Teleplay by Steve Stringer & Leah Longoria and Eva McKenna
Story by  Steve Stringer & Leah Longoria
Directed by Rachel Raimist
New episodes air Monday on CW

by Emily Maesar, Staff Writer

If last week’s episode of Roswell, New Mexico was all about setting up for future plot developments and events - then this week truly wanted to be about paying at least some of those off. Which… yeah, that’s certainly a way to describe what happened in episode six. 

There’s a fair amount of Alex in this episode, as he still tries to figure out the mysterious machine with Ramos over at Deep Sky. As they’re speculating about the machine (a red herring if I’ve ever seen one), a bunch of bats fly straight into the window. Which is… yeah okay cool. 

The other characters, though, are focused on two things. First, is the question of where Kyle is and who took him from Max’s house. The second is what happened to Maria, who is now in a coma at the hospital. Isobel tries to use her mindwalking powers to find Maria’s subconscious and the memory of the night before - to no avail.

Michael discovers the source of the bright light that Max saw as he was headed back to his house. One of the radio stations is completely blown to hell and the pieces of Kyle’s family radio are strewn around at the bottom of it. He calls Alex, who has some theories about why Ramos was being sketchy earlier in the episode. As Michael tries to piece everything together, Sanders drops the very randomly acquired information that all the bats that were affected by the radio signals were vampire bats. Which… is very cool and definitely not a conversation I could barely follow at all!

Anyway, Liz tries to take a blood sample off a shovel they find behind Max’s house to compare it to Kyle’s, but the equipment currently available to her (especially without Kyle’s hospital access) is unbelievably subpar. Alex, however, swoops in and saves the day by bringing the samples to Deep Sky. This reveals that the blood on the shovel is actually a relative of Kyle’s - most likely an uncle. Alex takes a shot in the dark and searches Ramos’s office, where he finds a second radio, almost exactly like the one Kyle had. Ramos comes across Alex in his office, however, and pulls a gun on him.

Oh! And Rosa’s doing stuff in this episode too. She takes off the necklace that helps keep her alien infused lifeforce in check, so she’s not doing random alien powered stuff without any control, and gives it to Maria. Which is all well and good, except that Rosa was wearing it for a reason. She ends up getting some super hearing powers, which helps her as she and Isobel finally figure out how to access Maria’s memory of the night at Max’s house.

Which, of course, happens at the same time that Liz realizes that something’s been weird about Max. All of which culminates in the reveal that, at some point (very large shrug as to when) Jones swapped places with Max. 

While I think the specifics of this are a bit… murky, to say the least, it certainly makes sense with the way Max has been behaving in this episode. I also think it’s a pretty solid feat of acting on Nathan Dean’s part. The differences between his performances for Max and Jones have been perfectly fine throughout the season so far. However, his ability to change the manner of his chemistry to Jeanine Mason as Liz is pretty remarkable. All their scenes feel wrong, but because of the plotting of the season so far it’s hard to say why. Until it isn’t, that is. 

Now, I will say that this episode is filled to the absolute brim with the kinds of conversations that stick in my brain as being very much ones of plot convenience. Like, a lot of people are making interesting logical leaps that don’t seem totally earnered. Or particularly well explained. The show is certainly moving at a faster clip than previous seasons have, but I’m also left wondering what Jones motivations even are. Which is kind of where this season behaves like the others. Roswell, New Mexico has a villain problem, and I’m hoping Jones ends up being a more satisfying one than his predecessors.