S01.E05: Don't Speak

[Sakura12]

Yeah the "she abandoned me" is big red flag for me. Way to make everything about your feelings, Max. Maybe Liz left because she thought her sister got high and killed two people and the whole town turned against her. Thats enough reason to want to leave and try to process everything. Having your high school crush tagging along doesn't seem ideal for that.

It also doesn't seem like they dated in high school because in the Flashback that looked to be during the last few weeks of high school, when Rosa and Liz were in the car talking liz looked to maybe considering Max and Rosa told her not to bother with him and get out of the town and make something of herself. So if anything they may have hung out a few times before everything happened. 

[Cristofle]

7 minutes ago, kj4ever said:

He asked Liz just how much she remembered from the last two weeks she was in Roswell so I guess they are going to send some big love story our way that Liz can't remember.

I still think Liz is a complete asshole and Max is pathetic.  At least some of the others are semi-interesting.  I don't see Alex as being the kind of kid that people just know is "gay".  He doesn't come off that way at all.  I wonder if the actor is straight in real life?

Actually out of the whole cast I think I like Kyle the best.  Maria would take that spot but we only see her when they need to talk to the friendly barkeep for advice.

I am curious about exactly what is going on with Alex. I thought he was semi in the closet as of the third episode with how he reacted to Isobel (we know Maria knows he's gay, and has known for years, but that's about it) but in this episode he talked like he's out. Maybe he's still not very open about it in general though. When he was talking to his father about Michael, it was obvious they both knew what he was really saying about Alex being gay, but Manes didn't want to come out and say it out loud. 

[shapeshifter]

6 hours ago, phoenics said:

The symbol that is in the dirt when Isobel wakes up from her blackout...

I missed that.
Was it the same as the one in the lampshade in the crawlspace detox bedroom?
Was it similar to the OG Roswell orb symbol?

Edited February 14, 2019 by shapeshifter

[KittenPokerCheater]

I think Alex and his Dad have a "don't ask don't tell" kind of arrangement, but certainly it doesn't seem like Alex is very open about his sexuality.

I really like Max and Michael, and hope we have more scenes between the two of them.  

[Regalbegal]

9 hours ago, Cristofle said:

finally got to watch the episode last night - I think this was their best one so far. Kyle and Alex were unexpectedly entertaining (I LOLed at "What's the worst we can find?" "Literal skeletons!") and touching. It was interesting that someone (was it Valenti? Was it Rosa? Was it someone else?) hid a piece of alien glass in the walls. Also, there was a point in the pilot of Michael having a piece of the same material, so I think that's going to connect Michael and Alex at some point. 

Agreed on both counts!  This episode had a lot of new info/plot development, but unlike last week balanced it with action and drama to keep things interesting.  The Alex/Kyle scenes were definitely  - and surprisingly - my favorites. One positive about the show is that the writers have given opportunities for all of the major characters to have interaction with each other (not just the same pairs over that over) that provide some additional character background and development - Michael/Maria being an example last week, Alex/Kyle this week.  We learned a lot about not just Alex and Kyle's relationship, but their relationship with their fathers, Alex coming out, Alex/Michael (both coming from abusive backgrounds) etc.   Eek, could Alex's father be more awful?  This must has made an impact on me, bc after watching I had a dream that he (Alex's father) broke my phone?? 

I think it is pretty clear I am on board for Max/Liz, but it struck me this episode that a good 80% of the time, no matter what he is doing (policing, having sex, having a conversation,  just hanging out), he looks on the verge of bursting into tears.  Theoretically, Michael and Isobel have been putting up with this for 10 years? (even though they had a role in it..).  Yikes. 

Every week, even though it is not featured in the episode, I get the song from the episode title stuck in my head as a ear worm.  Luckily I was a big No Doubt fan back in the day. 

[Cristofle]

The symbol isn't really that close to the OG show - it's this one, also seen on Max's back:

I thought the symbol on the keychain and in the lamp in Rosa's secret room was closer to the original show's symbol. 

[Kareny]

55 minutes ago, Regalbegal said:

 We learned a lot about not just Alex and Kyle's relationship, but their relationship with their fathers, Alex coming out, Alex/Michael (both coming from abusive backgrounds) etc.   Eek, could Alex's father be more awful?  

One thing I'm reflecting on now that I've had a couple days to digest is this complicated dynamic between Alex, Kyle, and their dads. There's a clear consensus between them that Kyle's dad was the good one while Alex's was not, but you have Kyle's dad reaching out and being a father figure to Alex, and Alex's dad we know has been trying to loop Kyle into the alien investigation. It's like a weird father-son love rhombus and it definitely creates an interesting dynamic.

[phoenics]

9 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

I missed that.
Was it the same as the one in the lampshade in the crawlspace detox bedroom?
Was it similar to the OG Roswell orb symbol?

No, it's this one...

The symbol from the lampshade and keychain reminded me of the whirlpool symbol from the OG show - I think it's an easter egg for us OG fans.

Edited February 15, 2019 by phoenics

[Myrrhine]

On 2/12/2019 at 9:12 PM, Kareny said:

I loved the Kyle/Alex stuff. The original series really took a long time to get around to bringing those two characters together, but it was so fantastic when they did. I like the fact that they're going more directly for that dynamic, and this new backstory with them being former besties and Valenti's mentorship of Alex when his father rejected him is great, great angsty Roswell stuff.

I did too! They were great. Their interactions made Alex way more interesting to me. They are a big part of why I wasn't bored with the episode, even before the intense confrontations / revelations there at the end.

On 2/12/2019 at 9:40 PM, ParadoxLost said:

I was really annoyed that Liz had the nerve to go through the box Kyle had of his Dad's stuff.   I wrote her self absorbed ass off in that moment. 

That bunker and all the conclusions Kyle reached make no sense to me.  Maybe Liz and Kyle are siblings.  I feel like there is some gaping detail that when revealed will make it all less illogical that there is a frilly, out dated love nest / detox bedroom underneath Valenti's cabin.

Yeah, I thought it was pretty callous of Liz to go through the box. You can't wait like a day to go through it with Kyle? Or you know, ask if it would be all right to take a look yourself if he isn't up to it. 

One thing I'm getting a little tired of is all of these "revelations" that are just mistaken conclusions. (Or one character lying to another). So yeah, I'm still suspicious of the whole "Rosa is a Valenti" development AND the theory that the bunker exists / looks like that because Valenti set it up for Rosa to detox. I could kind of hand wave that maybe Valenti attempted to help a daughter he had never been close to by wildly overcompensating with a babyish bedroom set up for her to use while recovering from addiction, but that doesn't explain where the bunker came from in the first place, why there is a link between the lampshade and the alien tech hidden in the wall of the bunker, why the furnishings look so deeply deeply creepy, why the key chains match the symbols marking the location of the alien tech & the cabin. 

On 2/12/2019 at 9:46 PM, KittenPokerCheater said:

Isobel doesn't have the glowy hand power, so there's no way it could be her.  It's all a big fake out.I guess the new suspect is whoever can do the glowy hand thing, so I'm guessing it's alien #4, whoever that is.

Do we know for sure Isobel can't do the glowy hand thing? Even if they have different powers, maybe they can leave the same mark? 

On 2/12/2019 at 9:54 PM, ParadoxLost said:

I'm now at the point where I don't understand why Isobel mind warped Liz to leave town.

Was Liz on a mission to find out what happened to her sister back then too and Michael/Isobel just wanted her gone?

 I think it must just be because they had to get a Nosy Parker (haha) out of the way, so that no one would look more closely at Rosa's role in the deaths of the girls Michael and Isobel each think the other killed.

On 2/12/2019 at 10:02 PM, KittenPokerCheater said:

So Michael was ready to turn himself in to save Isobel.  And Max... who was he protecting?  Did he think that Isobel or/and Michael had done it?  And Isobel mind warped Liz because...why? Did she think that Max had killed the girls?

Annoyed we have to wait two weeks to find out.

I think Max also thinks that Isobel killed the girls, right? 

On 2/13/2019 at 6:48 PM, phoenics said:

Wyatt's words when he started shooting at them was "All you had to do was keep quiet!"  That suggests he was there specifically to prevent Grant Green from telling Liz what happened.  That either means that Wyatt himself is an alien and trying to conceal his extraterrestrial existence, the government is using him to keep this hushed up (unlikely, tbh), an alien is mind-controlling him, or he's just out for revenge (but his comment makes that unlikely). 

Even if he's there to destroy evidence, that still doesn't mean he was there under his own ability - someone could have sent him there to destroy it and kill Liz/Grant.

I like the theory that he is being controlled by an alien. I just can't work out why a human Wyatt would be involved in an alien cover up of the death of his own sister while drunkenly terrorizing the Ortechos for being related to someone who caused it.  

[Cristofle]

On 2/15/2019 at 6:06 PM, Myrrhine said:

I think Max also thinks that Isobel killed the girls, right? 

Yes, Max seems to think Isobel killed the girls from the last moment of this episode. So he and Michael appear to think she killed the girls in the midst of some blackout, and they made a decision to tell her that Michael did it. That's why Max was so willing to take the fall instead of Michael last week - he knows Michael didn't kill them, he believes Isobel did. 

[phoenics]

On 2/15/2019 at 6:06 PM, Myrrhine said:

I like the theory that he is being controlled by an alien. I just can't work out why a human Wyatt would be involved in an alien cover up of the death of his own sister while drunkenly terrorizing the Ortechos for being related to someone who caused it.  

I have a new theory about this... Maybe it's not Noah mindcontrolling Wyatt.  Maybe it's actually Grant Green.

I'm not sure Grant Green is dead.  I know what we were shown - but I just don't believe it.  Yet.

Fact:  Grant Green was definitely at the turquoise mines/cave the night Rosa died.  Him calling the police to report girls "floating" could have been his "cover" and the birth of his kooky alien fake news radio shock jock schtick.

Fact:  Everything we heard about folks dying and disappearing came from ... Grant.  And then magically, Wyatt shows up to add a bullet punchline to Grant's story.  And a whiny "All you had to do was stay quiet!"  Grant then makes up the perfect cover story for Liz potentially dying - "You broke in, I tried to stop you."  What if all the people dying was because of Grant?

What if Noah ==> FBI agent assigned to come to Roswell after Manes tried to get funding for Project Shepherd sending the handprint photo in?  And doing such close surveillance on Isabel made him develop real feelings?

What if Grant Green ==> the mysterious mind-controlling alien we all keep speculating about and he's not really dead?  His bracelet has a green stone in it.  

More in the spoiler/spec thread (since my theory depends on something from the books that I can't go into on this thread without spoiling people).

[ParadoxLost]

On 2/15/2019 at 6:06 PM, Myrrhine said:

So yeah, I'm still suspicious of the whole "Rosa is a Valenti" development AND the theory that the bunker exists / looks like that because Valenti set it up for Rosa to detox. I could kind of hand wave that maybe Valenti attempted to help a daughter he had never been close to by wildly overcompensating with a babyish bedroom set up for her to use while recovering from addiction, but that doesn't explain where the bunker came from in the first place, why there is a link between the lampshade and the alien tech hidden in the wall of the bunker, why the furnishings look so deeply deeply creepy, why the key chains match the symbols marking the location of the alien tech & the cabin..

I didn't think the bunker was babyish.  I thought it was too wildly out of date to be something set up for Rosa to detox.  I presume its origin was as a bomb shelter around the time of the original crash..  I wouldn't be surprised if Valenti's "ancestors" weren't hiding a victim of the original crash and then paths crossed in each new generation.

One other thing I'm wondering about...   Were the other calls to 911 related to alien mind control/suggestions on the night Rosa died or were the writers just trying to be funny.  One call was a woman who thought it odd enough that her husband was trying to tip their cows to call 911.  The other was the new classic:

Woman: My boyfriend thinks he's a cabbage

Man: I have regretfully become a cabbage.

Sounds kind of like the kind of prank a teenage Isobel might pull given what she did while practicing at that bar.

[phoenics]

2 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

I didn't think the bunker was babyish.  I thought it was too wildly out of date to be something set up for Rosa to detox.  I presume its origin was as a bomb shelter around the time of the original crash..  I wouldn't be surprised if Valenti's "ancestors" weren't hiding a victim of the original crash and then paths crossed in each new generation.

One other thing I'm wondering about...   Were the other calls to 911 related to alien mind control/suggestions on the night Rosa died or were the writers just trying to be funny.  One call was a woman who thought it odd enough that her husband was trying to tip their cows to call 911.  The other was the new classic:

Woman: My boyfriend thinks he's a cabbage

Man: I have regretfully become a cabbage.

Sounds kind of like the kind of prank a teenage Isobel might pull given what she did while practicing at that bar.

I had the same thought about the 911 calls - in discussions on other boards, people said that it could be that since Roswell PD got so many weird calls, they weren't taking most of them seriously and the call about floating teenagers probably got lost in the shuffle.  Of course - the sheer deluge of fake calls could've been caused on purpose by an alien trying to obfuscate and overwhelm the police.

But at first thought - I figured Isobel was messing with folks too.

[ParadoxLost]

23 minutes ago, phoenics said:

But at first thought - I figured Isobel was messing with folks too.

But that means Isobel was messing with people near enough to Rosa's death that it overlapped Michael's cover up.  That points to Isobel not being the killer.

[phoenics]

8 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

But that means Isobel was messing with people near enough to Rosa's death that it overlapped Michael's cover up.  That points to Isobel not being the killer.

Good point.  That's why I think if it's alien related, it's another alien doing it.  Presumedly the one behind everything.

[Cristofle]

I'm stuck on why Max seemed surprised at the mark. He said "How is that possible?" Maybe Isobel isn't generally capable of making the mark? Thus far it seems like Max is the one who does things with his hands (healing, fixing the hospital power, etc). Even the major blackout went through his hands, from his land into the town. Michael moves things with his mind, and Isobel gets into peoples' minds. 

[Myrrhine]

19 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

I didn't think the bunker was babyish.  I thought it was too wildly out of date to be something set up for Rosa to detox.  I presume its origin was as a bomb shelter around the time of the original crash..  I wouldn't be surprised if Valenti's "ancestors" weren't hiding a victim of the original crash and then paths crossed in each new generation.

I meant that it looked way too young for an 18 or 19 year old Rosa; she never would have picked decor like that at that age; maybe at five or six? But maybe that's why it looked way too young to me: because it seemed like it was from another era. 

I agree it makes a lot more sense as a shelter for an alien from decades past!

[phoenics]

11 hours ago, Cristofle said:

I'm stuck on why Max seemed surprised at the mark. He said "How is that possible?" Maybe Isobel isn't generally capable of making the mark? Thus far it seems like Max is the one who does things with his hands (healing, fixing the hospital power, etc). Even the major blackout went through his hands, from his land into the town. Michael moves things with his mind, and Isobel gets into peoples' minds. 

I wonder if Max and Michael assumed that Isobel killed them by breaking something in their minds - which begs the question of why a hand print would be on Rosa in the first place?  If they're sure Isobel never touched them and that he (Max) never touched them or tried to heal them, then maybe that's why he is confused?

My theory has been that Isobel was mind controlled to kill them - and that she did it with her hands... but if Max is surprised then... it must have gone down another way.

[ParadoxLost]

16 minutes ago, phoenics said:

I wonder if Max and Michael assumed that Isobel killed them by breaking something in their minds - which begs the question of why a hand print would be on Rosa in the first place?  If they're sure Isobel never touched them and that he (Max) never touched them or tried to heal them, then maybe that's why he is confused?

My theory has been that Isobel was mind controlled to kill them - and that she did it with her hands... but if Max is surprised then... it must have gone down another way.

Max's hand print shows up later so I assume that means it showed up in the morgue if Max is surprised about it.

I don't think Max could be so certain that neither Michael or Isobel touched Rosa when he knows one was covering up and thinks the other killed them.  It points to neither Michael or Isobel having a power that leaves a handprint for Max to be as surprised as he was.  Any other scenario (outside of shock that there is documented proof of their powers), after a decade, points to Max wondering if he didn't notice something Michael or Isobel did which isn't worth emphasizing as much as they did.  

The curious thing is that they made a point of telling us that whoever left the hand print had a hand that is noticeably smaller than teenage Max's..  Let's say Max was done with any growth spurts by then, I don't think any of the male cast is noticeably small enough or young enough to  be a suspect.  Points to a female alien.  If its not Isobel, then who does that leave?

Suspect list (going for completeness rather than plausibility).  Not totally convinced the handprint is tied to the manner of death.

Rosa's mom is an alien and tried to resurrect her

Maria was given a partial alien lineage to make up for going with Michael/Alex instead of Michael/Maria and she tried to save her friend.  Maybe her fortune teller stick is real and she can draw on the power of others and somehow picked up Max's powers without him knowing.

Liz has a big blank space in her memory.  I kind of like the idea that she is chasing her memories without realizing it.  Don't like the idea of her having any powers.

Kyle's Mom / Sheriff is an alien and decided she needed to silence Rosa because she knew too much

[phoenics]

Questions.... so many questions...

I'm beginning to be pissed off about how absent Maria is from this story given how important she is in the books and the OG show.  

[methodwriter85]

Quote

Yeah the "she abandoned me" is big red flag for me. Way to make everything about your feelings, Max. Maybe Liz left because she thought her sister got high and killed two people and the whole town turned against her. Thats enough reason to want to leave and try to process everything. Having your high school crush tagging along doesn't seem ideal for that.

 I half expect Max to go to the Volturi convention to expose his sparkly skin in the sun.

I loved, loved, LOVED Alex and Kyle getting a backstory that they were friends before middle school cruelty took over.

Quote

I wonder if the actor is straight in real life?

There's actually been a lot of gay speculation over Tyler Blackburn going back to his Pretty Little Liars days, but then again, most of the male love interests on that show seemed gay as hell.

I agree though, Alex isn't exactly Kurt Hummel. Barring some outing, he came off as the kind of guy that could have gone under the radar.

Edited February 21, 2019 by methodwriter85

[ParadoxLost]

On 2/20/2019 at 9:15 PM, phoenics said:

Questions.... so many questions...

I'm beginning to be pissed off about how absent Maria is from this story given how important she is in the books and the OG show.  

I forgot one possibility.  If alien control theory is true and Isobel can be controlled then maybe Max can be controlled.  Except for the small handprint on Rosa thing.

I was never particularly enamored with Maria or Maria/Michael on the OG show.  But on this show, I think the actress who plays Maria is the best of the lot so its annoying that she's currently relegated to a nothing role.

Frankly, Liz could use a friendship with Maria just to counter balance that she (Liz) has self absorbed shitty person tendencies.

Just by process of elimination I do wonder if Maria ends up as Kyle's love interest.

[peachmangosteen]

On 2/22/2019 at 6:13 AM, ParadoxLost said:

Just by process of elimination I do wonder if Maria ends up as Kyle's love interest.

I'm down for them to try this. Those two are probably my faves tbh.

Edited February 23, 2019 by peachmangosteen

[Cigale]

Rosa, Rosa, Rosa...  Blah blah blah...  Ladida...

Sorry, but I do not care.  I absolutely can’t, I swear.

[tessaray]

I'm okay with the Rosa mystery but I wish they had spent the first  few episodes making me care more about Max and Liz as a couple. It just played out so strangely with Max looking like an obsessed stalker at times. Maybe the next episode will fix that but I feel like the writers took for granted that they could lay out all their other plots first and then get back to them whenever. 

[AudienceofOne]

Alex and Kyle are the best. Let's make it all about them.

On 2/13/2019 at 2:46 PM, KittenPokerCheater said:

ETA:  Also, the bunker detox room was scary and super Ick.  There have been too many kidnapped women/girls held in rooms like that for me to feel comfortable with it. Even if it was to detox Rosa (who was a  teenager).
 

Oh is THAT what that creepy sex bunker was for. I couldn't get over it looking so much like a creepy sex bunker and I couldn't help thinking that just because he wasn't having sex with a troubled drugged out teen in the sex bunker didn't make it less like a sex bunker. There's no way he just put that together for her. It's clearly his sex bunker. 

On 2/13/2019 at 5:12 PM, Callaphera said:

Alex and Kyle were the best thing about that episode and I would be all right if this show was all "Fuck this alien bullshit, let's just focus on these two in our new buddy cop series". Because seriously, as a character, Liz sucks. Pronounced-Nine-Different-Ways Rosa died and Liz is willing to also let the cannon fodder die in order to get answers and I liked creepy alien conspiracy theorist dude. I'm starting to think that the rando looks of disgust that is probably supposed to be indignation that Max has around her half the time is because she's just a horrible person. 

I can't work out what it is they're going for with Liz. She's a pretty bad friend, unethical, jumps to conclusions, she's a bad scientist. Liz is a bulldozer. I guess it's better than being a pot plant but surely they could have had an intelligent, confident and forthright woman without her being such a bulldozer. I'd be fine if I thought they were trying to make her unlikable deliberately as a deliberate statement on how female characters are always supposed to be pure and full of justice but I don't feel it is deliberate. I think we're supposed to sympathise with her. I find it hard to.