Hi, I'm Pamie. I'm filling in for Djb this week, as he's suddenly trapped under the heavy object known as a "workload." This promises to be a pretty interesting recap, as I've never seen this show before in my life. We'll look at it this way: what happens when someone sits down and watches Roswell for the first time in her life and it happens to be this episode? You get this recap. You know, it'll just be a little experiment for those of you who love this show and have watched it for years. It has been on for years, right? Amazing. Okay. Deep breath. Here goes.
Oh, by the way? I've never watched a show on the UPN before. Isn't this the Sci-Fi channel?
Previously on Roswell: Parents forbid a dark-haired girl from being able to see Max anymore. This same male parental unit then threatens a boy, who I'm assuming is Max. Max looks like he used to sing for Toad the Wet Sprocket. A blonde confesses that she can "go into people's heads while they're sleeping." She touches a yearbook photo of one Alex Whitman, and the image gets all watery and blurry. Wait. Maybe that's this crappy videotape. Nope. Alex Whitman then has a dream where he's dancing with a blonde in a fancy dress while another blonde watches. Cut to this Alex person asking Isabel Evans (thanks for the full name, Alex. It helps this early on) if she'll go to the prom with him. Then it might be a shot of those two kissing at a prom, but if that's the case, then Alex decided to go to the prom dressed as a priest. Cut to a car crash, with police investigating. The angry father from the beginning of this section announces that Alex is dead. Dammit! He's the only one I know for sure so far. Isabel cries on Alex's casket. End of "previously."
We open with what I think might be porn. Two young, pretty kids are making out at what sounds like a dance. Thighs are stroked. Upper lips are sweaty. Tongues touch. The girl closes her eyes and looks like she's far, far away, which means she must be close to having a television representation of an orgasm. Pan back so we can see that the two are still clothed, but they're alone in a room that's decorated like a Halloween party. They aren't in costume, I don't think.
Okay, that scene just fades away, and now we watch the same girl in a different outfit walk down a street. Does Roswell always open with a make-out scene? Will that make sense to me later? We'll find out. Okay, I think this girl has just spotted the guy she was making out with earlier. They're walking in opposite directions on either side of this street and there are people all around, but they're only looking at each other. In most shows I normally recap, someone should walk face-first into a pole right about now. Nope, that girl just walked right by one. They both just look like they're thinking dirty thoughts.
What is happening? Cut to a movie theater marquee that reads, "Roswell Revival. The Best Years Of Our Lives." Is this the opening credits? No. The slutty-thoughts girl walks up to the box office and buys a ticket. She enters the show already in progress, and the camera pans over to her already sitting with the slutty-thought man from across the street. She's in tears watching the screen. He actually hands her a handkerchief at this moment. A real handkerchief. Do you know a man alive that's not your grandfather that still carries a handkerchief? Anyway, both slutty-thought girl and I laugh simultaneously. She refolds the handkerchief to avoid all of his snot and dabs at the corner of her eye where there are no tears.
They're already changing the marquee to something about Paris as SluttyCouple walks out of the theater spoiling the ending of "Roswell Revival." Apparently "she" married him at the end. SlutMan says it's because she loved him. Oh, wow. These are the first lines of the episode. No wonder Djb recaps this thing. Just bad music and mime. Anyway, Slutette says, "She did, she really, really loved him." SlutMan adds that "he" was "damaged," but "she" still loved him. They go on about how great the female protagonist is and how beautiful of a person she is to love someone so damaged. Slutette says she loves old movies. She wishes that real life could be like the old movies, where everything works out perfectly and the guy always gets the girl. They stop walking and face each other. "It can be like that," he says, reading from his Clich Handbook. He laughs awkwardly and walks away from her. She rocks back and forth, watching him leave her. Is that where she lives? Across the street from the theater? She just keeps standing there, staring. Okay, I guess we'll leave her there, just like my parents did to me when I was five and wouldn't follow them in the grocery store anymore.
Pan down from a clock to a giant black void for fifteen seconds before finding a photo strip of this same couple we've been following all this time. She's in his lap and he's holding her, smiling. Pan down to smiling, kissing, smiling. It's the girl, and she's on her stomach in bed, staring at the strip of photographs, biting on her pinkie nail with her feet crossed at the ankles like any good community theater director would have her blocked. She does her best WWAJD here (What Would Ashley Judd Do?) and stares straight out with her hand under her chin as she thinks really hard about something we aren't clued in on, but I'm guessing from the context of this show that she's an alien and she's in love with this guy and she's wondering if she can tell him she's an alien and he'll still care for her or if he'll run screaming. Am I close? And I'm just taking a wild stab here, but isn't that probably the basic conflict of eight out of ten of these episodes? AshleyJudd/Slutette then touches the photograph of her and SlutMan kissing, and it warbles like a puddle. She keeps staring straight out, panting just slightly, as I start to notice she also looks like Kari Wuhrer. She closes her eyes.