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ROSWELL |
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Series Overview
Max - Jason Behr Liz - Shiri Appleby Michael - Brendan Fehr Isabel - Katherine Heigl Sheriff Valenti - William Sadler Kyle - Nick Wechsler Maria - Majandra Delfino Alex - Colin Hanks 
OTHER ROSWELL SEASONS Season 1 Season 2 OTHER ALIENS AMONGST US SERIES 3rd Rock From the Sun Dark Skies Threshold Invasion 
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Season OverviewIt's year three of ROSWELL and the final year. It doesn't come as any surprise as this year is even less focussed than the last. It starts off with a bang in Busted, a bold statement about where the show is going, but that's a promise that isn't delivered on. The story goes off on all kinds of tangents with comedy wedding farces, musical business exposes, shock deaths and reincarnations, the usual Christmas issue and corking penultimate episode in Four Aliens and a Baby, which shows just what the series was capable of, but never really aspired to very much. ROSWELL is ended and there is little doubt that it will only be a small footnote in the history of the genre on TV. TopBustedMax and Liz get arrested for the armed robbery of a convenience store in Utah. There's more to it than that, of course, as Max is searching for a way to get to his alien son who has contacted him mentally in distress. The crashed Roswell ship was in the basement of the convenience store and Max has the key to make it work, but first there is the small matter of a felony to be dealt with. A lot has happened since Tess turned out to be the bad guy and went back to their home planet heavily pregnant with Max's son. For one, Max has turned into a badass (albeit a slightly lame one) with stubble, leather jacket and open top car. He's also quitting the family home since his adoptive father wants to know what's going on and he can't tell him. Isabel is having an affair with one of the lawyers who works with her father and is keeping it a badly guarded secret for reasons that will presumably become apparent. Most of all, though, the show has taken on a washed-out, desert-blasted look that makes it look grittier, harsher and more dangerous than it really is. The flashbacks are in a glossy, all-colour sheen, but the present is all grit and shaky cam. It's an interesting look that fits the structure of the plot, but it remains to be seen whether this will be carried forward to the rest of the season. TopMichael, the Guys and the Great Snapple CaperMichael gets a job at a pharmaceutical company as a security guard. Once there, he gets the other guys on the shift to loosen up a bit, right to the point of stealing a case of snapple. When the theft is discovered, however, the whole crew is fired and Michael learns what it is to let people down badly. He determines to return the snapple, but happens on a crime much greater than the one for which they all lost their jobs. After the surprisingly blistering Busted, ROSWELL comes up with an episode of such epic silliness that it might as well be from another show. Michael's whole story here is so utterly nonsensical that it is impossible to care about it and even the twisted argument over the morality of firing a whole crew because they were suspected of a crime (the fact that they carried it out notwithstanding) fails to raise the humour that it ought to. Liz's father appears to be the obstacle that is going to keep them apart this season, which is nothing new and the sheriff's new business plan reaches whole new depths of embarrassment. TopSignificant OthersThe relationship between Isabel and Jesse is getting serious, which brings up the whole problem of the alien thing. She solves this by breaking up with him, then realises that she can't live without him and then turns down his proposal of marriage (as you do). Liz finds out why her Dad is having such a hard time with her relationship with Max and Michael is torn between his friends and his girl. The soap opera that blighted much of Season 1 is back with a vengeance. There is no plotline at all that is going anywhere and everything feels aimless and lost, totally without focus. Worse than that, the show is wasting its major asset in the shape of Majandra Delfino's Maria, whose joie de vivre seems to have departed. ROSWELL needs to get some sort of focus back and some sort of series arc underway because it is firing off in all sorts of directions and is, quite frankly, a bit of a mess. TopSecrets and LiesMax goes to Hollywood in order to track down a shapeshifting alien who might just be the key to his getting the Roswell ship back so that he can go in search of his son. In the meantime, Isabel tries to break it gently to her parents that she is engaged to be married. ROSWELL suddenly shoots off in another direction as the focus on the aliens working together as a team is abandoned altogether. Max in Hollywood has some sly digs at the film community (producer Johnathan Frakes is back in a casting scene, there's a weaselly agent, everyone wants in on the business etc), but makes little sense as an actual plot. Max goes off with no information and yet ends up locked in a room with a serial killing shapeshifter in less than two days, all pretty much by accident. Isabel's attempts to tell her family about her engagement are models of believability, though hardly more entertaining, by comparison. TopControlThe shapeshifter has Max at his mercy, but can't kill him. It is coded into his genes that he has to obey every direct order given to him by his king. Max orders him to help find the ship that could take him to his son, but will he go through with it when he learns that it will destroy everything that the shapeshifter has worked for in 50 years? Max is making a hell of a mess of everything. He can't even keep Liz happy with a quick phone call, but that is nothing to the cold lack of compassion he shows the shapeshifter when he orders him to fly the shift, losing all semblance of the ability to feel pleasure that has taken him 50 years to learn. It's a moment more chilling than anything else the show has ever produced. It doesn't make up for the fact that the plot makes no sense, allowing two unarmed civilians to walk into a building on an army base holding a top secret piece of kit that was recently the target of an attempted theft. Not only is nobody watching the ship, but nobody hears it taking off either. The soap opera around Isabel's wedding preparations are the stuff of detailed drama by comparions, but the stuff of a poor soap opera in their own right. TopTo Have and to HoldThere's only two days to the wedding and Isabel is falling apart at the seams. Her parents still refuse to come, the flowers are nowhere to be seen, the wedding dress has been delivered somewhere in Florida and she is having dreams of another man, another man who turns out to be the lover from her previous life for whom she betrayed her entire family. ROSWELL does a farce in which a lot of people run around and everything goes wrong and the only thing that doesn't happen is someone losing their trousers. None of this is funny unpredictable, or particularly effective. Which gives the sudden, threatening arrival of her dream man in the flesh at the reception a bit more of a kick, but not enough to make going through all the preamble worth the effort. TopInterruptusIsabel and Jesse set off on their honeymoon, pursued by K'Var, Isabel's lover in her previous life who is intent on taking her back with him. He has an intense effect on her to the point where she agrees to join him, as she did once before, but Max and Michael are there to help out, if they can keep everything a secret from Jesse. And we thought To Have and to Hold was farce! Interruptus is a bedroom farce in which mistaken identities, people sneaking in and out of bedrooms, the delaying of the main honeymoon activity and the husband who has no idea what is going on combine to little comic and absolutely no dramatic effect. ROSWELL got through its difficult Second Season just about intact, but has completely lost the plot in this third. There is no cohesion, no through plot and very little sense. TopBehind the MusicAn old friend of Maria's comes into town on his way to New York and awakens in her again the dreams she had of being a musical performer. Michael gets jealous and stuff starts exploding all around him. Meanwhile, Max tries to find a way to deflect his father from the investigations that he is carrying out. After two episodes of semi-comic farce, ROSWELL gets back to the job at hand - the alien conspiracy. It is actually a nice move to make the potential enemy this time around Max and Isabel's adoptive father and the resolution of Max's attempts to stop him is also nicely unexpected. It's certainly a lot more interesting than the Maria/Michael story that is just the same old thing and only comes alive in the very last scene between them. TopSamuel RisingAn autistic boy comes up to Max and calls him Daddy. He then draws a picture of a space ship. Max is sure that this is an attempt by his son to contact him, but it turns out that his mission is to heal not the boy, but the family around him. Welcome to the Christmas episode of ROSWELL, a time of traditional sugar overdose. And so it proves this year, although the fact that Max cannot simply heal the boy's problem away means that the resolution has to be found in another way that is more touching than expected. The fun of the episode comes from Jesse finding out abotu what Isabel turns into at this time of year and Michael's desperate attempts to woo Maria back by playing Santa. TopA Tale of Two PartiesIt's New Year's Day and everyone seems to be waking up with other people's partners. Flash back eight hours and we find Max and Maria looking for a hidden party, Michael getting drunk and having his powers go haywire and Isabel trying to make a night of it for Kyle when Jesse gets caught up at an airport. This is absolutely all about the soap opera and nothing about the alien. Sure, Michael's powers go mental after a beer, but that's just an excuse for him to finally agree to the break up with Maria. The rest is just emotional drama-lite. It's fun enough and its optimistic, which is a good thing in a seasonal episode, but it does make you wonder where the show thinks it's going these days. TopI Married an AlienWhen Jesse's reporter friend comes to stay for a few days and starts to ferret around after a story, Isabel considers that her life is just like some bad sitcom. This is a total gimmick episode, but it is a really fun total gimmick episode. Taking BEWITCHED as its template and putting the characters from ROSWELL into that format is inspired and then welding that into the actual real life story tones down the silliness of the sitcom. What it doesn't do is move any plotlines forward and proves once again that ROSWELL has lost its way and doesn't know what to do with itself. We wouldn't mind them making a series of I Married an Alien though. TopCh-ch-changesAfter singing with Jim Valenti's band, Maria gets picked up by a talent scout for a New York record label. She's not sure that she wants to go because of what it means to her on-off relationship with Michael. Liz, meanwhile, is afflicted with bursts of alien power that threaten her whole future, not to mention her life. The soap opera side of the show continues to dominate, but at least there is a certain amount of alien stuff in there this episode. In this case it's Liz's situation, which at least brings a rare outburst of heightened emotion from Max. The rest, though, is pretty much teenage relationship stuff that quite frankly is done better elsewhere. TopPanaceaThe medical research company where Michael works as a security guard has been keeping tabs on him and in the wake of a friend's death he discovers that they know all about him. It's not him they want, however, it's Michael's healing powers and they force him to use those powers in a way that leads to a shocking conclusion. Liz finds her way around the boarding school that she has enlisted in, but finds that she's not the sweet girl that she used to be. Maria finds out that the music business is all about the business and not about the music. This, though, is about the new threat in the aliens' lives. Morgan Fairchild pops up as a woman who is intent on getting Max's powers used for her own ends no matter what means she has to use and proves to be utterly unconvincing, as does the whole revelation behind the medical company's interest in Max. Ah, but the cliffhanger though, that's the thing. It's a shocker all right. TopChant Down BabylonFollowing his rejuvenation by Max, the elderly owner of Metachem finds that not only has his body been reborn into the shape of Max, but Max is living inside his head. He goes to Vermont in order to kill the thing that is keeping Max alive - Liz, but finds that he can't actually bring himself to kill the love of his life. Meanwhile, Isabel gets shot, leading Jesse to learn the truth about his wife. ROSWELL is trying to cram an awful lot of story into this third season and that means that the threads aren't being given enough time to breathe. This is the story of Max's death and rebirth and yet it's over in less than half the running time of an episode. Nobody even gets a chance to grieve properly since before anyone has come to terms with his death he's back and walking around again. This could have been spread over a couple or three episodes and been much more effective instead of being jammed into one where it is rushed and messy and not very convincing at all. The revelation of the truth about Isabel to Jesse is a better story and carries the episode along on the action following her shooting and the recriminations afterwards. TopWho Died and Made You King?Michael is now marked with the Royal seal, an emergency backup in case of Max's death. He goes a bit mental following the abduction of Jesse by the FBI and sets off to kill all those that know about the aliens, but Max and Isabel step in. This is a better episode than we have had for a while now, concentrating on one story and seeing it through. Jesse's abduction by the FBI and subsequent recruitment by them as a spy is predictable, but at least scans properly and fits the running time suitably. Michael's going of the rails is again jammed into the episode without real thought or care, almost as a side issue and is dealt with summarily. Fortunately, it provides the only real action, which sees Max and Michael throw each other around a bit. More use of the powers in the battle would have been fun, but right now we'll take what we can get. TopCrashAn alien ship crashes to earth after being struck by an airforce jet. The daughter of the missing pilot makes a moving speech in his memory, but Michael knows that the man is locked away because of what he saw. Together, the aliens decide to spring the man. For once it is Michael who is determined to do the right thing. There is a certain amount of tension in the actual rescue, but the ease with which they waltz onto and off a highly secure military base is completely unbelievable. There isn't anything here that we haven't seen before, except for Max and Isabel's parents learning the truth about their children. That's the cliffhanger. TopFour Aliens and a BabyScientists manage to get inside the crashed alien spaceship and are amazed to find that it houses a baby. Unfortunately for them, the baby has a protector and they are quickly dead. The army go all out to capture the alien that killed their men, but as it turns out to be Tess, they are led right to the door of the aliens. Now if ROSWELL had been able to pull out episodes like this more consistently then it might have managed more than 3 seasons. Bringing back Tess is a masterstroke and the plot is, from that point on, very simple. The hunt is on and the prety are trying to stay one step ahead. There's tension and action and then a conclusion that is both unexpected and spectacular. The human drama of the parents reacting to the news that they learn of their adoptive children's real nature is nicely weaved in, although the sudden switch from prying threat to supportive allies is too sudden to be really effective. This turns out to be one of the finest episodes that the show has produced. TopGraduationLiz finds that she suddenly has the gift of foresight and one of the first things that she sees is the death of the whole gang. A couple of more visions and they can pin the date down to the upcoming UFO convention, but as they plan to make their escape, events take a sudden surprise turn. The final episode of ROSWELL has about it a sense of nostalgia and sadness. The end is coming and there's every chance that it's coming in terms of death. Either way, the group is breaking up, decisions are being made and nothing is ever going to be the same again. It's a shame, therefore, that the action doesn't quite sit with the emtoional drama and some of the characters get a pretty lame send off, sent right back full circle to the beginning or simply sent on their way. It has closure at the end, sort off, but doesn't end on the high that it might have. Top |
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