I don't know if it would be terrible storytelling. I could be for certain, but it could also be worked in to be something bigger. Is it really Max? Does he know how he got out? Just new threads to spin with a lot of hilarity.

But seriously, if you look at how long it has taken to get to this point and sort of project how long it will take to "rescue" Max we are looking at months. I had this happen in a RP of mine and it was literally months of me trying to get people to post to rescue the damn characters whose player was only gone 2 weeks.