liz and, this time he gets to be the damsel in distress, leaving clues for her to find him and talking to her about not giving in to her fears. He’s also a little insecure and sad to think that he’s the thing holding her back, which would all hold more weight if he wasn’t actually holding her back and we saw these things outside of just this moment instead of this weird push by the show for her to give up her dreams and live in Roswell forever.

Still pissed about Heath  no homo-ing him and Dallas after that very soulmate-y speech earlier so the show can continue to insinuate this hella awkward thing with Rosa 🙄

The final, and perhaps MOST egregious sin in this rather long List Of Sins this episode committed, has to be taking all urgency away from Michael about looking for Alex and having him chilling by a firepit with his ex talking about how they need to make a plan or something to go look for their missing friends (NOT mentioning Alex specifically), while....not actively doing ANYTHING but hanging out with his ex while his boyfriend dies of dehydrations probably since it’s been more than 3 days at this point and we don’t even know if there’s water down there. Literally WHOMST, after aaaaalll the backlash during season 2, and the continued backlash in season 3 for not addressing the issues with m*ria and actually making them worse, thought that not only burying Alex for more than half the season was a good idea, that not allowing Michael to care/worry about Alex missing for over half the season was a good idea, but also that paring Michael up with m*ria of ALL fucking people, was a good idea?! (insert *gif of El yelling “was that a right choice at papa* here since I couldn’t find one in the .5 seconds I searched) It’s been disgusting the way they have wedged her into this storyline just to have something to do. The best thing I can say is that there are only 4 episodes left, and that whatever Tyler and Vlamis have for us in the finale drop will be better than anything the show has given us for them, ever.

Link to previous episode posts: 4x01, 4x02, 4x03, 4x04, 4x05, 4x06, 4x07, 4x08