#my dreams and power surges but I'll figure something out and would it really be that bad if they just. don't find an Incarnation for a

[pocketramblr]

Also silent prince updated (love it) which makes me think about my own curse swap and ah it would just be really really funny. Really funny. If there was a time the Incarnation was the special once-a-century Gerudo. Like you thought the Sheikah and Knights had a contentious custody situation, ah ha wait till they got to deal with this

[roswelldetails]

RNM 2x05 - I'll Stand By You

So just a little note from me, the person behind the season 2 detailing.  I am trying really really hard to keep emotion out of these posts...which is really really hard for me because I'm an inherently emotional person. I'm a glass case of emotion, ready to shatter at any given moment. (#dramatic)  But I want to be true to the intent of this blog and keep my feelings, biases, and, you know, shipping out of this blog.

It was really really hard to do with this episode. Because I straight up ugly cried for like, 45 of the 60 minutes. 😂

So I guess, the point is, I'm proud of myself and sticking to the details here. My regular blog is where I'm doing the emotional flip out thing! 😂

EPISODE SUMMARY:

ACCEPTING REALITY — The discovery of some complications with Max’s (Nathan Dean) pod forces Liz (Jeanine Mason), Michael (Michael Vlamis) and Isobel (Lily Cowles) to confront the possibility that they may not be able to save him. Elsewhere, Maria (Heather Hemmens) and Alex (Tyler Blackburn) make amends. Kimberly McCullough directed the episode written by Alanna Bennett & Jason Gavin (#205). Original airdate 4/13/2020. 

DETAILS:

Max/Isobel/Michael reunite at age 11 according to what Michael tells Alex in 1x10.  So that would make the opening of this episode set in 2002ish.

Michael tells Max and Isobel, "I remember you. I don't know you."

"After nobody adopted me for a year they just stuck me with the name of that trucker who found us."

"I didn't ask you for anything."

This is like the thesis statement of Michael's whole history with Max in the flashbacks.

"Don't pay more than you collect, kid. Passing credit back and forth is a good way to get stuck with somebody forever."

Rosa's art. 

What I can see says: "...what they all told me, but I didn't listen" and "Stand the shelter".

Rosa on her dreams

"I have not had any freaky dreams in weeks. Okay, Max is probably off haunting Isobel now that they're strong enough for their psychic twincest weirdness."

"How long has that been happening?"

"Um, I don't know. It's an old boom box."

"Rosa, have electrical appliances been malfunctioning around you?"

"I really thought it was just a side effect of the handprint."

"If being in the pod introduced a new protein into your system it could have altered your DNA too. You could be developing abilities."

"Liz, look. The handprint is changing.  It's smaller."

"It's fading."

"Tell me this is a good thing."

"I don't think so."

Michael and Liz theorizing on why the pod shorted out:

"The pod's got a charge. It's like a battery powering the preservation process. This one's gone dead."

"Did the generator blow the electromagnetic threshold?"

"I think a surge came from the pod itself. But that pod has lasted almost a century. It shouldn't glitch out."

"Okay, well, then, this one did."

"All right, stop. It doesn't matter why the pod is broken. It just is. So how long does Max have?"

"My theory is that being tethered to Rosa through the mark is what kept Max from going brain-dead, and in turn the stasis process is what kept the mark from fading. So he could be gone by tonight."

"Okay, well, we have three more pods. So let's just put him into another pod."

"No. He's just gonna do it again. I haven't told you everything. I didn't want to scare you. I didn't want to be the one that took the hope away."

"Talk now, Rosa. Right now."

"I was seeing Max in my nightmares months before I told you about it, and he was begging me to stop you. He said that he was in a lot of pain in there."

"That's Noah's pod. Noah told us it was broken. It wasn't keeping him in stasis. He could feel time passing. None of us thought of that."

"We've been doing everything we can to make Max stronger. He pulled his own plug."

Note...as far as we know Isobel was the only one who knew about Noah's pod being broken.  In 1x12 it was before Liz arrived at the house that he told them about the broken pod, so only Max and Isobel heard that part of the story.

Alex on his training. "NSA intelligence cryptology training".

Monitor screen in the secret lab:

Noah's heart is still too weak to transplant. Kyle says it needs at least eight more weeks

"I wrote a paper for a bioethics class on patients in vegetative states who feel pain. Sometimes it's all they feel."

As a non sciencey person, I was wondering if bioethics class was a real thing. Tonight I saw an interview on the news with a UC Berkeley bioethics professor on COVID. So yes, it's a thing.

Alex on Michael that summer post-Rosa's death:

Starting fights with jocks

Broke into the drugstore

Not going to UNM

Hasn't hung out with Max all summer

Got busted for stealing hubcaps (Kyle's hubcaps, we learn later) 

Became a walking bar fight

Was in jail when Alex left to enlist

Michael on Max in 2008:

"It's more than that. And it's less than that. We were friends when we were kids, but now Max reminds me of a bunch of stuff that I'd rather forget. The only thing that we have in common anymore is Isobel."

Max's yearbook had a pencil stuck in the page with Liz and Max's photo in it. (The one we first saw in 1x03).

"Biology Club. Max hated science. He was in that club for four years just to watch your sister chew on the end of her pencil."

Max's mindscape:

First just desert, clouds, and then lightning strikes (destructive energy?)

Liz's antennae -- they disappear from Isobel's hands

Rosa describes it as broken

Crashdown special is Max's favorite "Little Green Man milkshake".

The Crashdown counter is kind of merged with biology lab equipment. 

The juke box is there

The Crashdown booths

Jeep

Neon Crashdown sign

One of those claw drop game machines (from the Crashdown) but it's filled with baked good displays.

The yearbook

Later, everything else is gone except the one Crashdown booth, the Jeep, and the neon sign.

The distorted music they follow to find Max is the Cactus Groove song in the music list...just, messed around with. See @angsty-nerd's post here:

"I'm the hothead. You are the hero. It's always been that way."

"You stole the hubcaps off Kyle Valenti's graduation present. Both his parents are cops. Do you want to end up in jail tonight?". 

👀 Tonight, specifically. 

Michael seemed excited about the job at Foster's Ranch until he found out that Max set it up for him.  Max found out about it from his dad (only like the 2nd or 3rd mention of his dad in the series so far).

"When I got back in town I asked Max why you and your brilliant mind hadn't changed the world yet. He said you didn't care about the world enough to bother changing it. He believed you could."

Max and Isobel in the mindscape:

"You're okay. I could feel something was wrong with you.  Everything felt…"

"Cold. I know."

"You can't be here. It's finally ending.  I can feel it. But I don't know what happens if you're in my head when I die."

"So it's true? You want this?"

"I could feel my connection to the outside world getting stronger, so I snapped. I couldn't take it anymore. I released a surge. You have to let me go, Iz."

"I can't take it anymore."

"Okay."

"I am so sorry."

"I just want to memorize this."

"Okay. Okay.  I need you to tell Liz something."

"You can tell her yourself.  She and Kyle are prepping for surgery.  They're going to use the faulty heart. She just wants to talk to you before you die."

"No. No."

"You won't be suffering. They're just gonna bring you back and then let you go."

"No you have to stop this.  You cannot bring me back under any circumstances."

"Max? What is really going on?"

"I am dangerous.  Whatever Liz is bringing back is not me. It's just some broken shell."

Maria on her mom's computer 

"Her nurse said that for the two weeks before she went missing, when she wasn't trying to escape, she was talking to someone online."

The 21st birthday flashback

Isobel gets Michael to help move Max after getting drunk on tequila.  He passed out in front of the tattoo parlor. It's the same tattoo parlor Michael goes to at the end of the episode.

Max's weird drunken statement.

"The thing is, there has to be there. Okay? There's always three. Until the very end.  I'll show you...What it means is you should be here…'cause it's all broken without three. So we'll figure it out.  You'll find your way back."

👀 Until the very end. Interesting.

On Max becoming a deputy:

"You know he did the whole police academy thing because of you, right? He thinks you're gonna get into the kind of trouble you can't get out of if you don't know someone."

Back in the mindscape:

"I figured it all out. She, there's an energy to suffering, there's an energy to death, and when I heal people, I absorb that energy. So when I resurrected Rosa, I took in ten years of emptiness. So if you resurrect me, you will be bringing back an infection. Don't want… I don't want to come back as a monster. I don't want to hurt anyone that I care about."

"That's what this is about? We've been hurting, Max. We don't work without you."

"You will! You will. You are stronger now than when I died. All of you are. You, Michael, Liz, you will survive this. The three of you. No, you need to stop them, Iz. Now."

"Okay. I love you."

"You too." Isobel disappears.

Max is using pretty similar wording to his drunken rambles in the 21st birthday flashback

We don't see that Max is chained down until this next exchange with Rosa. Isobel didn't see that detail as far as we know.  Didn't hear the chains clanking when they stood and hugged. Only after Isobel left.

"I'm sorry this is happening."

"Isobel is lying. She is buying time.  You know she'll never let me go. But you can feel the darkness too, right? That's why you don't like being in my head. Because you know it's real."

"I didn't want that to be true, but yes."

"I know my sister and I know your sister and they'll never give up. So you have to be the one to stop this surgery, okay? Or I will destroy everything that we love. You have to stop them to save them. Now go.  Please, Rosa. Go."

Isobel explaining to Liz

"When he saved Rosa he absorbed all of that dark energy. He's gonna have to expel it."

"And he's afraid he's gonna kill someone when he does."

"Yeah. So we just need someone stronger than Max to take that hit...if he thinks he needs to protect us he obviously doesn't know how capable we are. Bring him back, Liz. I'll handle the rest."

"I get it now. It's gotta be the three of us."

"He would never pull his plug to end his own suffering. Unless he thought he was saving us from something. And I'm a little sick of his heroic martyr crap."

In case you missed it, Michael did not know that.  At the beginning of the hospital sequence Isobel is telling Liz what she learned in Max's mindscape and says that she hasn't been able to get ahold of Michael.  Michael figured it out on his own. He finally "got it".

The pacemaker:

Isobel with Max at the end… everything is gone except the Jeep. And Bright Eyes playing (the song he and Liz danced to on their first date back in 2008). And then his eyes close and Bright Eyes fades away.

“First thing I remember is the three of us. We woke up terrified and lost. But together. And then all of the sudden I was alone. I got real good at being alone. I had given up on people entirely. And then you found me again. Hell of hero move. You showed up just in time. When you are a kid who nobody loves, kindness is a currency. Friendship doesn’t means jack. Family just lies, and hurts, and leaves. I’ve only ever known love to be temporary. So yeah, I push people away. Every time someone threatens to care about me I test their love until they have to leave. Connection is conditional. Everybody eventually gives up on the guy who refuses to be rescued. But you were the only one who I couldn’t run off. You never believed me when I tried to be something I wasn’t. So this thing in your chest, it might give your heart a pretty solid kick every once in a while. Consider it payback. It’s my hero move, Max. If you wake up, you consider us even, okay? If you wake up, we can be a family.”

Good visual parallels during Michael's speech. Alex and Kyle drinking together during the "and then you found me again". Maria walking up on "the guy who refuses to be rescued"

Max is in the coma for three weeks.  Wakes up at the secret lab (instead of his house, which is where he was previously.  I'm guessing it was a planned wake up because he's no longer plugged into all of the IVs and whatnot.

"I begged you to understand."

"Max, it's gonna be fine."

"No… I told you to let me go. I can feel it inside me."

"It's...it's symmetry, okay? It's just energy for energy.  We can deal with that. Fight it, Max. This isn't you."

"I don't want to hurt you. I need to get out. I need to get away from you, from everyone."

"I can't let you do that."

Max shoves Isobel and runs. When he shoves her there's a slight ringing like the sound they use when the aliens use their powers.  Isobel follows and stops him with her powers.

"I made a promise that if you came back and you weren't Max, and you were actually going to hurt people that I would kill you. I figure, hey, you got to play God. Make life and death decisions all on your own. Well it's my turn now."

MUSIC:

1. Letters To Cleo "Here and Now"

2. Lady Antebellum "Love Don't Live Here"

3. Cactus Groove "Fallin"

4. James Talley "Big Thunder"

8. Ross Copperman "Stars Are On Your Side"

5. Lindsey Ray "Keep You Safe"

6. Tommee Profitt feat. Sam Tinnesz "With you Til The End"

7. Bright Eyes "First Day Of My Life"

The Cactus Groove song is the first song this season that I haven’t been able to find on Spotify… let me know if any of y’all had any luck with it!