By Christina Sizemore
“September 23.
Journal Entry One. I’m Liz Parker
and five days ago I died. After that,
things got really weird…”
Even when I was a teenager I never watched “Teen
dramas.” I guess I felt that since
everyone around me kept throwing their real life drama into mine- and since I
had enough of my own- I didn’t need to watch fictional “Woe as me” moments of
teenage angst. You do find rare
situations, however, when something is put to film that quickly makes you
forget the teenage aspect and instead, appreciate the suspense, the scares, the
characters, and the freaky paranormal moments.
It might have teens, but it isn’t all about the typical hormonal crap
that we are all happy to be done with, feel sorry for our kids for having to go
through, and are annoyed at listening to.
Sometimes that rare show can be about much more than that and much more
than most adults would want to endure.
The show Roswell hit all of
those aspects right on the head.
I’m not saying it was royal human-hybrid aliens...but it was
royal human-hybrid aliens.
When a show starts off with a literal bang, you know you are
in for something. Not even five minutes
in and one of the main cast is shot. The
show doesn’t give time for a slow burn, which in some cases can be a good
thing. You spend the first five minutes
realizing that the diner the Pilot opens up in, much like many spots in the
heart of Roswell, caters to the alien conspiracy theorists and people hoping to
catch a peek at one. The perfect tourist
trap. Jump straight into finding the
gunshot victim, Liz, is enamored with the town’s resident shy guy, Max, who has
sat in said diner staring at her the whole time like he usually does with his
anger-prone best friend, Michael. Enter
the gunshot, Max rushing to the rescue, and healing her with a touch of his
hand...and things just snowball into Crazytown from there.
You have these seemingly normal teens that do everything that others do- shop, talk on the phone, and listen to music when depressed- just trying to merge with society and fit in. Yet it is hard to fit in when one can blow up things with his hands, the other can heal people by touching them and project force fields, and the third can walk through people’s dreams at will and melt darn near anything if forced. Max, his sister Isabel, and their best friend-slash-surrogate brother Michael, do not know much about their background, but they know enough at the start of the show to know that they are from another planet. Somehow they look like us, have appetites for the same food (although a weird dietary quirk means they need extremely sweet and extremely spicy foods, so they put Tabasco sauce on EVERYTHING,) and in general live and operate just like any normal human being. The problem is that they are far from human and as they were dropped here on earth in the Roswell crash of 47 and gestated in pods for decades, emerging as young toddlers ages later, have zero idea as to why they are on Earth in the first place. So far they have done a fantastic job of blending in and hiding themselves from the rest of the world. Then Max makes the fatal mistake of saving the life of the girl he loves from a gunshot wound given by a crazy patron in her father’s alien themed cafe. Local Sheriff investigations lead to State and then to the Feds, and no one can understand why. But these three do. They know that saving a life led to suspicion. And now Liz and her friend Maria have been dragged into their world with no way out and even less understanding than the alien-hybrids have.
The show manages to weave dozens of plot threads and keep
them woven. You piece together more and
more details of the alien’s background with each episode and without
sacrificing the current character development.
They are discovering Government cover-ups and dodging bullets while
trying to avoid detention and failing art class, and with each season the
problems grow and change because well, you know, that is just how regular human
life works. One minute you deal with
test scores and hormones and the next college applications and marriage. This show doesn’t forget that these characters
are half human, half alien, so they have to deal with double the problems. Much like Burn
Notice, there are so many threads to pull on a long-standing conspiracy
mixed with a galactic war (so that you never run out of bad guys that they
encounter,) alien creatures that attack them and the planet, artifacts that
either help or hurt them on their journey, or just general pieces of a long and
complex puzzle that explain more than just their origin. They also explain the Government’s hand in it
all decades ago as well as today and the reason behind the war that led to the
alien’s arrival on earth. Even after
they think they have pieced it all together they find how wrong that they are
and they still find more pieces to add to an ever expanding puzzle. And we thought our everyday lives were hard
to manage. Try balancing double the
work- and half of it being this dangerous- and see how you handle things.
One of the biggest things that got my attention on this show
was the fact that it can be very difficult to pay attention to an entire cast
when it is large. Three or four people and you can focus on, but if you have an
expansive group to pay attention to, then it can be difficult to give them all
due-diligence in crafting a backstory and giving them empathy. I have only seen a handful of shows pull this
off. Roswell
is one of them. Even characters that
start off as minor and innocuous background characters end up so endearing that
your heart bleeds for them at every turn.
Episodes are set apart and dedicated at various points to every single
cast member, giving them their own piece of the pie and your view of how living
the life of a friend to aliens has affected their world. You become more emotionally invested than you
expect, even in the lives of some characters that you swore you would just
despise for being utter douches. Turns
out, as the show gives them their moments in the spotlight, you find that they
are not the douches that you thought.
This show has an amazing knack for turning things on its ear and making
you think that the bad guys are good, the good guys are bad, and the last
person you expect to save the day will do it every time. And they give each of those characters the
chance to prove those twisted, reverse-tropes.
My only regret is that the final season couldn’t live up to
its potential. The show was a cult
classic and, when originally being cancelled after one season, fans revolted
and sent cases of Tabasco sauce to the studio…a tribute to their sweet and
spicy alien dietary quirk. The fans
flooded the studio with so many cases that they had nowhere to put them. Their voices were definitely heard and the
show was renewed. But, when it got the
ax again in season three there was no saving it this time and they had to rush
to wrap up every thread that was dangling.
The second half of the season came off rushed. Things that should have happened more slowly,
with battle planning and more strategy, just seemed to fall in their laps in a
Deus Ex Machina fashion. Cataclysmic
events just seemed to befall them that would have left even Fonzie saying
“Whoa, I wouldn’t have even tackled THAT shark, man!” It left many fans happy that there was least
an end resolution, but scratching their heads and turning to the world of
fan fiction to fix it and continue. If
only that could have been repaired. Extended.
I guess there just wasn’t enough Tabasco sauce this time…
Regardless of the rushed ending, this show is a ride from start to finish. Alien powers. Spaceships. Galactic wars. Government cover-ups and gunfights. Alien creatures that try to blow people up from the inside out. Getting trapped in caves. Love, hate, fear, teenage drama and adult drama...it covers it all and makes it worth every minute. Netflix it and let me know what you think. I promise you it is worth a shot. Stay tuned to Needless Things for my multi-piece Roswell character study. First up, we will talk about the King of Antar himself and resident shy kid of Roswell, Max Evans.
Christina Sizemore is trained in only four
things: writing, fighting, paranormal
investigating, and being a mom. At this
point in her life she truly feels that she is not qualified to attempt to learn
any new field. A twenty year martial
artist, mother of three, and writer who is working on the publication of her
first book titled “Finding Your Way: A Guide To Your Path In The Martial Arts,”
she spends her days working out, writing, making fanvids, going to DragonCon,
and playing board games/video games/out in the yard with her kids and husband
who are just as geeky as she is. She is
convinced that one day her skills will be of assistance in the Zombie
Apocalypse and that while she is of no use in the kitchen, she can Buffy that
zombie for ya or teach you the best way to get the blood stains out of your
clothes (Psst…the secret is mixing Crown Cleaner and Shout. Just sayin’.)
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