S1 E7 Something Broke in this Town Once

[David]

Something Broke in This Town Once

The story starts back in 1947, Lieutenant Colonel Harlem Manes (presumably
Alex’s grandfather), is overseeing an alien autopsy. confirming that our
trio were not the only ones who fell to Earth that night — and they find a
familiar three-point symbol that means nothing to them, but is familiar to
us from the show’s opening titles.

Back in 2018, Liz is reminded by Alex that she’s been a pretty bad friend to
Maria. As it turns out, Maria has been going through a lot: her mom, Mimi,
has started to lose her mind, rambling about an imminent alien threat and
ships glowing in the night.

“I wanted to be the fun friend. I thought I could do that for a while,”
Maria says as an explanation for keeping it to herself for so long. Maria
explains that there’s no diagnosis yet, but it’s not dementia, a toxin, or a
tumor.

Mimi keeps mistaking Liz for Rosa, which is painful, but Liz goes along
with it. “I’ve been clean for ten years,” she says as Rosa, giving her
sister back the future she never got to have.

Mimi tells Alex (her son and Maria's brother) that his aura looks the same
as his father’s. She says that the energy around their family became dark
the day he (the father) “learned too much,” and she seems to know that Alex
is holding onto the alien shrapnel from Valenti’s cabin

Mimi also recalls that “everything changed when Isobel told Rosa her
secret,” and refers to Isobel as the blonde who was “hunting” Rosa.

Isobel gradually comes to the same conclusion she reached last week: that
she’s a threat and needs to be neutralized. Michael and Max can’t bring
themselves to do it, but Isobel points out that it’s not up to them, and
that they’ve proven themselves to be extremely bad at making decisions for
her.

So Isobel checks herself into the hospital under a temporary psychiatric
hold, and seems at peace for the first time in a while, reassured by the
fact that she’ll be locked in “in case I go all Dark Willow.” (A 'Buffy
reference')

Maria finally makes the awful decision she’s been putting off and checks her
mom into an assisted living facility.

Wyatt Long claims to have no memory of trying to kill Liz or shooting Max.
Max isn’t buying it, but when Long draws a doodle of that mysterious
three-point symbol without realizing it, Cam (the deputy Max has been
sleeping with) recognizes it from a tattoo on Max’s shoulder.

Liz is busy trying to develop a serum that will harm aliens, or at the very
least dampen their superpowers, knowing what Isobel is now capable of.

She has a change of heart by the end of the episode. Doing harm is the
opposite of why she became a scientist. But Max encourages her to keep
working on her serum. He’ll never stop protecting Isobel and Michael, but
at the same time, he wants Liz to protect herself.

The situation with Rosa and Isobel is kind of confusing, but I think this is
what Liz thinks may have happened: Isobel confided in Rosa that she’s an
alien, Rosa freaked out and was thinking about telling her father, Arturo.
So Isobel (or whatever was possessing her) killed Rosa to keep her quiet.

Or maybe Isobel told Rosa about the desert drifter who attacked her and was
killed by Max and how he did it.

Arturo’s undocumented status comes up twice in this episode, as the reason
Liz won’t go to the cops or government about Isobel.

Is Wyatt Long an alien? He’s having blackouts just like Isobel’s, he looks
kind of like Max, and what if all his hatefulness is coming out of his own
fear about being uncovered? Not all aliens are good I suppose.

If Mimi is referring to the 1947 crash when she says, “Something broke in
this town once, and the pieces shattered”, is she she saying that the energy
from Max, Michael, and Isobel’s world is dark?

David