Roswell: The Complete First Season

As a teenager, I half-believed that my "real" parents would, any day, swoop down in their spaceship and rescue me from dreary ol' planet Earth. Who'd have guessed that such trite teen angst could serve as the basis of a network TV series? Roswell posits that, yes, aliens really did crash in the New Mexico desert, and now they're students at Roswell High. When alien dreamboat Max Evans (Jason Behr), who has the ability to "manipulate molecular structures," saves ordinary human Liz Parker (Shiri Appleby) from certain death, he simultaneously blows his cover and embarks on an intensely earnest romance (he is, naturally, if inexplicably, drawn to the Earth girl--but maybe he's heard that Earth girls are easy). But now mildly creepy Sheriff Valenti (William Sadler) is on to the E.T.s, as are agents from a shadowy branch of the FBI. Although it hints at a darker parable of teen sex and love--"It's not safe," warns Max of their relationship; "I don't care," Liz replies--Roswell is pretty much content to revisit territory already explored better in The X-Files (unsurprisingly, series co-creator David Nutter is an X-Files veteran). Situations and plotlines get increasingly absurd over the course of these 22 episodes in the initial 1999-2000 run of this three-seasons-and-you're-out show, with--unfortunately--no concurrent increase in charm or sense of humor. The DVD set is loaded with extras--commentaries, featurettes, deleted scenes, and auditions--but the series is lethargic enough without getting bogged down in this kind of minutiae. Optional. (M. Johanson)