The episode opened in a restaurant called the Crashdown Café that serves the tourists that flock to Roswell like pilgrims flock to Mecca to attend the annual Roswell Crash Site festival. In it, we meet best friends Liz Parker and Maria De Luca, who attend the local high school and work part time as waitresses at the restaurant. We also meet Max and Isabel Evans, who, along with their friend Michael Guerin, share a secret which, up until now, only they knew. The first thing we notice that is different about Max and Michael is that they consume bottles of Tabasco sauce as part of their diet. As we watch Liz and Maria talk, we can see that Max harbors strong feelings for Liz, but Liz is unaware of these feelings, despite Maria’s wise observation of this fact to Liz. Suddenly, a fight breaks out between two patrons of the restaurant, and shots ring out, hitting Liz, seemingly fatally. Max rushes over and through the use of some type of mysterious power that he possesses, he heals Liz’s wound, much to the chagrin of his friend, Michael. He then throws ketchup over where the wound was to cover up the blood, and he and Michael very quickly depart the premises, leaving an empty bottle of Tabasco sauce at the scene. It is at that point that we learn the true identity of Max , Michael and Isabel. It turns out that they are descendents of survivors of an alien space ship that had, indeed, crashed in New Mexico in 1947. We learn that they were born from incubation pods years after the crash, and that they are now living with local people who had adopted them knowing nothing about their origins. Max, by saving the life of Liz, has put his own life at great risk, by exposing his carefully guarded secret to outsiders.

We then meet other people that will play a role in the show. There’s Kyle Valenti, Liz’s boyfriend, whose father is the sheriff of the town, and who begins to suspect that something is amiss when Kyle spies a strange hand print on Liz’s stomach, a hand print that the sheriff had seen once before on a dead body. The sheriff, it seems, is haunted by the ridicule that his father endured for believing that aliens did indeed exist, and when his investigation of the shooting at the diner turns up inconsistencies, he is determined to find out what really happened, and in doing so clear his father’s name. We also meet Alex Manes, Maria and Liz’s best friend, and the scenario is set for Liz to confront Max and learn the truth about how he was able to save her.

In the meantime, Maria, who realized that Liz, had, in fact, been shot during the altercation at the restaurant, confronts Liz, and Liz is forced to tell her the truth. This prompts Max, his sister, and their friend to consider leaving Roswell in place of a safe haven, but they soon conclude that running away will just draw further suspicion to them, so they decide to stay and take measures to draw suspicion away from them. We then joined Max and Michael on the road as they inform Isabel of what had happened. Isabel reacts angrily to this revelation, as she told Max that he had been the one who always admonished her and Michael not to use their powers. Max then commented that Isabel uses her powers all the time, but she said she uses her powers for “recreational” purposes. She then proceeds to play a CD without a CD player, and melts the cheese on the taco that she is eating, which I found to be a highly comical moment in the show. Max, Michael, and Isabel then get pulled over by Sheriff Valenti, who routinely harasses young people, and his suspicions are aroused when he sees an empty bottle of Tabasco sauce in their car, tying them to being in the diner at the time of the shooting. Isabel seems very nervous about the sheriff and is afraid of him. His suspicions aroused, the sheriff steals Liz’s dress and turns it over to the government authorities, who greet his suspicions with great skepticism, but this sets the tone for future trouble from this obsessed sheriff, who later attempts to arrest Max until Liz and her friends foil his nefarious plans.

Max, as it turns out, has loved Liz from afar all his life, and when she asks him why he risked everything to save her, he simply states "because it was you”. By this simple, but wonderfully evocative statement, Max summarizes the love that he has for Liz in a beautiful way. Later, Max uses his powers to let Liz see herself through his eyes and to feel what he is feeling about her, and in doing so, Liz realizes that in Max’s eyes, she is beautiful. By “connecting” with Max in this special way, she starts seeing him in a different light, and she begins to fall in love with him. At the end, though, Max tells Liz that although he wants them to be together, he feels that he can’t take that risk, as he feels that being in a relationship with her will put her in too much danger. These scenes touched my heart like no other scenes that I’ve seen on a television show in a very long time, and established the romantic mood for the series itself.

Overall, I found this series premiere to be a really wonderful show, and it seems to promise great things to come, as we become further drawn into the lives and stories of the characters in Roswell.

Jerry D.