Written by Alanna Bennett & Danny Tolli
Directed by Rachel Raimist
New episodes air Monday on CW

by Emily Maesar, Staff Writer

Occasionally, the way that stories are told on television necessitates episodes where everything that happens in them is simply because it’s all set up for the future. And while that might not be entirely true for this episode of Roswell, New Mexico… it’s mostly true. Or, at least, that’s how it felt this week.

We open with Max keeping Kyle alive by healing him. Which is something I maybe should have seen coming, all things considered. So, despite Max being on the verge of dying from heart failure… he seems perfectly fine the next day. We discover, once Liz and Heath arrive back in Roswell, that Max has tethered together Liz, Kyle, and himself. (How very season one, love-triangle of him!) Because of this he’s passed his whole dying thing onto Liz, with the healthiness of all three parties moving about as he tries to rectify the situation. Except he can’t actually fix it. Someone will always be dying unless Max gets healed by Jones.

Meanwhile, the burned up body of one of Jordan’s racist buddies is found on the Lopez farm. Max gets called out to work it and we get to see the sheriff in action, along with a pretty openly racist cop. Max is forced to bring in Lopez and his husband, as they’re being charged for the murder.

So, here is where I must question the decision to keep Max a cop. Or, rather, to make him a cop again. Because Max wasn’t a cop for a while there, and I really cannot fathom a particularly good reason for him to have joined the force again - in a world where the pandemic happened and, I can only assume, everything else did too.

And, while race and racism have always been a big part of the series, things are even more charged this season. As tensions rise in town, there’s a protest outside the police station about the arrest of the Lopezes. Liz and Rosa’s father, Arturo, makes his first appearance of the season. (I presume to protect Carlos Compean’s health during shooting.) He’s always a welcome light to the show, and I’m glad to see him again. It’s also nice to have his immigration status brought up again so we can see where he's at in his journey.

The protest takes up a big part of the episode, though, so a lot of things happen during it. Including Kyle posting bail for the Lopezes, a brick getting thrown through the police station window, the sheriff agreeing to call in Jordan’s friends, and those friends of Jordan’s showing up with guns and attacking Arturo.

For that last one, Rosa steps in and, after getting a gun pointed at her, ends up with the phone of one of the militia members. About half our main cast decide that something needs to be done about Jordan and his shitty friends, so they use the phone to make a plan to “take care of them.” We never really learn what that means, though, as Maria and Rosa get taken into the barn the group is meeting in before they can do anything. They get what amounts to a confession about them moving their friend’s body to make it look like the Lopezes killed him, and all their general racism comes out as well. But, as it happens, the second militia they’d called in from a neighboring town, was actually the reporter that hadn’t left town yet. She and her friends recorded Jordan’s whole confession and livestreamed it.

Which brings us back to Max, Jones, and the healing conundrum. The whole episode Isobel is trying to figure out what else Jones did during his day outside of the cage. She doesn’t believe he’s told them the whole truth - which she’s correct about. Jones knew that the only way for him to save Max, was to kill someone and store their life to use as the juice for healing the man he views as his son. And if you hadn’t already guessed who the person he killed was… well it’d be the racist asshole who’s dead body was found at the Lopez farm.

After a bit of fighting, Jones does heal Max. Which, in turn, means that Kyle and Liz are healthy too. Liz finally commits to staying in Roswell, and the team puts Jones back into the pod, not just the cage. But all does not seem right in the world. Maria is still convinced they’re not out of the woods yet.

Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that my absolute favorite thing from this episode was the conversation that Michael and Rosa had outside The Crash Down. It comes as a realization that this was one relationship that’s never been covered. That Michael played a significant role in the reception Roswell had to Rosa’s death and the racism that’s hotten hurled at the Ortecho family since then. These are two characters that deserve all the empathy in the world, and I’m so happy they’re finding it even in each other.

Now, with the ending of the episode, it’s still entirely possible that Maria’s vision was correct and that this episode was only a light reprieve from Kyle’s untimely death. Which… is mean. I rest, though, knowing that with all the alien stuff bopping around, and Jones still in their back pocket, that it might not mean Kyle’s down for the count forever.