Tess: Evil or Misguided?

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Cocogurl
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Re: Tess: Evil or Misguided?

Post by Cocogurl »

Sin wrote:I don't so much agree with this. Again what was stopping him from having meaningless sex after he saw Kyle and Liz then? Relatively nothing. I think the fact that he had a relationship with Tess (more or less) before the sex and them him sleeping with her meant that he wanted more from Tess in that moment and afterward. I think in the end of it all I feel about it this way there are so many reasons why sleeping with Tess was wrong. The problem is really layered and multifaceted. It harmed who Max was at his core person. It wasn't within his character to do such a thing and the way he was written showed that this was very much against who he was. Max was never careless about sex. Ultimately if the fans react to something that is written with the vehemence that we did and all of us feel as if it's something he wouldn't do then the writers failed as writers because they aren't writing characters in character. To be honest beyond this point it seemed as if Max wasn't even Max anymore. He was diminished.
Well, the way I see it is, just because he gave up on the idea of a romantic first time doesn't necessarily mean he'd go around sleeping with random girls. He probably went back to thinking he'd probably never have sex, which would probably explain why the condom was no longer in his wallet. I just don't think that his night with Tess was the result of romantic feelings. It was solace. As heartbroken as Max was at the end of EOTW, he hadn't completely lost everything like he felt he had in ITLAITB. In that episode, him and Liz weren't just broken up, they weren't even friends anymore--thanks to his dumbass ultimatum. Alex had died, Isabel hated him. Everything was just falling down around him and he didn't know what to do. Enter Tess, who offers him all the love and support in the world without expecting anything back in return. And in that moment, he gave in. He might have wanted to move forward with things that night, but not for the right reasons. I just feel like if his relationship with Tess was truly romantic and something he wanted to really explore, he wouldn't have thought sleeping with Tess was wrong at all. He wouldn't have been so unsure and regretful about being in a relationship with her. That's how I feel about it. :)
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Coccy
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Re: Tess: Evil or Misguided?

Post by Coccy »

I believe that if Max had opened up to her about his fears, his guilt, etc. all that was bothering him then she would have. But she didn't know that Max felt this way, only Tess knew. Max didn't open himself to anyone else in that episode. He didn't tell Isabel how he felt, neither did he open up to Michael, Maria, Liz or anyone else.
how he could open to Liz and tell her his problems and his fears if in that moment she was the problem and he was hurt by her? O_O Seriously, is this a variation of the Stockholm syndrome? :lol:

Max didn't open himself to anyone else in that episode because he had no one. Isabel was angry with him. Liz was angry with him. Michael, lets face it, never was a good listener and he had to think about Maria after all.

I feel that Max would have died for any of them. This is not meant as if I am minimizing what he did for Liz in CDB, but I believe that Max would have died for all of them in his group. That's what he did in The White Room so to speak. He was tortured for information and he sacrificed himself to keep the others safe. It's in his character to do these things and yes this aspect of his character could have been reinforced by his love for Liz as he wanted to protect her from harm but, I believe he would have died for Maria, for Tess, for Michael, for Isabel or even for Alex. So I don't believe this is indicative that he only loved her, so to speak as I believe he would have done this for all of them given the situation as that's who Max is. Am I saying it's meaningless? Absolutely not. I just don't think of it as a prime example of his love for Liz even though the gesture is huge. I believe that Max would have done this for them all. Again this doesn't mean it's nothing. I just don't believe it's something exclusive to only Liz.

Which is why I said that Max could sacrifice himself for her but it seems as if he can't love her the same way even when it's hard (EOTW through MITC or ITBAITL through BIY).
based on what facts?
definitely this is not the show i saw and yes you're minimizing his actions very much making it seems that he did the same things for them when he never did :roll:
He cared about the others but the canon doesn't support the idea that he would have died for any of them because he never did for the others the things he did for Liz and it was evidenced that he did those things for Liz because she was the love of his life not because she was his friend. It's about build up and how the story is written. And It was written like that for Liz and Max not the others. The same situation was never showed or implied as a possibility for the others too, he never reacted for the others the same way he reacted when Liz was in danger. He didn't make the same decisions or expressed the same feelings. It was never showed or implied in some ways that he would do that for them all. He ultimately put his family in danger for her, if we want to be honest. On the other hand even before chant down babylon it was often implied that Max would do anything for Liz and this included putting himself in danger over and over. The show itself started like that and is based on the fact that an alien boy risked his life and put himself, his family and his secret in danger when he saved the life of the girl he loved.
When Liz was in danger Max lost his control and rationality (see ch-ch-changes when he talked with Michael. also Max to the Max where the FBI ultimately captured him because he was protecting Liz) and even wanted to contact the same people that tortured him in order to find some informations and save her. He didn't do that even when he believed that his son was dying.
In the white room (that is a totally different example compared to when he died) he went totally crazy only after Pierce made him see a pic of dead Liz. Max pleaded him to leave *her* alone. In that episode Max wasn't sacrificing himself for the others. He got captured and he didn't have the informations that Pierce wanted from him, in the first place. It's not that Pierce would freed him. When he saw the pic of dead Liz he desperately tried to give to Pierce what he wanted by pretending that he could answer to his questions (for example what the orbs were and how they could be used) even if he really didn't know what Pierce was talking about. Only because Piece threatened *Liz* Max reacted so dramatically and was willing to do anything if that meant keeping her safe. Pierce used Liz on purpose for this reason. He made a pic of *her* death not the others because he knew that by threatening her her he could get what he wanted from Max, he even kinda admitted it.
In chant down babylon it's showed that Max didn't survive for Michael, Isabel, Tess or the others. He survived only for Liz. Everything Clayton got from him were memories of her. Not a single image of the others. Reason of why Clayton wanted to kill Liz because he knew that Max wanted her. He didn't try to kill Michael, Isabel or the others. He didn't even acknowledge them and Max's feelings for them. They weren't a treat because Max wasn't surviving for them and they weren't the ones who were making Max's soul stronger.
Max's soul survived only for her and because he wanted to protect her. In the end when they were falling the flashes of his life were only about her not his son, his family or his friends...and he chose to kill himself to save her. That's what Max did in the whole episode.

you're basically assuming that just because he did these things for her he would have done the same for the others too (the same logic, then, could be used for Liz and what she did for him. Based on her character/personality she was a caring person too who did everything for her friends too). The canon only showed us that he did these things for Liz because he loved her, not just because he was the leader and it was his nature. He's not a martyr.
What happened in chant down babylon is a prime example of his love for Liz (along with the other times where he put himself in danger for her) because you can assume what you want but i don't think that there's something more telling and huge than someone who kills himself for the person he loves. Someone that survived only for that person.

IMO If one thing is weird here it's the fact that for you he would have proved to love Liz only by not sleeping with Tess, caring about her...whatever when him and Liz were done and he believed that Liz didn't love him anymore ( and he didn't even stop to love her and even Tess knew it and saw it ) and Liz herself was dating another person.
While for you he didn't prove to love her when he killed himself for her! :lol:
You're totally minimizing what he did for her using a pretext and assuming, without any canon evidence, that he would have done the same for everyone. An episode like Chant down babylon couldn't be more clear and invalidate what you said.
If Liz had done the same for Max (killing herself for him) i bet that you would repeat it like a mantra and see it as the ultimate proof that she loved him. You already do it for less.

I know that he didn't love Liz in the same way, I said that he loved Tess in a similar way, he even said himself that he loved Tess, just not the same way in which he loved Liz. It's was obvious that their relationship was more then simple friendship and that Max/Tess were more along the lines of a psudeo-boyfriend/girlfriend thing.
he didn't love Liz in the same way, I said that he loved Tess in a similar way ----> this is contradictory.
the show excluded the "similar". That was the whole point. This is what the canon supports with scenes, phrases and even what Tess herself said and saw.
In the moment where Liz asked him if he loved Tess and Max replied her "not LIKE I LOVE YOU" he made it clear. Liz didn't ask him if he loved *her* yet he wanted to specify it, he wanted her to understand that his feelings for Tess weren't similar to the ones he felt for her. They couldn't be similar because they weren't alike, they weren't the same thing. He differentiated the kind of love. In the same episode Max told Michael that he loved him when they said good bye. In the series he also told his mother that he loved her. He didn't even say that kind of i love you to Tess.
He loved many people but he was in love with Liz. That was the point.
What he felt for Tess was care and he later confirmed it. And no wonder why he cared about her. But even that care was fragile and not so stable, it was based on lies and influenced by the circumstances and duty because as soon he discovered her real colors (and that she didn't love him and everything was a show, a trap ) he stopped to care about her and even tried to kill her twice but the thought of his son stopped him. When he saw her real colors his only duty was the baby and not her anymore. If he had really loved her he wouldn't have stopped just because she betrayed him, above all he wouldn't have believed it so easily.
Liz betrayed him too but he didn't stop to love her and even Tess knew it and hated it because it made all her efforts pointless because she could never really get his heart and make him love her like he loved Liz.

I don't agree with this. I don't feel as if their relationship was damaged after TEOTW.

This is a general sweeping statement that I feel isn't realistic. There are some occasions where you have to tell lies.


As I stated above I don't really think things changed all that much aside from Liz and Max not being together romantically.

For you her lies didn't damage them but him sleeping with Tess did. It makes sense (put sarcasm here)
For you Max damaged the relationship because he cared about Tess when he had no one but Liz didn't damage their relationship when she took away one of the foundations of their relationship: honesty.
basically for you a couple is perfect and transcendent if they only care about each other and don't look at other people (that isn't even true even in Liz's case) even when they're not together while it doesn't matter to you if one of them is keeping things from the other basically manipulating his/her feelings.
I guess then that Isabel and Jesse are the epitome of true love for you.

I obviously disagree.
The thing is that they were past all of that. They had forgiven each other. Those problems from TEOTW were resolved.
how their problems could be """resolved""" if he still believed that she didn't love him and really meant the things she had said in TEOTW? She never denied it, she always confirmed the lie. Just because people don't talk about all their problems and even forgive each other it doesn't mean that the said problems magically vanish. Sounds familiar? Because it happened to Liz in the third season
Just because he tried to be friends with her it doesn't mean that everything between them was resolved and he was all happy and had no problem and they could get together like if nothing had happened. It could never be ok between them because he didn't know the damn truth and he didn't even know that she actually wanted to be with him. He believed the contrary.
those problems from TEOTW were far from being resolved because the only thing that could have resolved them was Liz telling him the truth. He still believed that she didn't love him and didn't want to be with him (that wasn't the truth) and he still believed that she had slept with Kyle (and that wasn't the truth). Nothing was resolved.
In fact this is the reason of why things between them were so bad when Alex died and she said something that "awoke" in him the memory of what she had previously said in TEOTW.

eta: i find it very symbolic that for you their problems where resolved only because Max was nice with her again, no matter if he was still hurt and he didn't know the truth. As long as he was nice with her his feelings didn't matter and they didn't need to resolve their issues.
this is typical of someone who only cares about Liz. Otherwise you should care about the fact that he didn't know the truth and he was still hurt just like you care about the fact that in the third season Liz didn't voice all her feelings about the situation with Tess sooner although she was, for most of the season, clearly happy to be with him again and even helped him for his son quest.

Ava said that Zan was always looking or waiting for something I feel that something is implied to be Liz.
i think that what the scene really implied is that destiny is fail no matter if you have a Liz or not in the picture.
Zan and Ava were together and there was no Liz between them yet he didn't love her, they didn't work. Just like Max and Tess.
Zan was awaiting for someonelse. Max found that person. Zan didn't.
That said, we can't assume that Zan was awaiting for Liz specifically. That would cheapen the M&L relationship and it goes against everything you had said about Max and Liz especially the point about "exclusivity"
Zan is not Max. Liz was Max's soulmate not Zan's. At the same time Max was her soulmate not Zan.
Being soulmates isn't based on the dna. A soulmates is called "your other HALF" for a reason. You can have more than a kindred soul but the soul mate is only one.
Zan needed to find his Liz. Maybe he would never find her just like the original Zan. We don't know.
again just because they have the same dna, the same body, it doesn't mean that Zan and Max had the same spirit and they're the same person. The whole point about the dupes (and the show i think) is that clones aren't the same people. Otherwise Rath and Lonnie would be good like Michael and Isabel.
Unless you're saying that Max couldn't even care about other women while Liz could even have two soulmates!
Her loving Zan and sharing with him the kind of love she shares with Max contradicts all thetalking about how Liz stayed true to her relationship with Max.

In fact i couldn't ship her with Zan. I simply don't find it believable that Liz would chose Zan over Max or simply replace him because they're similar (assuming that they were similar character-vise too. To me it didn't seem that they were so similar just like the other dupes) even if Max is dead.

Maybe it's up to personal beliefs but personally I loathe the idea that you can simply replace someone using clones.

I feel like this is all semantics. The end result is the same here. He confided in Tess more then he did with anyone else. He let her in (in more ways then one) I think that just proves yet again that Tess meant something to him that was more then just a rebound or a sex playmate.
easy. She was the only one available and she was literally stalking him
how it can be semantics? I'm just showing the facts and how different two things are (when he went to Liz compared to when Tess went to him and took advantage of the fact that he had no one) especially because you compared them saying that it was the same while it obviously isn't.

You keep minimizing or maximizing things to make them fit with a point and by doing that you basically put things out of their context using selective memory. Using your "technique" a fan of Tess could justify everything she did and say that the others were bad and they did the same things she did.
My problem with Max sleeping with Tess at that time is that Max (who we perceived Max to be for so long) wouldn't have slept with Tess and he did. I personally don't believe that this is a very Max like thing to do. But he does it. I personally find that to be out of character. But it's canon. So it is something Max did. So Max ended up sleeping with Tess and accoridng to Max's character he doesn't have sex with people he doesn't care about. I don't think Max would do something like that but apparently he did. Otherwise we wouldn't be discussing this.
but, again, Max wasn't himself (and that is canon because even the writers admitted it)
so it doesn't matter what he believed or not believed before that moment and after it.
you don't realize that the fact itself that you call him OOC invalidates your point.
Cocogurl wrote:Well, you gotta think about this, though. When Max saw Liz and Kyle together, everything he felt towards sex and your first time was probably shattered along with their relationship. Max felt like sex was special because he knew exactly who he wanted to share that first time with. Liz. Once she was gone, I doubt it meant that much to him after that.
amen.
even if Max had cared about his first time Liz had already ruined that idea when she slept with Kyle so from his pov they couldn't have their first time together anymore
The point is most likely he cared about *their* first time together because that wouldn't be only a first time itself.
Still it's not that he slept with Tess as soon as Liz broke up with him. This doesn't mean that when he slept with Tess he did because sex meant something to him in that moment. Mostly because he didn't program what had happened with Tess and he regretted it when it happened. Even his speech before kissing her wasn't about him wanting to be with her. It was about himself and how alone he felt.

to me It's very telling that he only slept with Tess when he was in the worst time of his life and really believed that he had no hope to be with Liz again.
Well, the way I see it is, just because he gave up on the idea of a romantic first time doesn't necessarily mean he'd go around sleeping with random girls. He probably went back to thinking he'd probably never have sex, which would probably explain why the condom was no longer in his wallet. I just don't think that his night with Tess was the result of romantic feelings. It was solace. As heartbroken as Max was at the end of EOTW, he hadn't completely lost everything like he felt he had in ITLAITB. In that episode, him and Liz weren't just broken up, they weren't even friends anymore--thanks to his dumbass ultimatum. Alex had died, Isabel hated him. Everything was just falling down around him and he didn't know what to do. Enter Tess, who offers him all the love and support in the world without expecting anything back in return. And in that moment, he gave in. He might have wanted to move forward with things that night, but not for the right reasons. I just feel like if his relationship with Tess was truly romantic and something he wanted to really explore, he wouldn't have thought sleeping with Tess was wrong at all. He wouldn't have been so unsure and regretful about being in a relationship with her. That's how I feel about it.
amen to that too.
Mmm, this is where I have to disagree slightly. You were right about Max In The City. He did have faith in her there, but I don't feel like the Alex thing was the only time he didn't take her side. He didn't listen to her about Ms. Topolsky when she first came to town until HE decided that she could be a threat. And he didn't take Liz's side when Ms. Topolsky came back either. And then in Blood Brothers, Max still insisted that Liz lie to Alex even after they had him break the law for the aliens. So, to me, these were a few times when Max just couldn't find it in him to just believe that maybe Liz was right. And then I look back at all of the crazy things Liz did just because Max asked her to do it, and I just feel like it wasn't as easy for Max to just have faith like Liz did--again, I chalk this up partially to the way Max, Michael and Isabel grew up believing that no one could be trusted. So, it's understandable as well.
My point is: just because he believed in her and trusted her it doesn't mean that he could blindly believe in everything she said just because *she* said it.This would cheapen the times where he sided with her making it seems that he's more an a$$ kisser than someone who knows her and trusts her because he really believes that she's right. That would mean that he sides with her just because he's biased about her. Like those brainless fanatics that are obsessed about some people from a sect and believe that they're always right no matter if they have some evidence of it or not.
Just because he was a careful and rational person and he didn't want to jump to conclusions especially if that would mean putting them/her in danger it doesn't mean that he didn't trust her. In all the examples you wrote he eventually agreed with her. Sometimes it wasn't that he didn't agree with her but it's obvious that he didn't want her to be in danger.
Max and Liz were control freaks, above all. They tended to make decisions for the other one thinking that they were doing the right thing and protecting them. For Liz it was the same, it's not that she blindly followed Max every time he said something just because *he* said that. That was Tess :lol: M&L weren't ass kissers. When they believed in each other a part of the reason surely was that they were biased a bit but they didn't blindly follow each other like crazy fanatics. Liz had her moments too where she disagreed with him. Because she has her own brain. It's only natural.



I don't think that Liz was a doormat in the third season just because she stood by her man when he had a problem and she wanted to help him.
I also think that Liz herself knew that if she and Max ended up in that situation it was for her fault too
so in a way she was taking the responsibility of her actions
She was also able to see the priorities and it's very mature for me. Was she putting away some of her feelings? Of course she was. Yet when she had a problem with Max's actions (see control and samuel rising) she voiced it. So it's not that she blindly followed him. She is not stupid. She understood him.
Sin wrote:I think the thing is that there are many ways to see or interpret what happened.
Except we're talking about YOUR interpretation of the things and you should choose only one of them especially when one interpretation totally contradicts another one to the point that i don't understand what you really hate Max for.
It makes sense to judge something using different povs if those povs share some sort of connection. Otherwise it seems that you're only using random pretexts in order to criticize him at any cost.
Like i summarized in my previous reply you kept changing the point writing things that invalidate what you had previously written. I don't see a connection between the things you said. I don't see a constant.
The only constant thing that i perceive by reading your posts is that yours is an ad hominem argument (=biased. Directed against a specific person rather than against his arguments and the facts. Double standard.) against Max.
The way you minimize the things he did for Liz and always remove the context where the moments happend also shows that.

It's just unbelievable and it just seems selfish.
how it can be unbelievable and selfish? maybe it's because i love children but Max's son was in danger it's only natural for me that he wanted to save him. The contrary wouldn't be in character for Max.
it's not that Max was going to partys without Liz or he left Liz at home when she was sick.
The baby existed we couldn't get rid of him so M&L could have fun and Max could declare his love for Liz all day long, you know :roll:
It's not even true that he did nothing for Liz in the third season because with all his problems he still found the time to be an attentive boyfriend for her
examples: when they talked about her father, when he wanted to talk with him, when he went at the crashdown because they missed each other, when he realized her dream and made her fly in the desert, when he kept his promise to take her to the iceskating in the xmas episode, when he wanted to help her with Harvard and supported her, when was scared about her sickness to the point that he even wanted to contact the FBI.., when he talked with her at the phone in Panacea and told her that he didn't care about the things he said to him he just wanted her to be ok... then chant down babylon and the other episodes in the end.
For someone who had a serious problem to resolve like finding a son lost in the space (not to mention Philip's investigation and the tension between him and his parents and the alien abyss itself) Max was more a boyfriend for her than all the characters who didn't have any problem to resolve and who had all the time to be attentive with their gf but they weren't.
Max's son as a priority can be comparable with what Liz did for Alex when he died. In a way Liz took Max for granted (she took for granted that he would understand and support her no matter what because that's what he had done in the past, sounds familiar?) and even put their friendship aside because in that moment finding Alex's killer was a priority for her more than Max.
Max needed to save a person that was alive LOL. A tiny person actually. A defenseless baby who wasn't even one year old and was lost in the space with his homicidal mother who wanted to deliver him to their enemy like a gift.
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Re: Tess: Evil or Misguided?

Post by Sin »

Coccy wrote:how he could open to Liz and tell her his problems and his fears if in that moment she was the problem and he was hurt by her?
Liz wasn't what he was hurt by. He was hurt by the possibility that he had not protected Alex, that he had failed in healing them and he felt guilt over that. He wasn't upset with Liz (according to your theory) he was upset with himself and couldn't see the truth. I think that had Max told Liz this she would have been there to support him (but he would need to make himself vulnerable first and show Liz how he felt) and I think then Liz would have been there and from that point they could have worked together to find Alex's killer. To be honest Max could have talked to anyone and he probably wouldn't have been in the place he was at the end of ITBAITL.
The canon only showed us that he did these things for Liz because he loved her, not just because he was the leader and it was his nature. He's not a martyr.
I guess I always saw Max as the kind of guy who would sacrifice himself for the greater good or who would do anything to protect his friends, even sacrifice himself. I feel like he did it more or less in The White Room and I just always saw that as something that was in his character. I feel that was the reason why he took Alex's death so hard because he couldn't protect him and because he felt as if he failed. So I would think that he would do anything to protect the people he took it upon himself to protect. He heals Kyle in the end of season one because he was his responsibility and he was targeted because of all the alien stuff. I've always seen that as something that was in his character that he would put himself in danger to protect another person who to protect a person in the name of the group. That's always the vibe I got from him.

I don't think that makes Chant Down Babylon less special so to speak, it just means that this case of him protecting Liz or him sacrificing himself for her wasn't something specific to only Liz from what I could tell from his character (as he seemed to be always willing to do anything to protect the ones in his circle and he seemed to be willing to sacrifice things to accomplish this purpose as well).
this is contradictory.
the show excluded the "similar". That was the whole point. This is what the canon supports with scenes, phrases and even what Tess herself said and saw.
I don't think this was the case. We can go over it again and again but the end of the result was that Max and Tess were something that was much closer then just friends (Max and Michael were friends, Max and Kyle were friends, Max and Alex were friends, etc.) what Tess had with Max was not friendship and it was also much more then just "dating", they were like Boyfriend/Girlfriend. Am I saying that Max loved Tess the same way in which he loved Liz? No as the show never said that? But am I saying that Max did end up loving her within that context? Yes according to his own words he did love her.
In the moment where Liz asked him if he loved Tess and Max replied her "not LIKE I LOVE YOU" he made it clear.
He still is using the world love to quantify his feelings about Tess. He is describing the way he feels about Tess by using the word love.
Liz didn't ask him if he loved *her* yet he wanted to specify it, he wanted her to understand that his feelings for Tess weren't similar to the ones he felt for her.
Then why use the term love at all? He could of simply just said no.
In fact this is the reason of why things between them were so bad when Alex died and she said something that "awoke" in him the memory of what she had previously said in TEOTW.
I don't think that TEOTW was a factor there. Max forgave her for that back in MITC. The reason why he was acting the way he was in ITBAITL was because he didn't want to believe that aliens killed Alex. Those two events were separate. Unless Max didn't really forgive Liz in MITC and he was secretly resenting her this entire time, but I don't think that makes much sense considering all that had happened at that point. HOM, ARCC, MITC, etc.
As long as he was nice with her his feelings didn't matter and they didn't need to resolve their issues.
This isn't it. Max himself said that he wanted to "start over" so to speak and go with a clean slate. So unless he didn't really feel that way and he was lying all the time and didn't really forgive Liz then I don't see how that's possible. Max and Liz were friends. They supported each other. Is that to say he wasn't hurt over everything? No. But he was putting the past behind him.
but, again, Max wasn't himself (and that is canon because even the writers admitted it)
so it doesn't matter what he believed or not believed before that moment and after it.
you don't realize that the fact itself that you call him OOC invalidates your point.
When I say that Max wasn't himself I am saying that the way the writers wrote him to do these actions was not the way Max would have usually acted. Max more or less did do these actions so Max is the one to have consequences for those actions. Just because I don't like them doesn't mean that he didn't make those choices and doesn't mean that it is no longer canon, so to speak. It happened on our screens so it's canon. My problem with it is that it doesn't make any sense and the Max who was the Max I always saw on screen wouldn't have made these choices, he was unrecognizable and from then on Max always seemed like a pod from that moment forward.
Except we're talking about YOUR interpretation of the things
No we aren't. We are talking about several views and reasons why Max slept with Tess. I think that says volumes personally about the situation. I don't think anyone is able to really understand the reasons why Max slept with Tess otherwise I think it would be pretty clear why he did. If there are numerous view points of it then I think that just goes to show how it was so different for him to sleep with Tess in the first place since no one is able to get why he did it. I personally don't really understand why he slept with Tess.

I have been responding to some of your reasons why he did it (you say that it was purely physical and that he wanted to sleep with her to start a relationship with her) and I took that line of thinking and tried to understand it. However you also said that the sex was meaningless as well at some point in our discussion so isn't that a contradiction as well? I have simply been reacting based on your thoughts. Either Max didn't care about her and slept with her or he slept with her because he wanted to start a relationship with her and feel close to her. I think this just shows that people don't really know why he slept with her and people don't understand why he really did it. I know I don't. I am just trying to understand it. Either way though the act itself still has the same effect.
the point that i don't understand what you really hate Max for.
I don't hate Max, I just don't understand his character past this point. He changes at this point and I think this was the crux when everything pretty much went wrong.
The way you minimize the things he did for Liz and always remove the context where the moments happend also shows that.
What am I minimizing? As to removing the context, my main point is that in the end he ended up in confiding in Tess (and only her anyway) what does it matter if she was near him all the time? How does that change the fact that he felt more comfortable talking to her then any other person in their group. I don't get this logic. It doesn't change anything. It's a seemingly useless detail.
how it can be unbelievable and selfish?
I think it was selfish because he was putting Liz in a position of danger to help him find his son (Busted) and because he didn't care about Liz's feelings at all during season 3 it seemed. I mean Liz's line in changes says it all doesn't it. Every time he talked about his son he hurt her. Every time he talked about his son all she thought about was how unfaithful he was to her and he didn't care. That's the epitome of selfishness. He didn't want to lose her but didn't care how much he was hurting her either.
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Re: Tess: Evil or Misguided?

Post by Coccy »

Sin wrote: The very thing that made the ship so special, so amazing, so transcendent is gone and they are reduced to being the average couple
so in your opinion what made them transcendent aren't things like:
- the fact that they saw in each other souls sharing their most intimate thoughts and feelings
- the fact that she could feel his death when it happened
- the fact that they saved each other life more than once
- the fact itself that they had an irrational connection that can be called soulmates
- the fact that he loved her since he was a kid
- the fact that they could be unsure about many things and their feelings for the others but they were always sure about loving the other one
- the fact that he risked everything for her including his life and he ultimately sacrificed himself for her
- the fact that she sacrificed everything for him too and decided to embrace his life since the start when she wasn't forced to do it and had everything to lose
- the fact that they would rather live for only 12 days if it meant being together instead of living a lifetime safe but apart
- the fact that even after someone tried to change their future and created bad consequences they never stopped to love each other and they still found their way back to each other in the end
- the fact that even after they tried the future they still married in both lifetimes
- the fact that they never stopped to love each other no matter what or who and even someone like Tess had to admit it
- the fact that nothing could keep them apart.. even death.

For you what made them transcendent is only the fact that they're monogamous people? Really? oh well.
I guess that this is where we disagree the most.
I tell you a secret: most of the average and ordinary couples are monogamous (even when they don't really love each other and are together just because it's a habit or they don't have the guts to do what they want) this doesn't automatically make them transcendent IMO. If that was true then everyone can be considered epic.
above all what it really means being monogamous? because M&L are monogamous. When they weren't together they still were "monogamous with their hearts" since they never loved other people like they loved each other and the others could only be second best.
I also think that no person in the world has room in his/her hearts for one person only. I don't think that it's realistically possible. It goes against nature. Even Max never was like that even before sleeping with Tess. He loved Liz but he loved Michael, Isabel and his parents too. Just different kinds of love. Liz loved other people too. Because there's always a difference about being in love with someone and loving/caring about someone. You may be in love with only one person but you can care about many for different reasons. At least this is how i feel.
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Re: Tess: Evil or Misguided?

Post by Sin »

Coccy wrote:- the fact that even after someone tried to change their future and created bad consequences they never stopped to love each other and they still found their way back to each other in the end
To me it seemed to be a pyrrhic victory considering what they had lost. Yeah they were still together but I believe they had lost the very thing that made them such an amazing couple in the first place. I believe that we ended up losing who Max truly was. We lost the man who loved Liz and only her and instead we got a storyline in which Max sleeps with Tess and ends up having a child with her that ends up hurting Liz and diminishing her until the end of the series when Tess comes back and she lets go of all of her hurt. But it's still there. Max still at one point either stopped loving her, gave up on them, or whatever you want to call it and there is evidence of that out there in the world some where in the form of the child. It will always be there a reminder of that it wasn't enough, whatever they had wasn't enough in that time and that it didn't mean enough to him.

Tess still ended up winning if not the war then a battle and that underscrowls everything that I believe the dreamer relationship was about. Because the thing that made them such a great couple was that there was only one person for them (for Max it was Liz and for Liz it was Max) and that night with Tess proved that it wasn't true. Either physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally (whatever way you want to call it or categorize it) Max let Tess in and that changed the entire standard of their relationship. They weren't them anymore after that. That exclusivity, that singularity wasn't there anymore.

We could see that Max changed in a way and Liz also changed in a way and they had to cut parts of themselves away to fit together again after Max slept with Tess. For Liz she had to live with the hurt that caused her grief for an entire year it seemed because she didn't want to guilt Max and for Max he had to fight to resemble the person he was before sleeping with Tess. This is what I mean when I say that it was a destructive storyline. It pretty much ate the couple from the inside out the entire season.
Coccy wrote:I tell you a secret: most of the average and ordinary couples are monogamous (even when they don't really love each other and are together just because it's a habit or they don't have the guts to do what they want) this doesn't automatically make them transcendent IMO. If that was true then everyone can be considered epic.
I guess what I am saying here is at least they are true. To themselves, the other person, what they feel, etc and at least what they have is a kind of integrity that shows their love so to speak. They aren't going to do something that degrades who they are, what they feel, etc. If they tried to be in the relationship and it ends up not working out (or they fall out of love with one another) then they could move on with some form of moral character so to speak.
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Re: Tess: Evil or Misguided?

Post by Coccy »

Liz wasn't what he was hurt by. He was hurt by the possibility that he had not protected Alex, that he had failed in healing them and he felt guilt over that. He wasn't upset with Liz (according to your theory) he was upset with himself and couldn't see the truth.
both. He was hurt for both reasons. He was hurt because he couldn't save Alex that was her best friend. He was hurt because he felt guilty. He couldn't talk about it with Liz because he felt hurt fo what she told him (about Alex dying for his fault) and because of their existing problems. He was hurt and angry toward Liz because he believed that she didn't love him anymore and she even resented him because Alex died.
I guess I always saw Max as the kind of guy who would sacrifice himself for the greater good or who would do anything to protect his friends, even sacrifice himself.
exposing himself to protect the others is a thing
doing something so extreme like dying for the person you love is another.
I feel like he did it more or less in The White Room
in the white room he didn't kill himself for them nor he intended to do it (it would be useless anyway, it wasn't required. He was a cavy for the FBI that wanted to analyze him)
it's not that he got captured because he sacrificed himself for the others. Actually, he got captured because he was protecting Liz and he didn't think about himself.
in chant down babylon he killed himself for Liz after his soul survived only for her. It's a completely different storyline.

i can't see how the two things can be even vaguely comparable.
i could understand more if you made a comparison with graduation when he exposed himself so the others could escape. But even that time Liz was there, he looked at her and then made his decision.
This after he had already made the decision to live only for 12 days but with her instead of escaping alone and being safe.
He could say good bye to his friends and his family but he didn't want to leave Liz, he preferred to die but being with her.
Even that time isn't comparable to chant down babylon because in that episode Max killed himself for her after his soul survived only for her, in the first place. It's a combination of two incredible things.
It wasn't a matter of exposing himself only.

He heals Kyle in the end of season one because he was his responsibility and he was targeted because of all the alien stuff. I've always seen that as something that was in his character that he would put himself in danger to protect another person who to protect a person in the name of the group. That's always the vibe I got from him.
again helping the others and even expose himself to protect them is one thing
killing himself for Liz is another.
He's a leader and i can agree that sometimes he had the "hero complex" (Is it called like that?). But he never did something so extreme like killing himself for other characters and nothing implied that he could have done it.

you don't have a scene where he killed himself for the other characters or he even implied that he could do that for the others. So you can't assume that he would do for the others what he did only for Liz.

It's like assuming that Michael would stay in earth for the others too not just for Maria because in Independence day he came back for Max and Isabel.
I don't think that makes Chant Down Babylon less special so to speak, it just means that this case of him protecting Liz or him sacrificing himself for her wasn't something specific to only Liz from what I could tell from his character (as he seemed to be always willing to do anything to protect the ones in his circle and he seemed to be willing to sacrifice things to accomplish this purpose as well).
how it can't be something specific to only Liz if in the show he actually did. that. only. for. her? :lol:
Then why use the term love at all? He could of simply just said no.
talk about semantics.
because love is used for care too (reason of why i used the example of when he said that he loved Michael or Isabel), so he was honest
at the same time he wanted Liz to understand that he didn't care about Tess the way he cared about her and that he loved *her*, Liz.
Liz didn't ask him if he loved *her*. he didn't have to tell her. Yet he not only answered to the question but also managed to make her understand that he didn't love Tess like a man loves a woman, basically because he felt that way only toward her.
I care about her but i'm in love with you.

i also think that a "no" wouldn't in character for Max. It wouldn't make sense in that moment. Of course he cared about the mother of his child. It makes way more sense that he managed to answer to the question but at the same time he told Liz that he loved *her* even if that wasn't Liz's question.

It's not that we have only that phrase. This interpretation is also supported by other phrases and scenes in the canon.
He never said "i love you" to Tess while he had no problem telling it to the people of his family.
In the same episode Tess got a flash of him kissing Liz and she later admitted that he never felt for her what he felt for Liz.
Later he used the word "care" and "attraction" when he talked about Tess. and Tess also admitted that he was thinking about Liz when they were together because she was it.
The point is that he cared about Tess as the mother of his child and someone who was with him when no one was (and it makes totally sense) but everyone knew, Tess included, that she was a rebound and he was still in love with Liz even when he believed that Liz didn't want him.


for the other part i think that we're saying the same thing
i'm not saying that M&T were just friends but that she was a rebound.
the funny thing is that you said that too :lol:
I don't think that TEOTW was a factor there. Max forgave her for that back in MITC.
and he said that when?
even assuming that he forgave her with his mind it doesn't mean that he wasn't still hurt by her words and actions. Just like Liz felt toward the Tess situation in the third season.


My point doesn't change. Their issues could never be resolved without him knowing the truth.
you can't have a perfect relationship if a lie is involved. Especially not that kind of lie that made him believe that she didn't love him or love him enough to stay with him.
You talk so much about what made them special. But what made them special is honesty too, the fact that they talked about their problems and didn't keep secrets from each other.
No we aren't. We are talking about several views and reasons why Max slept with Tess. I think that says volumes personally about the situation. I don't think anyone is able to really understand the reasons why Max slept with Tess otherwise I think it would be pretty clear why he did. If there are numerous view points of it then I think that just goes to show how it was so different for him to sleep with Tess in the first place since no one is able to get why he did it. I personally don't really understand why he slept with Tess.
it seems to me that I'm able to understand why it happened and i wrote it over and over. Other people are able to understand it too, it seems, and they said it.
so i don't think that this is the problem here.

we were talking about your opinion and why you believe that he ruined everything in that moment. This is what i was trying to understand.
You tried to explain why you have this opinion about him and in order to do that you wrote the reasons. The problem is that the reasons you wrote contradict each other to the point that it seems that yours is an ad hominem argument (against Max).

However you also said that the sex was meaningless as well at some point in our discussion so isn't that a contradiction as well?
i didn't say that it's meaningless. I simply said that it was a mistake that happened into a specific moment and it's understandable, for me, why it happened and i don't think that it ruined everything between M&L
For me there's nothing to understand. I also said that i value other things (that they did for each other) more than sex and i don't think that he could prove to love Liz only by not sleeping with Tess in that specific moment.
Mainly because he did things for her that are more telling for me. Of course i have this opinion because they didn't even really cheat on each other since they weren't together at the time.

What am I minimizing? As to removing the context, my main point is that in the end he ended up in confiding in Tess (and only her anyway) what does it matter if she was near him all the time? How does that change the fact that he felt more comfortable talking to her then any other person in their group. I don't get this logic. It doesn't change anything. It's a seemingly useless detail.
useless detail?
He had no one so he talked with the only person who didn't hate him in that moment. LOL How it can be an useless detail? :lol:
It's not that he chose her between so many options. It was either pretending that she wasn't there with him and ignore her when she appeared on his side all the times or answer to her questions
It's not that he went to her on his own accord. He was always alone.
again it's telling that when things between him and Liz were ok he went to her (A roswell xmas carol)
and again, even if he would really go to Tess i don't understand what's wrong about it. I don't have a problem with it. Why i should? Maybe i'm weird but for the life of me i can't see what's wrong about it. The only wrong thing there was her taking advantage of his pain to get what she wanted because the truth is that she wasn't really there to help him and she only made him feel worse.

Even Liz who had Maria did the same with Sean. She felt comfortable talking with him about Max and her life. She confided her feelings. She went on a date with him. She had some fun with him. He gave her advices. She went to him after the prom and when she felt sad in departure. She even talked about him in her journal. She used his help when she was investigating about Alex.

I think it was selfish because he was putting Liz in a position of danger to help him find his son (Busted)
wrong. He didn't ask her to help him and he didn't force her
It was Liz's own decision. She was the one who wanted to help him and insisted to do so.
He kept telling her that she didn't have to do that. Even right before they entered in the store.
Do i have to post the quotes?
ok i post some quotes:

Max: Are you ready?
Liz: Yeah, I think so.
Max: Liz, you don't have to do this.
Liz: No, Max. We are in this together. That's what we said. Together till the end.

----

Liz: No, no, no, no, no. I want to do this with you, max. Together.
Max: Why?
Liz: Because if i had lost a child, I would want you to help me find him. But that's only part of the reason. The other part is that i don't want you to slip away from me. I know what it's like to be with you, and I know what it's like to be apart from you. And I would rather be with you.
Max: I don't know if i could live with myself if anything ever happened to you.

----
there's also the scene in the cell.
and because he didn't care about Liz's feelings at all during season 3 it seemed.
not true.
There're some scenes where he realized that things could be hard for her, even without Liz telling him
an example is the ice skating scene from Samuel Rising. He realized it and reassured her.
In control he was an ass :lol: I don't need to justify him to understood him and why he was like that in the episode. But it does matter to me that he then realized how wrong he was and he apologized to her.

I mean Liz's line in changes says it all doesn't it. Every time he talked about his son he hurt her. Every time he talked about his son all she thought about was how unfaithful he was to her and he didn't care. That's the epitome of selfishness. He didn't want to lose her but didn't care how much he was hurting her either.
the line that Liz herself regretted saying right after she said it and she told Max that she didn't really mean it and she was sorry.
I don't think that Max didn't care and his reaction proved it. He was obviously affected by her words he saw that she was hurt and he didn't want that. In the scene at the window (OT: i love that scene) they were literally crying. I don't know how someone can say that he didn't care about her feelings. The day after when he called her Liz basically told him that she was sorry for what she had said and he answered that the important thing was her being ok and she didn't need to apologize.

Did he realize that she was more hurt than how she seemed? No. But if Liz didn't tell him her feelings he couldn't read in her mind.
It's basically what you said about Max in the second season (about him not telling her that he was still hurt) it's the same minus Liz's lie from TEOTW that made everything more complex then.

i agree that he didn't want to lose her and most likely this is the reason of why he didn't push the argument when she didn't. It was a mistake that they did together because they didn't want to lose each other and they just wanted to be together. I understand why they did that.

I guess what I am saying here is at least they are true. To themselves, the other person, what they feel, etc and at least what they have is a kind of integrity that shows their love so to speak.
i guess that this is where we disagree too

it's a matter of apparency vs what it really is. To me you can be unfaithful to the person you love even if you don't sleep with another person. You can be unfaithful for many reasons. (and you surely aren't unfaithful when you date another person while you aren't together with the one you love)
many people are monogamous on the "exterior" but it doesn't mean that they love each other deeply.
Many people are together just because it's a habit or because they can't find something better. It's sad but it happens.
My point is that being monogamous alone isn't a proof of true love.

when it's about Max and Liz they didn't even cheat on each other because they weren't together when they "dated" other people. They are monogamous because monogamy is the condition of being paired to only one person at a time. Of course i would have judged things differently if they had really cheated on each other while they were together and in love. I can't see them doing that.
But this isn't the thing that made them special to me.
Unless we talk about people that believed in polygamy their whole life but became monogamous after they met a specific person when it's about relationships in general being monogamous is a given for me.
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Even if my molecules were spread out from here to whatever galaxy my home planet is in,
that wouldn't stop me. All my molecules would be like little homing pigeons.
They'd all zoom to you, and then I'd re-form." - Max Evans; Roswell High - The Watcher
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Re: Tess: Evil or Misguided?

Post by Sin »

Coccy wrote: both. He was hurt for both reasons. He was hurt because he couldn't save Alex that was her best friend. He was hurt because he felt guilty. He couldn't talk about it with Liz because he felt hurt fo what she told him (about Alex dying for his fault) and because of their existing problems. He was hurt and angry toward Liz because he believed that she didn't love him anymore and she even resented him because Alex died.
I guess this is where I disagree. Max and Liz were on good terms prior to their disagreement about Alex's death. I don't think Liz and Max could have been friends if Max hadn't forgiven and moved on from what he saw with her and Kyle that night, did it still bother him? Of course. But I never got the impression that he was still using this against her or that he was still upset with her for it otherwise there is no way half the scenes with them being friends could have even taken place. WAF, MITC, ARCC, VLV, CYN, etc.
exposing himself to protect the others is a thing
doing something so extreme like dying for the person you love is another.
I guess I see them as similar thing. I mean Max was willing to be tortured for the rest of his days to protect the other aliens (Michael, Tess, Isabel, Nascedo, etc.). He was willing to put himself in danger countless times with for the good of the group, he always protected people. I see them as similar things, here. This was something Max did all the time for the group (again this doesn't take away from what he did for Liz). I am not saying Max never did amazing things for Liz. I think the fact that he exposed himself to protect her is a huge thing. I don't feel like that's what I am discussing.
Max killed himself for her after his soul survived only for her, in the first place. It's a combination of two incredible things.
It wasn't a matter of exposing himself only.
I always saw it as Liz loved him enough to bring him back.
He's a leader and i can agree that sometimes he had the "hero complex" (Is it called like that?). But he never did something so extreme like killing himself for other characters and nothing implied that he could have done it.
I disagree. I feel that he did extreme things to save people all the time. I guess we just see him differently I always thought of Max in season 1 and even season 2 as doing extreme things to save people. He was the leader.
you don't have a scene where he killed himself for the other characters or he even implied that he could do that for the others. So you can't assume that he would do for the others what he did only for Liz.
LOL. Of course not death is usually a one-shot thing. But I am simply saying it was in his character to do these crazy things to save people. I mean he ends up healing Clayton because his friends are threatened. So in a way you can say he sacrificed himself, his life and his body for his friends in Panacea, but again I don't want to quantify his heroic actions and belittle them because I just think that's tacky. My main point here is that Max was always a hero and he was always doing crazy things to save, protect and guard the people that he cared about.
because love is used for care too
If this is the case he simply could have said that he cared about her. Instead he used the word love which has a much stronger connotation in describing his feelings toward Tess and it's so obvious that his relationship with Tess was much different then his family ones toward Michael and Isabel. Do I believe that Max was in love with Tess? Perhaps not. But I do believe that he did love her in a romantic way. I guess in a way Max proved that you can love two people at the same time.
He never said "i love you" to Tess while he had no problem telling it to the people of his family.
In the same episode Tess got a flash of him kissing Liz and she later admitted that he never felt for her what he felt for Liz.
I guess this is the distinction, he never directly says how he feels about Tess prior to the reveal that she killed Alex and was about to kill them so we don't know how he feels about her. It makes sense that after that reveal Max would deny or downgrade his feelings for her now that he knows her true intentions. All that we know is that during this time period Max used the term love to describe how he felt about Tess. And he didn't have the same relationship with Isabel and Michael as he had with Tess so I don't think that comparison really holds up that well.
for the other part i think that we're saying the same thing
i'm not saying that M&T were just friends but that she was a rebound.
the funny thing is that you said that too :lol:
I believe that Tess was more then just a rebound.
My point doesn't change. Their issues could never be resolved without him knowing the truth.
I guess this is where the catch 22 comes in. She couldn't tell him and he couldn't know. Otherwise the world would have ended. Future Max was adamant that he not know and Liz didn't want to change the future for the worst. I don't blame either of them in this case. Max couldn't know and Liz couldn't tell him. But I still don't think that this changed their relationship that much, again they were very close friends event after TEOTW, and it seems that you are implying that their relationship was this hardship when I don't think it was. At least not until Alex's death. Like I said before there are too many scenes showing differently.
You talk so much about what made them special. But what made them special is honesty too
This is true. But my point still remains I feel. They were still close, they were still Max and Liz they simply weren't together romantically.
we were talking about your opinion and why you believe that he ruined everything in that moment. This is what i was trying to understand.
If we are talking about strictly my view on it then I think that their relationship was ruined because Max was ruined. Because Max would never have done it, but the writers forced him into a situation where he did sleep with Tess when under the circumstances on the show he never would have slept with her. That's what it comes down to Max would never have slept with her. The fact that they twisted his character into doing that destroyed Max and it destroyed him so fully that he was never really Max after that. I think that's the best way I could put it. Tess destroyed him and he was never the same after that because they had Max do something he never would have done and it broke who he was as a character and no one could heal that after wards.
You tried to explain why you have this opinion about him and in order to do that you wrote the reasons. The problem is that the reasons you wrote contradict each other to the point that it seems that yours is an ad hominem argument (against Max).
I am approaching the situation from all sides and I feel all sides kind of end up having the same conclusion. I'll say this again:
Tess still ended up winning if not the war then a battle and that underscrowls everything that I believe the dreamer relationship was about. Because the thing that made them such a great couple was that there was only one person for them (for Max it was Liz and for Liz it was Max) and that night with Tess proved that it wasn't true. Either physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally (whatever way you want to call it or categorize it) Max let Tess in and that changed the entire standard of their relationship. They weren't them anymore after that. That exclusivity, that singularity wasn't there anymore.
The character of Max died that night.
i didn't say that it's meaningless. I simply said that it was a mistake
I wish I could see it that way. To me it's so much more then just a simple "oops!" mistake. :lol:
Perhaps because this action had so many consequences it's really hard to see it that way.
i don't think that he could prove to love Liz only by not sleeping with Tess in that specific moment.
I think this was one crucial way in which he could have and the fact that it didn't I think destroyed a lot of values that Max and Liz kind of personified. This isn't simply just about Liz and her reaction for me (I know you may think it is) but this also has to do with the Max character. I don't think he ever recovered after that. I mean I think it makes so much sense why Katims completely ignored that part of the story and only chose to write about his son. Because he knew that he couldn't write a scene in which this was believably played - he couldn't really give the audience a reason as to why this happened - which is why he never really explains it. I mean the fact that he had every one go into denial and pretty much refused to talk about Tess at all shows that, doesn't it?

I think he had this belief that everyone would just forget about what happened in season 2.
He had no one so he talked with the only person who didn't hate him in that moment.
You keep saying Max had no one. Did Maria and Michael not exist. There were plenty of people that he could have gone to, to talk about things with. It's not as if he had to spill his guts to Tess. I guess I don't really get this. I mean it's fine if you think he wanted to talk to Tess and believe that he had the right to but just admit that it was Max's choice to do so and that he wanted to talk to Tess. Again no one forced him to do otherwise.
wrong. He didn't ask her to help him and he didn't force her
It was Liz's own decision.
Of course she did. That's who Liz is. Liz often always provided her help to the group. She did EVERYTHING for Max. It's not as if Max couldn't have told her no (he did as much in Control). He knew the situation was dangerous but he didn't care. All he cared about was finding his son. Liz very easily could have been shot (again) trying to find that stupid spaceship and it was out of character (again!) for Max to use Liz in the way he did in Busted.

I have numerous problems with the baby storyline above all is that it was more or less just Tess ripping them apart (again) and just showing that Max wasn't really Liz's. That Max was going to leave her (Control) when he got the chance to go find his son. Max cared even less about Liz's feelings, safety and well being at times because he was so obsessed with finding the baby. Yeah I know Max had to find him but it doesn't change the feelings and resentment that go into feeling things about the storyline or feeling as if Liz is being taken advantage of here.
I mean Liz's line in changes says it all doesn't it. Every time he talked about his son he hurt her. Every time he talked about his son all she thought about was how unfaithful he was to her and he didn't care. That's the epitome of selfishness. He didn't want to lose her but didn't care how much he was hurting her either.
Did he realize that she was more hurt than how she seemed? No.
How could he not? He had sex with Tess and had a baby with another woman? How could he not think that this didn't bother her? Is Max a vegetable? Is he stupid? I think your not giving him enough credit of course Max KNEW he had to have known. He knew how he felt when she supposedly slept with Kyle how could this not be worse? :roll: Of course Max knew. He just didn't want to deal with it...He didn't care. All he wanted to do was be with Liz, even if by her own admission he was hurting her and he was incredibly insensitive about the whole Tess/baby thing whenever it came up.
My point is that being monogamous alone isn't a proof of true love.
I guess I don't see why else you would be monogamous. I mean you have to at least respect the person you are being monogamous to otherwise there is no purpose. I am not talking about just staying together "for the kids" or something like that. I feel there must be some love there between the two otherwise it doesn't make much sense to me.
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Re: Tess: Evil or Misguided?

Post by Cocogurl »

Coccy wrote:My point is: just because he believed in her and trusted her it doesn't mean that he could blindly believe in everything she said just because *she* said it.This would cheapen the times where he sided with her making it seems that he's more an a$$ kisser than someone who knows her and trusts her because he really believes that she's right. That would mean that he sides with her just because he's biased about her. Like those brainless fanatics that are obsessed about some people from a sect and believe that they're always right no matter if they have some evidence of it or not.
Just because he was a careful and rational person and he didn't want to jump to conclusions especially if that would mean putting them/her in danger it doesn't mean that he didn't trust her. In all the examples you wrote he eventually agreed with her. Sometimes it wasn't that he didn't agree with her but it's obvious that he didn't want her to be in danger.
Max and Liz were control freaks, above all. They tended to make decisions for the other one thinking that they were doing the right thing and protecting them. For Liz it was the same, it's not that she blindly followed Max every time he said something just because *he* said that. That was Tess M&L weren't ass kissers. When they believed in each other a part of the reason surely was that they were biased a bit but they didn't blindly follow each other like crazy fanatics. Liz had her moments too where she disagreed with him. Because she has her own brain. It's only natural.



I don't think that Liz was a doormat in the third season just because she stood by her man when he had a problem and she wanted to help him.
I also think that Liz herself knew that if she and Max ended up in that situation it was for her fault too
so in a way she was taking the responsibility of her actions
She was also able to see the priorities and it's very mature for me. Was she putting away some of her feelings? Of course she was. Yet when she had a problem with Max's actions (see control and samuel rising) she voiced it. So it's not that she blindly followed him. She is not stupid. She understood him.
This is one area where we'll have to disagree. Because I feel like Liz has blindly followed Max throughout most of the series, doing anything he asked just because it was what he needed. And I don't think that's kissing ass. It's just that she made him such a priority in her life, that what ever he needed, she'd try and help him. So I feel like Max owed her. And in all of the examples that I wrote, yes, Max did eventually agree with her, but it was always when HE decided to. Yet, Max would ask Liz to lie to Alex, she'd do it. Break into Kyle's house to get the diary? She'd do it.

Also I think that if EOTW plays a factor in why Max didn't believe her about Alex, than that would indicate that he lost complete faith in Liz and would make me even more angry with Max in those episodes, because that would mean that, deep down, he is petty and selfish. And I don't like to think that Max is like that. :(

And Liz didn't just put away some of her feelings. She put away ALL of her feelings pretty much in season three. In Control and Samuel Rising, she may have stated some of her feelings, but these were also episodes where Max was focused on his son, so she never could really lay down all of the things that were bothering her and demand that he treat her better. Because how can you do that when he's trying to save his son? That's where I think her mindset was whenever he took her for granted.

But we could all debate this until we're a bunch of old people, and it still won't change our opinions probably. :lol: So, I'm fine with agreeing to disagree. And wasn't this supposed to be about Tess and her evil ways?
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Re: Tess: Evil or Misguided?

Post by Rowedog »

Cocogurl wrote:But we could all debate this until we're a bunch of old people, and it still won't change our opinions probably. :lol: So, I'm fine with agreeing to disagree. And wasn't this supposed to be about Tess and her evil ways?
Yes, thank you Cocogurl. Please stay on topic in this thread. If you'd like to continue the debate you can do so through PM's or there's probably another thread for the topic you're discussing. Let's keep this thread for what it was originally intended and try to remember that everyone had a different and personal response to watching the show and we all interpret things differently :D
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Re: Tess: Evil or Misguided?

Post by Coccy »

Sin wrote: I guess this is where I disagree.
if you don't find it believable that Max could feel still hurt by Liz and that what she did had many repercussions especially in the end it's pointless to discuss this point.
Still, following your logic Liz, in the third season, she didn't have a reason to feel still hurt just because things between them were ok again
I guess I see them as similar thing.
but it isn't. They're two completely different storylines

I mean Max was willing to be tortured for the rest of his days to protect the other aliens (Michael, Tess, Isabel, Nascedo, etc.).
He wasn't willing to be tortured. They captured him. It's not that he told them : here i'm torture me :lol:
he had no choice, even if he wanted to sacrifice himself it would be pointless because they wanted to analyze him.
They would have killed him anyway.
It's not that Max sacrificed himself in order to save them so he delivered himself to Pierce.
Actually, like i previously said, he got captured because he fell into a trap and he fell in that trap because he was protecting Liz and he didn't care about himself even knowing that the FBI wanted him.
Still, even in that episode it was showed that Max really lost it only when Pierce made him watch that pic of dead Liz. Only in that moment he was willing to do anything so Pierce wouldn't hurt her. He even said it.
Pierce didn't made a photo-manipulation using his friends. He used Liz, he specifically threatened her. Why? the answer is obvious to me. :roll:
He was willing to put himself in danger countless times with for the good of the group, he always protected people. I see them as similar things, here.
again protect the others and being a leader is a thing
killing himself for Liz is another.

Above all, when Liz was in danger Max reacted differently. He was irrational and he didn't think that his actions could put Michael and Isabel in danger. See when in ch-changes he told Michael that he would have contacted even the FBI if that meant saving Liz.
This was something Max did all the time for the group
but he never killed himself for the others and again he actually chose Liz over the others' safety, sometimes.
I am not saying Max never did amazing things for Liz. I think the fact that he exposed himself to protect her is a huge thing. I don't feel like that's what I am discussing.
you keep saying "expose himself" when what chant down babylon showed is way more than this.
the episode showed that a person (Max) died and his soul didn't "die" because he didn't want to leave the one he loved (Liz) and for this person he killed himself to save her.

I always saw it as Liz loved him enough to bring him back.
of course for you Liz has all the merits :lol:
i always saw it as their love bringing him back :roll:
even before that scene his soul already survived for her, this showed that he loved her so much that even after his death loving her gave him the strength to stay here.
LOL. Of course not death is usually a one-shot thing.
for Max it isn't since he died twice :lol:

if the writers had really wanted to imply that Max would have done the same for everyone they wouldn't even need to kill him. Just show that he was willing to do that like they did, before that scene, when it was about Liz.
I mean he ends up healing Clayton because his friends are threatened.
he didn't know that he could have died. He only tried to heal him.
when he shared the body with Clayton he made the decision to kill himself. He even asked Liz to do it in one of the moments when he got the control.
when he wanted to contact the FBI in order to help Liz he knew that the FBI could have killed him or torture him without giving him any help. He wasn't so irrational even when he needed to save his son.
When in Max to the Max he chose to follow Liz and protect her Nacedo told him that he was in danger, Max knew that the FBI could have captured him but he didn't care.
when he proposed to her he knew that if he didn't escape from roswell alone like they had previously decided he could have lived only for 12 days but he was willing to do that if it meant being with Liz.


My point still stands. Just because he killed himself for Liz it doesn't mean that he would do it for everyone just because he's the leader. Frankly it's ridiculous. It's an assumption that doesn't find something concrete in the canon. Again no offense but you're minimizing it using a lame pretext and making comparisons between things that aren't comparable by any standard. The example about the white room (and i even suggested you a better example) that you keep using is not only completely different but even that example itself proved that Liz is different for him because he got captured while he was protecting *her* and it was Pierce threatening *her* that made him so desperate and willing to do anything, even giving answers that he didn't have, to protect her.

Honestly I think that you minimize what Max did mainly because you know that what he did in that moment (CDB) basically goes against the opinion you have about him (because of what happened with Tess). Because killing himself for her should be considered a bit more symbolic of his love for her, more than anything else because nothing can be so extreme.
Since you want to overrate one thing (him sleeping with Tess) you devalue another (him killing himself for Liz)
So you minimize it like you minimize Max's feelings in the second season and the context where his mistake happened.
I would appreciate it more if you simply and honestly said that by that point of the series you didn't care about his love for her anymore and he could have done anything for her even killing himself but nothing could change your mind. The third season doesn't exist. I wouldn't lose my time talking about this point then. It would make more sense since for you he ruined everything in the second season. :roll:


You also don't realize that If you use the same logic for Liz too then she basically did nothing special for Max either because Liz was protective and self-sacrificing with her friends too so what? She would kill herself for all them? She would give up about her dreams for them all?
In order to say that Max would have done it for everyone you need something more concrete than the examples when he simply exposed himself for the others or helped them.
You make it seems that i'm giving this merit to the dreamer relationship only when he killed himself or almost did it for everyone but it's not true. :lol: He both implied that he could do that and he really did that only for Liz. It's canon :lol:
this is how the story is developed. If the writers had wanted to imply what you said they would have done it.
Plus she was the only thing that kept him alive when he died, the only one able to save him. and it's not just because she loved him like you said :roll: it's because she was what kept his soul alive, in the first place.
Again the episode didn't show you that Max's soul survived for Michael, Isabel and the others. He did only for Liz. All the flashes were only about her. If the writers wanted to imply that Max could do that for everyone they would have done it by showing memories of them too, for example, and by proving that what kept him alive was Liz and his family. Instead it was only Liz. Even in the white room it was her. It's not that he didn't care about the others but the episode showed that some people can do anything, even something so extreme, for the love of their life.
He didn't kill himself because Clayton wanted to hurt Michael or Isabel. He did that because the old man wanted to hurt Liz- Why? Because Max survived for her. Clayton knew that by getting rid of her he would've removed what made Max stronger, the reason of why a part of him was still alive. Of course Clayton didn't realize that by threatening Liz he condemned himself because Max tried to kill the body (so both of them) and he ultimately succeed. When the body died Clayton died for good while Max came back. I think that the reason is that Max had something to hold onto, he was loved and he loved her and didn't want to leave her. Clayton didn't have love, he had nothing that could keep him alive so died.

a similar thing happened even in the books by Melinda Metz too.
Even in those at one point Max was essentially dead but their love saved him.
in the books the storyline about Tess is basically reversed minus the sex part

If this is the case he simply could have said that he cared about her. Instead he used the word love which has a much stronger connotation in describing his feelings toward Tess and it's so obvious that his relationship with Tess was much different then his family ones toward Michael and Isabel. Do I believe that Max was in love with Tess? Perhaps not. But I do believe that he did love her in a romantic way. I guess in a way Max proved that you can love two people at the same time.
Liz didn't ask him if he cared about her. She asked him if he loved her. and he honestly answered but at the same time he told her that he loved her, Liz, even if that wasn't what Liz asked. He clearly said NOT LIKE

of course people can interpret it differently according to what they want to believe and what's their opinion about that situation but i think that the interpretation that most of the people do is correct because it's supported&confirmed by other phrases in the same episode, what he later said and by the fact itself that even Tess admitted that he loved Liz and saw her in his mind everytime they were together.

Tess may be crazy but i think that if he had really loved her she wouldn't have betrayed him like that even if that was her plan.
Instead she preferred to see him dead instead of being with him while he was still pining for Liz and would've never loved her like he loved Liz.
I guess this is the distinction, he never directly says how he feels about Tess prior to the reveal that she killed Alex and was about to kill them so we don't know how he feels about her.


so basically for you just because he didn't say it it automatically means that he loved her? It doesn't make sense to me :lol: using this logic everyone loved everyone and Liz loved Sean.
The fact itself that he never said it should be a clue that it wasn't how he felt toward her. otherwise he would have said it. It's not that with Liz he had a problem with the "i love you".
also it's not true that he never said how he felt toward Tess. It's not true that we don't know how he felt about her because he not only said it but even Tess herself knew it and admitted it. She knew that he only cared about her but he loved Liz

you said: "Then why use the term love at all? He could of simply just said no."

well he could have just said "yes" too.
He didn't need to tell Liz that he loved *her* since that wasn't what Liz was asking.

It makes sense that after that reveal Max would deny or downgrade his feelings for her now that he knows her true intentions. All that we know is that during this time period Max used the term love to describe how he felt about Tess.
yes but before that moment it's not that he told Tess that he loved her
The "not like i love you" scene with Liz happened before it was revelated that Tess was a betrayer.
what Tess said about him loving Liz and never feeling the same for her was referring to the time before that
what Tess said about him thinking about Liz when he was with her was referring to the time before the "evil tess" revelation
of course after he saw her real colors even his care for her was killed.
But i also think that it could be destroyed so easily because it wasn't a very strong feeling, in the first place.
If the feeling was strong he wouldn't believe so easily that she was a traitor and he wouldn't have tried to kill her...twice. Mainly because i feel that when you really love someone you know him/her. Otherwise what you love? Unless like Max you only care about a person because it seems that person cares about you.
Liz betrayed him too yet for Tess own admission he never stopped to love her. It took Max a year and the worst moment of his life to eventually give up about his relationship with Liz while it took Max some minutes to get rid of Tess and stop to care about her and her safety.

And he didn't have the same relationship with Isabel and Michael as he had with Tess so I don't think that comparison really holds up that well.
i only made that example (his i love you to Michael, Isabel and his mother) in order to say that the phrase can be used for other kinds of love too not only the one he felt for Liz. (at least in English.) Because he cared about other people too. Still he didn't even say that kind of "i love you" to Tess and i believe that even the care/love he felt for his family was stronger than what he felt for Tess. (not just because he said that but because he showed it)
I also made the example to show that he had no problem saying it to the ones that he really loves.

I believe that Tess was more then just a rebound.
yeah, he always went to her only when things between him and Liz were bad and he ultimately gave a chance to her only because he believed that Liz didn't love him and he was angry with her
it's not a rebound (put sarcasm here) no no
I guess this is where the catch 22 comes in. She couldn't tell him and he couldn't know.
this doesn't change my point.
Lets say that even if he really couldn't know then they had no hopes to be what they were before that because you can't create a relationship with such a lie between them. It goes against their kind of relationship. They're the ones who saw in each other souls and knew each other like no one. How you could have that back if she was keeping such a huge secret from him?
Otherwise the world would have ended. Future Max was adamant that he not know and Liz didn't want to change the future for the worst.
The future had already changed when FMax vanished and that tragic timeline didn't exist anymore. The plan had already worked. Beside, at one point it seemed that Tess saw Kyle as a possible romantic interest. One way or another Liz succeed because Tess stayed.
Liz didn't need to still lie to Max. Especially when Alex died and it was obvious that the future had changed for the worse.
That storyline is dumb and it's one of the most stupid and forced things ever written on tv.
It also made Liz OOC for me. It's not believable to me that she didn't tell Max the truth even after Alex died.
but it's canon.
also, she did tell him the truth eventually (Ronald Moore also said that Liz told him about Fmax in the summer before busted. Apparently we couldn't even get the real scene :roll: the resolution of one of the most important things of the season is only implied. ). So she could do it very well.
She just chose to do it when it was too late.
I don't blame either of them in this case. Max couldn't know and Liz couldn't tell him. But I still don't think that this changed their relationship that much, again they were very close friends event after TEOTW, and it seems that you are implying that their relationship was this hardship when I don't think it was. At least not until Alex's death. Like I said before there are too many scenes showing differently.
what i'm saying is that with all your talk about how their relationship was special before Max slept with Tess i don't understand how you can feel that they were still the same before that when one of the foundations of their relationship (honesty) wasn't there anymore.
The point is that Max damaged something that was already damaged by Liz. Their relationship already wasn't the same anymore and couldn't be without her telling him the truth.
This have nothing to do with Tess. Even If Tess didn't exist you still wouldn't have their relationship back to how they originally were. Unless Liz finally told him the truth and they could make the decision together.



This is true. But my point still remains I feel. They were still close, they were still Max and Liz they simply weren't together romantically.
and they could never be, at least not like they were in the first season where you liked them so much
because Max didn't even know that she actually still loved him and wanted to be with him
him not knowing the truth would taint their relationship forever because he always be insecure about the things that she had told him in TEOTW, he would always believe that deep down she still saw him as someone dangerous and a part of her wanted to be free and fall in love with a normal guy.
I can't see Max as someone who wants to be with her even knowing that she won't be completely happy with him.
He still had hopes for them (up to heart of mine) but he didn't want to force her into a relationship with him so he respected her decision.
Liz told him those things because she knew that only by making him believe that he would finally give up about her feeling that it was the best for her.

If we are talking about strictly my view on it then I think that their relationship was ruined because Max was ruined. Because Max would never have done it, but the writers forced him into a situation where he did sleep with Tess when under the circumstances on the show he never would have slept with her. That's what it comes down to Max would never have slept with her. The fact that they twisted his character into doing that destroyed Max and it destroyed him so fully that he was never really Max after that. I think that's the best way I could put it. Tess destroyed him and he was never the same after that because they had Max do something he never would have done and it broke who he was as a character and no one could heal that after wards.
you don't realize it but the same can be said about Liz.
TEOTW was forced too. It made her OOC too. when Alex died she was ooc too. I can't see Liz lying to him all the year and even pretending at one point that the lie didn't exist. She didn't even realize that from his POV her phrases were hurting him badly.
that storyline was forced beyond limits. Its only purpose was to break up M&L for a year and give a chance to Tess who eventually was evil and needed to get pregnant from Max. So they could get their alien soap opera.
In fact the writers didn't even feel the need to show us the scene when Liz finally told him the whole truth. It's only implied.
This speaks volumes about its REAL purpose, and it had nothing to do with the end of the world.

again, if their relationship was ruined it happened way before too late too bad.
because, again, without him knowing the truth you could never get their relationship back to its origins.


I am approaching the situation from all sides and I feel all sides kind of end up having the same conclusion.
how they can have the same conclusion if one contradicts the other?
I already explained why

not to mention that your logics are definitely double standard.
I don't have a problem with people having a different opinion if they apply their opinion to all the characters.
but i feel that for you some logics are valid only for Max while other people, in the same situations, are or could be justified.

The character of Max died that night.
I don't think so.
Maybe what was destroyed is the unreasonable and unrealistic logic of the ones who saw Max as the dream guy always perfect who could never do something wrong and they took for granted that he could be always perfect no matter what was done to him. With an opinion like this one it's easy to get disappointed.
Sooner or later it was inevitable that he would have done a mistake because perfection doesn't exist even for Max. People make mistakes and they learn from them.
You said that the ones that don't share your opinion are cynical because new tv-shows sucks so they're used to watch worse things. In a way it's true (and it's a compliment to roswell. Because people criticize it yet they love things that are way worse. Compared to most of the shows, novels, movies and real life roswell is a fairytale!) but i don't think that it's a matter of being cynical. It's more a matter of being realist
and perfection isn't real. You will never find that even in fiction. Unless you have mary-sue characters, that are hated by most of the people anyway and no wonder why lol
I could never relate to a perfect character. This doesn't mean that we have to love the super imperfect ones and bad people are the best of the world :lol: (like some people make it seems. some people make it seems that just because you're good you're boring. This is wrong too)
Even Liz was far from being perfect. You can change the mistakes and the modalities but the result is always the same: no one is perfect.
That storyline sucks but it isn't such a "tragedy". It's not that the writers made him cheat on Liz while he was with her. That would really be OOC and against their build up
They created a situation where it was way too understandable for me why Max did what he did. Still in the end they were able to eventually find their way back to each other because their love was stronger.
Sometimes i get the impression that you even hate this (that they were able to still love each other)

I mean I think it makes so much sense why Katims completely ignored that part of the story and only chose to write about his son. Because he knew that he couldn't write a scene in which this was believably played - he couldn't really give the audience a reason as to why this happened - which is why he never really explains it. I mean the fact that he had every one go into denial and pretty much refused to talk about Tess at all shows that, doesn't it?
what are you talking about? he explained it and it was already obvious that she was a rebound. What you needed more.
maybe it wasn't clear for you but it's not true that what happened was such a "mystery". I don't think so.
again even Tess herself admitted that he loved Liz and he was pining for Liz while he was with her.
even some of the people who don't like M&L understood that storyline.
Beside it was obvious that Max regretted what had happened with Tess and he was trying his best when she got pregnant.

There were plenty of people that he could have gone to, to talk about things with.
like? an imaginary friend?
i already excluded Michael, Maria, Isabel and Liz (especially Liz)
who remains? Kyle?

and again it's not that he went to Tess on his own accord.
Max's choice was to be alone and deal with his feelings alone like he always did. She was the one who was stalking him
It's not as if he had to spill his guts to Tess. I guess I don't really get this. I mean it's fine if you think he wanted to talk to Tess and believe that he had the right to but just admit that it was Max's choice to do so and that he wanted to talk to Tess. Again no one forced him to do otherwise.
i don't get why for you it was ok for Liz to talk about her problems with Sean and even use him as a rebound and go to him on her own accord many times (see heart of mine and in departure and when she was investigating about Alex) WHILE Max couldn't even REPLY, reply, to Tess when SHE went to him and offered her (fake) support.
This is hypocritical.
and no you can't justify Liz saying that Sean was "nothing" :roll: Unless Liz is crazy.
Because if Sean was really nothing and she really felt absolutely nothing for him, even friendship, then she wouldn't go to him, she wouldn't kiss him. Sean was a temptation like Tess. Look at the scene when Liz and Maria talked about the kiss. (that is a bit similar to the scene when they talked about Billy kissing Maria.)

don't make it seems that Liz is a saint when, according to your own rules, she isn't.

Of course she did. That's who Liz is. Liz often always provided her help to the group. She did EVERYTHING for Max.
and so?
you said it
It's not as if Max couldn't have told her no
he did but she insisted.
he couldn't "rule" her, no?
(he did as much in Control).
and this shows that he cared about her safety and he wasn't willing to put her in danger like you're saying
He knew the situation was dangerous but he didn't care. All he cared about was finding his son
that's not true. and the scenes that i posted prove it.
if he didn't care then he would have accepted her help without telling her that she didn't have to do it.
It's not that he asked for her help
it's not that he didn't show that he felt responsible for her although Liz made it perfectly clear that they were in that together.

I don't understand why Max could put himself in danger for her and this is considered always romantic while Liz couldn't do the same without people saying that it's not fair.. without people blaming Max for her own decisions

She had her own brain and she was perfectly able to make her choices.
It seems to me that Max was hated in too late too bad because he wanted to "rule" her. Yet you wanted him to do the same in busted and make the decision for both of them.

If Liz wanted to do something she would do it with or without Max's permission and she proved it in the series.

. Liz very easily could have been shot (again)
she was the one holding a gun.
suicide?
trying to find that stupid spaceship and it was out of character (again!) for Max to use Liz in the way he did in Busted.
he didn't use her. She was willing to help him
They're a couple. They always did things together. Nothing new here.

I have numerous problems with the baby storyline above all is that it was more or less just Tess ripping them apart (again) and just showing that Max wasn't really Liz's.
being jealous of a baby isn't something that i can agree with.

"Max wasn't really Liz's" what the heck it means? He's not an object that Liz possessed.

with all the talk about the things that the writers pretended that didn't exist you basically wanted Max to pretend that his son didn't exist.
How it can be reasonable? the baby was in danger and he felt like s*it because he couldn't help him yet everything you care about is Liz. Liz. Liz.
Liz who shared with him a part of the blame because they ended up in that situation for her fault too and she knew it.

He didn't care.
again this doesn't fit with the canon.
it's not true that he didn't care otherwise your wouldn't have the scenes i talked about in my previous post.

again your logic is a bit double standard about this point too
you're the same person that basically minimized Max's feelings in the second season and didn't find it believable that he could be angry with Liz in the end... just because he was friends with Liz and things between them were nice
in the third season things between M&L were beyond nice, they were a couple again and Liz even wanted to help him yet this didn't mean that she wasn't still hurt and needed to talk about it.
Using your own logic one could say that Liz didn't care about Max's feeling in the second season.
if you remove "the end of the world" it's the same thing.


I guess I don't see why else you would be monogamous. I mean you have to at least respect the person you are being monogamous to otherwise there is no purpose. I am not talking about just staying together "for the kids" or something like that. I feel there must be some love there between the two otherwise it doesn't make much sense to me.
are we still talking about Max and Liz? :lol: i've lost you here.

cocogurl wrote:But we could all debate this until we're a bunch of old people, and it still won't change our opinions probably. :lol: So, I'm fine with agreeing to disagree. And wasn't this supposed to be about Tess and her evil ways?
you made a point
it's the reason of why i avoided this discussion at the beginning. It's just pointless and we always repeat the same things over and over and over and over (and i admit that i have this flaw too. Sometimes i should just give up instead i lose my time)

about the third season i feel that it was balanced between the beginning where Liz was the one being there for him when he needed her and the ending where Max was the one being there for her when she needed him. Just saying.


eta: i've read the reply by Rowerdog
for me we can end this discussion and you can all avoid my reply.


ps: sorry for the spelling errors.
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