#michael spending time teaching rosa is not bad and i actually want it very badly but it's just ill-timed considering

[ashesandhalefire]

so after ending 3x06 with alex being held at gunpoint while michael stands at the base of the impenetrable tower like a scene out of goddamn rapunzel, i’m going to need at least one scene before they’re pushed back into separate plots for another whole episode

[wunderlass]

On BFFs and friendship while Adulting

There was a post in the tag earlier today posing a question that I wanted to answer but unfortunately by the time I got around to it the post had vanished. I can’t remember the exact wording, but it was asking opinions of who is the ‘better’ friend to Maria during the series: Liz or Alex. 

I still wanted to answer that question (in a much broader sense) so here we are.

Usual meta caveats: my interpretation, ymmv etc.

First up: there is no right answer to that question. There are ways to be bad and terrible friends, sure, but every friendship and every connection is different in ways that are difficult to measure tangibly. We use “deep” friendship a lot when we discuss it but we can’t quantify that: time and knowledge and commonalities can make a difference but ultimately friendships are as much about chemistry as romantic connections are.

Also, just because somebody is the kind of friend you only go out partying with doesn’t mean they are less valid than the person you’ve known since nursery school who has been there for every major milestone of your life. So long as you’re both happy with the fact you’re only in each other’s lives to party, that friendship does what it needs to.

All of this to say: friendship isn’t a competition (and I don’t think that’s what the other poster was actually implying). You can have multiple best friends or none, or one “deep” lifelong bond. Liz and Alex aren’t competing for Maria’s affection or to be the better friend to Maria. All they need to be is the best friend they can be for her.

The real question is, how successful are they at it?

Honestly...not great.

But they’re trying!

Liz and Alex are both damaged, flawed people, for different reasons, and that’s impacted not only them but the connections they have to other people.

For Liz, she’s been wearing Rosa’s armour for ten years. We know she’s flitted from place to place, eschewing social media. She couldn’t make a connection romantically but there also has to be a trail of broken friendships across all of the places she’s been in during that time. We don’t hear her reference anybody except Diego, her ex-fiance, so there isn’t a hint of other friends she’s keeping in touch with. 

She also didn’t make much attempt to keep in touch with Maria or presumably anybody else from Roswell (perhaps understandably). It all sounds pretty lonely, and we come to learn that as capable as Liz is, the events when she was 18 have caused real damage to her emotionally. She’s isolated and stunted. Only upon returning home does she begin to shed her armour and attempt to reconnect.

Alex is also isolated and stunted, but for different reasons. Even after years of abuse we know he made major life choices in the hope he’d receive some form of love from his father (and likely brothers). He doesn’t seem to have had any kind of affection in his home life, so he reached out for it wherever he could when he was a teenager, notably to Michael. That ended badly, and he’s done what his father, the military, and a patriarchal society have wanted him to do: he’s locked his emotions away. 

Where Liz displays her emotions proudly and often loudly, Alex is quiet, introspective. He internalises everything, or shoves it away so he can pretend he isn’t feeling. He wears his own form of armour so nobody can hurt him anymore. It’s a survival mechanism. We have hints that he has made friends and bonded with some of his colleagues, but how much he’s opened up to them or given them the opportunity to hurt him is debatable. And much like Liz, his time in Roswell is teaching him that although allowing other people to know you is a risk, that kind of vulnerability can also be its own kind of reward.

How does that relate to Maria specifically?

We see Liz spend more time with Maria than Alex does on screen, although arguably that is because Liz is the lead so we spend more time with her anyway. Both are returning to Roswell after a decade away, with the implication that they may have briefly returned in that time but haven’t made much of an effort to keep in touch with her or each other.

So this is an old friendship - the kind potentially forged when they were as young as toddlers - but one which has been neglected due to time and circumstance. One where all involved have to discover how much the other parties have changed and grown in the interim.

Maria herself has become pretty isolated. We know this because she also never mentions other friendships - the closest she has is her banter with Michael - and she seems to devote all of her time to Mimi and the bar. She also mentions dating a Chad, which is hilarious, but also hints at a desperation to have a connection with somebody after she’s been left behind in a one-horse town.

Liz is good at the easy stuff: turning up for advice, drinking, reminiscing about old times. She’s too wrapped up in her own stuff to give more than that. Maria says she was happy with this because it’s a distraction. She’s either sharing more with Alex - possibly because she expects Liz to leave town again sooner rather than later - or Alex has been around enough to see the situation with Mimi.

But I don’t think Alex is much good at the heavy emotional lifting either. He has to turn to Liz to help him shoulder that burden in episode seven. Fandom likes to celebrate him calling Liz out, but she really has been going through a lot, and it was Maria’s choice not to share. Liz doesn’t necessarily know Maria well enough anymore to spot the signs of emotional distress if they’re hidden from her.

Here’s where I admit that I see plenty of myself in Liz and Alex. I’m not very good at being a shoulder to cry on either. At the start of episode nine, Maria reaches out to Liz, who immediately starts to problem solve, and that’s the kind of friend I am: come to me when something's gone wrong and I will figure out how to fix it, even if what you actually need is someone to listen while you fall apart. We’re looking at two emotionally distant people who work in technical disciplines, and that’s their likely go to behaviour.

I think when Liz is aware of a problem, she’s better at being supportive, whereas Alex is so out of touch with his own emotions he might not be very good at handling others’ emotions either, hence his appeal to Liz in episode seven. However, both of them ultimately leave Maria high and dry when she’s most vulnerable. We end up with Michael who is hilariously, visibly uncomfortable with an upset Maria and yet does the right thing purely by instinct: offering her a literal shoulder to cry on. In episode nine we see Liz let Maria go off to “be her own damn saviour” when that might not actually be what Maria needs or wants.

So neither Liz or Alex are a perfect friend to Maria, and that’s okay, because that’s part of their emotional arcs. They both need to, and are beginning to, learn how to flex the friendship muscle again. By the end of the series we may even have three emotionally healthy, functional adults!

Just kidding, the show is going to put them all through the wringer and destroy them and us.