Max/Liz (Roswell)
Author: PepperjackCandy
Spoilers: Pretty much the whole series
Credit: Many thanks to aome for the beta.
Max
At the time the show opens, Max Evans is socially and psychologically 16 years old. Physically, he, his sister Isabel, and their best friend Michael, are 52 years old, give or take 9 months. They were sent to Earth as fetuses on the alien craft which landed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.
They hatched out of their engineered "wombs" in 1989, when they appeared to be about six years old. Max and Isabel became separated from Michael in the desert, so when they were picked up by the Evanses, Max and Isabel were placed in their family for adoption, but Michael ended up in the foster care system.
Max, Isabel and Michael knew that what they could puzzle out of their true origins was a secret, and kept it very closely guarded; Only the three of them, and not even their adoptive parents, knew until the Pilot.
Liz
Elizabeth "Liz" Parker is, in her own words, "the smallest of small-town girls." Her family has been in Roswell for generations, and they own, and live above, a diner which has been in their family since before the alien craft crashed in the desert outside of town. After the crash, and the subsequent publicity and controversy, they decided to try to make a profit from the influx of tourists, renamed the diner the "Crashdown," and redid it in an alien theme, all the way down to the wait staff wearing fake antennae.
Liz is also part of a trio; the other two are her best friends Maria and Alex. She is a straight-A student, and dating the head of the football team (whom, far from being thrilling and exotic, she describes as "safe") when the Pilot of the Roswell television series opens.
Max/Liz
Max/Liz is a canonical pairing. And, for the concept of the show, really *the* canonical pairing, as ultimately the show is the story of Max, and of Liz, their journeys to adulthood, and the bond that exists between them from the opening scene of the Pilot onwards.
When the Pilot opens, Liz and Maria are working at the Crashdown. Max, Isabel and Michael are in one of the booths. Max is unable to focus on his conversation with his sister and his friend, because he keeps watching Liz instead.
Maria tells Liz that Max is watching Liz, but Liz doesn't believe her. That is, until an altercation between two customers erupts in gunfire and Liz is shot.
Max runs to Liz and uses his alien powers to heal her. Then he breaks a bottle of ketchup and spills it on her to camouflage the blood that remains on Liz's skin and clothes. As she takes off her uniform, Liz discovers a silver handprint on her abdomen.
The next day, Liz corners Max with a list of questions beginning with "Where did you come from?" until the exchange that launched a thousand shippers:
LIZ: So when you healed me you risked all of this getting out didn't you?
MAX: Yeah.
LIZ: Why?
MAX: It was you.
Choice
Max/Liz is about Romance and Fate and Kismet and all sorts of other initial-capped things, but it's also about something that belongs in all lower-case: choice. Not about choosing whom you love (see Romance, Fate, Kismet above), but about the choices you make along the way - whether to deny it, or let it go forward, what outside considerations are valid, and which should be ignored.
The first choice made is Max's choice to out himself to save Liz's life. Liz's life then takes a whole new (and bad science-fictiony) direction when she makes the choice not just to ignore what has happened, but to seek the answers.
They also have to choose whether to pursue a relationship. And in the eighth episode of the first season, Heat Wave, they share their first kiss.
The end of Season 1 brings a 'spoiler' to the Max/Liz relationship in the form of Tess, who is a previously unknown fourth Podster. She arrives with a tale that she is Max's destined bride, disrupting Max and Liz's lives. In the end, Max chooses Liz, but Liz chooses to let Max go.
Of course, this is the WB, so it's not that simple. They continue to dance around each other for the first quarter of the second season until an episode titled The End of the World (#205), in which Liz is given no choice at all - a Max from 14 years in the future arrives to tell Liz that without Tess, the Podsters won't be able to repel an upcoming alien invasion and that Liz's romance with Max will drive Tess away.
So, left no choice, Liz breaks Max's heart. She sets it up so that Max will think that she and Kyle, the football-playing ex-boyfriend, have had sex.
But still, Max and Liz are drawn to one another and choose to let that attraction override their common sense. Finally, Max chooses to be with Tess, and they have what seemed to much of the audience to be highly-unrealistic sex in an observatory which was curiously closed for business at night.
Later, Tess reveals that she is pregnant, and that becoming pregnant with Max's baby had been her plan all along. She tells the other Podsters that she needs to bring them with her when she returns to their home planet but, one by one, the other Podsters choose to stay on Earth.
The Appeal of Max/Liz
Max/Liz appeals to me as a pairing because, in many ways, it mirrors my own -- highly unrealistic -- relationship with my husband. We've known each other for, well, it's going to be coming up on 30 years ago soon.
Much like Max and Liz, we've both always been drawn to each other. I remember trying to figure out how to get information about him out of my mother (his pre-school teacher) and one of my best friends from high school (who had been two years ahead of him in the same grade school). For his part, he used to try to get my mother-in-law to visit the library where I worked part-time my senior year of high school in hopes of running into me there.
Off-Again/On-Again Max/Lizness
Finally, I have to address one of the, shall we say, ickier issues of Max/Liz shippage - the break 'em up/get 'em back together cycle of Max and Liz's relationship.
It’s not just what I want, it’s what’s meant to be. It’s all in here, Max. Our destiny. This line, spoken by Tess, drove many of my fellow shippers to despair. "It's their destiny! It says so!" was a common refrain.
But I never gave any credit to the idea that Max and Liz were over. Early on in the series, the creator, Jason Katims, said that Max and Liz were the heart of the show, and I never heard Katims say anything to convince me that he'd changed his mind. In fact, in the very interview where he first talks about Tess, Katims says, I was obviously very drawn from the pilot and continue to be to the deep connection between Max and Liz . . . .
Fics
I have to confess that I haven't done much reading of Max/Liz fics. For me, fanfiction is usually a way to deny a canon that I don't like. And while I had many quibbles about the bad science fiction of Seasons 2 and 3, I've never been that upset with the canonical condition of their relationship to need to hide out in fanfiction. If anyone reading this has any Max/Liz fic recommendations, feel free to put them in the comments.
Spoilers: Pretty much the whole series
Credit: Many thanks to aome for the beta.
Max
At the time the show opens, Max Evans is socially and psychologically 16 years old. Physically, he, his sister Isabel, and their best friend Michael, are 52 years old, give or take 9 months. They were sent to Earth as fetuses on the alien craft which landed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.
They hatched out of their engineered "wombs" in 1989, when they appeared to be about six years old. Max and Isabel became separated from Michael in the desert, so when they were picked up by the Evanses, Max and Isabel were placed in their family for adoption, but Michael ended up in the foster care system.
Max, Isabel and Michael knew that what they could puzzle out of their true origins was a secret, and kept it very closely guarded; Only the three of them, and not even their adoptive parents, knew until the Pilot.
Liz
Elizabeth "Liz" Parker is, in her own words, "the smallest of small-town girls." Her family has been in Roswell for generations, and they own, and live above, a diner which has been in their family since before the alien craft crashed in the desert outside of town. After the crash, and the subsequent publicity and controversy, they decided to try to make a profit from the influx of tourists, renamed the diner the "Crashdown," and redid it in an alien theme, all the way down to the wait staff wearing fake antennae.
Liz is also part of a trio; the other two are her best friends Maria and Alex. She is a straight-A student, and dating the head of the football team (whom, far from being thrilling and exotic, she describes as "safe") when the Pilot of the Roswell television series opens.
Max/Liz
Max/Liz is a canonical pairing. And, for the concept of the show, really *the* canonical pairing, as ultimately the show is the story of Max, and of Liz, their journeys to adulthood, and the bond that exists between them from the opening scene of the Pilot onwards.
When the Pilot opens, Liz and Maria are working at the Crashdown. Max, Isabel and Michael are in one of the booths. Max is unable to focus on his conversation with his sister and his friend, because he keeps watching Liz instead.
Maria tells Liz that Max is watching Liz, but Liz doesn't believe her. That is, until an altercation between two customers erupts in gunfire and Liz is shot.
Max runs to Liz and uses his alien powers to heal her. Then he breaks a bottle of ketchup and spills it on her to camouflage the blood that remains on Liz's skin and clothes. As she takes off her uniform, Liz discovers a silver handprint on her abdomen.
The next day, Liz corners Max with a list of questions beginning with "Where did you come from?" until the exchange that launched a thousand shippers:
LIZ: So when you healed me you risked all of this getting out didn't you?
MAX: Yeah.
LIZ: Why?
MAX: It was you.
Choice
Max/Liz is about Romance and Fate and Kismet and all sorts of other initial-capped things, but it's also about something that belongs in all lower-case: choice. Not about choosing whom you love (see Romance, Fate, Kismet above), but about the choices you make along the way - whether to deny it, or let it go forward, what outside considerations are valid, and which should be ignored.
The first choice made is Max's choice to out himself to save Liz's life. Liz's life then takes a whole new (and bad science-fictiony) direction when she makes the choice not just to ignore what has happened, but to seek the answers.
They also have to choose whether to pursue a relationship. And in the eighth episode of the first season, Heat Wave, they share their first kiss.
The end of Season 1 brings a 'spoiler' to the Max/Liz relationship in the form of Tess, who is a previously unknown fourth Podster. She arrives with a tale that she is Max's destined bride, disrupting Max and Liz's lives. In the end, Max chooses Liz, but Liz chooses to let Max go.
Of course, this is the WB, so it's not that simple. They continue to dance around each other for the first quarter of the second season until an episode titled The End of the World (#205), in which Liz is given no choice at all - a Max from 14 years in the future arrives to tell Liz that without Tess, the Podsters won't be able to repel an upcoming alien invasion and that Liz's romance with Max will drive Tess away.
So, left no choice, Liz breaks Max's heart. She sets it up so that Max will think that she and Kyle, the football-playing ex-boyfriend, have had sex.
But still, Max and Liz are drawn to one another and choose to let that attraction override their common sense. Finally, Max chooses to be with Tess, and they have what seemed to much of the audience to be highly-unrealistic sex in an observatory which was curiously closed for business at night.
Later, Tess reveals that she is pregnant, and that becoming pregnant with Max's baby had been her plan all along. She tells the other Podsters that she needs to bring them with her when she returns to their home planet but, one by one, the other Podsters choose to stay on Earth.
The Appeal of Max/Liz
Max/Liz appeals to me as a pairing because, in many ways, it mirrors my own -- highly unrealistic -- relationship with my husband. We've known each other for, well, it's going to be coming up on 30 years ago soon.
Much like Max and Liz, we've both always been drawn to each other. I remember trying to figure out how to get information about him out of my mother (his pre-school teacher) and one of my best friends from high school (who had been two years ahead of him in the same grade school). For his part, he used to try to get my mother-in-law to visit the library where I worked part-time my senior year of high school in hopes of running into me there.
Off-Again/On-Again Max/Lizness
Finally, I have to address one of the, shall we say, ickier issues of Max/Liz shippage - the break 'em up/get 'em back together cycle of Max and Liz's relationship.
It’s not just what I want, it’s what’s meant to be. It’s all in here, Max. Our destiny. This line, spoken by Tess, drove many of my fellow shippers to despair. "It's their destiny! It says so!" was a common refrain.
But I never gave any credit to the idea that Max and Liz were over. Early on in the series, the creator, Jason Katims, said that Max and Liz were the heart of the show, and I never heard Katims say anything to convince me that he'd changed his mind. In fact, in the very interview where he first talks about Tess, Katims says, I was obviously very drawn from the pilot and continue to be to the deep connection between Max and Liz . . . .
Fics
I have to confess that I haven't done much reading of Max/Liz fics. For me, fanfiction is usually a way to deny a canon that I don't like. And while I had many quibbles about the bad science fiction of Seasons 2 and 3, I've never been that upset with the canonical condition of their relationship to need to hide out in fanfiction. If anyone reading this has any Max/Liz fic recommendations, feel free to put them in the comments.