#103 Monsters – Primer

Maria’s fears of the aliens are heightened when she has an encounter with Isabel who freely uses her powers to taunt her. Maria becomes unraveled, and ends up running her car into the back of Valenti’s. Liz tells Maria it’s important they stay in control.

Isabel goes to Max saying she doesn’t trust Maria to keep their secret, but Max assures her he trusts Liz to help.

Isabel makes the decision to “dreamwalk” Maria (Isabel enters Maria’s dream) to find out what she’s thinking. In the dream, Isabel realizes that Maria wants to tell Valenti everything she knows about the aliens.

Maria becomes visibly distressed, when Valenti mentions he wants her to come in to discuss the accident. Liz urges Maria to stay in control, but Maria isn’t sure she can pull through. Maria reveals to Liz she’s torn, and can’t promise she won’t tell Valenti everything. Maria finds out for the first time, that Liz is also scared.

On her way to Valenti’s office, Maria witnesses Isabel sharing a tender moment with her mother, DIANE EVANS, and realizes Isabel may not be all that different from herself. The stakes now high, Maria goes to her interrogation with Valenti. When Valenti warns Maria he doesn’t want any more families destroyed, Maria remembers Isabel with her mother and successfully stonewalls Valenti.

Meanwhile, Max has accepted a job at the local UFO museum with Curator, MILTON ROSS, in order to find out all he can about the Crash.

Jason Katims Commentary

JASON KATIMS COMMENTARY
“IT WAS REALLY AMAZING TO SEE WHAT MAJANDRA DID…”

Transcribed by Lena

The idea behind Monsters was to use Majandra Delfino, who plays Maria, and use her fear to drive the episode and what we wanted to do was remind the audience ‘What it would be like if this happened to you?’ and Maria of all the characters is the most normal high school human who reacts to things appropriately and Majandra said that she feels like she’s the only normal person in the cast, because she is freaking out and that’s what people should be doing, if they found out that aliens exist. So we wanted to sort of drive that point home to the audience through her fear of this whole situation through her discovery of the fact that there are aliens out there and that sort of led to a kind of comedic place with her about her fears and thrilling her in a car with Isabel, who used her powers deliberately to intimidate Maria. The really interesting moment for me was that great scene at the end between Maria and Valenti, where you see Maria start to crack under the pressure and literally breaks down and cries but then rises above it and stays strong and protects the secret of the aliens and it was really amazing to see what Majandra did with that scene because until then I only sort of knew her as his wonderful quirky actress and to see this other side of her come out it was a wonderful surprise.