Jasper1975

Love the title...

To me, Busted and their action in the early part of Season 3 is all part of their journey. They couldn't commit, and find their happy ending if they didn't go through all the crap they did. Now, some of it was extreme. But then I think the Liz and Max of the Pilot, and Season 1. To steal a fake diamond, and to break into a convenience store with a gun would be extreme. But the Max and Liz who went through Season 2, and the grief of Alex's death and being pushed and proded... not that far fetched. Liz already had shown her degrees of criminality when she broke into the school for Alex's exchange documentation. And many other things they were pushed into doing, or did it on a whim without truly thinking the consequences...

Now the convenience store robbery was a hard one because it was open all night. And they needed to get down there, to see if the ship was there... But still, the Bonnie and Clyde-esque of the mission was a way of making the stakes higher, show they aren't kids anymore. To make the parents suspicious. And not oblivious anymore...to the actions of their kids. And to send Max out on his own, and put some distance in his relationship with his parents. Which is the opposite of the close knit family he had earlier in the series...

They all made mistakes. Made choices that could have gotten into trouble if they had gotten caught.

So to me Max and Liz's decisions in the early part of Season 3 was not that far fetched given how things were going, and the extremes they were being pushed to...

JMO!