‘Roswell, New Mexico’s Michael Vlamis on Michael & Alex’s Discoveries and Max’s Fate
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 2, Episode 4 of Roswell, New Mexico, “What If God Was One of Us?”]
Michael Guerin’s (Michael Vlamis) search for answers about his mother, Nora (Kayla Ewell), leads to quite a few answers in Monday’s episode of Roswell, New Mexico.
Not only does he now know that his mother did want him — and wanted to leave with him — but he also knows the identity of the man who was hunting her who was formerly only known as Tripp (Jason Behr). It turns out that he was a Manes man, Alex’s great-uncle to be specific. And Alex (Tyler Blackburn) also hands over the piece of the console he had.
Plus, “What if God Was One of Us?” ends with potentially good news regarding Max (Nathan Dean Parsons): his eyes opened in the pod. But what does that mean? Vlamis chatted with TV Insider about all that and more.
Tripp is Alex’s great uncle. Alex seems to be the one who struggles with that the most, with Michael saying it wasn’t him. Does that still affect their relationship — platonic or romantic — going forward?
Michael Vlamis: Something like that, big news, will always affect the relationship, but at the same time, Alex is a good person, and Michael Guerin believes that and knows that. He thinks he’s not like his dad [or] his other family members, and he’s really trying to help, and he does have that love for Guerin that Guerin hasn’t experienced from many people. No matter how mad you want to be at someone for what their family did, it wasn’t him who did it.
Yes, it’ll affect the relationship with the news that we know, but at the end of the day, I have belief in Alex as a human being, as a kind-hearted soul, as the guy who gave me his guitar because he saw that my hand was fixed. He’s looking out for my best interests, so I just want to be there for him during this time because what I’m going through is similar to what he’s going through with struggling with demons from his family members and where he comes from, and does he have this evil inside of him that it seems his other family members have?
I don’t want people to think that of me with what my family’s gone through and the lies that we’ve created, so there’s a little bit of forgiveness in that. If you take a step back, you really look at people are who they are in the moment and what they’re doing now, you can’t criticize someone for what someone else did that they had no control over. The two understand that, no matter how difficult that is, and that will help the come together even more.
Alex also gives Michael the piece of the console and admits he was worried he’d leave.
That pissed me off. He’s hiding a piece that I’ve been actively looking for, but how can you blame that on him when — at first, I blame him. I don’t like that. It really bothers me … and it surprises me, but after a little self-reflection, after that moment, I know that he loves me, whether it’s as a friend now or lover before. It’s hard to not be selfish in these situations, and Michael Guerin is an evolved enough person to realize that. Whether he punches people first and asks questions later, eventually he always comes around, because he has a good heart.
Michael finds out his mom was working on a plan to leave with him. How important is that for him considering his past and how does it change who he is going forward?
That’s everything because it shows that he was wanted and it gives him a little bit more belief in himself that he wasn’t just this runt of the litter that got cast aside. This season’s interesting because it’s Guerin who doesn’t believe in hope, but he continually is given hope and then it’s ripped away from him, so that’s one of those moments where he’s surprised and he feels loved for the first time in a while.
It gives him a chance to think that maybe he does belong, maybe there were people that wanted him out there and that might change his perspective on the world to show him that, that the people in town and Isobel and Max, even though he’s gone, those people really did have love for him, and sometimes it’s hard for him to accept that love. But he’s coming around to it.
At the end of the episode, Max’s eyes open, but the logline for the next episode teases, “the discovery of some complications with Max’s pod forces Liz, Michael, and Isobel to confront the possibility that they may not be able to save him.”
It’s a roller coaster ride. Like anything in life, when someone’s going through a traumatic event, there’s ups and downs, and we are given some hope in the next episode, but it’s immediately stripped from us, and the characters almost feel like they need to go back to the drawing board.
Because Max is really gone. I think a lot of people thought that because he’s a central character, and it’s a big show, that he would come back sooner than he has. But the way that we’re operating with the show is he’s not coming back, so we get a little bit of hope next episode, but you realize the complications of what we’re doing. The truth really sets in, after the next episode, which leads into a really crazy episode for Michael Guerin in Episode 5.
That is Michael Guerin’s episode and we get some cool flashbacks of seeing Michael and Max and Isobel’s relationship after they lied and the whole town got shook up with supposedly Rosa killing those girls in a drunk-driving accident. It’s really cool to see how they went from buddies in high school, when Guerin’s going off to college, and then when Guerin doesn’t go off to college, how does he treat Max and kind of blames Max for his current situation. We see a lot of that unfold in Episode 5, and I’m really proud of that episode.
Isobel’s been having a tough time lately, and we’ve mostly seen her with Liz. Are we going to see Michael and Isobel touching base?
Oh yeah. Those two characters are kind of the rock for one another. It was always any time Max was pissing Michael off, he would go to Isobel, or Isobel would go to Michael. Isobel’s always been the middle person, and right now, Michael is just feeling very secluded. It’s easy for Michael to slip into playing the victim card, just because so many things haven’t worked out for him, but at the end of the day, Isobel is his best friend. That’s one of the few people — aside from Alex and maybe Maria now — that he actually feels he can confide in, so we have some really good moments. We spend a lot of time together as the season progresses.
Roswell, New Mexico, Mondays, 9/8c, The CW