annavere | Tired, watching Roswell

Six day work weeks are slowly shredding my sanity, but the upside is they are absolutely crushing my ability to procrastinate. I don't have enough life to dawdle. I write or it doesn't happen. Consequently, my original prediction that I would get nothing done during this timeframe has turned into the exact opposite and I'm sure the HLH deadline is the major factor here, but it's helping keep my mood afloat when it would otherwise be in free fall. I am in a constant state of exhaustion.

Also, finished season one of Roswell, which I'm rambling about under a cut. It was pretty endearing - except for all the many occasions it made me want to set my hair on fire. There was a really great story here, buried under a metric ton of relationship woes and so much repetition it would make a lethal drinking game, to wit:

Every time a character insists on keeping secrets
Every time a character promises to keep a secret and then turns around and tells somebody
Every time an alien breaks up with their human paramour
Double shot if the human breaks up with the alien
Every time Liz says "I'm Liz Parker" during her diary voiceovers
Every time Liz or Maria is terrible at waitressing or Michael at short ordering
Every time anyone is a terrible student
Every time anyone is terrible to their parents (wow, this show made me miss the Buffy and Joyce dynamic, which is so loving despite the difficulties)

Despite all this, I found a lot to love, or be wildly entertained by, and it did finally turn the proverbial corner in the last four episodes and deliver on all the plot threads it had been ignoring all season. And since I'd had that whole season to bond with the characters, it mattered when one of them got tortured by the government and all the rest collectively freaked out. It also looked surprisingly great, with lovely lighting and a lot of interesting camerawork - including some delightfully 90s "dreamlike" effects which go straight into music video territory. I also unabashedly love the opening credits. The 90s nostalgia was strong with this show, like a warm blanket.

Stupidly unromantic, though. Not only did Liz/Max, Michael/Maria and Isabel/Alex share the exact same story beats between them, it had the highest number of relationships for incredible amounts of WTF. There was a whole episode devoted to Liz developing creepy physical side effects to her hot and heavy make out sessions with Max, and to Max having not at all sexy flashbacks to Liz's childhood while kissing her. What. The. Fuck. There's another episode dealing with Michael and Isabel having shared erotic catapult nightmares about each other, despite having grown up as siblings (different households, but still). My jaw was on the floor throughout that bit. This is pretty rich stuff for a 90s teen drama, or else I have badly underestimated that genre. Latecomer Tess showed up and for a couple episodes seemed intent on seducing the entire alien cast (Max got the brunt of it, to rile up the Liz fans, but I thought that was a cheap bit of conflict and the best dynamic was actually between her and Isabel - sadly, that's guaranteed going nowhere).

Lots of interesting concepts at play all rooted in the same basic premise, which is the total ignorance of the alien kids as to their origin and abilities. The more they find out, the more disturbing it all gets, and it keeps them sympathetic (most of the time - they do kind of treat their humans like crap, and rarely receive satisfactory pushback for it) while begging all manner of questions about identity and self-direction. They also get stuck with a mentor/protector who happens to be a scary serial killer, and therefore the cause of most of their problems in the season. Factor in my already discussed love for Sheriff Valenti and Agent Topolsky, and I look back on the whole experience with increasing fondness - although 'Heat Wave' and 'Blind Date' are two of the dumbest episodes I've sat through in a while, stuff like 'The Convention' and the race to the finish line made up for it. I think my intellectual credibility with my boyfriend took a hit here (I eventually switched to headphones and the like), but it was fun.