by Lisa Asanuma

Created on: January 20, 2009

Roswell caught my attention from the very beginning. The very first advertisements, in fact, were shown on Fox, the summer before it aired. The series was moved to the WB before it aired, as it fit better into their young-adult lineup. Even those first commercials, vague as they were, had something captivating about them, though. Just a boy and a girl, both with lost looks, and a small blurb of voice-over and a clasping of hands, with the word Roswell with some green cast over it.

The adverts disappeared, though, and I thought perhaps the show had been axed before it had even begun, and I was sorry for it, because there had been something to those two characters, something in their eyes that had pressed on me. That September, though, while flipping through channels, there it was. I happened upon the Pilot episode by accident. I'd missed a good portion of the episode, but it was being replayed over the weekend, and boy was I ready for it, VCR prepped to record.

The basic premise is this: Max and Isabel Evans, and their friend Michael Guerin, are aliens from the 1947 Roswell crash, hidden for decades in pods in a secret chamber of a rock formation in the desert. In 1989, they "hatched," knowing nothing about themselves and looking like six-year-old humans. They were discovered wandering the highway. Max and Isabel were adopted by loving parents, but Michael is put into a decidedly not-so-loving foster home. Fearful of discovering what might happen to them should the truth of their origins ever be revealed, the three vow to never share their secret, and each has their own way of hiding in plain sightMax, the clean-cut boyscout type, Isabel the cold-hearted beauty, and Michael the quiet miscreant.

In the Pilot episode, however, Liz Parker, local waitress and long-time crush of Max's, gets shot in her father's caf when a fight between two customers gets out of hand. Max, who has the power to heal thanks to his mysterious genetics, cannot stand to see her die, and so in a flash decision risks everything to save her life, which of course leads to questions being asked. The series as follows is a sometimes-thrilling, always touching saga as the three aliens bring Liz and her friends Maria and Alex into their inner circle, and go forth to make friends, discover enemies, evade the law, learn about their origins and fall in love, all while trying to keep up with high school.

Roswell was love at first sight, for me. Here was Liz Parker, "the smallest of small town girls,"

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