In season one of Roswell, New Mexico, we are introduced to Liz Ortecho, our lead. She’s a brilliant scientist and incredibly stubborn, refusing to drop things until she gets her desired result. She’s also extremely compassionate; her drive to become a scientist was due to the trauma of her sister’s death and wanting to prevent other people from enduring such pain. She loves deeply and whole-heartedly, but because of abandonment fears she’s terrified to let anyone in. She’d do absolutely anything for those she cares about, including running headfirst into a dangerous situation if it means protecting them. She was incredibly multi-faceted and you could not get me to stop gushing about how much I loved Liz last season. About how much I loved seeing a woman of color (albeit, a light-skinned one) be the lead of this kind of genre show and be so well-rounded.
If you know me outside of this site, you know from mid-February last year up until the early episodes of this season, Roswell, New Mexico, and more specifically, the relationship between Liz and Max was practically the only thing I could talk about. For more than a year, I literally, physically, could not shut up about this relationship and these two characters and how much they meant to me. But then season two episode 5 happened. And I noticed this episode prioritized Michael mourning Max. Michael, the fandom favorite white bisexual dude, got the focus over the Latina lead. That is the exact moment where my excitement started to die down for the show. (And this shit isn’t new. We’ve seen it before when a white showrunner has a lead that’s played by a person of color, most notably and recently being Killing Eve, where Eve, played by Sandra Oh, the initial headliner for promotions, has gotten sidelined to the point that most people who don’t watch think that the lead of the show is Villanelle.)
But I could live with the sidelining. It infuriated and disgusted me, but I figured, “Hey, I’m primarily watching for Echo, as long as the writers do right by them I can deal, I’ve sat through shows I hate for stupider reasons.” And then season two episode 9 happened and revealed just how little they care about Liz, by having her make a decision that is an utter betrayal to the Liz we met in season one.
If I were to try to explain Liz’s importance to the show in season one, I would be rambling for pages. How she drove the entire plot. How hundreds of decisions made by other characters were made because of things Liz said to them.
Want a summary of Liz’s actions in season two? She mourns Max. While, yes, she is using her science know-how to try to find a way to bring him back, that’s pushed so far into the background that we barely see it. We get a brief look at Max and Liz reconnecting. Liz has an emotionally fraught dinner with her mom. Liz nearly loses her dad because ICE detains him and he nearly gets deported. And then Liz decides to use her brilliant mind to do alien research that she does not have consent to be doing; that involves her stealing DNA to do in the first place; that will inevitably put Max, Michael, Isobel, Rosa, and Maria in danger. Liz does this research and refuses to listen to Max’s objections, refuses to understand how she can’t possibly go public with any findings without endangering him. Like, literally, Liz nearly lost her dad because of racist policies that would have sent him back to Mexico, and yet Max talks about his fears of exposure when she confesses her experiments the next episode, that shit isn’t clicking and she just insists that he can’t possibly understand what this means for her, as a Latina scientist who wants to get recognition for her achievements.
We went from Liz being the Latina lead who’s actions and words literally drive every single plot point in season one, to Liz barely being involved in the A plot of season two. From a Liz who was driven to science because of her compassion and deep desire to help others, to a Liz driven by her ego and not caring about the harm she causes those close to her in the name of “furthering scientific progress” when it will inevitably come at the expense of others.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I have to explain how the writing for this show is rotten at its very core before I get into my rant about Liz’s character assassination. Because there are so many other issues with this show and it all ties into the mess of this tragedy done to Liz.
The Disabled Mimicry
Within the first two episodes, we learn that two of our main characters are disabled. Alex, a vet trying to get out of the military and escape his abusive father, who is also an amputee as we learn in his very first scene; and Michael, who has a mangled hand (which… I will get more into that in another section of this critique). It’s already in murky territory given that neither Tyler Blackburn nor Michael Vlamis are physically disabled themselves (or at least not in these ways), but this is the usual so I pushed aside that nagging thought and went with it. But as the season progressed, it started to become more annoying as it became clear that no real thought was put into writing for these disabilities. They were pretty much only brought up when plot relevant, and even then, usually very clumsily. But, again, I swallowed that thought and rolled with it.
Then, in the season one finale, Michael’s hand is suddenly magically healed. This decision is explained in-show as Michael holding onto a physical representation of his trauma that he needed to be unburdened from. It’s not treated like an actual disability that he had to deal with for a decade and there don’t appear to be any lasting effects from this disability in season two. And, again, in-show, it is practically outright stated that now that he’s free from that burden, he can move on and finally be happy… I truly don’t even have the words for how fucked up and ableist this is. It all still astounds me a whole year later.
To the credit of the writers’ room, I guess, they tried to touch upon Alex’s disability more in season two. It’s mentioned more regularly and definitely not solely brought up for plot relevant reasons, but the times it’s brought into focus feel more like the writers screaming, “See? We didn’t forget about Alex’s disability and the hardships that come with it. We’re talking about it,” instead of looking at the daily life of an amputee.
But, then again, we can’t give too much credit to the handling of Alex’s disability in season two because we also have his father, Jesse, faking a disability! Jesse, the villain, fakes a disability to appear weak, so no one will be expecting his master plan of committing an attack to blame on the aliens, so he can be a hero when he uses a bomb specifically designed to wipe them out! Because there’s never too much of the disabled villain trope or the villain pretending to be disabled trope cause we love the stereotype of disability as representing moral failings and the implication that disabled folks are helpless!
The Homophobia
This topic is probably going to make some of you want to snipe me, so before I get into it, I’m going to say that I think Michael and Alex are decently written in terms of being representations of a bisexual and gay man, respectively. My issue is more about the writing for them when it comes to their relationships than the writing for them as characters (or at least the writing for them as characters in relation to their sexualities). Now that I’ve said that though, let’s talk about this.
So, at the end of the pilot, we learn Alex and Michael used to be intimate, as the episode ends with them having a very charged discussion and sharing a kiss. The next couple episodes portray them as seeing if they can establish a real relationship ten years later. It’s very intense and emotional and implies that they had something incredibly deep as teens.
But then, in episode 6, we get flashbacks of their relationship in high school and… there’s very little substance. It’s clear they like each other and are interested in each other romantically, but they have, like… three conversations where they’re just getting to know each other and then suddenly they have their first kiss? And immediately after their first kiss, they have sex?
This just comes off as their relationship being oversexualized, which is highlighted by the fact that what we had seen in the present day up to that point was primarily the physical aspect of their relationship. It left a bad taste in my mouth to see the gay relationship immediately getting physical, especially when paralleled to Echo, where Max and Liz are apparently too pure and chaste to even share a kiss. (I also really despise seeing minors sexualized in media, so the show also loses points for that.)
(Also, as someone who was a Repressed Gay™ in high school, I gotta say the fact that we’re supposed to just go along with Alex, who was terrified of being open about being gay, who was scared to make a move on Michael, having his first kiss with Michael and the two of them immediately having sex after? I call bullshit.)
Then, to make matters worse, we learn how Michael’s disability happened. Jesse caught Alex and Michael together right as they are taking a moment to laugh and talk after having sex, and in this moment of joy, he becomes physically violent, resulting in him smashing Michael’s hand with a hammer. It’s a trope that a lot of straight creators tend to fall back on, showing LGBTQ+ joy and immediately following it with pain that is intrinsically tied to that identity. That scene is the exact moment I checked out of caring about Malex as a relationship. I’m just not interested in a gay relationship built on trauma porn.
I guess the writers get a few points for the relationship between Alex and Forrest, because even though I’m not all that invested, they are fairly cute, and given it’s a new relationship that is just starting, they’re in that ‘getting to know you’ stage and there’s not much in terms of physical intimacy yet; but then again their screentime together has been pretty limited, so I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if next season either just doesn’t bother to give their relationship proper development or their relationship ends up oversexualized as well.
Unfortunately, though, there’s more fuckery from season one episode 6. We learn that Isobel and Rosa had been spending lots of time together and were friends, with the suggestion that their feelings for each other might have been deeper than that. As we see more of their dynamic through flashbacks, it’s revealed that Isobel would spend time with Rosa when she would disassociate, and that on her end, the feelings were definitely romantic, which is ableist as well as homophobic, so… fun! But it gets even worse! It turns out that the time Isobel would disassociate, her body was actually being taken over by a male alien. So the writers teased a sapphic relationship for it to not be between two women at all. I guess the writers are trying to fix this by having Isobel realize she is sapphic and the promise that her next relationship on the show will be with a woman, but after the handling of Isobel and Rosa’s relationship in those flashbacks, and the (frankly) painfully awkward scene where Isobel makes out with a woman before they go to the bathroom to have sex, I have absolutely no faith it will be written well (especially if Isobel’s love interest happens to be a woman of color).
But that’s not all!
In season two, we have The Clusterfuck of Bullshit. As Michael has been romantically involved with both Alex and Maria, after the three of them are in a life and death situation, they seek physical comfort from each other and have a threesome. I don’t want to get into discussing this scene in-show because, honestly, everyone is going to interpret it differently and I do not care to argue about whether it was executed well or debate what the characters’ reasonings and feelings are. (Also, just know if you are vilifying Maria for this situation, I personally hate you very deeply.)
So, let’s get into the narrative framing and set up for this situation. The first half of the episode decides to give some focus to Maria and Alex’s relationship. They somehow end up talking about a time when they were teens and played Seventh Heaven or some other similar game that required them to make out. Alex discusses how he was still closeted and how physical intimacy with Maria was the only time he had enjoyed physical touch from a woman. Now, as a lesbian who spent five entire years thinking I was bisexual, let me just say that the way you relate to the other binary gender when you are aware you are gay, but are not comfortable admitting that to yourself, is completely different to the way you relate to them once you have accepted this about yourself. Maria was Alex’s closest friend! Of course he felt comfortable and safe with her! If he were to be intimate with a woman while he was still trying to deny to himself that he was gay, why would he choose anyone else over the friend he trusts most?
But here’s where things take a turn and become uncomfortable. Maria’s response to this confession is to tell Alex that before he came out, she was confident they were going to get married? What? How is that in any way an appropriate thing to say to your best friend, a gay man? It’s truly so astounding that the writers decided to have a character listen to her gay friend confiding in her about how things with women never felt right and to respond with, “I thought we were gonna be a couple.” Like, it’s been months and I still can’t wrap my head around this bullshit.
But, again, things get worse. Maria is the one who initiates the threesome. And she initiates it by kissing Alex. Maria, Alex’s best friend who he literally just told about how uncomfortable he is with physical intimacy with women, kisses him after he expresses discomfort at seeing her and Michael kiss… Again, I don’t want to talk about the execution or debate whether it makes sense for the characters in this moment. It does not change the fact that these are fictional characters being put in this situation by the writers, and this situation being written in the first place suggests a lack of respect for gay men. (And before anyone wants to start screaming about how the episode was written by two gay men, it’s pretty likely they were told this was a plot point they had to hit, so who knows if this would have been the end result otherwise; plus Carina Adly MacKenzie, the showrunner, has final say on the scripts, so it’s possible she changed things. We don’t know! And even if they did freely make the decision for things to end in this threesome, that also doesn’t automatically stop it from being homophobic! Two individuals can not speak for an entire community’s experiences! Please stop using the fact that two gay men wrote this episode as a shield from criticism! The vast majority of gay and lesbian viewers felt insulted and invalidated, and if you are bisexual, you cannot understand that identity just because you share a same gender attraction with us!)
(And not to detour too much into the racism of it all as that’s my next topic, but I’d like to get this thought out there too. I have been trying to avoid discussing fandom because I want to focus on the actual text of the show, but if you’re here, reading this, you surely know that practically any piece of media that features a Black woman has a fandom that is eager to tear her to shreds and will insist their vitriol towards said character has nothing to do with race. MacKenzie spends a lot of time engaging with fans on twitter, and she spends a lot of time engaging with Malex shippers, which is the corner of fandom that is most vocal with their misogynoir. I know for a fact that MacKenzie has seen this hate towards Maria because she likes to make vague tweets like, “Huh, I wonder why you all are so harsh to Maria,” but not, you know, directly calling out folks in fandom for being racists.
Anyway, she was aware of the way Malex shippers treat Maria, and yet decided the three of them should have a threesome and decided Maria should be the one to initiate things… While I’m pretty confident that the intent of the threesome was an attempt to placate both Malex and Miluca shippers (because it’s obvious MacKenzie expected both groups to be pleased with this development), I refuse to believe she had no idea of the vitriol she was about to unleash upon Maria. She had to have known that the Malex shippers would take this as an excuse to attack Maria yet again, especially Alex stans who incessantly accuse Maria of being selfish. She cannot claim to be oblivious when she is constantly engaging with fandom, and, overwhelmingly, the people more vocal about the show also tend to be the ones who are vocal about their hate for Maria.)
The Racism
I’m gonna break this down into specific sub-categories in a moment, but let’s just get the general stuff out of the way.
Hopefully, I don’t have to explain that making white folks who have some kind of magical ability into an allegory for a marginalized group is a fucked up trope. This trope transposes struggles of people of color onto white folks who will likely never experience anything remotely similar just so the (white) audience will feel sympathy for these characters. It’s a trope that desperately needs to be retired. So, that’s already a big strike against this show.
We then have the reveal that Max, Isobel, and Michael covered up the murder of Rosa, Liz’s sister, and the murder of two white girls, making it look like a car accident that Rosa was responsible for, and allowing their tiny racist town to start targeted attacks against Arturo, Liz’s father.
Now, if you’re reading this and you haven’t watched the show, you’re surely thinking, “What the fuck, how could you ever root for a Liz/Max romance?” And logically, you are 100% right. There should not have been any possible way for a romance to be viable after that reveal. But the narrative shows us nuance to the situation, that Max’s first reaction to finding Rosa dead was a desperate attempt to revive her with his abilities, that he only went through with the cover up because if he couldn’t save Rosa and do right by Liz, he had to do right by his family and protect them. And, unfortunately, he was kind of right. If he, Isobel, and Michael hadn’t covered up the murder of these girls, there’s a good chance that they would have been found out, and if they’d been found out, there’s a good chance that they would have ended up in a research facility that we see later in the season. That Max’s number one fear of Isobel and Michael being experimented on would probably have become a reality.
There’s also the fact that this event traumatized Max and he has a deep sense of self-loathing for it, deciding to become a cop in order to protect people (which… I don’t have it in me to even get into that writing decision. All I wanna say is abolish the police and on a very superficial note, thank God that Max quit being a cop in season two). While there is nothing Max could have done to fix the harm he has caused the Ortechos this past decade, he does everything he feels he can to protect them that wouldn’t expose the fact that he’s an alien. He makes efforts to protect Arturo from ICE, and checks up on him regularly as well as looking after the diner. As soon as Liz returns to Roswell, his priority is always keeping her safe, regardless of what that means for him or his family. (I’ll touch upon this again when I complain more about the way season two twisted Liz’s character, but it felt important to bring up now as I’m somewhat defending Echo as a romance.)
The point is, the romance that this show is built on is literally founded upon racism, upon the audience’s willingness to hand wave away what Max has done, even though the narrative (and I very much agree) argues that a stupid decision he made out of being oblivious to the reality of Liz’s life as a Latina, is not a good representation of Max’s character. That he was making what he thought was the best choice in a horrific situation that would always end with hurting Liz.
There’s also the fact that the narrative refuses to hold Isobel and Michael accountable for the cover up as well, when all three of Pod Squad participated and Max was the only one who cared about the fallout and about doing right by Liz. In fact, in season one episode 2, Isobel and Michael try to threaten Liz into leaving and the writers’ room apparently didn’t even think it was important to have them apologize to Liz for that. If they refuse to hold Michael and Isobel responsible for terrorizing Liz like that when they are freely making that choice as adults, why should we expect the narrative to hold them accountable for their actions as terrified teens in a panic? It’s also annoying to see both Michael and Isobel lash out at Liz, with Michael never apologizing to her for it and Isobel giving half-assed apologies that center herself and her feelings.
Which characters are prioritized
So, as I kind of insinuated in the introduction, Michael gets way more focus during season two. The narrative focus falls onto his search into what happened to his mother, as this idea of family is the main thread of the season. (In fact, now that I say that I think the only topic that was consistently discussed in every episode this season was Nora and Louise, because the “alien abductions” were the other big plot of the season and that storyline was dropped and picked back up repeatedly, because the two white aliens connected to Michael and Isobel had to retain focus, apparently.) But it’s more than that.
We can see this prioritization even in something as simple as who is allowed to be angry. In season one, after Liz learns of the cover up, she is rightfully furious. I was so pleased to see Liz taking no shit and being in destructive mode, wanting to cause pain to Pod Squad for what they did. And while I still think it makes sense for her anger to have faded after her argument with Max and seeing how she hurt him, as we’d seen previously that her fury is intense but it’s relatively short lasting; in retrospect it really doesn’t sit right with me that Liz was only allowed to be angry for one episode.
Liz is then hesitant to be around Max, Michael, and Isobel, but she starts becoming more defensive of them shortly after that argument with Max. She calls her serum an “angry letter [she] had no intention of sending.” She becomes distraught at seeing how desperate Max is to save Isobel once she’s taken the serum and starts experiencing negative side effects, and insists to Michael that she can’t allow Max to watch Isobel die. She’s sympathetic to Max’s pain over Isobel, as she can relate given her experience with losing Rosa… While all these moments do come off as aligning with the Liz we’d seen in previous episodes (and the time skip of six weeks does help!), I can’t help but be troubled by the decision to have her forgive Max in the span of three episodes.
Liz is allowed to have brief moments of anger in season two, but it’s almost always directed at Max or other people of color. Once she forgave Pod Squad for their part in harming her family, she’s no longer allowed to express anger at Michael or Isobel, even when they deserve it.
After Rosa is revived and she learns of what Pod Squad did, she is rightfully enraged and can’t believe Liz wants to save Max after everything she and their father had gone through. But, like Liz, her anger only lasts for an episode, and to make matters worse, her anger is directed practically solely at Liz, with her only making a couple of angry comments to Max through their psychic bond and not holding anyone else accountable for the situation.
When Maria finds out about the aliens, she is only allowed to be angry for two scenes: her arguments with Michael and Liz. While I’m glad Michael faced consequences for lying to Maria (well… briefly), that scene is cut off in the middle of Michael’s plea for Maria to hear him out. The focus of their scene is the pain of this betrayal and how sad it is for Michael to lose her. The argument between Liz and Maria was stellar, seeing Maria refuse to accept Liz’s excuses because not knowing these things put her in danger. Maria basically calls Liz out for her obliviousness to her reality as a Black woman, and how, as women of color they should have each other’s backs, and yet two episodes later Maria is forced by the writers to swallow her anger and returns to being Liz’s supportive friend. Without Liz even giving an apology.
Meanwhile, Michael’s default mood in season one was anger; constantly lashing out and becoming violent, including two separate scenes where he throws Max around a room with his telekinetic powers, and the audience is supposed to sympathize with his emotions. He seemed to mellow out a bit in season two, which I found extremely odd because I’d have expected him to be angrier after Max’s death, but whatever, the writers don’t care about characterization so why should I try to understand this decision. Isobel gets angry fairly frequently too, although that usually presents itself as shitty behavior such as her microaggressions (usually targeting Maria) or violating boundaries, which is frequently played for humor.
There’s also the fact that season two seems practically incapable of portraying relationships that don’t center on Michael or Isobel. The relationships with the most screentime are Malex and Miluca, with Michael obviously as a focal point for these relationships. In fact, once we hit episode 7 and Michael and Maria are back to dating, I think Maria literally has three or four scenes the rest of the season that are not with Michael present. Liz and Max are together for nine episodes in season two and it honestly feels like their relationship has less screentime and substance this season than they did in season one, when they were only canon for four episodes! Liz and Maria are apparently best friends, but I can count the number of scenes they have together the entire season on one hand. Maria and Rosa are close too, apparently being closer than Maria and Liz were back when they were teens, but they only have two scenes together the whole season. Maria and Alex have repeatedly claimed they are best friends in-show, but besides a brief interaction in episode 10, they hadn’t been around each other since episode 6! I mean, for fuck’s sake, Jenna, a white side character, spends more time with Liz in season two than Liz and Maria spend together. Rosa practically only spends time with Isobel or Liz, with all of her emotionally intimate moments happening with Isobel, as if that makes any fucking sense when Isobel was the last person she saw before she was murdered and it would’ve been traumatic; as if Rosa can’t open up to Maria or Liz (or Arturo). Kyle is shoved into a romance with Steph, a brown Latina who isn’t given any personality except for the fact that she is dying and hates poor people; and their scenes are fairly limited, but it feels like he barely interacts with anyone else. Team Human is made up entirely of people of color and the writers refuse to meaningfully show the dynamics between these characters who have known each other for two decades because they’d rather put white characters at the focus.
Maria and Miluca
So, while I do very much agree with what many Black women in fandom have said about how it was refreshing to see Michael care for and prioritize Maria (which no other character was doing in season one), I have to admit that the writing for Miluca always made me wary. I did not like that Maria, again, a Black woman and the only main Black character on the show, was the one person on Team Human who didn’t know about the cover up. I did not like that Maria had hated Isobel for a decade when she thought Isobel was indirectly responsible for Rosa’s death and that Michael knew this and still slept with her, surely knowing that it’s unlikely that Maria would be receptive to his flirting if she had known the truth. But I knew Miluca was a big relationship in the original Roswell show and the book series that this show is based on, and I figured, “Hey, season two will (hopefully) acknowledge that this was a betrayal, and it’ll be emotionally fraught to see Maria come to terms with the fact that she has feelings for someone who has caused her and her friends unintentional harm.”
But… that’s not really what we got. Let’s start from the beginning with this.
In season one, Maria is sidelined pretty heavily. I actually counted Heather’s screentime during the first season. She doesn’t even clock in an hour of the approximately nine hours worth of content (granted, as she’s only in ten of the thirteen episodes, she couldn’t have appeared in more than seven hours but… the point still stands). Up until episode 7, Maria pretty much is only around to comfort and support Liz and Alex, and flirt a little with Michael. Then, in episode 7, we see how she’s been struggling to take care of her mom, and how much of a toll it is taking on her having to do it alone.
Episode 7 also sees the beginning of Miluca. Maria, who’s constantly showing up for Liz and Alex, who’s been shouldering this situation with her mom alone, can’t hold it in anymore and breaks down. And Michael is immediately there to comfort her. It’s a very sweet moment, and even with all the bullshit that’s happened since, I’m still grateful that the scene plays out the way it does.
After that moment of support, we quickly see them return to the fun and flirty and light-hearted dynamic we briefly glimpsed in episode 4. And, unsurprisingly, this leads to them sleeping together shortly after. Although Maria is pretty obviously interested in Michael, she jokes with him that this was a one time occurance. But she isn’t even afforded the chance to enjoy the possibility of something with Michael, because Alex finds out pretty quickly after it occurs. He has no reaction towards Michael, but he goes to Maria, his supposed best friend of two decades, who had absolutely no idea about their history, and proceeds to passive-aggressively guilt her for having casual sex with Michael. Like, wow, love to see the Kyle-Liz-Max-Jenna love square (where all the characters are white or white passing!) be resolved so amicably with everyone still being friends, and yet the love triangle featuring a gay mixed Native man and a Black woman gives us this jealousy bullshit. Thanks!
So then Maria, being the person who constantly prioritizes those she cares about over herself, decides to push Michael away because she has unintentionally hurt Alex and he’s too important to her. Michael is pursuing Maria and she continues to push him away, until Liz gives her advice in the finale. The advice basically boils down to, “It is okay to prioritize yourself, and you deserve to do so.” And so Maria decides to give things a chance with Michael. To see if they really have a future. It is a moment where Maria decides that what she wants matters and she does not have to constantly be prioritizing everyone else, and even as someone who never really shipped Miluca, this moment still makes me teary-eyed.
But then, in season two we immediately see Michael pushing Maria away, and now she’s reaching out, trying to give him the space to grieve Noah (well, Max, but that’s unbeknownst to her at that point), while also letting him know that she’s receptive to starting something. While I understand Michael’s self-destructive behavior is him acting out after losing Max, it’s still fairly jarring to see this change. After being the world’s biggest ass and making out with another woman in front of Maria in her own bar, he yells at her when she asks why he’s blowing this up. The next time they interact, a couple weeks later, they have a conversation where they briefly bond with each other over their moms, and Michael is suddenly trying to win her affections again? And she decides to give him another chance after he gives a quick speech about how he likes seeing her happy? How was that enough for her to decide to initiate a relationship with him?
And then, as if I wasn’t already conflicted enough, we have Maria finally learning about aliens and the cover up. Literally my only wish after seeing how their relationship started in season one was for Michael to be the one to tell Maria about everything, which he especially should have done when he had an entire arc in season one about not wanting to keep secrets from those he cares about… and he clearly cares a lot about Maria given how quickly he modified his behavior when he wanted to try a relationship with her. But Jenna has to guilt him into even considering telling Maria, and a drunken Rosa accidentally beats him to it.
We then have what is probably the most uncomfortable scene of the season after the gratuitous threesome: Michael comes by the Wild Pony to come clean, and upon realizing that Maria already knows and seeing her in distress, screaming at him to leave her alone and get out, he invades her personal space and tries to pull her closer to him. The scene immediately killed any fondness I had for their relationship, because while I do understand Michael’s desperation to not lose his one current good relationship, it does not give him the right to violate Maria’s boundaries! It is not okay or romantic to watch Maria desperately trying to shove him away while she is in tears and to see Michael continuing to cling to her! And for bonus revulsion at this scene, as Michael himself is an abuse survivor, he should understand the importance of not touching people when they are giving blatant signals that they don’t want to be touched! What the fuck!
(Also, it should be noted that Maria’s boundaries being violated in this scene is literally never brought up. Like, we literally have Maria, distressed and visibly uncomfortable with Michael making physical contact with her and then they pretty much don’t interact until the threesome scene. Kill me.)
After Maria and Liz have their argument, Maria then processes everything offscreen. After a few weeks, she goes to see Alex and claims she’s still mad at their other friends but she forgives him for lying to her and withholding information about her own life because she fell for his ex, when, again, she did not know Michael was his ex until she was already involved with him! The way the narrative tries to act like these are equal situations… Please, just shoot me now!
The next episode we learn that Maria has been avoiding Michael for at least a month, telling Alex she’s not interested in him because he’s so destructive, leading to Alex defending Michael and his part in the cover up (which, I will get into that bullshit later!), and by the end of the episode Maria’s back in a relationship with him again? Without them having any sort of conversation beyond “I almost lost you”? And she also seemingly trusts him completely now? There’s no leftover anxieties about how their last conversation played out or anything about Maria wanting to take things slowly as they get to know each other again? Where is the narrative coherence?
Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, now that Maria and Michael are back together, Maria practically only has scenes with Michael now. We learn that she has visions and that power is literally only introduced to further the storyline of Michael and Isobel learning about their bio families. We also learn that Maria’s abilities will ultimately lead to her declining mental health, as the same thing happened with her mom and grandmother, which results in practically all of the Miluca scenes for the rest of the season being Michael worrying about her health, while Maria inexplicably suddenly wants to learn how to control these newfound powers, when she had previously talked about her fears of losing her mind multiple times. Both episodes 7 and 8 have Michael obsessing about Maria’s health and practically begging her to be careful with her abilities, to then have a later conversation where he apologizes for worrying and makes a comment along the lines of, “I know you don’t need me because you don’t need anyone because you’re a badass who can handle herself.” And both times had me sitting there with my mouth open in horror because Michael, Maria’s boyfriend, is regurgitating this bullshit of how Black women are self-sufficient. Literally no other characters are saying this shit, so why is her fucking boyfriend, the person who should be a steady source of support, saying it? (To be honest, these comments made me know in my gut that a breakup was in the cards for Miluca before the season ended. Truly hated to be right.)
After Michael finds a way to help prevent, or at least slow, Maria’s mental deterioration, they have barely any scenes together. Michael gives her this protective bracelet he made in episode 10, Maria isn’t in episode 11 at all and Michael spends the whole episode desperately trying to find Alex, episode 12 they have a quick reunion once Michael escapes from Jesse and Flint, and I will get to the bullshit of episode 13 in a minute.
Episode 12 has Mimi saying cryptic comments to Maria, which she later realizes was her mom telling her what to do to save everyone at CrashCon. Maria quickly takes on a sacrificial role as she searches for the alien bomb and quickly disposes of it, but not before it goes off and affects her! Thankfully, in episode 13, we see that Maria is physically fine thanks to the fact that she’s part human, as well as Liz’s experiments helping her heal. But after she saved everyone thanks to those clues from her mom, Maria is now determined to master her abilities, claiming they misunderstood her mother and that she isn’t actually crazy, but that her mind just works differently than theirs. Michael is again distressed by Maria deciding to sacrifice her health to help others, and he blurts out that he loves her for the first time, with Maria responding back that she feels the same way (also for the first time). But then she breaks up with him because she knows he won’t stop worrying about her, as she is now insistent on embracing her abilities, and she also suggests that she thinks he will be happier with Alex. Also, I have to point out that this decision to embrace her powers is directly opposed to what Mimi wants for Maria as she has repeatedly tried to convince Maria to wear the necklace she gave her that will slow or possibly even prevent this mental deterioration! And I gotta admit that this feels like an easy way to completely drop the plotline of Maria searching for ways to help her mother by just having Maria come to this realization that people misunderstand Mimi.
To add insult to injury, not only is Maria sacrificing her happiness (which is the exact fucking opposite of her decision in the season one finale!) and health for the sake of maybe helping other people with her visions, we then have the scene that makes my blood boil. One of the last scenes of the season features Alex performing a song he wrote at an open mic night at the Wild Pony. I don’t think he even knows about Michael and Maria’s breakup, because his scenes with Michael in the finale are primarily discussing more of the 1947 nonsense about their families. But the song Alex wrote is clearly about their relationship and growing up with Jesse, including a line in the song that is literally something Michael had said to him back when they were attempting to reconnect in season one. Michael seems a bit overwhelmed and starts to leave before Isobel tries to stop him, insisting he should stay for the rest of Alex’s song because she knows it’s (partially) about them. And Michael’s response is basically, “I know we’ll be together again at some point, but I’m not ready yet.” Yes, you read that right. Michael confessed his love for Maria for her to break up with him and sacrifice her happiness, for Alex to then fucking practically serenade Michael a couple days later in Maria’s own fucking bar when he might not even know about their breakup? And Michael is receptive to this? It’s nauseating and the only way it can possibly make logical sense to you as a viewer is if you are antiblack because otherwise it should register as being narratively incoherent.
Unfortunately, there’s probably more to dissect about Maria’s treatment but this is all that immediately comes to mind without a rewatch (that I desperately do not want to do), and I have more to complain about, so we’re moving on.
The Noah twist
In season one, we are introduced to Noah (played by Karan Oberoi, a South Asian man) and Isobel (played by Lily Cowles, who is white). They seem like a very sweet and loving couple and Noah seemingly adores her, constantly prioritizing her and trying to make her happy.
But then season one episode 9 reveals that there is a secret bad alien… and episode 11 reveals that that alien is Noah. Not only does this paint the brown man as evil when placed against the white aliens, but it also absolves these white characters of the blame of an incident that lead to ten years of torment towards a Latine family, while saying “Actually, this brown dude is to blame for the violent and racist attacks against the Ortechos.”
And not only that, but Noah is revealed to have been abusing Isobel for the past decade. It wasn’t enough to have their relationship be built on a lie, for him to have been manipulating her ever since they met. No, Noah was able to sneak into her mind when she was 14, and took over her body every time she disassociated. He then preyed upon Rosa while in Isobel’s body, becoming violent and possessive towards her and killing her when Rosa rejected him. Noah, again, a South Asian man, is presented as a sexual predator on top of his already fucked morals since he only kills those he views as expendable (immigrants and sex workers mostly)!
And then after all this, we see him killed off in a very graphic and brutal way.
People rightfully angrily tweeted MacKenzie over this, and after some back and forth, she gave a response of, “I hear you. I’ll do better in the future.” (Not an exact quote, but it’s the gist of her response.)
And yet…
Season two we end up in the same fucking situation. We have Flint Manes, a mixed Native man, who is fairly darker-skinned, who views the aliens as a threat. There’s no nuance to his character, he just hates aliens. Flint is not afforded the same luxuries that are given to the white men in the Manes family. While the finale has Alex claiming he’ll be there to reform Flint, I’m doubtful the narrative will follow through on that if Flint continues to get any worthwhile screentime.
Isobel
Where do I even start with Isobel? She’s mean, and her ugliest behavior always rears its head when she interacts with people of color, and specifically women of color.
Her ability is to get inside people’s heads and change their perceptions of things. It’s an action she frequently uses to avoid facing the consequences for her actions. After the cover up of Rosa’s death, Isobel gets into Liz’s head to send her away from Roswell, a decision she and Michael made to keep Max from confessing everything to her. She tries to do the same thing again when she suspects Liz is trying to find a way to harm the three of them, solely because she knows Liz is spending time with Max and the two of them have discussed his powers.
Isobel repeatedly taunts Maria, and at one point, gets into her mind to drag out the reason why Maria hates her. Maria seems terrified in her mindscape, near tears, as she confesses her reason, and yet the scene plays as if we’re supposed to find this violation cool and think Isobel is a badass.
Noah is constantly pandering to Isobel and doing what she wants, being the perfect doting husband, and… it doesn’t exactly feel reciprocal. Like I said before, it’s clear they love each other, but there’s a lot of Noah being there to support Isobel and very little of Isobel being there to support Noah. Granted, episode 11 tells us it was all a ruse and that Noah had just been pretending, but it sucks to see her constantly being coddled by a man of color up until that reveal.
Given Isobel understands how it was a violation for Noah to be in her mind, I expected her to be more mindful of her interactions with the other characters, but, unfortunately, she’s even worse in season two.
In episode 2, Isobel is dealing with some personal drama, and she’s incredibly catty towards Maria, who is continuing to be nice to her, while Maria has her own drama of her mother having been missing for two weeks! Maria remains polite and even supportive towards Isobel while she is worried sick about her mother, and yet the narrative wants us to feel bad for Isobel and be concerned about what she’s going through instead and find her rude unnecessary comments comedic.
In episode 4, Isobel has a talk with Liz where she says that she had always used her mind powers for selfish reasons and that she considered quitting, but that it’s okay if she does so for unselfish reasons? That her violating people by changing their perceptions of events is no big deal when she’s doing it for reasons other than hand waving away her guilt? Someone please make this train of thought make sense!
We then have Isobel get into Arturo’s mind to make him believe that some miracle happened to bring Rosa back from the dead to avoid telling him the truth that aliens are real and about the cover up like he deserves after a decade of being the target of racist violence. This violation and the following reunion are portrayed as heartwarming, but I couldn’t help but sit there with a deep sense of unease as I watched the scene unfold.
In the next episode, Isobel wants to talk to Max, and the only way to do so while he’s near death, is to use the bond he still has with Rosa, from when he revived her. So Isobel’s solution to this is to use a giant book to hit Rosa with, hard enough to knock her out. Isobel, a woman nearing 30, knocked out a fucking 19 (maybe 20?) year old and this assault is played as a fucking joke! And then no one fucking brings it up again! Rosa has a bruise on her forehead and no one fucking says anything, not even Liz, who knows Isobel got into Rosa’s mind somehow. Make it make sense!
Over the rest of the season, she then repeatedly gets (or attempts to get) into people’s minds (all of whom are people of color!) when they have not given consent, which is even made into a joke in episode 12 when Isobel outright states that she got into Mimi’s mind without consent and is angry about Mimi pushing her out! How is Isobel’s refusal to respect people’s boundaries a source of comedy? How is her desire and need for answers more important than these folks autonomy?
The Manes family drama
Jesse Manes is a bigot. Pure and simple. He makes racist coded comments, talks about how the aliens are terrorists and he wants to kill them, beat Alex as a child for being gay and tries to shame him into remaining closeted; he even has a monologue about how stereotyping is good actually because it means preventing tragedies. Season one thankfully gave him very little attention, but, unfortunately, season two brings him into focus.
Season two starts with Jesse waking up from a coma, and he’s clearly planning something with Flint. While we don’t know details until the last three episodes of the season, it’s clear we’re supposed to be wary of Jesse. But the narrative comes off as wanting the audience to sympathize with him, until it’s made clear it was all a ploy.
As mentioned when I discussed the disability mimicry, Jesse fakes a disability and even gets himself hospitalized to ensure people believe he is unwell, he talks about being reformed and how he no longer feels the hate he clearly did last season. He gives the ruse that he is making amends with people he has previously wronged. We spend at least three or four episodes listening to him talk about how he’s changed or whatever, just for episode 9 to be like “PSYCH!” when it’s revealed he’s been spying on Alex, trying to determine what Team Human and Pod Squad know. We then sit through another episode that initially paints him as concerned and caring for Alex, until the reveal that it was more bullshit and a trap for Michael. And even with this supposed plot twist that Jesse had never changed, I still stand by my interpretation that the narrative wanted us to sympathize with him, because in the last four episodes, Alex talks about how he wants to let go of his anger at his father and forgive him and there’s even a scene where he tries to reason with Jesse because they are family. As if that means something to the abusive homophobic racist. I’m tired.
As if that wasn’t exhausting enough, we then have the story of Tripp Manes. Alex’s great uncle, if I recall correctly. Tripp was in the military in 1947 when the aliens arrived on Earth. He was one of the individuals chasing Michael and Isobel’s alien mothers, (initially) trying to kill them because they were immediately perceived as threats by humans.
Over a bunch of flashbacks scattered through five episodes of season two, we learn that Tripp had a romance with Nora, Michael’s mother. Yes, you read that correctly. Tripp, who comes from the bigoted Manes family, and is part of the military group trying to capture Nora and Louise, was actually secretly in a relationship with Nora and revealed to have been secretly good and trying to warn the aliens in a twist. Who cares if he was part of the raid that led to Roy Bronson, an innocent Black man (whose sole purpose is to be kind and teach the aliens how to be more human before sacrificing himself for the (white) audience to be sad about and talk about him being a hero or whatever because white fandom loves to interpret Black characters dying for white characters as martyrdom), being senselessly murdered? Who cares that he was complicit in Nora being captured and tortured for decades? He saved Louise and warned them about the attack a couple days prior and was there in a “protective” capacity, I guess, so obviously he was a good person doing his best and his participating in all this while meaning to do right by the aliens absolves him. I truly cannot roll my eyes hard enough.
It’s revolting that all these 1947 flashbacks practically only existed for two reasons: one, to reveal that Maria is part alien; and two, to make some kind of point how the Manes and Guerin families are inexplicably tied together because… fate, I guess? We start with the implication that the Manes family has always been violent and bigoted, and initially portraying Tripp as the same before being the fake out of, “Nope, Tripp was a good guy!” It was unnecessary and just more proof that the writers would rather focus on relatively unimportant white side characters than the fucking Black woman who is part of the main cast! They spend all this time trying to explain how Tripp was good as if we should fucking care when he was part of the system that has the goal of killing all aliens! They spend all this time giving Jesse nuance solely for the shock factor of revealing he’s still a piece of shit! And yet, Flint, the darkest-skinned of the Manes brothers (at least of the three we’ve now met. Yay, colorism!), is the only one who buys into Jesse’s ideology, is willing to die to see it through, and he gets absolutely none of that.
The trauma porn & turning social justice into out-of-place soapbox speeches
So, we talked about Noah… It’s time to talk about how gratuitous this show gets when discussing trauma.
For the most part I was really pleased with how the writers handled everyone’s trauma with regard to Rosa’s death, well primarily Max and Liz as their trauma surrounding her death gets the most focus. Her death scene did come off a bit graphic and unnecessarily so, but it didn’t feel like it was being gratuitous for the sake of it. But then we get to the Noah reveal… and the dialogue about his abuse is… extremely vivid. There’s also the fact that Noah kisses Isobel in her mindscape when she’s crying and terrified after he admits he killed Rosa, and he is now controlling her, which is solely there for the audience’s revulsion, as if we need another reminder of how he has violated her sexually. In fact, a lot of the dialogue surrounding Noah’s abuse mirrors dialogue surrounding sexual assault and rape, which brings me to my next point…
So, Isobel is revealed to be pregnant at the end of the season two premiere. Even though I quickly realized that this plotline was likely going to be about Isobel getting an abortion, as MacKenzie had previously mentioned she hated pregnancy storylines, that didn’t lessen my feelings of disgust at seeing a character who had just learned she had been abused for over a decade by a man she had been in love with and being horrified to learn that she was now carrying his baby. I mean, if you wanted to do an abortion plot, we couldn’t have had Isobel have a one night stand with some random person? In fact, wouldn’t that have been a stronger support of abortion rights, given that situation is solely about a woman not wanting to have a baby when she becomes unexpectedly pregnant and not tied up in discussions of abuse and trauma? This plotline is wrapped up by episode 3 (yes, you read right! This is brought up in the last two minutes of the premiere and wrapped up by episode 3!), but not before we get a needlessly gratuitous look at Isobel bleeding out and nearly dying if Liz hadn’t come to her rescue!
And how do the writers handle this alien abortion since Isobel can’t go to a human doctor? She starts dosing herself with the lethal serum that Liz made without telling anyone. This serum that she took last season that nearly killed her, that Liz had to spend two months creating an antidote for, because Isobel wanted a quick fix to stop feeling guilty over her part in Rosa’s death and stole it and used it on herself with no idea of what the side effects were! Isobel starts dosing herself with that serum without saying anything. She hasn’t even told anyone she is pregnant! And this is meant to represent an illegal abortion (which is even outright said in the dialogue) to demonstrate how unsafe the conditions are when the right to legal abortions is restricted. We then see the real reason for this plot to exist at all, for Isobel to go into a jarring tirade about how she’s just like every other woman in Roswell because they no longer have access to safe and legal abortions either. We also have the eyeroll worthy moment of a horrified Isobel saying, “I almost became a statistic,” to Liz after she saves her.
I’d also argue that the 1947 flashback scenes function as trauma porn as they honestly serve very little purpose and the end result is Roy’s needless gratuitous death, which we see or hear on three separate occasions because apparently it’s important to see that traumatic event from different viewpoints; and seeing both Nora and Louise be brutalized as they get captured and left for dead, respectively.
Once Max is revived, we see him start recovering pieces of memories from before he was in the pod. The memories are brief and fairly vague, but we see Max chained up and isolated as a child, with an adult he is clearly scared of, as he flinches away when the adult touches him. I honestly don’t even want to know whatever will be revealed in season three with this storyline because it is obviously incredibly traumatic for Max to have been screaming and repeatedly drawing the symbol he saw in his captivity all over the walls as a child, but given season two proved that this show likes to be gratuitous for the sake of gratuity and the fact that the season ended with Pod Squad finding the alien who had been holding Max captive, I’m confident this will be touched upon in greater detail next season.
We also have a subplot of Arturo being detained by ICE, which pretty much solely happens for Liz to give an angry speech about ICE treating immigrants as less human and to list off a bunch of names of individuals who have died in their custody. Who was this scene for? It felt like it was so obviously a line meant to inspire rage in (white) folks but there’s not much substance and given how haphazard and carelessly the rest of these scenes about ICE come off, it truly feels like the only goal of these scenes were to write a fuck you speech about ICE as if that does absolutely anything. If you were to compare the handful of scenes about ICE to Freeform’s unfortunately cancelled Party of Five, it pales in comparison and becomes obvious that it was written from the vantage point of someone who knows this is something they’ll never need to be fearful of.
General writing nonsense
I’ll admit season one had faults with the writing outside of the messy attempts at inclusivity. There were things happening offscreen that the audience had to fill in for themselves, as well as scenes that didn’t come across as clearly as the writers had hoped leading to 5000 different interpretations, but the plot was driving towards something. I didn’t feel like there were hundreds of inconsistencies.
In the season two episode 2, Rosa confronts Liz about the circumstances of her death. Liz makes a comment about how she never believed Rosa would drive drunk with other people in the car and how it didn’t make sense to her… But in season one episode 2, Liz was desperate to see Rosa’s autopsy to absolve her by having proof that she was drunk and high? It felt like a total retcon, but I let it slide because I understood that they were trying to relate Rosa’s supposed accident to situations they’d been in with their mom, and I appreciated the writers adding more depth as to why Liz struggled to accept Rosa’s death.
The entirety of season two episode 5 is built on this supposed fact that Michael always pushes those that he cares about away to avoid being hurt or let down. But in season one, Michael was the one pursuing Alex? Michael was the one begging for Alex to give their relationship a genuine shot and to talk to him, and Alex was the one pushing him away? Once Michael decides to move on because he’s had enough of Alex pushing him away, he then pretty openly pursues Maria? And excluding his brief self-destructive moment in the season two premiere, he’s always been trying to start something with Maria since they unexpectedly slept together? What was that conversation between Alex and Maria discussing how Michael pushes people away? Why is there no fucking consistency? Make it make sense!
We also have this arc (apparently) of Isobel becoming stronger, both physically and with her alien abilities, because some dumb bullshit of Max coming back with destructive energy that he’s going to have to release, and her needing to be able to withstand it. But, outside of a couple scenes showcasing her newfound telekinesis and maybe 30 seconds worth of Isobel training with some kind of self defense instructor, we literally see none of this? And then Max is back and she can suddenly do the same things that Noah was doing after over a decade of practice? She is suddenly stronger than Noah AND Max, who is the supposed alien savior, and able to block the bolt of lightning Max directs at her in his destructive rage? It’s straight up some bullshit so they now have a get out of jail free card for absolutely any dangerous situation that Pod Squad finds themselves in. Probably for the sake of #girlpower because mainstream media has brainwashed people into thinking physically powerful white women with little substance outside of that are the epitome of feminism.
Remember how I mentioned Alex defends Michael when Maria has been purposefully avoiding him because her trust in him is shaken after learning about the coverup? Well, it’s revealed that Alex has known for a while as he pretty freely brings it up. We never see Alex’s reaction to learning about Pod Squad’s part in this, so we never see him be (rightfully) angry about it; which is truly fucking absurd as he is a mixed Native gay man who was regularly harassed in high school for his identity. Alex fucking understands what it means to be the target of hate, so to see him hand wave away Arturo, the father of one of his childhood best friends, being terrorized for a decade because “Oh, poor Michael had to shoulder the burden because he was protecting Isobel,” made me sick.
Then there’s the hilariously embarrassing plot of Michelle, the police chief, believing Max killed Noah, and that’s why he’s disappeared from Roswell. Michelle questions both Liz and Isobel, confident that they won’t be able to cover for Max, and clearly disappointed when they both offer alternative explanations and defend Max. Michelle even talks over Max potentially poisoning Noah with her son, Kyle; to which he gaslights her because Team Human refuses to tell other people about the existence of aliens, even when said individuals are deeply involved and fucking deserve the truth. When Max finally returns to Roswell a few episodes later, one of the first things he does is go to Michelle to ask for his job back… and she agrees, even though three episodes ago she was convinced that Max had murdered Noah. Max then decides not to return to his job as a cop, just for him to be in a suspicious situation a couple episodes later, and for Michelle to yet again accuse him of murdering Noah. Huh? Why did she agree to give him back his job in the first place if she still believed he killed Noah? Where is the logic?
Season one had this idea of Max being some kind of savior; it’s implied when he talks to a Native woman about the alien symbol he saw as a kid, and Noah outright confirms this idea later in the season. Max has an innate need to help people, but it’s very clearly a mix of his empathy and guilt over his part in the cover up and hurting Liz. Max became a cop in an attempt to atone, but it’s pretty clear he hates his job (or, is at least pretty dissatisfied with it) and he blames himself for instances where he thinks he could have saved individuals who were dying, but chose self-preservation and didn’t use his powers in the fear of exposing himself; and, by extension, exposing Michael and Isobel. And yet season two repeatedly brings up the idea of Max wanting to be the hero and that he does these actions so he can be perceived as one? What?
We also have Maria’s powers, something the audience has been wondering about since early season one. When she suddenly starts having her visions halfway through season two, Kyle does testing on her, and after having looked at Pod Squad and Rosa’s DNA, he says that she is definitively not an alien. He also looks at health records of her family and notices the mention of a company that has repeatedly been used as a cover up for alien related phenomena, leading to the apparent realization that Maria’s grandmother was experimented on. But then three episodes later we learn that Maria is in fact part alien as her grandmother was the child of Louise and Roy! What was the fucking point of this fake out? Why drag on this reveal that Maria’s part alien up until the twenty third episode of the show when people had been predicting she was part alien since the first few episodes of season one? The reveal felt so pointless and underwhelming and, if I recall correctly, led to me screaming at the TV in frustration.
There’s literally so much more to criticize about the nonsensical and convoluted plot for season two, as everything becomes this huge headache-inducing alien conspiracy, because nothing can exist outside of that apparently, but I don’t even have it in me to keep complaining about the lack of sense or coherence in the writing, so let’s circle back to the reason I lost practically all enjoyment in this show.
Okay, so way back near the beginning I briefly brought up Max consistently prioritizing Liz’s safety and here’s why. After Liz learns about the cover up, out of (rightful) anger, she decides to make a serum that she intends to be able to take away the aliens abilities. When Max realizes she is working on something with his DNA (that he willingly gave her), he angrily asks for an explanation. In my opinion, Liz does not owe him one (at least not currently, given his confession of the cover up), but she explains what she is doing anyway, because whether she can admit it to herself or not, she is in love with Max and him understanding what she is doing is important to her. He is still understandably upset once he hears her out, and Liz seeing this reaction from him causes her to rethink what she is doing, to realize that creating this serum is antithetical to why she decided to become a scientist in the first place. Max later has to practically beg her to keep the serum for her own protection, because he doesn’t trust himself to make the right calls when it comes to Liz’s safety, but he can’t let anything happen to her, even if it means harm befalling him or his family.
In season two, we have Liz using research collected by people who have caused harm to the aliens, who want to eradicate them; to fuel her experiments. She is stealing DNA and doing all her research behind Max’s back. And upon him confronting her about it, she becomes defensive. She refuses to listen to his concerns and continually insists she would never put him in danger, even though she is literally doing that by continuing with the research. Hell, the writers name drop Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman who had her cells stolen for research purposes and whose cells are still used to this day without the permission of her family! They had the gall to bring up Henrietta Lacks, acknowledge that it was medical abuse against Black people, and then have Liz do practically the same thing, and yet we’re supposed to be on Liz’s side? When Max destroys her research, we’re supposed to view that as a selfish act? We’re supposed to think Max was being a bad partner to Liz for protecting himself by destroying her experiments that she had been conducting unethically, and yet this show also wants us to hand wave away his part in tarnishing Rosa’s name and harming the Ortecho family? We’re supposed to believe Liz is being genuine when she repeatedly claims she can’t survive losing Max again when she’s willingly, carelessly, putting him (and other people she considers family) in danger like this? And, to be honest, Liz pursuing the research doesn’t even make sense in the first place! Given how distraught she was to find Max practically dead in that cave, given how tirelessly she worked to bring him back because she refused to live without him, she should be extremely wary of any information from Caulfield; as well as, you know, be concerned about her own previous attempts at alien science; that part of me is in disbelief that she didn’t destroy that research the second Michael gave it to her.
And that’s not even the worst part of these experiments she was doing! She stole DNA from Steph, who is, again, a brown Latina, in order to create some “cure” for her barely explained disease that is killing Steph, and Liz uses her untested “cure” on her? With no idea if there will be any side effects? And, again, the writers literally name dropped Henrietta Lacks, and then had Liz use this “cure” on a woman of color, as if women of color still to this fucking day aren’t forced to undergo medical procedures without their knowledge or consent? And what happened to the Liz from season one who never wanted to use her serum on Isobel because she didn’t know if it would do more than just take away her powers? Liz, who at that time hated Isobel, was concerned about side effects of her serum, but she’s got no concern about side effects for the brown Latina that Liz seems to genuinely like from their brief interactions? How the fuck are we supposed to reconcile season one Liz with season two Liz?
In season one, Max and Liz’s relationship was built on mutual care and honesty. Excluding Max withholding info about the cover up, which was an act to protect Liz from emotional harm, as well as an act to protect Michael and Isobel from being found out; every single action he takes in season one is him prioritizing her safety. He never lies to her and is always open about his feelings, never expecting anything in return. When Liz gets to know who Max has become over these ten years apart, after her anger fades and she forgives him, she allows herself to be with him and we see just how tender they are with each other. They were always concerned with each other’s well-being, always concerned with ensuring they were on the same page, that they were a team. I mean, there were multiple instances of them confessing secrets to each other that they had never vocalized to anyone else! Their relationship was built on honesty and reciprocity, and it was beautiful and refreshing to see.
And what did we get in season two? Liz and Max withholding information from each other because they are afraid it will upset each other and suddenly being inept at communicating. What happened to them working together? To them going to each other to talk things out? To them hearing each other out when they disagreed, and creating plans to resolve issues together? Like remember the Noah situation? How they both were in disbelief that Noah was the evil alien they were looking for, so they talked through it together before they decided to take any actions? How they had a disagreement of what to do with Noah when he got out of the pod, but they listened to each others’ views? Where was that dynamic this season? In season two, Liz spends half her time with Max babying him and obsessing over his health because she’s terrified of losing him, and yet she outright refuses to hear out his concerns? The same Liz who was in tears at seeing Max’s emotional distress and knowing she had caused it when she didn’t trust him, is now in attack mode when Max talks about his fears of being exposed? There is a fundamental disconnect here.
But this is my point. There is a lack of care for any cohesion or consistency. The main concern in the writer’s room is what will be most shocking or dramatic or #controversial or it’s their attempt to pander to the fans. Because the fandom, or at least the more vocal parts of fandom, spent all their time gassing up Malex last season, Michael became the central focus of the writers this season. Liz, Max, and their relationship was an afterthought. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Jeanine Mason and Nathan Dean are billed as the leads of this show, the relationship of Max and Liz is the entire basis of the books this show is based upon; and yet MacKenzie made a Instagram post where she admits the first time Liz says “I love you,” to Max was a scene that was written last minute because she fucking forgot about it! She spent the entirety of episode 5 making the point that Liz needed to tell Max she loved him, and then the next fucking episode she nearly forgot about having Liz say it to Max. Let that sink in how little she actually cares about their relationship.
The existence of diversity does not automatically mean good representation. I do not know how many times that has to be said for some of you to understand that. Just because this show ticks off boxes for disability representation, LGBTQ+ representation, and has a racially diverse cast doesn’t mean it can automatically be hailed as some progressive masterpiece. I’m not saying you can’t enjoy this show, but I am begging you to think about the media you consume more critically, to seek out opinions from folks of marginalized backgrounds and to listen to their concerns, and to be vocal when a piece of media fucks up in harmful ways like this. We have let too much bullshit slide and we need to start holding the media we engage with accountable and demanding for better content, as well as knowing when to stop giving creators another chance. I unfortunately can’t bring myself to definitively say that I’m done with the show, but I’ve felt let down by a lot of shows in my TV watching history, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt as deeply betrayed by a piece of media as I did by this, so chances of me returning seem pretty slim right now. Don’t keep praising MacKenzie’s word of god explanations and her progressive sounding defenses of her choices that other folks have criticized; interrogate the actual text of the show and ask who this is meant for, who these representations help or harm. (Also, creator’s intent doesn’t matter when their work harms people so stop fucking using their desired outcome as a shield when someone calls them out! If your content harms someone, take that shit to heart and hold yourself accountable for your mistake! Promise to do better and stand by that!)
If you read this entire thing, I want to sincerely thank you. I’m sure it was draining to read, because it was draining to write and edit, but if you actually want to be an ally to folks of marginalized communities, then you cannot stay silent anymore. We cannot ignore and pretend not to see content that harms others just because we don’t want to tarnish our enjoyment of a piece of media. Speak out when you notice something harmful and amplify voices of those most affected by these portrayals.
