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My thoughts are so random on this episode. There’s alot of threads being tackled and not all of them jive together. In the last two episodes watching Roswell has felt like watching three different shows all at the same time: there's a murder mystery, a family drama, and a YA high school romance in New Adult-ish clothes (omg, the genre collision). Then there are the B-plots: sexual orientation in the military and immigration politics. Trying to pull the narratives together into a cohesive whole makes for a jarring roller-coaster ride.
So, cowboys ...
Immediately, the title of episode four brings to mind stereotypes of the American Cowboy taming the Wild West. He's (always a He) gallant, tall, laconic, capable, stern, tough, emotionally unavailable, and physical.
Our candidates for cowboy hood are as varied as the stereotype is flat:
Max, Michael, Kyle, Liz, Maria, Isabel, Master Sargent Manes. The problem of this line-up is the problem that the episode posits: Where Have all the Cowboys Gone? The fact is that they are missing. The stereotype is absent in the selection of characters provided. Looking back over the episode, they're knocked off one by one.
Spoilers!!
Michael has none of the rugged, noble qualities associated with the cowboy. If anything he's more of a Drifter or a Desperado. That becomes very obvious in the light his awesome exchange with Maria:
"You drink just enough to burn off that Dramatic Cowboy Angst and then you start a fight before you have to pay."
It's SO Micheal and I am really enjoying the antagonism that exists between Maria ad Michael. The original pair had a similar, but less malicious vibe. The characters were romantically entangled, after all. Michael Vlamis's Michael Guerin is SO much more nuanced and troubled. Heather Hemmen's Maria DeLuca still carries some of Maria's quirk, but she is also very self-possessed and incredibly sharp. I still think the character is woefully under utilized, but we got to see some of her bite tonight and it was awesome!
Maria is pretty obviously our shaman in this storyline, guiding and insightful. Last week, she pointed Liz in the right direction to start her Rosa Treasure Hunt, this week it's all about revelations in the palm of Isobel's palm. Genuinely psychic, which I was so pleased to see, Maria has an odd place in the story. More connected to Rosa than to Liz, layer of remove sets her up as an outlier to all of the central action. She isn't a confidante like Kyle, dragged into the central narrative via his second romantic lead status and Liz's loose lips. In service to tonight's plot, Maria's reason for her beef with Isobel catty and high school as it sounds (I don't like you cause my BFF doesn't like you: the enemies of my friends are also my enemies, yada yada yada) acts as an entry point into a new facet of Isobel's character.
Reflections of Katherine Heigl slowly unfolds over the course of season one from this confident, sophisticated mean girl into this really lonely, needy TEENAGER was a highlight of the original series. She was clearly the best actress on the show, as later evidenced by her work on Grey's Anatomy, and I am still really disappointed that her career hasn't gone further -- you, guys, she has all the talent. Lily Cowles does a great job managing a similar trajectory, but her portrayal still reads a little disingenuous. She's missing the vulnerability that Hiegl exposed in Isabel so very well. Isobel's "carefully curated Pinterest" exterior (so aptly described by Maria) masks a woman desperate for security and stability and acceptance.
Isobel's utter pre-occupation with why Maria doesn't like her takes her down a pretty dark path. That attempted dreamwalk smacked so much of a mental rape attempt that it took me aback. Isobel's gifts make her good at violations. I didn't recognize it in last week's episode because the aggressiveness was missing. Isobel's interaction with Maria was very personal and very intent and intentional. The power dynamic though, interestingly, gets shifted pretty quickly. As Maria's psychic abilities peel back the mask that Isobel wears. It swings back again when Isobel literally shoves her abilities at Maria, demanding that she open her mind.
Isobel is obvs nobody's cowboy. She doesn't reflect the good, kind, true, upstanding hero. Her powers make her good at subterfuge.
Quickly, Kyle is way to urbane to be a cowboy. He's the town doctor: helpful, kind, smart. Master Sargent Manes is the villain. Nuff said.
Despite his very square and manly jaw and how well he fits the physical image, thus creating an expectation for us of how he will be and how we read him as a cowboy (with the hat and the boots and his thumbs in his belt loops), Max is definitely NOT a cowboy. Max is the love interest. Stereotypically, he read's as the girl in the triangle. Max is emotionally available, needy, and pining. He's laid his heart out for Liz only to have it repeatedly crushed. She does it again in this episode, admitting only that she feels something and that alot of that is terror.
In the final scene between Liz and Max, it was almost as if they were having two different conversations across time from the opposite sides of a relationship. Max, at least in his head, has been in this whole relationship with Liz that she never even knew about let alone participated in. His part of the conversation is about investing in and saving a relationship that doesn't, and never has, existed. Once again, Max declares his love for Liz and though she is able to acknowledge the feelings that he has, Liz isn't quite ready to meet him there.
So, who's left? Where HAVE all the Cowboys Gone?
Well, arguably, Liz, as much as she talks, is our laconic, capable, tough, emotionally unavailable cowboy. Rosa maps it all out for us in the opening. The plucky go-getter heroine, smart, tough, distant, and capable. The entire opening scene in which Rosa describes Liz, words Liz echoes to Max, are descriptors that are traditionally coded masculine. Liz wears her distance as a badge, one that she isn't willing to let go of. I love that Liz has such a sense of herself. In that last scene, Liz is looking into the possibility of a future relationship with Max, she's still in the early exploratory phase of the relationship and is faced with a Max who is demanding more of her than she has to give. This is SO different from the original star-crossed love affair of the original series in which Max and Liz fell hard pretty instantly and equally. The shift in this iteration, the rebalancing of their affections definitely lends itself to a more grown-up narrative. Or at least, let's be honest, in this regard for Liz. While Max may still be hovering on the edges of some school boy crush for a girl he really no longer knows after an absence of ten years, Liz is living in an adult reality where love is never that simple.
Random Thoughts:
a) "People are the worse drug. They all hurt you in the end." The mystery of Rosa continues! Max does some dumb, melodramatic things and makes Jenna suspicious cause he's TIRED of hiding how much of a special snowflake he is! And then Roswell turned into a lifetime after-school special with the big reveal that Sheriff Valenti (the former) was having an affair with Liz's "teenage, drug addict sister"! Cue close-up, melodramatic tunes, and fade to black cause what can you say after that! Of course, all we've really mostly seen is Liz making one wrong left turn after another. She likes to get worked up, ratchet up the tension, make sweeping declarations inditing persons and then figuring out that okay, maybe, she might have been wrong. It's like a total soap opera.
b) What's the likelihood that crazy Alien Conspiracy Guy IS, in reality, an alien? Hiding in plain sight and all.
c) "You have exactly cinco segundos to get out!" Have I ever mentioned how much I love Spanglish? Well, any language mixing with English, really. I totes love it.
d) Master Sargent Manes remain an asshole.
e) Heart attacks out of nowhere, what up, Car Accident Kid and Papi Ortecho?!
f) I love that all of their powers have a physical limit and come at a price. It's not easy and there are repercussions.
g) Consensual, non-shamy, adult sex!! YAY!!!!
h) "I don't want to talk about him with you while I'm not wearing a bra."
i) And the finale reveals!!!!
1 - Michael killed "those girls." Does that include Rosa or just the other two? I get the feeling it was NOT Rosa, but that Michael's guilt is pushing him to become scapegoat for the sake of the family. After-school special Episode 2. No joke, it got really dramatic.
2 - The lights come back up in the city and there was, if my eyes don't deceive me, an imprint of a space ship over the city. What the actual fuck?!
So, cowboys ...
Immediately, the title of episode four brings to mind stereotypes of the American Cowboy taming the Wild West. He's (always a He) gallant, tall, laconic, capable, stern, tough, emotionally unavailable, and physical.
Our candidates for cowboy hood are as varied as the stereotype is flat:
Max, Michael, Kyle, Liz, Maria, Isabel, Master Sargent Manes. The problem of this line-up is the problem that the episode posits: Where Have all the Cowboys Gone? The fact is that they are missing. The stereotype is absent in the selection of characters provided. Looking back over the episode, they're knocked off one by one.
Spoilers!!
Michael has none of the rugged, noble qualities associated with the cowboy. If anything he's more of a Drifter or a Desperado. That becomes very obvious in the light his awesome exchange with Maria:
"You drink just enough to burn off that Dramatic Cowboy Angst and then you start a fight before you have to pay."
It's SO Micheal and I am really enjoying the antagonism that exists between Maria ad Michael. The original pair had a similar, but less malicious vibe. The characters were romantically entangled, after all. Michael Vlamis's Michael Guerin is SO much more nuanced and troubled. Heather Hemmen's Maria DeLuca still carries some of Maria's quirk, but she is also very self-possessed and incredibly sharp. I still think the character is woefully under utilized, but we got to see some of her bite tonight and it was awesome!
Maria is pretty obviously our shaman in this storyline, guiding and insightful. Last week, she pointed Liz in the right direction to start her Rosa Treasure Hunt, this week it's all about revelations in the palm of Isobel's palm. Genuinely psychic, which I was so pleased to see, Maria has an odd place in the story. More connected to Rosa than to Liz, layer of remove sets her up as an outlier to all of the central action. She isn't a confidante like Kyle, dragged into the central narrative via his second romantic lead status and Liz's loose lips. In service to tonight's plot, Maria's reason for her beef with Isobel catty and high school as it sounds (I don't like you cause my BFF doesn't like you: the enemies of my friends are also my enemies, yada yada yada) acts as an entry point into a new facet of Isobel's character.
Reflections of Katherine Heigl slowly unfolds over the course of season one from this confident, sophisticated mean girl into this really lonely, needy TEENAGER was a highlight of the original series. She was clearly the best actress on the show, as later evidenced by her work on Grey's Anatomy, and I am still really disappointed that her career hasn't gone further -- you, guys, she has all the talent. Lily Cowles does a great job managing a similar trajectory, but her portrayal still reads a little disingenuous. She's missing the vulnerability that Hiegl exposed in Isabel so very well. Isobel's "carefully curated Pinterest" exterior (so aptly described by Maria) masks a woman desperate for security and stability and acceptance.
Isobel's utter pre-occupation with why Maria doesn't like her takes her down a pretty dark path. That attempted dreamwalk smacked so much of a mental rape attempt that it took me aback. Isobel's gifts make her good at violations. I didn't recognize it in last week's episode because the aggressiveness was missing. Isobel's interaction with Maria was very personal and very intent and intentional. The power dynamic though, interestingly, gets shifted pretty quickly. As Maria's psychic abilities peel back the mask that Isobel wears. It swings back again when Isobel literally shoves her abilities at Maria, demanding that she open her mind.
Isobel is obvs nobody's cowboy. She doesn't reflect the good, kind, true, upstanding hero. Her powers make her good at subterfuge.
Quickly, Kyle is way to urbane to be a cowboy. He's the town doctor: helpful, kind, smart. Master Sargent Manes is the villain. Nuff said.
Despite his very square and manly jaw and how well he fits the physical image, thus creating an expectation for us of how he will be and how we read him as a cowboy (with the hat and the boots and his thumbs in his belt loops), Max is definitely NOT a cowboy. Max is the love interest. Stereotypically, he read's as the girl in the triangle. Max is emotionally available, needy, and pining. He's laid his heart out for Liz only to have it repeatedly crushed. She does it again in this episode, admitting only that she feels something and that alot of that is terror.
In the final scene between Liz and Max, it was almost as if they were having two different conversations across time from the opposite sides of a relationship. Max, at least in his head, has been in this whole relationship with Liz that she never even knew about let alone participated in. His part of the conversation is about investing in and saving a relationship that doesn't, and never has, existed. Once again, Max declares his love for Liz and though she is able to acknowledge the feelings that he has, Liz isn't quite ready to meet him there.
So, who's left? Where HAVE all the Cowboys Gone?
Well, arguably, Liz, as much as she talks, is our laconic, capable, tough, emotionally unavailable cowboy. Rosa maps it all out for us in the opening. The plucky go-getter heroine, smart, tough, distant, and capable. The entire opening scene in which Rosa describes Liz, words Liz echoes to Max, are descriptors that are traditionally coded masculine. Liz wears her distance as a badge, one that she isn't willing to let go of. I love that Liz has such a sense of herself. In that last scene, Liz is looking into the possibility of a future relationship with Max, she's still in the early exploratory phase of the relationship and is faced with a Max who is demanding more of her than she has to give. This is SO different from the original star-crossed love affair of the original series in which Max and Liz fell hard pretty instantly and equally. The shift in this iteration, the rebalancing of their affections definitely lends itself to a more grown-up narrative. Or at least, let's be honest, in this regard for Liz. While Max may still be hovering on the edges of some school boy crush for a girl he really no longer knows after an absence of ten years, Liz is living in an adult reality where love is never that simple.
Random Thoughts:
a) "People are the worse drug. They all hurt you in the end." The mystery of Rosa continues! Max does some dumb, melodramatic things and makes Jenna suspicious cause he's TIRED of hiding how much of a special snowflake he is! And then Roswell turned into a lifetime after-school special with the big reveal that Sheriff Valenti (the former) was having an affair with Liz's "teenage, drug addict sister"! Cue close-up, melodramatic tunes, and fade to black cause what can you say after that! Of course, all we've really mostly seen is Liz making one wrong left turn after another. She likes to get worked up, ratchet up the tension, make sweeping declarations inditing persons and then figuring out that okay, maybe, she might have been wrong. It's like a total soap opera.
b) What's the likelihood that crazy Alien Conspiracy Guy IS, in reality, an alien? Hiding in plain sight and all.
c) "You have exactly cinco segundos to get out!" Have I ever mentioned how much I love Spanglish? Well, any language mixing with English, really. I totes love it.
d) Master Sargent Manes remain an asshole.
e) Heart attacks out of nowhere, what up, Car Accident Kid and Papi Ortecho?!
f) I love that all of their powers have a physical limit and come at a price. It's not easy and there are repercussions.
g) Consensual, non-shamy, adult sex!! YAY!!!!
h) "I don't want to talk about him with you while I'm not wearing a bra."
i) And the finale reveals!!!!
1 - Michael killed "those girls." Does that include Rosa or just the other two? I get the feeling it was NOT Rosa, but that Michael's guilt is pushing him to become scapegoat for the sake of the family. After-school special Episode 2. No joke, it got really dramatic.
2 - The lights come back up in the city and there was, if my eyes don't deceive me, an imprint of a space ship over the city. What the actual fuck?!
no subject
Date: 2019-02-06 10:59 am (UTC)From:You're right about the genre combo being a little weird. I'm more into the family drama aspect of it, I think. The Max/Liz high school romance dooesn't interest me, although Michael/Alex does.
Lol at Max being "the girl in the triangle". It's true!
I can't remember how many girls died along with Rosa, but if Michael confesses to killing them all, yikes. The legal consequences will be grim. And man, it was painful when he said he'd confess because he's got nothing in this world.
The lights come back up in the city and there was, if my eyes don't deceive me, an imprint of a space ship over the city.
Yeah, I've got no idea what that's about either. Guess we'll have to wait until next week.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-07 05:50 am (UTC)From:Roswell, New Mexico is a little crazy. Glad to meet a fellow occupant on the crazy train. I wasn't sure how much I was going to dig the show, but I'm digging it more than I thought I would.
While I some feels and loads of thoughts about Max and Liz, especially reframed after last night when I realized that Max is the damsel, Michael/Alex are totes my OTP and I ship them with teh fire of a thousand fiery suns.
Michael gives me all the feels. I think there were two other girls besides Rosa. I don't think he killed Rosa though. I think he's going to cop to killing Rosa, even though it sounds like he did kill the other two girls. OMG, I want to know!! lol.
I'm finally excited for next week's episode.