Rowedog wrote:That is completely open to interpretation.
How so? Tess didn't like humans, that much is canon. She either felt that they were insignificant, didn't mean anything and we means to an end, she showed as much pretty much every chance she got. She didn't care about Alex's feelings, nor Kyle's we saw that in Departure. She didn't care at all about Liz being in danger with the FBI. She never showed concern over Maria, etc. She even wants to mind wrap the guard in VLV to get into a club, something which horrifies Liz. Tess came in pretty much isolating the entire group from herself from the beginning, and she never rectified the situation. She never tried to rebuild those bridges and she put forth no effort to even try to be friends with the humans in the group. This is one of the reasons why Tess never fit in with them, not because they isolated her but because her beliefs, her practices, hell her
attitude was not conducive to foster friendships with the group. She had biases, she was pretty much a bigot in that regard alone and that was very much her own fault. You can't be friends with someone who doesn't respect you or find you to at least in some semblance be an equal and she never wanted to be equal with Alex, Maria, Liz or even Kyle for that matter. So off of jump street Tess was at a disadvantage her not because the humans were unwilling to be her friend (I think the only one who was truly unwilling was Maria) but because she was never interested in having human friends.
So at this point I have to disagree. I know that redeeming Tess is another big thing with many as of late but I often think that there is a revision of who Tess actually was. She wasn't some shy ingenue that was being forcibly ousted from the group every chance they had. It's not as if the mean humans were horrible to her. Tess showed no desire to be apart of the human/alien relations group. And that was of her own desires here and that's not something that was retconned last minute the show never showed Tess having a genuine interest in the humans.
She always saw them as means to an end, we can see that from the way she treated Alex, Kyle, Amy Deluca, and others. Tess never tried to be nice to Maria, she hated Liz she never liked the humans to begin with. The only semblance of kindness she showed to the humans was with Kyle and even that was conditional, Tess only showed interest in Kyle when Max was willing to give her the time of day.
She never wanted to have relationships with humans. She saw them as less than we saw that from the beginning and the end and even various times in the middle. So that in effect created problems with her inclusion, when you go in hating a good half of the group then it's pretty pointless. Tess didn't want these bonds or interactions.
For all we know, she may have felt that she couldn't work her way into their tight knit group and had just given up trying.
This would imply that she at one point tried with all of them and that never seemed to be the case. When did she try to befriend Alex? Liz? Maria? Liz for the most part was actually pretty friendly to Tess all things considered yet again Tess wasn't interested in building that friendship. She was often rude and dismissive to both Alex and Maria and she pretty much just used Kyle for amusement and all of this is before the big reveal. It's one thing to say that Tess tried so hard to become apart of them (which I don't believe there is evidence of) and fault both sides. But Tess never even put in that effort from what I got.
As to her relationships with Michael and Isabel she ignored them pretty much through out season two. She only wanted to Max, so her lack of relationships within the group were her own doing. Even taking away her initial introduction to the group and the harm she caused with her mind warps.
I would also say that the group was weary of her due to the consequences of her own actions. You don't go about making friends with people when you hate one of the core people in the group (Liz), disrespect and insult two other people in the group and deride their place in it (Maria and Alex), and manipulate the other two people by playing with their minds literally, (Max and Isabel). Tess had a lot to make up for and she wasn't interested in fixing the bridges she herself burnt.
And thanks to sloppy writing on the writer's behalf, we'll never know.
Tess was always written like this. To state that this only happened half way through would be implying that episodes like TLAV, FS, and the like never happened.
She was always Max oriented about everything to the point where no one else mattered to her. This was nothing new. Tess didn't even love Max, even her was secondary to what she wanted which was her role as queen and her going home by any means necessary.
Like you said, friendship is a two way street and while they didn't show Tess making an effort, they also didn't show Michael or Isabel - or any of them for that matter - making any effort to welcome her into the group.
I disagree. the entire group accepted her as a part of their group even after the havoc she caused their group for Max and Liz and the hardship that she caused for Isabel and her blatant rudeness and disregard for the humans. Liz was often very nice to her, she was never rude even though she probably had ample reason to be. Kyle was often kind to her. Maria was the only one of them that out right hated her.
They accepted her and she was apart of them. It's not their fault if Tess thought that she was better than the humans and thus didn't want to have contact with them. You can't force people to be your friend, and it's not Michael and Isabel's fault that Tess only saw Max and didn't care about them.
Tess wasn't so isolated. She had plenty of time to make friends, she had plenty of time to reconcile with the others and set things straight if she really wanted to have these connections. The fact that she didn't just proved that she didn't care and that she only wanted what she wanted and that was her title and a trip home.
It's not like everyone in the group were just big bullies to her. The fact that Tess didn't have any friends in the group and didn't mesh were consequences of her own making due to her obsession about destiny and complete disregard of the people in their group and the disregard for their free will. To be completely honest who would want to be friends with a person like Tess? She completely took choices away from them and often forced them to do what she wanted, she was manipulative, hurtful and forceful at her best.
I don't think it's as black and white a situation as you make it out to be.
If the show had made any attempt to show Tess as a person who wanted the friendship of the humans and Isabel and Michael I would agree. But Tess wasn't even a friend to Max the object of her affection, most of the time. So that isn't going to fair well for the others who were less than dirt to her.
It's just to me it doesn't mattered that Max didn't love her, or that Isabel and Michael didn't form a special bond with Tess. Non of it even comes to close to comparing to the fact that Tess came into their lives with plan to deliver them to Kivar by any means necessary. 