I’ve been sick in bed watching Roswell and it isn’t great, but not bad all in all for a teen drama with a little SF thrown in. So, what kept it around for three seasons or so?
Quite frankly, I don’t find it “tape worthy” and so, I’m wondering if I’m just not seeing something in this small selection of episodes.
Another question, do you think we have “Smallville” because we had Roswell?
Thanks.
Well, I’m a big Roswell fan and pretty involved in what fandom is still around on the net. Nearly everyone I’ve ever talked to who liked the show has things about the show, episodes or arcs that they really disliked. The sentiment “The show had such potential, and then the powers that be went and ruined it” is quite common. (I’d be interested in which episodes you saw.)
To be a little bit more specific about the potential… well, I’d say that it was in the characters and the way relationships were explored on the show, especially in the first season. The sci-fi angle was nothing particularly great at the best of times, but the drama, the tragedy and comedy of the show often rose far above your run-of-the-mill teen dramas.
It’s probably still not going to be in everybody’s top ten list of best television… but if you watch the pilot, ‘heatwave’, ‘sexual healing’, and maybe ‘end of the world’ from season two, you’ll get a better idea of what we find DVD-worthy about it. (And that’s better than tape-worthy, of course. 
)
…I didn’t watch Roswell for a good long while, I didn’t think I could handle all the teen angst, etc… when I finally watched it, I found it had a surprisingly well-constructed story arc, with good characterizations that weren’t afraid to make fun of themselves. Max rivals Angel and Batman in the brooding stakes (who would blink first?), Liz is drop dead beautiful, Tess does a mean American accent and Isabel is delightfully nutty. (Go the Christmas Nazi!!!) The story arc about
Colin Hank’s character was absolutely fantastic, and the eventual reveal was logical, sad, and simply devestating story-telling.
Great show, worth it to tape as long as you can put any pre-conceptions about it being a “teen” show out the door…
I enjoyed Roswell but the thing was, the main characters, mopey boy and girl, (I forget their names) were just not nearly as interesting, or as fun to watch as the other people.
Just to answer this part, I think we have Smallville, and Roswell, and Charmed, and possibly Alias and some others I can’t think of right now because we had Buffy. That show seemed to kick off a whole sub-genre of “Teen drama with superpowers”.
To answer the question of “What did you see?”
I was drawn in by a scene set in the 30’s or 40’s, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention at the time (and D.O.M. that I am was caught by the blonde who appeared Latina in a 40’s style – she was quite striking).
Drawn in by a story that shifted in time using the same actors portraying different characters in each period.
Skipped the next one, then came back because daytime TV consists mainly of TV shows I didn’t watch the first time they were on the air and this seemed mildly interesting.
Ended with a Christmas episode (Christmas Nazi anyone?) and a healing of a children’s ward. Which, I admit was a nice episode that I’m glad I saw – all were flawed in some way and not “deeply” interesting. Also, the typical evil counterpart stuff didn’t interest me much either (which was some of the in-between episodes.
It seemed uneven, but not nearly as uneven as the last two seasons of “Smallville” which is coming dangerously close to losing it’s Tapeworthyness this season (in spite of the only really good episode I’ve seen this year “Lexmas”).
Okay, seems pretty clear to have been a stretch from early-to-mid season 2. ‘Summer of 47’, (the one with the characters all playing roles in a '40s flashback) is definitely good… I just watched that one on my DVD last night, actually. And yes, Majandra Delfino looked good in the 40’s outfit and sounded even better putting on a thick Texas accent as a Fort Worth reporter. 
The christmas nazi episode with the healing in the children’s ward (‘a roswell christmas carol’) is also a big favorite among the fans of the show, but I can understand if it didn’t seem compelling to someone who hadn’t gotten to know the characters so well. And several of the episodes in between really are fairly pitiful.
As a slight note, the episode that you skipped after the forties flashback would have been ‘end of the world’ if they were going in order at all, which is possibly the most beautifully written, and at the same time the most frustrating, 43 minutes of television in the entire series. (Especially since most of what made it beautiful was ruined by other episodes later on.)
Okay… resident Roswell geek shutting up now.
I was watching the same marathon on SciFi. The part that got me was the New York episode. Those are supposed to be New Yorkers? Maybe hanging around CBGBs in 79. I don’t see anybody looking like that around New York. And the accents were horrible.
Don’t get me started on the New York clones. “Total cornball”
Roswell is an interesting tv show.I watch it daily.
I for one like it because there’s something about the town, aliens and the Roswell incident itself that makes me feel all warm inside. I like watching shows that take place in the Southwest and I liked these characters.
The storyline was fun to follow, nothing too complicated but good entertainment for me. Third season was kind of shitty/cheesy though.
Hmmm…
Netflix Streaming has Roswell; it might be worth checking out.