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Roswell

By episode 10, the show is starting to feel like a bad teen romance novel at times. I hope it gets better as they abandon this stuff in favor of story arcs...
 
By episode 10, the show is starting to feel like a bad teen romance novel at times. I hope it gets better as they abandon this stuff in favor of story arcs...

It really doesn't.

I will say one thing, there's a neat storyline that builds up towards the end of season two which I enjoyed, but mostly everything interesting gets buried under all the angst.

Have to add one thing. I think I know the reason I tuned in when I did:

Katherine Heigl

Even this is infinitely preferable to the garbage she's making these days.
 
That's too bad. I mean, I 'want' to like the characters and everything. But it just seems like there's a lot of potential that gets lost amongst the teen angst. I'd like to know more about their powers and how they learned to use them, where they come from, where the alien arc is ultimately going, etc. etc. But all they seem to do is lovey dovey...
 
Season 1 - Mostly teen angst.
Season 2 - Mostly sci-fi.
Season 3 - A more even mix of both.
This is my recollection as well. The series ends on a very romantic and sad note, but considering how it struggled ratings-wise (as I recall anyhow), I was happy the show even got a proper ending.
 
Have to add one thing. I think I know the reason I tuned in when I did: Katherine Heigl
Yeah, I think I fell for her from the first ep forward. I still find her super hot and I'm glad her career has gone in the direction of movies. Still, I'd like to see her in something other than a RomCom at some point.
 
Just saw the pilot on Hulu ... seemed a little too teeny but with some potential. Given that it's a WB show, there's a strong chance it'll suck. But what do you folks think? Is it worth continuing for a while? Hulu has the entire first season up but they lack the latter two.

From what I remember, the first season was the most balanced between teen drama and sci-fi elements. The second season leaned a little more towards the teen elements, and the third more towards the sci-fi elements.

As a whole, it's a watchable series, and in places good, bordering on very good. I recommend you give it a try.

I recall the mix a bit differently.

Season 1 - Mostly teen angst.
Season 2 - Mostly sci-fi.
Season 3 - A more even mix of both.

Hmm I got it all wrong. Guess I have to watch it again.
 
Isabel is probably the most useless, boring character on the show (with the exception of her significant other in season 3, which made her even more uninteresting).

In order, I'd say these were my favorites:

1) Michael Guerin
2) Max Evans
3) Maria DeLuca
4) Liz Parker
5) Jim Valenti
6) Alex Whitman
7) Kyle Valenti
8) Tess Harding
9) Isabel Evans
10) every random guest star ever
11) Jesse Ramírez (shudder)

But yeah, Max and Michael are my boys (and certainly the most interesting characters on the show).

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As a BtVS/AtS fan, seeing all the crossover actors (go WB cross-breeding!) was great. It's also great that Brendan Fehr is now playing Booth's brother on Bones. Another Jossverse/Roswell cross-breeding with seeing David Boreanaz (Angel) and Brendan Fehr (Michael) together. Ditto with Jason Behr's (Max) appearance in BtVS' Lie To Me as Billy Fordham. And all the familiar faces between the two franchises like Julie Benz (DARLA! My favorite Jossverse female of all!), Keith Szarabajka (I love that man's voice--Holtz!), Jim Ortlieb (more prominent as Nasedo on Roswell), etc... were also icing on the cake.

Season 2 is overall my favorite, though Max/Liz were at their best in season 1. Season 2 is where Michael/Maria really took over and Michael was probably the most consistently sympathetic and well-acted character in the last two seasons.

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If you're looking for sci-fi, you're going to get A LOT of it at the end of season 1 and all through season 2. As far as WB teenage girl angst, it probably helps if you're viewing the show as a young woman, because the eye-candy and angsty youth portrayals (being an alien = being a young person trying to find one's way) by Jason Behr and Brendan Fehr are the things that makes the show worth watching.

There are some pretty far-out sci-fi plots coming, however. F.B.I. alien hunters, intergalactic politics/deceit/betrayal (those not-entirely-lovable Antarians) and dead alien-soul/cloned-human hybrid breeding experiments are going to be the biggest things you'll be hearing about. It's basically a case of where the kids aren't alien enough to be alien (their emotional nature, in particular) and not human enough to be human (and hunted because of it); they have to choose what they want to be and if they even want what they are predestined for. The freedom to make your own choices and destiny is kind of a theme there.

You also get the differences in the ways Max and Isabel were raised by the nice, loving Evans family, Michael by the abusive alcoholic foster father in a trailer and Tess by the emotionless alien (Nasedo) that didn't give her a human morality or any connections to humanity. And then you get to compare to the other set of four gone wrong and left in a sewer--one where Ava is actually more moral than Tess!

The sci-fi stuff actually works pretty well with the human drama.

Here's what's coming on the sci-fi front:
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As far as drama that isn't of the romantic variety... The end of season 2 is a CRY FEST.

Star Trek fans should also recognize a certain leaning mountain. ;)

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Thanks for the long post. I think maybe I have enough in me to give the show a little more time to improve with this new information.
 
It might also be of interest that Alex Whitman is played by Colin Hanks, who is Tom Hanks' son (and a spitting image of his father).
 
Thanks for spoiling it for the newbie.

Well, that answers why the end of season 2 is a cry-fest.

No Snapple for the spoiler.

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My favorite episodes are probably: The Pilot, 285 South, Toy House, The Convention, Independence Day, The White Room, Destiny, Summer Of '47, Harvest, Wipeout!, A Roswell Christmas Carol, How The Other Half Lives, Viva Las Vegas, Cry Your Name, The Departure, Michael, The Guys And The Great Snapple Caper, Samuel Rising, I Married An Alien, Panacea, Four Aliens And A Baby & Graduation.

You'll see Jonathan Frakes in The Pilot, The Convention and Secrets And Lies. Secrets And Lies even has Max doing an audition (badly) for Enterprise (Frakes is in that scene). There's also some humor about Frakes being at the convention (The Convention) because they couldn't get Shatner and Nimoy. Those mountains I referred to as being familiar to Trekkies are the Vasquez Rocks (where the fight with the Gorn took place). The Vasquez Rocks are VERY prominent in Roswell, as that's where the birth pods and the Granolith are.
 
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I really enjoyed this series. I was so happy when it got the chance to come back and do a proper ending, I liked it.

This show made me fall in love with Emilie de Ravin
 
I think it's a great little show. It shows its quaint WB roots, but it's kind of charming for it. The WB, for all its teen angst reputation, did a remarkable job with putting supernatural/fantasy/sci-fi series on that couldn't have survived on the big networks (Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series being the best examples with Roswell, Smallville, Supernatural, the last half of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and the ATROCIOUS Charmed being others). Of that grouping, Roswell was definitely the best besides BtVS and AtS.

Those shows actually didn't attract the niche teen market so much as they attracted the niche nerd market.

At least the WB had better quality control than, say, the Sci-Fi channel. And fantasy shows need that human drama element, IMO.
 
Add Charmed to the list, it got wonky toward the end, overstayed its welcome, but after Buffy, it was quite a pleasure to watch, people who liked Buffy liked Charmed.
 
people who liked Buffy liked Charmed.

Actually, it's almost entirely the opposite. Charmed tends to be bashed to pieces by the Jossverse community. It's nickname is "Buffy Lite" and not in a good way. It's considered a mainstream show. :lol:

Jossverse people are more likely to lump Charmed in with "lite" mainstream WB shows like Felicity, Dawson's Creek, Gilmore Girls and 7th Heaven.

Buffy, Angel and Roswell were the nerdier of the aforementioned shows. Angel was probably the oddest duck on the line-up because it had almost no teen marketability and was quite the tragic gloomfest.
 
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