Science Fiction in the age of Trump
Roswell, New Mexico makes several interesting decisions in its reimagining of its source material, but the most crucial might just be the show's awareness that the American southwest in 2020 is a backdrop a lot more dystopian than was present in either the books or the first TV show. These adult characters are fully aware, in a way that the dewy teens weren't, that the system they're navigating is capricious, unjust, and fully capable of exploiting bonds of love to provoke complicity in acts of monstrous evil.
What they slowly come to realize over the course of the first season is that surviving this system has remade them in its image.
It's the perfect backdrop to explore how each lie the siblings and their allies tell, for the most understandable of reasons, leads seamlessly and inevitably to the next, and the next, and the next.
Michael and Isobel intuit, where Max does not, that keeping a secret is not a one-time event but an active choice that Liz will need to continue to make, and that trusting her with their secret means trusting that she will never change her mind about keeping it. The parallel with the Dreamers, who registered (that is, disclosed their identities and their undocumented status) with the Obama administration only to face deportation under Trump, is instructive. The show is aware of just what the Pod Squad is risking in an America where institutions are crumbling, civil rights are illusory, and refugees are in concentration camps; later, it will also place the alien experimentation in a context that includes the Tuskegee syphilis experiments and other American horrors.
The Latino characters, meanwhile, certainly realize what is always hovering over the scene but that isn't articulated until late in season 2: that the alien siblings are permitted to assimilate in a way that native-born citizen* Liz is not, because they appear white.
The series' main question might well be: what do we do in an increasingly dystopian America where our institutions are crumbling around us and, as Alex puts it with respect to the US government, the evil is us? The show suggests that community is the way to do it. The main characters, particularly Kyle, are willing to contrast what they are told with what they already know or have learned from their lives in their community, and identify and discard the lie appropriately.
Max vs. the truth
Max fancies himself an honest person with a strong moral code, but we learn almost immediately that he is lying to himself as much as anyone else. Michael even calls him on it in their very first scene together—when Max claims that his sole interest is in protecting his siblings, Michael quite rightly points out that Max is also protecting himself. And, while Max is willing to be emotionally honest and vulnerable with Liz (a trait that is not particularly encouraged for men in modern American society, let alone for men in conservative regions and traditionally masculine occupations), it doesn't seem to be his default mode. Indeed, Max begins the series estranged from Michael (and to some extent Isobel) precisely because he won't open up to them about his feelings and his fears in the same way that he is able to with Liz.As far as his moral code goes, we learn in the very first episode that he has an idealistic moral code (he "likes to protect people") and also that he can't count on himself to do the right thing if it conflicts with keeping his secret. Max himself will realize this no later than the second half of the first season (the scene where he insists Liz keep the death serum), but he never seriously reckons with his habit of lying and how it's corroded his character. Isobel will realize by the middle of the first season that lying to literally everyone including her parents and husband about her identity has led her to fail to develop an authentic sense of self, but Max hasn't gotten there yet. (Michael, meanwhile, is doing far better here than either of the twins; as terrible as his childhood was, he's been spared the awful weight of having to lie to parents, and he's been able to work out his identity as an alien.) It takes until the second half of season 2 for someone (Sheriff Valenti) to finally spell out for Max that he cannot go on lying as reflexively as he always has. Not only does it leave him with nowhere to go when he's called on his lies, he hasn't been altogether well-served by his lies either. Ignoring his childhood trauma has left him with rage issues and dark impulses that he continues to struggle with. By then Max's lies have cost him his career: Valenti has correctly identified him as Noah's killer, and she's also established that he's far too compromised and unstable to continue as a cop.
Liz vs. medical ethics
Liz's specialty is regenerative medicine, which, as she periodically notes, has come with some ethics considerations. She consistently presents these as another obstacle she's faced: "old men on boards" who felt threatened by her.As we'll learn over the first two seasons, though, Liz repeatedly violates medical ethics when it's in the service of what she believes to be the greater good.
Her actions with respect to Max are particularly stark. She steals and analyzes his cells in the first episode. Later that season she'll use Max's blood to develop a serum to neutralize alien abilities. She freely admits that her motivation in doing this was in large part anger at them and a desire to hurt Isobel, and the scene where Max learns of the serum makes it clear that he did not know about—and certainly did not consent to—this use of his blood. By season two, fully aware of the fate he's facing if his secret gets out (she knows about Caulfield!), fully aware of Max's own feelings about Liz developing cures based on his physiology (she knows he is deeply uncomfortable with even the idea), without an emergency like Isobel's or Max's illnesses to provide even a flimsy pretext, she chooses to continue her experiments without his knowledge or consent.
In other words, by the second half of season 2 it's become entirely fair to wonder whether the ethical and political issues that have dogged Liz's career have been as inconsequential as she suggests, or if they might not have been the entirely legitimate consequences of her own behavior.
