#104 Leaving Normal – Primer

After an encounter with Kyle’s friends over Liz, Max realizes he may be risking revealing their secret. Max decides he needs to back off from Liz, and go back to the way things were before he healed her.

Meanwhile, Liz is delighted by the arrival of her grandmother CLAUDIA, whom she’s always admired. Coming home from a date with Kyle, Liz finds out her grandmother has had a stroke and is in a coma. Liz leaves an emotional message on Max’s answering machine, asking him to come see her at the hospital. Max, torn by his recent decision and his true feelings for Liz, reluctantly arrives at the hospital. Once there, Kyle sees Max and warns him to stay away from Liz.

Meanwhile, Michael begins to exact his own form of revenge by playing practical jokes on the jocks that beat up Max. Max becomes enraged when he realizes what Michael has been doing, and tells him he’s only jeopardizing their identity. Michael lashes back that Max has already done that by saving Liz’s life, which further confirms Max’s feeling that he should stay away from Liz.

Liz finds Max and asks him if he can save her grandmother. Max explains that he was able to save her when she got shot because it wasn’t her time to die. Max tells Liz he can’t stop what’s happening to her grandmother, because he’s not God. Liz then finds out Kyle’s friends beat Max up.

At the hospital, Liz blows up at Kyle who swears he knew nothing about the beating. Not being able to fight her true feelings for Max, Liz breaks up with Kyle. After Kyle leaves, Max arrives telling Liz although he can’t save her grandmother, he might be able to help Liz say goodbye.

Max establishes a connection with Grandma Claudia, and her ghostly form appears. Liz tells Claudia how much she’s always admired her, and Claudia responds by making Liz promise to follow her heart. Liz and Grandma say good-bye, before Grandma Claudia dies.

Jason Katims Commentary

JASON KATIMS COMMENTARY
VIEW THE ORIGINAL ENDING OF THIS EPISODE.

Transcribed by Lena

Leaving Normal was sort of an interesting situation, because originally there was another script [The Dance] and the studio the network weren’t happy for whatever reasons so we had to write this very quickly and the idea is something that I had planned to do later, so it was done in a very accelerated way and for that reason I had planned to first introduce the character of the grandmother then have this sort of twist happen where she has this illness and staying in the hospital as a life-threatening situation. I had to have that all happen in a very accelerated way and how do we get invested enough to care and to want Liz to speak to her again or to say goodbye to her and I thought that was really done well you know Shiri Appleby did a great job helping to sell this connection that she had with her grandmother and another interesting thing is that we had originally shot an ending where Max after he helps Liz say goodbye the grandmother, you know sort of sitting outside the hospital and Liz comes up to him and they have this very quiet intimate moment, where she just goes up and hugs him and thanks him and again the studio the network felt like they wanted to have a bigger ending than so we reshot the ending and in the episode that aired, it’s just the same thing that happens but it’s a bigger set piece that’s in front of the Crashdown Café at night and is a more cinematic moment it’s always been like an interesting thing to me because there are two different versions and one of them is not better or worse than the other it’s just two alternatives, so I thought that would be an interesting thing to see the two different to the ending.