She has rules?" Yes, Max. Sometimes mothers of teenage girls actually try to impose a code of ethics on their daughters before the mother goes off to Planet Arium all by her loneliness, setting Max on the trail of tracking her down in an unfamiliar land without even wearing the appropriate head covering. For shame! Liz extrapolates on some of these wacky, out-there "rules." "She thinks we should just take things slow." Also, she prohibits proper use of adverbs, clearly. No "-ly" suffix on her watch, no sirree. What else? "No makin' out." Or heavy petting of any kind. A good rule. A great, great rule. Max hates the rule, standing up to express his distaste for it: "So I suppose skinny-dipping might be against the rules, too." Naked you = against the rules. Against every rule of nature, in fact. But it's too late. He smiles again, at first removing his rather gay powder-blue buttondown, gay-porn-style (or so I've heard from the dwellers of Utah's prison system). Six packs slink away in disgrace, cheese lines up to be grated, and Suzanne Somers wakes up in the middle of the night in a Pasadena apartment, sits up in bed, and yells, "My invention finally worked!" without even entirely knowing why. Liz tells Max that he's made his point (he has) and that it's not that funny (it's not), and he jumps into the water wearing his boxers (so that would be less "skinny dipping" and more…what's the expression? Oh, yes, "not skinny dipping") and a pair of black socks. On a very special "Swimming Naked With Steve Urkel." Dork. DORK. She does the Full House Face Drop again, and Max tries to convince her with the utterly unconvincing, "C'mon Liz, this is something we can tell our grandchildren about." Liz opts out of the involuntary reaction of being sickened by thinking of our own withered grandparents beginning a story, "This reminds me of a time back in aught-five when Birdie and I had some quality naked sex time together," skipping ahead to the tired response of, "Grandchildren! What are they gonna be, six feet tall and green?" She stands up, mad. Fine! "But I am not taking my underwear off." We'll just pause a moment while that last promise inks itself into the OED under the entry for "favors, small." Aaaand moving on, and you've seen a summer's worth of these previews, so you don't need me for what happens next. But just as the twin set starts to be shed and the striptease begins, something sickly takes Max over and he gets all Dead Man's Floaty. Best way to avoid having to see Liz naked: fake death. Dramatic? Yes. But I can't say I'm not just a little impressed. Liz notices just in time to follow through on her promise of not-at-all skinny-dipping. She steps back on the dock and does a little ballet-dive into the crap water beyond. Cut to Michael "Understandably Pissy Naysayer" Guerin and Isabel "Underused Person Nality" Evans, finally making their first appearances of the season, attending to the physical and emotional needs of Max and Liz. Ugh! They huzzah about what the hell happened to him as he's rushed into The House That Government Subsidy Built, and as Max is wrapped in blankets and stabilized on the couch, he looks up and fills us all in: "Something's happening. I had this vision it was my son. He was reaching out to me. He's in trouble." A planet away from this. Dude. What could possibly be wrong with him?