Michale and Isobel dig deeper into their unexpected connection with the past, learning more details about the story of the night their mothers were attacked by the army. Alex and his father discuss their family’s history. Kyle takes Steph on possibly the worst first date ever.

If that intro sounds packed, I haven’t even gone into Max – remember him getting accosted along with Jenna’s sister as the credits rolled last week? Well, this week he turns up again dazed and bewildered and with Sheriff Valenti inviting him to cuff himself because she has some serious questions for him.

What this sets up is an episode where we keep revisiting 11:59pm from the perspective of various characters as their own exploits all disparately continue with Max’s plight in the background, but all inexorably drawing towards one another thanks to the links that pervade this small town.

Isobel and Michael’s chat with Michael’s boss shows us an entirely new side not just to the surly, hard-drinking garage owner, but also to the whole tale of exactly what went down the night the army stormed their parents’ home. One that sends Michael on a spiral as he convinces himself that he wasn’t the most important person even to his own mother.

Alex confronts his father once again having found more and more evidence suggesting that he isn’t the man he’s done a very good job of pretending to be all these years. That goes about as well as you might expect eventually, but not before Alex has found some information suggesting that Tripp might not have been the villain of events that history has remembered him as.

And poor Kyle take Steph on a date that manages to incorporate his ex, an awful lot of awkwardness and ends with a revelation too far. Kyle may be reformed from his high school days as a jock bully, and he may have his heart in the right place, but he’s going to need to work on his personality a lot if he’s going to keep hold of this girl.

In the midst of all this, Liz is still tinkering at the lab (when she isn’t running the diner) in spite of her promise to Michael. The possibility of ending illness for all of humanity just won’t get out of her head, and it’s easy to see what sort of dangerous paths it might take her down.

As each of these stories plays out, we get Max being interrogated by Sheriff Valenti, who has pieced together half-remembered memories of when the three siblings were first discovered (she being the deputy who responded to the call) and the various circumstantial evidence to make herself half-believe that Max is something dangerous (while still managing to be far away from the truth).

It’s a really jam-packed episode, but what’s clever is how all these apparently disparate elements link back to one another as the credits roll. One thing’s for sure – life in Roswell isn’t going to get dull anytime soon.

Verdict: Bursting at the seams with story and taking up all sorts of intriguing new plot threads. 9/10

Greg D. Smith