Four days after the Crash Festival, Liz and the aliens are still trying to get their lives back together in the looming shadow of government and legal entanglements.

(original air date October 13)

How Do You Solve a Riddle Like Maria?

Maria: That's what they do. They send in an alien task force and suddenly we're like accessories to Czechoslovakians.

Maria: The eraser room does two things. It cleans erasers and it takesour innocence.

Maria: Go get your apron on, Madonna. The masses are demanding alien beings, greasy food, and by God it is our duty to serve it to them.

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Written by Jason Katims
Directed by David Nutter

ADDITIONAL CREDITS

Julie Benz - Ms. Katherine Topolsky
Michael Horse - The Deputy
Mary Ellen Trainor - Mrs. Evans

WHAT HAPPENED

Michael becomes obsessed with taking a look at the photograph of the Hand Killer that Sheriff Valenti showed Liz. He believes it contains important clues to the aliens' past. Meanwhile, a suspicious "substitute geometry teacher" comes to town and starts investigating Michael.

In less overtly dangerous -- but no less distraught -- developments, Liz and Maria agonize over whether to let their friend Alex in on the aliens' secret, Kyle becomes increasingly convinced there's something going on between Liz and Max, and the FBI raid Valenti's office.... (more detailed spoilers)

ANALYSIS

Once again, the team of Katims and Nutter have provided their audience with an intricate reminder of just how little an adolescent's everyday life has to do with what adults would think of as rational thought. In fact, the character work and dialogue are tighter in this follow-up episode than in the premiere as the creators grow more comfortable with their story and subject matter.

As in the episode aired last week, Liz and her friends -- especially the sardonic Maria, who is rapidly becoming one of my personal favorites -- are portrayed here as authentic teenagers. They are not good at lying, nor are they particularly experienced at doing so in a way that would fool anyone but another teenager. They are subject to both short attention spans and extreme moods.

Even more relevant to the motif of "secrets" that plays such a dominant role of this episode, they are torn between wanting to feel included in everything going on around them and a need for massive amounts of privacy.

Like Maria before him, Alex desperately wants to be let in on the secret he knows Liz is keeping from him. The threat of exclusion -- of being shut out -- is so intense that, in the three scenes we see him in this week, he does nothing but complain about it.

Michael, for his part, is so hungry to be let in on the secret of his origins and, by extension, the secret of his real family, that he breaks into the sheriff's office for little immediate gain. Michael has spent his entire life without anyone but Max and Isabel to share his secrets with, and as such he is desperate to find his fellow aliens, in whom he hopes he can put his trust. Max is in a similar, but less acute situation, but his stable family cushions the yearning to some extent.

On the other hand, Liz confesses to the complementary need for privacy -- a need that the rather sinister-sounding Eraser Room underlines. In the span of two episodes, Shiri Appleby has deftly portrayed Liz as being a natural introvert, someone who would much rather keep her thoughts and feelings to herself (or the secretive intermediary of her journal) than have them dragged from her by a more outgoing friend like Maria. She would prefer to be invisible -- a creature composed entirely of secrets -- and finds the concept deeply appealing.

Since many -- arguably all -- teenagers often feel that they are the unwelcome center of attention, this urge to become invisible is a fundamental facet of the adolescent experience. The typical young person feels gawky or otherwise ill-at-ease, and, as such, would like nothing better than for the eyes to stop looking at her.

The Eraser Room, by being a place where the teenagers can be themselves free from the prying gaze of adults -- and can, in fact, turn the gaze back on the grown-ups without being seen -- is already something of a magical location for this series. I hope we see it again, and not necessarily in the lurid context that Maria talks about.

One last note on secrets. Thanks to the FBI's apparent betrayal, William Sadler's Sheriff Valenti has become a very subtly sympathetic character, building on his already ambiguous role on the show. The government has forcibly taken this man's secrets -- as his son Kyle ironically threatens to do with Liz and the aliens -- and we reflexively feel sympathy for him. He's a victim too.

WHAT WE LEARN

In addition to being the sheriff's son, Kyle is also one of West Roswell High's star jocks. He plays on the football team and is the September athlete of the month.

Michael doesn't have a fine degree of control over his powers. His early life (before leaving the incubation pods) might also have been different from Max's and Isabel's, as his psychic flashback implies.

Like many New Mexico towns, Roswell has a youth curfew, after which time nobody under a certain age is allowed on the streets.

DANGLING PLOT THREADS

So what does the key open? Who is Topolsky working for?

REALITY/ROSWELL CHECK

The angles of a triangle do in fact add up to 180 degrees.

Michael's flashback actually parallels the first reports from the Roswell crash site. As in the psychic vision, the majority of the material recovered from the desert was said to be "a metallic fabric," although it is not recorded whether it was constructed in the triangular-quilted manner shown on the television show.

The abundance of metallic fabric retrieved from Roswell leaves the possibility open that the object that crashed there might have been a top-secret experimental weather balloon of some kind. This is in fact the government's official explanation of the event.

Also, judging from the triangular pattern and the spherical shape of the fabric-covered object, the aliens on the TV show are probably acquainted with Buckminster Fuller's engineering theories.

Would federal agents really let Valenti -- who's essentially a hostile suspect after they raid his office -- reach into his desk, grab a paper bag and leave the scene of a search operation? Is Stephens just stupid?

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK

Reruns continue. Maria finally realizes it's not just a wacky game, while Max gets a job as part of his quest to uncover his origins in "Monsters".