A Roswellian Future?

As we've been getting ready to leave to the undisclosed location which houses our university employer, we've realized how many resources are available to us here that won't be available in our new home. Sure, our new home will have smoothies, but will they have the special garlic pizza recipe that's available here? Probably not. When I visited, a person didn't know what a Panera is, so I'm a little broken up about that, too. I'm sure there will be some carryover, but part of the difficulty in planning your last few meals/errands before moving is that you don't always know which places you can never see again.

One of the places we have already begun to miss is the local library, which has an incredible DVD collection. You can rent half a season of a show for just $1.00! Admittedly, you must watch that half a season in three days, but let's see the 75% full glass here, people! Admittedly, we have an account with Blockbuster Online, so they can send us television shows by mail; the problem is that the shows we get through Blockbuster Online are inevitably those shows that we both want to see, meaning that much quality programming gets neglected, such as Babylon 5. Anyway, upon one of my raiding expeditions at the local library, I found Roswell, a show I never got around to watching back when it was on the WB. Believing it would probably be "non-wife watching material," I took it out, only to discover that my wife was at least willing to give it a try (her X-Files affections won out).

There is a lot to like about the series. From the very first episode there was good conflict and a sense of an overarching plot (there's another alien out there too? he's killing people? And the sheriff wants to bring you in?). And even though these aliens were not of the Smallville butt-kicking variety, they still had some pretty cool powers.

However, there is something really not to like about the series: relationships. The dialogue is painful. For instance, when human Elizabeth (who loves alien Max) is talking with her boyfriend Kyle, she asks him if he "feels things" about her. He hesitantly affirms that he does indeed "feel things." I thought only George Lucas wrote dialogue like this! Where's Anakin Skywalker pleading, "Please don't let the kiss become a scar." (What did he mean, anyway? A hickey? By the way, at one point in the series Elizabeth does get a glowing alien hickey from Max, which eventually turns into a wound, so the kiss quite literally becomes a scar. I'm not making this up, people!)

I understand that some teenagers might talk this way. I understand one could argue that it is important in creating a show to represent teenagers realistically--I seem to remember hearing that in the scripts of My So-Called Life, writers would actually include the word "like" (e.g., "that's so, like, true") to give it that feeling of authenticity. But you know, I feel things about that kind of dialogue--things like rage and vitriol. So when Elizabeth writes in her journal about how there's something so perfect about driving in a car with the boy you like and the wind blowing through your hair, I am delighted that the car crashes, but disappointed that her journal was not also destroyed in the crash.

The characters in relationships do incredibly stupid things: for example, aliens are basically indestructible (Max has never been sick a day in his life); however, they learn that if they engage in Indian sweat ceremonies (don't ask), they might possibly die. The incident frightens Liz because it teaches her aliens are mortal (duh!). Max resolves from this incident--an incident that didn't even affect him, but another alien!--that they need to break up, because he can't risk accidentally dying on her. If you had to compare survival rates between people who are never sick but are vulnerable to sweat ceremonies and people who get sick, I think the former has better odds.

The problem is not simply that characters do incredibly stupid things, but they talk about them. They have to analyze "What is Max thinking?" and "Why doesn't Michael just let me in?" I find myself asking, "Why don't they just stop letting me in?" and "Do you really need to show me them getting back together and making out again?" The scene where Max was tortured by alien-hunters was almost a relief because it did not involve Liz looking "meaningfully" at him again.

So, even though the show did have good parts--parts I haven't really written about--we don't know if the teenager aspects of the show are too painful for us to make it to season 2. We may have to leave the local library behind, but we have not yet decided on whether we will leave behind Roswell. I guess we'll have to figure out if we feel things.