Roswell, NM – #105 Don’t Speak Review by Leonard
Written by Leonard
The episode begins with Isobel waking up in her night gown in the desert by a windmill. Michael is working on Max’s jeep. Max suggests that the aliens hit the road. Max tells Michael he won’t let him turn himself in as if one goes down they all will go down if they look into Michael’s past with them. Noah pulls up with coffee and food and then asks where Isobel is. Max tells him that she isn’t with them, Noah tells them she didn’t come home the night before so he assumed she was with them. Max and Michael try to cover that she was there the night before but left early this morning for goat yoga. Noah leaves looking worried. Max and Michael are out looking for her. After hanging up with Cameron, Max says Isobel’s car was found on 285 with the keys still inside. Michael says Noah wasn’t home when he dropped Isobel off the night before, and that she was exhausted and figured she went straight to bed.
Kyle is looking through the box of his dad’s things. He finds a key with a keychain of a sun like symbol. Liz arrives dressed for the interview for the research position that Kyle suggested. Kyle tells Liz that he’s found out that Jim had been to rehab twice, multiple affairs and an obsession with aliens. Liz picks up a drawing of a flower that she recognizes as Rosa’s and it confirms her fear that Rosa had an affair with Valenti. Kyle closes up the box and puts it under his desk and wants to forget the sleuthing for a day and go back to work. After Kyle leaves, Liz grabs the box and finds a digital recorder of the 6/8/08 (the night Rosa died) Roswell Police Department’s tip line. We see Kyle in his car leaving the city limits.
Liz has her headphones on listening to the recorder. After her interview, we learn that the position involves stem cells and healing, Liz is leaving the hospital continuing to listen to the recording until she hears a man calling in from the turquoise mines. He says he’s working on a documentary and he sees 3 teenagers floating in the desert.
At the Crashdown, Grant is screaming into his microphone working on his podcast as Liz interrupts him. He says he doesn’t have time for her. Liz agrees and demands to know what he saw that night. Grant begins packing up his equipment when Liz asks to see the video of that night. Grant denies there is any video, Liz rebuts him knowing that he was shooting a documentary. Grant leaves but not before telling her that nothing is an accident and that people who talk end up dead.
Kyle pulls up to a remote cabin. The front door has the symbol on the keychain. Kyle tries to unlock it but the key doesn’t fit. Kyle picks up a log about to break a window when Alex interrupts him. Liz is trying to get into Grant’s UFO Emporium, which is closed for renovation. Noah leaves a message for Isobel that he’s worried. Noah spots Liz. They introduce themselves, Noah asking if she had seen her today too. He tells her that he’s secretly a big alien fan too and that Grant has all his alien stuff in storage during the renovation north of the Long farm.
Kyle and Alex are at the cabin which was the old hunting cabin both of their dads used. Kyle tells Alex the cabin wasn’t in his father’s will. Alex replies that when he got back from Iraq, he got a letter with the key saying he could have the cabin. He had already died so he didn’t know why it was left to him and not Kyle or his mom. Kyle shows him the key. Alex recognizes the keychain and that the key is too small for the door. Kyle asks to look around for what it unlocks, Alex doesn’t mind and leaves.
Max and Michael arrive at the windmill that Isobel woke up by. Michael pulls out a gun from the glove compartment. Michael says they don’t know what triggers Isobel’s blackouts. Max says he knows that it’s trauma. The last time it happened was at the end of high school when she was afraid Max would abandon her and now she’s afraid that she’s going to lose Michael and she’s already lost him to Liz. Michael thinks it could be just the Rosa stuff and suggests they tell her the truth. Max categorically refuses. He tries to connect with her telepathically. This time Isobel responds, so Max and Michael head into the desert.
Alex has returned and finds Kyle staring at an old fishing rod. They reminisce until Alex says that Kyle became a bully after he became an athlete. Kyle says he doesn’t know why he acted that way. Alex says it’s because he was gay and didn’t want to be seen being friends with him. As Alex is asking how much longer Kyle will be, he yanks out a drawer in the coffee table and sees something under it. They move the table and find a hatch, so they open it (and we get the classic shot from Lost).
Max and Michael finally find Isobel passed out on a meadow.
Kyle and Alex turn on the light in the hatch and find what appears to be a girl’s bedroom. Alex spots a lamp with a floral pattern on the shade. He asks Kyle why he’s really there. Kyle tells him he’s looking into Rosa’s death and that he believes they were having an affair. Alex defends him saying that he was a good guy. He tells Kyle that he was left the cabin and not him because he knew that he (Kyle) would be fine and so he (Alex) would have a place to go and that he (Valenti) wouldn’t take advantage of a desperate teenager, he would help them.
Liz pulls up to the storage shed looking for Grant. She breaks the window to open the door. She walks around, at one point activating a radio that won’t turn off so she unplugs it. She turns around and finds Grant holding a gun to her. Back at the hatch, Alex finds medical supplies in the closet. Kyle identifies it as materials needed for detoxing. He suggests maybe this is where he kept Rosa to help her get clean or maybe that’s wishful thinking. Alex finds a small chest by the bed and asks Kyle for the key. Liz asks Grant to put the gun down so they can talk. Grant puts it down but it goes off and it shoots just confetti. Grant confesses to being on the watch list. Liz tells him that she’s interested in his documentary. Grant tells her that he was a peyote documentarian before and that later that year a couple guys came to him about that night so he gave them a fake tape.
Max and Michael are tending to Isobel on the back of Michael’s truck. Isobel figured Michael would be in jail by now. Michael tells her that Max thinks that Michael’s idea of confessing is what triggered her blackout. Isobel thinks she just exhausted herself trying to mindwarp Liz and didn’t think it would be harder. Harder Max asks. Max deduces that Isobel had mindwarped Liz after Rosa’s death.
Back at the hatch, the key does unlock the chest. Kyle picks up a picture of a baby. Kyle recognizes the hands as his father’s. Kyle then deduces that his dad wasn’t having an affair with Rosa, he’s actually Rosa’s father and that’s why he was never the same after she died.
Back at the storage, Liz watches Grant tape and it does indeed have footage of Rosa and the 2 others floating. Grant confesses to taking money to spew conspiracy theories or alien fake news as Liz succinctly puts it. Someone yells out “all you had to do was not talk” and then shoots at Liz and Grant. Grant flees as soon as he could, Liz starts when she figures when the gunman has to reload after 6 shots.
Isobel and Michael are trying to explain themselves to Max. Max asks Isobel where Liz is. She says she doesn’t know but Max screams out they are still connected as she just tried to get into Liz’s head. She tells Max that she’s in trouble near the Long farm. Max takes Michael’s truck. Before he goes, Michael gives him the gun. Liz sees the gunman reloading, so she plugs the radio back in. The gunman is revealed to be Wyatt Long. He approaches the radio, at which point Liz tries to surprise him, but Wyatt manages to knock Liz out. Wyatt begins pouring gas over wooden crates outside Grant’s storage. Liz wakes up inside one of the crates. Wyatt asks Liz who she told as he starts pouring the gas on her crate. Liz continues pleading as he drops his lighter. The fire starts to engulf Liz’s crate but she manages to kick the crate open and run off unscathed (despite her crate having been doused with gas and a pretty fair amount dripping all over her head and body). The flames reach Liz’s car and it explodes as she runs off. As she runs off Max catches her putting his hand over her mouth. Liz tells him that it was Wyatt who did this.
Kyle and Alex are covering up the hatch. Alex continues praising Valenti and telling how bad of a father his was. Kyle tells Alex that he’s the bravest person he knows.
Max finds Grant dead, bullet to the head. He tells Liz to stay behind him. Max and Wyatt shoot it out, both getting hit – Max in the shoulder, Wyatt in the leg – as the authorities arrive. Now at Max’s house, he’s just removed the bullet as Liz knocks on the door. She came from the hospital after finding out he left. Max tries to figure out why Wyatt did what he did, Liz offers to look at Max’s wound.
Over at Michael’s, he and Isobel are sitting by a fire. Noah pulls up. Isobel tries to calm him, Noah asks if she always wears a nightgown to goat yoga. Michael gets up and leaves. Noah asks if she’s having an affair, she says no. He dumps the contents of the paper bag he was holding on the ground – bottles of the nail polish remover. He says his grandfather would hide his booze in bottles of laundry detergent. He asks her to tell him the truth but she obviously can’t. Noah goes to the truck and hands Isobel a bag of her clothes and tells her he needs some time and drives off.
Kyle is going through the box of his father’s things until he snaps and throws it to the floor. Alex has returned to the hatch and is looking at the lamp. He sees the symbol from the keychain and door carved into the lampshade. He turns the lamp on, so the symbol reflects onto one of the walls. He uses his crutch to break the wall where the symbol is, and finds a piece of the ship – identical to a piece that Michael had.
Isobel is still sitting by the fire when Michael finally emerges from the trailer. She tells him she’s so tired of lying, Michael agrees.
Liz confesses she was terrified for Max. She says she knew she was safe once she saw him but her gut is still telling her not to trust him. Max tells her the heart isn’t logical as love makes you do crazy, beautiful and terrible things. Liz asks he’s talking about Rosa.
Cut back to Isobel continuing about how she’s living a lie. Michael suggests maybe it’s time they tell the truth to the people they love or the secrets will them all apart. Isobel says at least there were no more secrets between the 3 of them. Michael is still holding something back.
Back to Liz, she figures Max didn’t cover up Rosa’s death because he did it, he covered it up to protect someone he loves. She figures the 3 floating bodies were Michael, but he had a broken hand at the time. She shows Max the picture of Rosa’s corpse with the handprint over her mouth.
Cut back to Isobel who asks Michael what’s the secret. He replies that he didn’t kill the girls, she knows who did. Cut back to Max looking at the picture of Rosa. Liz realizes Max’s hand is too big compared to the picture and from when he grabbed her earlier, plus Michael’s hand was broken that day so it had to be Isobel. Max confirms it was Isobel who killed Rosa.
For the second week in a row, we have the best episode thus far. Now that we know who killed Rosa (or so it seems), now we look towards the why. The revelation that Valenti is really Rosa’s father is very soap opera though. That’s probably the biggest negative from this episode. Wyatt suddenly being a killer is out of left field too. And just for the record, Liz should be fried chicken by now. Gas was poured all over her box and a good amount spilled onto her face, head and clothes. Her box was lit up for a few seconds, then when she finally manages to kick out a side, she runs off through the fire – and she didn’t get a single burns or gets lit up. Liz apparently is already a superhero with fire resistant powers. But for the record Liz Parker’s electric hands > Liz Ortecho’s fire resistance.