Opening credits: The season finale of Roswell is brought to you in part "by Evolution from Dreamworks." And sixteen other moody one-worders that sound like rejected names for a new Calvin Klein cologne. Oh, and that movie? Looks. Retarded. Someone memo Julianne Moore that a little more Magnolia and a little less Ladies Man might help her career out a smidge. I'm only trying to help. Dude, this wasn't about the opening credits at all.
If some punk kid started playing "Who Let The Dogs Out" on his iBook on my overnight flight into the complete silence, I swear to God I wouldparty! Then I would jump right out the window.
Tap tap tap tap tap. We're at some kind of outdoor eating locale that looks a little like the Crashdown after the front wall was removed and reallocated to the set of Gilmore Girls ("Not renewed, Roswell? Well, then I guess you won't be needing THIS!"). Liz "Bowlmor Lames" Parker sits at a table with Maria, "My So-Called" Sean DeLuca, and Kyle "My Stepsister Is An Alien" Valenti, Kyle obsessively tapping the fingers of his left hand against the table in a vague simulation of the patience level the audience experiences in waiting for something to happen (and waiting and waiting and waiting). Everyone's in a jolly mood. Maria, shilling for the walled competition in her Crashdown uniform, banters at My So-Called Sean, "You've really gotta lose that earring. It's like you're so obviously trying." Sean banters right back that Maria is "retarded" (before you shoot off your poison emails, remember I was just quotingand that it's just a colloquialism and doesn't automatically mean that Sean hates all retards), and Liz offers up that she thinks the earring is "cute." Maria suggests, "Let's hear from someone other than the bowling partner." Kyle -- tap tap tap -- asks all hopefully, "Isn't it, like, a gay thing, anyway?" (Before you shoot off your poison emails, remember I was just quotingand that it's just a colloquialism and doesn't automatically mean that Kyle hates all the gays. Actually, that one wasn't a colloquialism at all. Excuse me. I have a poison email I need to go shoot off.) "Gay" and "retarded" in the same scene? Risqu! My So-Called Sean scoffs at Kyle's provincial point of view and asserts, "I've got to get out of this town, I really do," because living in a small town makes you narrow-minded and chilling in the clink makes you urbane. Everything I needed to know I learned from watching Roswell.
Maria finally notes the-tapping-fingers-from-the-first-act-going-off-in-the-third and begs Kyle to stop, but before we're all "I solved 'Clue'! It was Leanna in the University with the tapping fingers!" Max and Michael amble up, and Kyle and My So-Called Sean take off with barely a hello or goodbye. Michael sits down. Max asks Liz if he can talk to her upstairs. They go inside. Oh, wait. They are in the Crashdown. Huh. I mean, we've seen outdoor seating disappear and reappear at the Crashdown before (in, I think, "The Convention"), but it was three flimsy snack tables and a saltshaker, not this al fresco Viennese lanai thing. Seriously? Where's the wall gone off to? After Liz and Max take off, Michael looks concerned and morose at Maria, who frets, "Oh, God, somebody's dead, isn't somebody?" Syntax police, arrest that dialogue! Somebody wrote that line, didn't somebody? Michael promises that no one is dead, and tells her, "I have to see you tonight." I'm not talking 'bout moving in, and I don't want to change your life. But there's a warm wind blowin', the stars are out, and I'd really love to see you tonight. Oh, fuck. England Dan stuck in my head for the entirety of Memorial Day weekend. Thanks, Michael. Well, at least it blew the seemingly indestructible "Lady Marmalade" remake out of there for three or so seconds. That song. I swear. Shut up, Pink.