Hotel. This arrest has been quite a boon for the Salina tourist trade, I'm saying. Michael hears a knock on the door in Maria's room. Max enters and find Maria sleeping and Michael guilting: "She's been crying about Liz the whole night. Other than that, things are great." Max reminds Michael that his son is in trouble and just wants the diamond, and Michael responds, "You tell Isabel you came in here and found it yourself," handing him the diamond. Maria wakes up, snarls, "How could you make her hold the gun?" at Max, and looks away. Max encounters Isabel coming out of a room that's not hers on his way out, and Isabel defends, "I was just in there with Maria." Maria? Maria. You said Maria? That's what I said! Booby traps!

Sweet tap-dancing Jesus, another mad guy in a suit! Max goes back out to the convertible, where said suited man introduces himself as "Agent Burns of the FBI." And I was so taken aback to have the FBI back into things that for a minute I thought that Burns was the exact same name of the FBI henchman from season one (Pierce). BurnsPierce asks Max why he chose Sam's place. Sing it, BurnsPierce! I too am getting a little tired of everyone picking on Sam. Max volleys that his case was dismissed, and BurnsPierce sternly warns, "By the Sheriff's Office, maybe. I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're just an incompetent criminal. But if you were in that store for any other reason, be warned. If you don't stop, you will not be happy juvenile delinquents." I love how everyone just keeps telling them to "stop." What does that even mean?

But no. Max does not stop. He returns to the convenience store, the voices of this episode flashing back in his head again because flashbacks of flashbacks within flashbacks and it's all so meta and ouch my head just exploded. He returns in silence to the basement of the Quik-E-Mart, finding no spaceship downstairs, but instead a patch of white powder. Merry Mason follows him in, smirks, and delivers his single longest speech in show history: "I followed you here, because I can no longer trust you to tell me the truth. I thought you were involved in drugs, but this is clearly something else. What were you looking for down here, Max? What is this place?" Is it one of the five government storerooms large enough to house a spacecraft, the size of which you never seemed to know before now? Is that it? Is that what it is? IS IT? WHAT? And then, the twist ending. Merry Mason goes to pick up the powder, but Max tells him it "could be toxic." Merry Mason asks why there would be a toxic chemical in the basement of a convenience store (that isn't rat poison, or a surplus of those circus peanuts, or a renegade pack of Necco wafers, of course), suddenly adopting that "hey, waaaaait" face and spinning, "If this is what you think it is, we might be able to help Liz." What? Does he suddenly not care anymore why Max was in jail for armed robbery to begin with? WHAT?