Roswell The Toy House

Singed Bangs

Updated 2000-01-18 16:00:00

This week on Roswell: Apparently, someone down at Continuity Headquarters has been a bit sleepy on the job and chosen to neglect the unwritten truism that we, the audience, at least have to meet a so-called "major" character before investing emotionally when suddenly faced with the prospect of watching said character, oh, I don’t know, spontaneously burst into flames. For instance. So, in a vague and slightly patronizing attempt to hoodwink the viewer into believing that we know Max and Isabel’s mother so intimately that she might as well have borne all of us herself, we begin the week with a poorly edited and emotionally vacuous "previously on Roswell" that prominently features the nine cumulative seconds Mrs. Evans has spent on screen thus far in the series, as if this "Greatest Hits Of This Total Stranger" package is in some way synonymous with the lost art known in old-fashioned circles as "character development." Hmmm. Those were the two longest sentences -- ever. With a really, really tiny one in between.

Fade in on a distractingly non-sequitur hand-held shot from the upcoming UPN reality special World’s Most Sinister Footage Of Non-Threatening Birds in Flight, which inexplicably gives way to a close-up of vegetables being tossed into a frying pan. Um, what’s going on? I feel suddenly as if I have stumbled upon some experimental German short film, whereby juxtaposed shots of birds and frying food make total sense in some really artistic, non-linear way. I half-expect said German art film to go full tilt "Deiter’s Dream" and the next shot to be an extreme close-up of an old man lying in a baby carriage, wearing a bonnet and yelling "Schnell! Schnell!" for some reason only understood to the German film making community, like a joke shared by the Eastern-Bloc power elite whose laughter we can’t hear, muffled as it is behind the Iron Curtain. But before I have a chance to corroborate these hypotheses by running out to my local video store and renting anything with the word "Das" in the title, the Frying-Pan Cam ends its artistic reign and we cut upwards to reveal the kitchen at Chez Evans, where Mrs. "I Hope These Bangs Aren’t Genetic" Evans is sharing some bonding time with Max "These Bangs Are Definitely Genetic, Even Though I’m Adopted" Evans. She’s slaving over a hot frying pan while Max sits at the kitchen table, deep in pretending he’s not an alien. Good luck keeping that charade up till the end of this scene. Max looks over at his mom and chides her, "Hey, mom, why don’t you put a little more garlic in there," to which I want her to shoot back, "Why don’t you cook the goddamn meal yourself, Mr. Frugal Goddamn Gourmet?" But she doesn’t, and I realize with incredulous horror that I’m already bored. Bangs responds with some comment about how uncorked she gets when Max’s father is out of town, and then quickly turns the subject to Max’s biology homework in a pathetic attempt to distract him from her own admission that she gets around when Mr. Evans goes away on business. They bond over how bad they both are at science, and Max tells his mom not to worry because "I have a good lab partner. She’s really good in science." Bangs allows herself to become diverted from cooking long enough to motion curiously in a manner I might colloquially refer to as "raising an eyebrow," should said eyebrow not be obscured beneath such an egregiously maintained shelf of hair. "She?" she inquires. Yeah, she. Jeez, Mom, it’s a lab partner, not a concubine. "She’s a really good lab partner" should ring the same alarm as "she’s a really good accountant" or "she’s a really good OB/GYN." It just shouldn’t automatically equate to all things sexy. I’m just sayin’. But then I remember that "science class" is practically the same thing as "hotbed of burgeoning sexual passion" as far as this thrill ride of a show is concerned, and, well, I guess I can’t fault Bangs for trying.

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