Re: Were Max and Liz really good for each other?
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 8:38 pm
Well, Coccy, you really stated pretty plainly a lot of the reasons that I don’t ship Polar. I don’t know if I necessarily would have phrased it like you did, but that is neither here nor there. Especially since I think that bordering on bashing when it comes to UC couples is pretty much to be expected in the Dreamer forum – much like in the UC forums you won’t see Rebels singing Liz’s praises.
Now, in the interests of being situated firmly on middle ground, let’s run through a list of every unaddressed trauma that Liz or Max ever went through:
Liz:
* almost died; or if her journal is to be believed, did die and was brought back to life. Which brings with it a whole other can of worms that was never once addressed.
* found out that her longtime crush was an alien.
* had one best friend threaten to turn said alien into the sheriff if Liz didn’t tell her what was going on; Liz’s other best friend later threatened and actually attempted to follow through with cutting her off completely if she wouldn’t tell him a secret that she’d said repeatedly wasn’t hers to tell. We never see either of them apologize for this.
* her grandmother, who we are lead to believe Liz is possibly closer to than either of her parents, dies – and Liz is actually in the room when it happens. By the next episode everyone has forgotten about this.
* her last safe haven, her diary, is compromised when someone who she’s done nothing but cover for and protect steals it and reads it. And apart from a bonding moment between Michael and Liz and a small voice-over at the end of the episode, we never see anything significant happen with that. Was Liz angry? Did she feel like her privacy had been violated? Did she have to seriously consider whether or not to continue keeping her journal after all of the questions about the FBI or someone else finding it were brought up? The most answer we get to that is a loose brick in the wall.
* She sees how precarious Max’s safety is not once but twice: both when he swerves to avoid the horse and blacks out and then when Michael gets sick in The Balance. And in The Balance, her concern and worry is in a sense used against her
by Max as a reason why they don’t belong together.
* Liz gets repeatedly shot down by Max.
* Michael and Isabel frequently make derisive comments not only to Alex and Maria but to her; and often, she is the target of their resentment not only because she is ‘taking’ Max from them but because it was her life in the balance that caused Max to let their secret out. Just think about the subliminal message that’s sending to her: “Your life is the reason for all of our problems. We’d probably prefer it if you were dead, and as it is we’ll never forgive Max for saving you.”
* starts getting flashes from Max; and oh, wait, suddenly Michael and Isabel, who have been out for her head since the start, are encouraging Max to sleep with her for information. And these flashes aren’t flashes of Max’s life; they’re about alien artifacts and the army and all manner of stars and planets. During all of this, when she finally is together with Max, Maria starts freaking out and basically says, “It’s okay for me, but not for you.”
* Topolski, someone who is obviously on the wrong side of sane, tricks her into a meeting and then fills her head with the very real threat she and all of her friends face.
* After finally getting together with Max, suddenly he is lusting after another girl – and Liz is an incredibly good sport about the whole thing. Then Max comes to declare his undying love for her, and five minutes later, in front of her family’s friggin’ diner, he’s making out with another girl. Then when he tries to apologize/excuse himself, he brings up flashes, which has previously been *their* thing, and basically makes her feel like shit. She still trusts him, goes into Tess’s home and gets into a pretty bad and dangerous situation, and only gets out by the skin of her teeth when Max comes to rescue her.
* and this, maybe the crowning moment in the history of all the overlooked crap that Liz went through: she is abducted by someone who looks exactly like her boyfriend, initiates a make-out session with him, and is bombarded with flashes of dead bodies and overall creepiness. Then she watches him dump a dead body, blow up a gas station, and all the while lead her right to the Special Unit while intimating that she is ‘bait’ for them to study and experiment on. She also has to hear him making sexual innuendos about her.
* her boyfriend is captured by monsters while saving her. She then proceeds to be told very nicely by the girl who had been manipulating his mind and forced him to kiss her that any attempts on her, Maria, or Alex’s part to help save Max will only strengthen the chance of a rescue mission failing.
* when she finally is reunited with Max, she has to drive a vehicle that is shot at, jump off a bridge, and then, probably suffering from mild to moderate hypothermia herself, basically drag him to an abandoned van. And after all of this does she get a reunion kiss with her boyfriend? Nope! She gets to see exactly what those monsters put him through because he cared more about saving her than his own safety.
* on top of all of this, she gets to watch Max get pretty scary and, to some extremely small degree, switch places with Pierce. Then she gets to watch Michael, who by that time she considers a friend, kill the monster who tortured her boyfriend.
* after making the choice to stick it all out after this and to be strong for Max, he makes the decision that instead of going home, even for a day to get well rested, he has to know what his “destiny” is and open the orbs. She follows him, and hears all about his great love – the girl who he’s been “drawn” to, ‘cheated’ on her with, and who helped rescue him. As if that’s not enough to make a girl feel terrible, she then finds out that he is the leader of an entire world and that enemies are coming in short order to blow up the podsters and anyone who gets in their way. Then Max, who has just finished telling her that she is his destiny, turns to Michael, Isabel, and Tess, and says, “It’s the four of us from now on.” So whether in the end it’s because she can’t deal with the King thing, can’t deal with the Reincarnated Bride thing, feels like she has proven and will continue to be a huge liability to Max, or she’s just so freakin’ screwed up she can’t even think straight, she runs away. And (from her perspective) no one even tries to follow her.
Max:
* he watched the girl that he loved get shot. Then he put not only his own life but the lives of the two people most important to him on the line to save her. After he told her he was an alien, she walked away.
* he gets basically strung up by his toes by Michael and Isabel for healing Liz. Then, Liz gives him his first clue about any possible relatives – that one of his elders is apparently a murderer. Then he gets manhandled and threatened by the sheriff.
* he’s consistently put in the middle of Michael and Isabel’s problems not only with each other but with Maria, Alex, and Liz. Through all of this, he’s basically damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t as far as everyone but Liz is concerned.
* he has to trust that Maria won’t tell his secret solely on Liz’s assurance.
* he has to look Liz in the face as she’s crying and tell her that he can’t save her grandmother’s life.
* Oh! And let’s not forget what else happens to Max this episode – he gets the crap kicked out of him by Kyle’s cronies, and then Kyle ever-so-politely tells him that he doesn’t like him talking to Liz – as if Kyle is Liz’s father to dictate who she does and doesn’t talk to.
* he repeatedly has to deal with questions, insecurities, and frustrating half-clues about his past and his origins.
* his brother almost dies and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it.
* he’s basically forced to deal with the fact that with or without his approval, with or without a romantic relationship between the two of them, Liz – the girl he is in love with – is going to continually put herself on the line for him and possibly wind up paying the ultimate price for it.
* every time he makes any sort of progress in his relationship with Liz, the alien side of him – which he is just barely starting to come to terms with – somehow manages to screw everything up.
* Michael and Isabel both repeatedly go against his wishes, Michael many times endangering all of them – and yet it’s Max who is always blamed for everything because he healed Liz; Max who is always blamed whenever his temperature gets the better of him.
* Tess comes in, invades his mind and does God only knows what to his personality, emotions, and body – and all the time that she’s doing it, he is under the impression that she’s a 50+ year-old alien doing this for some sinister purpose.
* he finds out that he was, in Michael’s words, engineered, and that if Tess and Nacedo, the authorities on everything alien, are to be believed then he has no choice in who he ends up with or what path his life takes.
* Liz is kidnapped by Nacedo – while he’s out trying to get clues from Tess about the baby that his brother and sister may or may not be having together.
* he spends twenty-four hours in a government facility being psychologically, emotionally, and physically tortured. He sees his girlfriend killed before his eyes. And then once he is rescued and it finally looks like things might be looking up, Destiny comes calling and he is left, after the worst experience of his life, without the only person who can marginally comprehend what he is going through. Who is he left with? Michael, who is completely screwed up over having killed for the first time and has decided that, aside from his relationship with Isabel, everything about their so-called mission must be followed to the tee; Tess, who is too busy trying to infiltrate the group and get into his pants to ask him anything about how he’s doing; and Isabel, who is as always sitting on the fence between him and Michael and just generally not really helping him at all.
And all of this is only the first season. I’m sure I’ve missed some stuff, too. But as you can see, it’s exhausting just thinking about what they went through – and for them, many of these events were condensed into twenty-four or forty-eight hour periods. So, suffice it to say, without brining in TEOTW and the way that Future Max manipulated Liz, or the way that Liz manipulated Max both post-EOTW and CYN and how messed up that event left both of them, there’s sufficient evidence that there were much bigger forces than just “My bf/gf is being crappy to me” affecting their moods and behaviors.
Now, in the interests of being situated firmly on middle ground, let’s run through a list of every unaddressed trauma that Liz or Max ever went through:
Liz:
* almost died; or if her journal is to be believed, did die and was brought back to life. Which brings with it a whole other can of worms that was never once addressed.
* found out that her longtime crush was an alien.
* had one best friend threaten to turn said alien into the sheriff if Liz didn’t tell her what was going on; Liz’s other best friend later threatened and actually attempted to follow through with cutting her off completely if she wouldn’t tell him a secret that she’d said repeatedly wasn’t hers to tell. We never see either of them apologize for this.
* her grandmother, who we are lead to believe Liz is possibly closer to than either of her parents, dies – and Liz is actually in the room when it happens. By the next episode everyone has forgotten about this.
* her last safe haven, her diary, is compromised when someone who she’s done nothing but cover for and protect steals it and reads it. And apart from a bonding moment between Michael and Liz and a small voice-over at the end of the episode, we never see anything significant happen with that. Was Liz angry? Did she feel like her privacy had been violated? Did she have to seriously consider whether or not to continue keeping her journal after all of the questions about the FBI or someone else finding it were brought up? The most answer we get to that is a loose brick in the wall.
* She sees how precarious Max’s safety is not once but twice: both when he swerves to avoid the horse and blacks out and then when Michael gets sick in The Balance. And in The Balance, her concern and worry is in a sense used against her
by Max as a reason why they don’t belong together.
* Liz gets repeatedly shot down by Max.
* Michael and Isabel frequently make derisive comments not only to Alex and Maria but to her; and often, she is the target of their resentment not only because she is ‘taking’ Max from them but because it was her life in the balance that caused Max to let their secret out. Just think about the subliminal message that’s sending to her: “Your life is the reason for all of our problems. We’d probably prefer it if you were dead, and as it is we’ll never forgive Max for saving you.”
* starts getting flashes from Max; and oh, wait, suddenly Michael and Isabel, who have been out for her head since the start, are encouraging Max to sleep with her for information. And these flashes aren’t flashes of Max’s life; they’re about alien artifacts and the army and all manner of stars and planets. During all of this, when she finally is together with Max, Maria starts freaking out and basically says, “It’s okay for me, but not for you.”
* Topolski, someone who is obviously on the wrong side of sane, tricks her into a meeting and then fills her head with the very real threat she and all of her friends face.
* After finally getting together with Max, suddenly he is lusting after another girl – and Liz is an incredibly good sport about the whole thing. Then Max comes to declare his undying love for her, and five minutes later, in front of her family’s friggin’ diner, he’s making out with another girl. Then when he tries to apologize/excuse himself, he brings up flashes, which has previously been *their* thing, and basically makes her feel like shit. She still trusts him, goes into Tess’s home and gets into a pretty bad and dangerous situation, and only gets out by the skin of her teeth when Max comes to rescue her.
* and this, maybe the crowning moment in the history of all the overlooked crap that Liz went through: she is abducted by someone who looks exactly like her boyfriend, initiates a make-out session with him, and is bombarded with flashes of dead bodies and overall creepiness. Then she watches him dump a dead body, blow up a gas station, and all the while lead her right to the Special Unit while intimating that she is ‘bait’ for them to study and experiment on. She also has to hear him making sexual innuendos about her.
* her boyfriend is captured by monsters while saving her. She then proceeds to be told very nicely by the girl who had been manipulating his mind and forced him to kiss her that any attempts on her, Maria, or Alex’s part to help save Max will only strengthen the chance of a rescue mission failing.
* when she finally is reunited with Max, she has to drive a vehicle that is shot at, jump off a bridge, and then, probably suffering from mild to moderate hypothermia herself, basically drag him to an abandoned van. And after all of this does she get a reunion kiss with her boyfriend? Nope! She gets to see exactly what those monsters put him through because he cared more about saving her than his own safety.
* on top of all of this, she gets to watch Max get pretty scary and, to some extremely small degree, switch places with Pierce. Then she gets to watch Michael, who by that time she considers a friend, kill the monster who tortured her boyfriend.
* after making the choice to stick it all out after this and to be strong for Max, he makes the decision that instead of going home, even for a day to get well rested, he has to know what his “destiny” is and open the orbs. She follows him, and hears all about his great love – the girl who he’s been “drawn” to, ‘cheated’ on her with, and who helped rescue him. As if that’s not enough to make a girl feel terrible, she then finds out that he is the leader of an entire world and that enemies are coming in short order to blow up the podsters and anyone who gets in their way. Then Max, who has just finished telling her that she is his destiny, turns to Michael, Isabel, and Tess, and says, “It’s the four of us from now on.” So whether in the end it’s because she can’t deal with the King thing, can’t deal with the Reincarnated Bride thing, feels like she has proven and will continue to be a huge liability to Max, or she’s just so freakin’ screwed up she can’t even think straight, she runs away. And (from her perspective) no one even tries to follow her.
Max:
* he watched the girl that he loved get shot. Then he put not only his own life but the lives of the two people most important to him on the line to save her. After he told her he was an alien, she walked away.
* he gets basically strung up by his toes by Michael and Isabel for healing Liz. Then, Liz gives him his first clue about any possible relatives – that one of his elders is apparently a murderer. Then he gets manhandled and threatened by the sheriff.
* he’s consistently put in the middle of Michael and Isabel’s problems not only with each other but with Maria, Alex, and Liz. Through all of this, he’s basically damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t as far as everyone but Liz is concerned.
* he has to trust that Maria won’t tell his secret solely on Liz’s assurance.
* he has to look Liz in the face as she’s crying and tell her that he can’t save her grandmother’s life.
* Oh! And let’s not forget what else happens to Max this episode – he gets the crap kicked out of him by Kyle’s cronies, and then Kyle ever-so-politely tells him that he doesn’t like him talking to Liz – as if Kyle is Liz’s father to dictate who she does and doesn’t talk to.
* he repeatedly has to deal with questions, insecurities, and frustrating half-clues about his past and his origins.
* his brother almost dies and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it.
* he’s basically forced to deal with the fact that with or without his approval, with or without a romantic relationship between the two of them, Liz – the girl he is in love with – is going to continually put herself on the line for him and possibly wind up paying the ultimate price for it.
* every time he makes any sort of progress in his relationship with Liz, the alien side of him – which he is just barely starting to come to terms with – somehow manages to screw everything up.
* Michael and Isabel both repeatedly go against his wishes, Michael many times endangering all of them – and yet it’s Max who is always blamed for everything because he healed Liz; Max who is always blamed whenever his temperature gets the better of him.
* Tess comes in, invades his mind and does God only knows what to his personality, emotions, and body – and all the time that she’s doing it, he is under the impression that she’s a 50+ year-old alien doing this for some sinister purpose.
* he finds out that he was, in Michael’s words, engineered, and that if Tess and Nacedo, the authorities on everything alien, are to be believed then he has no choice in who he ends up with or what path his life takes.
* Liz is kidnapped by Nacedo – while he’s out trying to get clues from Tess about the baby that his brother and sister may or may not be having together.
* he spends twenty-four hours in a government facility being psychologically, emotionally, and physically tortured. He sees his girlfriend killed before his eyes. And then once he is rescued and it finally looks like things might be looking up, Destiny comes calling and he is left, after the worst experience of his life, without the only person who can marginally comprehend what he is going through. Who is he left with? Michael, who is completely screwed up over having killed for the first time and has decided that, aside from his relationship with Isabel, everything about their so-called mission must be followed to the tee; Tess, who is too busy trying to infiltrate the group and get into his pants to ask him anything about how he’s doing; and Isabel, who is as always sitting on the fence between him and Michael and just generally not really helping him at all.
And all of this is only the first season. I’m sure I’ve missed some stuff, too. But as you can see, it’s exhausting just thinking about what they went through – and for them, many of these events were condensed into twenty-four or forty-eight hour periods. So, suffice it to say, without brining in TEOTW and the way that Future Max manipulated Liz, or the way that Liz manipulated Max both post-EOTW and CYN and how messed up that event left both of them, there’s sufficient evidence that there were much bigger forces than just “My bf/gf is being crappy to me” affecting their moods and behaviors.