Calgary Sun-Surprise Roswell finale – Minor Spoilers
Surprise Roswell finale
By TYLER McLEOD — Calgary SunThe rookie sci-fi drama Roswell has been flinging surprises, information and clues at the audience for weeks leading up to the season finale at 8 p.m. tonight.
Yet with every answer comes another question.
“Now the whole thing has just gotten a lot more confusing,” says William Sadler, who stars as the town’s top cop, Sheriff Valenti. “As I became more certain there were aliens, I became more certain they’re not evil. They’re not all the things I used to think.”
Since the fall debut of Roswell, Valenti has been trying to force into the open the high school aliens played by Jason Behr, Katherine Heigl and Brendan Fehr.
Tonight, Valenti finally witnesses Michael (Fehr) using his unearthly powers. What Valenti will make of the experience remains to be seen.
Earlier this season, the sheriff seemed hell-bent on sending the extraterrestrials off to an FBI autopsy lab or sentencing them to summer school or whatever it is one does to teenage aliens.
“When the season started, I was just the sheriff in dark sunglasses chasing these sweet young aliens.
“It wouldn’t have been interesting if every week I was standing there going, ‘Curses! I missed them again!’ That would have gotten old real fast,” Sadler says. “Now I have a teenage son I don’t communicate with, I have an elderly father who I was reunited with, I have a girlfriend. These people in my life have little by little been pushing me into the good-guy category.
“It was something I always hoped would happen. It’s a nice arc.”
The future of Roswell is to be determined this week as networks announce their fall lineups.
Sadler isn’t likely sweating having to turn his badge in should WB decide Roswell’s loyal audience simply isn’t big enough to continue the series.
He can always return to his diversified film career, which has included everything from The Green Mile and Die Hard 2 to The Shawshank Redemption.
Roswell has attracted a very different demographic to Sadler’s film work. The young, hip cast has many fans who probably don’t even know there was a Die Hard before Die Hard: With a Vengeance.
To say nothing of the teens surrounding the 50-year-old New Yorker on set every day.
“I smack them around. They come around to me and say, ‘Mr. Sadler, I need career guidance…’ ” Sadler jokes of working with the young actors. “I was actually very lucky, I think. We have a very talented group of kids.
“What they lack in experience, most of them have more than made up for in raw talent. They surprise me all the time.”
And surprises are what Roswell’s all about.