#roswell nm 4x05 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lovecolibri · 2 years

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Things that did NOT Spark Joy-4x05

Fam, I am struggling this season and I don’t know if it’s just because it’s the last season and I’m losing my patience, or if things are getting worse, but I am...SO confused, so much of the time. Which isn’t always a bad thing in shows! They can’t tell you everything in the first episode, you’re supposed to have questions, it’s what keeps people coming back to watch. But RNM has a habit of not giving us answers to the questions we have and after 3.5 seasons I’m losing hope I’ll ever get answers so it’s to the point that having so many questions is no longer fun. On top of that, a lot of the question I have are not about the plot so much (okay they ARE but those are more “why TF didn’t we do/learn this ages ago” or “why is this person involved instead of someone else”) as they are about the mechanics of how LITERALLY anything is supposed to work. The show keeps contradicting it’s own lore, or just, having things happen with no explanation, or we’re randomly TOLD things and not SHOWN them, or pacing issues giving time and place no meaning which affects the audience’s ability to orient themselves with the story. Watching this isn’t like enjoying a good mystery where every new clue gives you more questions (BRB gotta go watch OMITB), it’s like playing a game with a 5 year old who keeps changing the rules to fit their needs leaving the adults to flounder trying to adjust what they already knew to fit the new, contradictory information.

The issues with season 4 seem to be mostly the fault of multiple seasons of bad choices culminating in the mess we have right now. Part of the pacing issue is this needlessly complicated set up for the main group to find out these tidbits of info about Dallas and his history, and these alien pieces, meaning we need 6-8 new and recurring guest characters, and everyone spread out doing different things with the new characters instead of each other. They should have had all these alien prisms as things already in possession by the main group. Eduardo could have the stone tablet thing (instead of sending it to Mexico and us finding out all about his family casita but not why Tezca was even IN Mexico and necessitating that to be a whole storyline in the first place, when Clyde said they were all on the ship with Jones. But also somehow didn’t know about Michael being his son with Nora? ANYWAY), Alex and Kyle could have had the prisms found in stuff from their dads/dad’s bunkers and on the reservation (maybe Gregory had a piece and says mom was holding it for Alex or something last season), or one is something Kyle pulled from Caulfield while he was gathering things up before it was destroyed. 🚗 said she pitched the show with a 5 season arc, and IDK how much Chris deviated from the alien part of the plan but with “the alighting” and “Ophiuchus” being name-dropped every season I feel like we’re still pretty on track, and changes were mostly made around personal drama stuff. So it’s not a stretch, again since things from season 1 are still being mentioned now, to think that they could have been setting this up all along, AND it would be the PERFECT way to keep Kyle and Alex connected to the main story, even though it should never have been a struggle but the show apparently hates joy, and interesting, fan favorite characters. They could have NOT killed off Jones and done *something* to wake him up this season (MAYBE having 1 guest star) and let him do the faceoff with Max. Jones specifically said he was going to go after Alex to get Michael to cooperate and this would have fulfilled that narrative promise they set up on a massive tee and then just....failed to hit, at all. Apparently Liz needs yet another rando scientist or two to work with instead of letting her work with Kyle and Michael again like she did to fix Max’s heart in season 2 even though we NEVER got to see it. We don’t need all these extraneous characters and backstories about them!

All this to say, this is REALLY long, and I have some salty shit to say and I’m going to be bitching about a lot of things I don’t understand and I’m annoyed about so I’m going to put it under a cut. If you happen to have answers, because my brain is swiss cheese about some events in this show (especially when they info dump for a whole episode), let me know! Then I’ll at least have some answers! If you’re only interested in the joy this show inspires, you can catch up on all that goodness here, otherwise lets dive in to the “clear as a muddy swamp” water. Who knows, maybe we’ll find a tunnel to whatever hole Alex has been kept in for the past month! (or you can go read my life reactions under my “roswell spoilers” tag since I’ll probably be reiterating a lot of it here, but those posts sometimes have memes attached!)

Link to previous episode posts: 4x01, 4x02, 4x03, 4x04

First bit of confusion right off the bat! Tezca saying the blue flame was a Power Jones had and she was able to access the power from Max even though it was dormant. HOWEVER, we never saw Jones use that power. We saw him quite often using regular fire. If we were going with some kind of blue fire, shouldn’t we have seen that at least once last season instead of retconning that it’s something Jones can do that we’ve never seen or heard about? Again they killed Jones too soon and without ever letting us learn as much as we should have from and about him.

Speaking of, NO JONES RESSURRECTION?! *throws phone*

So, Isobel found Cam, half naked in the desert and she was last seen with Max, who no one can find, and Isobel just....drops Cam off with Liz and fucks off to Mexico?! Without even trying to go look for her brother?! Season 1 told us Max could find Isobel even when she was in the middle of the desert and had no idea where she was, even though Max didn’t think he had the same mindscape powers as her, but she can’t rally the troops to go rescue her brother from the clutches of evil which, for all they know, could include Jones since they just found out his body went missing?! The show sidelining Isobel and Max’s relationship is one of their many, many crimes.

Max says he’s just waiting for the handprint to fade and break the connection. Everyone been knew he was lying about something and apparently Liz is...just going to trust him even when she acknowledges he’s lying to her face which, okay, but Michael doesn’t say anything either? About both the lying which you know he clocked, OR the fact that the handprint fading didn’t stop Jones from accessing that old connection and trying to kill Liz with it so why is ANYONE assuming the print fading will do anything? Or is this just more lore changes we’re supposed to ignore like we had to do last season when suddenly the faded handprint could still come back and kill you?

Michael has once again left someone who was kidnapped to their own devices but at least Eduardo told him too and it was okay though I did think Michael had gotten him untied and he was on his way out into the desert. Clearly he was found by Bonnie and Clyde again, but at the time, no one knew that yet. He could have been back at Deep Sky taking a shower and having a nap for all anyone knew. And yet, after a few hours since he saw him last, Michael is saying they need to stage a rescue op, while no one has heard from Alex in DAYS, even after they called him about a friend’s mom he knew well DYING and no one seems to think it’s the slightest bit odd? Not one single worry about Alex not calling to tell Michael good night, or answering Michael’s texts when Michael asks if he’s still up?! After showing us last season that they call each other just to chit-chat and check in and when Alex didn’t answer Michael went over and when he didn’t find Alex he went to Secret Government Agency headquarters to get to Alex?! *screams into pillow*

WHAT was the deal with the woman in the pod needing surgery?! I couldn’t see any injuries that would necessitate surgery in an unsterile environment with an untrained tech and no medical equipment! Kyle would know better than that and wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t a life or death situation which we are given NO indication that it was! This isn’t even just telling and not showing, it’s not telling OR showing! WHY was that even needed when she’s up and looking just fine? Did Kyle smuggle medical tools and anesthetics (which, he’s a surgeon not an anesthetist) into Mexico? Did he perform supposedly emergency surgery with NO anesthetics?! No monitoring equipment?! What kind of surgery was it?! Where did the find the silver goo to get her out of the pod?! WHY DID THIS NEED TO HAPPEN when all they needed her for was to tell them about the vault? We could have seen them pulling her out of the pod and her thanking them for rescuing her and doing the vault thing, and then showing them all the journals and stuff! It was SO unnecessary. And if they wanted Kyle and Isobel to do the investigating on their own, why pull her out of the pod at all? She could have been evil for all they knew! Why not leave her there until the figured out who she might be and then have the vault explanation? Also, how did the man who runs the distillery owned by Kyle’s family NOT tell him the casita was ALSO owned by his family?! Uuuuuuuugh!!!!!

The need for alien powers to open the vault was kind of cool but how did the not-alien Valenti’s do it? Did it require 3 of them to be in agreement to open the vault together? If so, why didn’t we hear about that?! Also, how did Tezca (who apparently named herself after an Aztec god even though she’s from outer space and wouldn’t know about them) even know it was in there? Can she sense alien things like Rosa even though this had no alien glass in it? It was smuggled down from Roswell fairly recently so was that something Jim took from Caulfield and gave to Eduardo? Instead of answering any of these questions, we had a whole thing about surgery. 🙄🙄🙄 But hey, at least one of the things the dark triad took was in Kyle's family! Which begs the question(s), why didn’t Kyle or Alex's family have the rest of the glass pieces? Oh right! Because otherwise m*ria would have nothing to do and no connection to the story so everyone else's story has to not make sense to squeeze her in 🙄 We should have been getting hints about this last season when we met Eduardo at LEAST. The main group should have found one or two of those glass pieces and been investigating them in the background (just a mention, some hints to build up to this) since at least last season as well, and they should have belonged to the Manes family/found in Jesse’s bunker, Eduardo/something else Jim left for Kyle, and maybe one on Alex's mom's side of the family from when Louisa lived on the reservation, instead of Patricia having all of them. Because when did Nora make the board? On Oasis? We didn’t see it with her when her and Louisa escaped! In Caulfield? How would Patricia have gotten it then? Why was it not a family legend passed down for m*ria's family if they were the guardians like the Valenti family? Mimi clearly thought Jesse and Jim just got mixed up in something and didn’t know what it was. It's just suuuuch a mess with no build up when it could have been teased from the start! Maybe Kyle found a piece in Caulfield while he was gathering stuff up before it exploded!

As much fun as learning about Dallas has been, m*rai did nothing this episode but drag his scenes down. She basically served as a rubber duck for Dallas to bounce info off of for the audience. Too bad Lucky isn’t still around, that would have been just as useful but at least enjoyable to watch. The whole symbol conversation was ridiculous given how instantly recognizable it is. As they both point out, before acting like it’s brand new information literally a minute later so m*ria can have an idea about it 🙄 I’m surprised they didn’t end up going to every Christian church in the area (there are hundreds in Roswell actually) because that symbol is everywhere. Apparently everyone and their mother know about the abandoned “church” but somehow it’s still miraculously empty of people or kidnap victims when they show up (guess they didn’t poke around enough to see the chair with rope around it?), and somehow everyone knows about the building but NO ONE knows about the SHED with the big ass TREE in it that grows STRANGE FRUIT?! REALLY?! And don’t even get me started on the Dallas backstory bit which, while sweet, makes zero sense with the other info we have about the time period and people involved. Did his dad put him in a pod and drive to a different town and put his pod in a lake before he was captured? Did someone else do it? If so, who? How was he out and freely living so long without reconnecting with his triad who were in the area? Clyde says he can feel Bonnie so clearly there is a triad connection! Why didn’t the military confiscate everything in that barn when they took him? Who knows! Not ever, ever us. Again, more questions that only arise because they contradict the stuff we already know.

Should have put in my Sparks Joy post that I would be delighted if m*ria and Dallas end up related? Because as much as I need them to stop using him as a reason to give m*ria screentime, I would absolutely cackle about that development. Everyone wanted her with Iz and they turned out related (but somehow still never addressed how close of relations that made her and Michael), so this would just tickle me to death.

As much as it’s nice getting SOME pod siblings moments, especially Max and Michael not ending on a fight, Max is STILL using every opportunity to throw Michael’s relationship with Alex in Michael’s face and I haaaate it. Also, why did they not have this discussion at the house? Because they drove out to the middle of the desert to look for Eduardo, and Michael suddenly decided Max needs to be back with Liz. Where he just was. Did Michael kick him out of the car and make him walk back to his house? Did he drive him back the way the just came and then drive all the way back out to the middle of nowhere to keep looking? (With THESE gas prices?!) It’s like they stage these scenes in a place that looks cool without any thought about how they characters got there, who all is there, when it takes place, how they end up where they do next, how long it takes to get anywhere, there is just no continuity!

So apparently squeezing their (alien?) organs produces enzymes that help powers manifest? Does everyone on Oasis palpate their kids organs to make their powers grow? Would doing so to Michael manifest any other powers seeing as how he’s also got DNA from Jones but only ever had the same telekinesis that apparently all aliens have until he found out he was immune to fire. Which apparently also now means he can summon it at will? Would have been nice to see that happening or talked about. Also, with as, frankly frighteningly poor control as Max has, I can’t imagine he’s had all these abilities from Jones and WASN’T basically Jack-Jack from The Incredibles going absolutely haywire all this time. And if all aliens have telekinesis, why did Max and Isobel have to work so hard to do it, when Michael had to work so hard NOT to and still many years down the line slipped up enough that he got branded as having demons?! (they were 7 when they came out of the pods? and 13 at the exorcism?) I want to be more excited about the alien stuff but it just feels like the writers don’t know anything about their own show or lore.

As fun as it’s been watching Liz and Cam have scenes together I’m once again asking why Liz isn’t having these heartfelt scenes with someone closer to her, like, oh IDK, ROSA! Yes Amber wasn’t available at the start but they could have done phone calls and just filmed Liz’s part and filmed Rosa’s later. The show wrapped before it started airing it’s not like they had the episode out before Amber was back on set. Or Michael who would also encourage pushing Max. Oh right, she did get to have her once per season 2.5 minute scene with m*ria to remind everyone they’re BFFs I guess 🙄 Also Liz brings up m*ria losing her visions means she can’t see Mimi anymore, but m*rai lost her visions BEFORE mimi died, and also, she died YESTERDAY. Not that you would know it based on literally anything happening. Also her “seeing the future” has literally never come in handy before so IDK why everyone is so distraught about it now 🙄

Clyde’s character continues to be all over the place, suddenly opening up to Michael, and being chill with Bonnie’s choices, not pushing about what happened with Eduardo, just, GIVING Michael the sky map, like??? Also sticking with my theory he and Bonnie should have been a couple. Also are we just supposed to....forget? that he AND BONNIE joined forces with Jones to commit genocide against their own people? But we’re supposed to buy wide-eyed, innocent Bonnie and Clyde saying the “first time” is always the hardest about her while 10 minutes earlier Bonnie was just saying she didn’t want to hurt people anymore?

I haaaaate that they are having Max and Cam talk about how she was in love with him (is it past tense if she’s still wondering what could be?), and how much he cared for her too. This should have happened in season 1 or if Cam wanted some space to get over it first, it should have happened in season 2 at the latest. She wasn’t even IN season 3, we are well past the time for having this discussion and now it’s just eating up screentime.

I guess Alex getting kidnapped by Eduardo and then, I don’t know, sitting back and getting his additional soda flavors from the Deep Sky lab techs while Eduardo bonded with the team and helped take down Jones makes him “really important” to Alex. The thing is, I WANT him to be really important to Alex! Alex deserves a good father figure! But we haven’t SEEN it or even been TOLD about it until this moment, when everyone is looking for Eduardo while Alex is currently eating dirt in a hole and no one cares.

The bandana is still a thing so why did we have to watch Alex take it off and them walk off alone through what looks to be a dystopian-ly empty town square while Jesse’s statue takes up the entire frame if they haven’t talked about it, and Michael’s still wearing it. If Rosa can come back as a Catholic miracle to Arturo and as Rosalinda to the rest of the town, SURELY Michael could get “miracle” surgery?

Max exploding in anger, what else is new? But even worse than him exploding in anger and hurting Liz and then the writers having HER apologize to HIM and decide to take equal blame, is the fact that the danger barely has a chance to register before it’s over. Instead of Max passing out after his outburst, or Tezca knocking him out and Liz getting hurt and Max waking up to Cam trying to keep Liz alive, and being worried that his fritzing powers are going to hurt her more, he just heals her in a blink and everyone moves on. THIS is the kind of drama we actually WANT to see, not the same cyclical patterns of them lying to each other and fighting about what avenue needs to be taken to fix whatever big problem is currently happening. That first healing where Max wasn’t even sure he could do it?! That moment is still amazing, and every time they have him heal her and brush it off it cheapens the power until it becomes mundane and I hate it.

Liz saying they want things to be simpler than they can be just rubs me the wrong way because things SHOULD be simple! Look at Malex! They loved each other even as broken teens with poor coping mechanisms and walls a mile high. Their separation came from outside forces, compounded by their trauma responses and them stopping communicating effectively with each other. Once they moved past all that? It was simple! They still have to work at it, but Michael sounds SO excited and content when he says he regrets not letting Alex in every time he shuts him out, because he KNOWS how good it feels, how much easier it is to let Alex it. But that has never been Echo’s problem. They don’t have outside forces keeping them apart, they have fundamentally different ideas about how to do nearly everything and when they should be pulling closer and working together they are ALWAYS lying to each other and shutting each other out. It’s not “simple” because they...aren’t compatible. And I hate that because I LIKED Echo when the show first started and I wanted to keep liking them but the writers make it SO HARD to root for a couple that can never tell the truth and work together on anything. Also Max is....who they decided Max should be. Remember when he fell all over himself when he saw her for the first time and when he begged her not to die and every time he looks at her with heart eyes when she’s being incredibly smart? If they had leaned into that instead of the “brooding, dark, tortured hero” aspect, he and their relationship would be so much better and more interesting.

.Supposedly Michael tells Dallas the fruit from the alien tree is fuel, not food? Even though he took a bite? Fuel for...their ships? For their minds? Did Clyde say that? Is this another thing they just pulled out of the air and put in a throwaway line to come back in 4 episodes where we’re expected to remember?

At least according to the preview for next week, that kiss from Bonnie was good for something besides proving that Michael is loyal to Alex, but honestly we should have seen Clyde say something to Bonnie by the end of that episode asking her like, a vague "did you do it?" and her saying yes and looking upset about it, and then seen Michael cough or something. Then this whole episode we should have seen a little something in each of his scenes, not much, maybe a sniffle here and a cough there, or a shiver, but something so that when he collapses at the end it all comes together. But we only saw his powers flicker once before that last scene and that was it! I honestly thought when I saw that, that we would find out there were alien flowers or something in the cave damping his powers. Instead they just had a kiss happen out of nowhere and then circled back 3 weeks later to make it into something different. As heavy handed aa RNM can be they somehow fully missed out on foreshadowing this. Like yeah it's a day or 2 in show time, but 3 weeks for the audience. Also, Michael hasn't really been physically hurt since the shed and Alex isn't even there to catch his boyfriend when he passes out?! Alex isn’t there when Michel gets to sit and look up at the map to his home planet?! This is Michael all alone after finding out Sanders wanted to adopt him all over again.

Speaking of Alex and the show missing opportunities, we are 3 full episodes and a month for the viewers past Alex getting quicksanded and you STILL want me to believe Michael isn’t the slightest bit worried about not hearing from Alex? I get that they need Michael to go nuts at the right time since apparently Alex is missing for quite a bit of the season and they needed Michael to be doing other things, but that’s like, SUCH an easy fix?! We JUST saw Michael being worried he messed everything up and Alex saying he trusts their relationship to be okay even if he’s gone for a bit. Michael being worried but forcing himself to push it back because he thinks he’s overreacting makes PERFECT sense for him! We should be seeing him leaving a couple messages every episode, updating Alex on what’s going on and sometimes just inane things like making fun of something Max said. We should see him talking with Dallas, and Liz, and Max about being upset Alex isn’t answering but how he thinks he’s overreacting until finally he says something to Kyle and Kyle validates that Michael’s not overreacting and he’s worried too. We should be feeling like the Jaws theme is playing in the background and watching the knowledge that something has happened to Alex getting closer and closer to their realization. Even if for some reason we couldn’t see Alex (though it’s the same thing as with Rosa, if he’s in a hole, they could shoot him alone in whatever space they are keeping him at a later date since the whole show wrapped before airing), we should be seeing everyone else, but especially Michael feeling his absence in every single episode.

Finally, and much as I’m ready to FINALLY get the Kybel train moving, I was absolutely correct that it would be rushed and either they wouldn’t get together until the end, or they would shove them together RIGHT after the breakup and either way it wouldn’t feel like the story Kyle and Isobel deserve. I guess this is the better option as we have more episodes to enjoy Kybel content (that is, if they don’t decide to be awkward about it and Kyle doesn’t get quicksanded with Alex to keep them apart), but BOY does it feel cheap to not only have them getting together within about 24 hours of Isobel breaking up with Anatsa, but also to have IN THE SAME EPISODE, in the span of a few hours, Isobel going from crying about driving the best relationship she’s ever had off a cliff to “she wasn’t my person”. And Isobel brings up something Kyle said two full seasons ago as like, a reason she never thought he was an option, but she was off hooking up with someone else that night, so how are we the audience supposed to connect that blip of a moment that I do not remember to Isobel liking Kyle this whole time but thinking he didn’t like her? AGAIN, this is something we should have been seeing hints of since that episode or at the very least had Isobel mention something last season before going out with Anatsa about thinking he’s not an option for her so she’s going to take a chance on someone else. It’s just so frustrating that all the tiny crumbs are being held up like, “look this has been here all along!” because the writers are bad at their jobs and can’t seem to hit the broad side of a barn-sized emotional beat to save their lives.

Finally finally, here is a live reaction of us waiting for literally anyone to care about Alex because if I don’t laugh a little Imma tear my hair out

#roswell nm #roswell spoilers #roswell nm my behated #things that did not spark joy #4x05 #anti maria deluca #i have looked at this too long so sorry not sorry if it's a rambling mess #i'm definitely not going back to re-edit it anymore #it's your problem now!

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