by Jen Winkler, Community Contributor
\nJun 20, 2014 | 11:03AM<\/p>\n
The story is as old as time: Boy likes girl, girl likes boy, girl uncovers boy\u2019s secret identity. Hilarity ensues. No, but seriously, the epic love story of Liz Parker and Max Evans in Roswell deserves to be remembered and introduced to a new generation of fans.<\/em><\/p>\n Season 1 | Episode 1 | \u201cPilot\u201d | Aired October 6, 1999<\/strong><\/p>\n In honor of the \u201cflashback Friday\u201d trend, I thought I\u2019d kick off my time as an EW Community Contributor by recapping the best episodes of Roswell, a criminally underrated WB\/UPN sci-fi series from the late 1990s\/early 2000s. If you\u2019re new to the series, I highly suggest adding it to your list of summer Netflix binge watches. Even if you\u2019re already a fan, it\u2019s always a good time to rewatch!<\/p>\n One of the brains behind the show may sound familiar to you now: Jason Katims. As in, the Friday Night Lights, Parenthood, and About a Boy creator. If that doesn\u2019t sell you on the show, maybe the cast will do the trick. Jason Behr, Shiri Appleby, Majandra Delfino, Brendan Fehr, Katherine Heigl, Nick Wechsler, and Colin Hanks round out the cast. Fun fact: Many of them reunited at the Austin Television Festival earlier this month for a panel in honor of the 15th anniversary.<\/p>\n We\u2019re first introduced to Liz Parker (Shiri Appleby) as she\u2019s christening a new journal with a strange beginning: \u201cI\u2019m Liz Parker, and three days ago, I died. After that, things got really weird.\u201d Uh, I\u2019d say so! Cut to her and her best friend, Maria (Majandra Delfino) working as waitresses in a kitschy tourist trap of a diner known as the Crashdown Cafe. (We later learn that Liz\u2019s father owns the cafe, and the Parker family even lives in the apartment above it.)<\/p>\n Liz no sooner gains the attention of some tourists in town for the alien festival than she\u2019s the accidental victim in a shooting, when two other customers get in a fight and a gun is fired. This is where Max (Jason Behr) and Michael (Brendan Fehr) come in. They witnessed the shooting, and Max rushes to save Liz\u2019s life. We see visions of a younger Liz that Max is witnessing as he heals her gunshot wound before the cops even arrive. As soon as the sirens get closer, though, Max smashes a bottle of ketchup and begs Liz to go with the story that she slipped and a bottle broke on her.<\/p>\n Sheriff Jim Valenti (William Sadler) instantly starts investigating this case. Witnesses in the cafe, including the tourists, all confirm that a gun was shot, but no bullet can be found anywhere. When Liz gets home that night, she discovers a glowing handprint left on her stomach where Max touched her.<\/p>\n The next morning, everyone is back at school but all anyone can talk about is the shooting. Maria bugs Liz to tell her what really happened with Max, but so far, Liz is keeping her word and staying mum on the subject. Maria and Liz\u2019s friend Alex (Colin Hanks) wasn\u2019t at the cafe at the time, but he\u2019s equally concerned about the incident.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Max\u2019s sister Isabel (Katherine Heigl) and Michael are getting on Max\u2019s case about the very public risk he took in saving Liz\u2019s life. Not only did he save her life, but he also revealed his true identity as an alien to Liz. Now Michael and Isabel want to skip town before anyone else learns the truth about them.<\/p>\n Oh yeah, it was super-convenient that Max had walked into biology class chewing on a pencil and got freaked out when the assignment was to take a swab of cells from inside your mouth and view them under the microscope. He got a bathroom pass and missed the rest of class while Liz did some detective work of her own. With his pencil eraser at hand, she discovered that his cells were wildly different from her own. The conversation that follows this discovery confirms Liz\u2019s suspicions that Max is an alien, or as he prefers, \u201cnot of this Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n Sheriff Valenti isn\u2019t letting go of this case so easily. His son, Kyle (Nick Wechsler), caught of glimpse of the glowing handprint on Liz\u2019s stomach when he brought her home after a date. For whatever reason, he must have told his dad, who then confronted Liz about it in school. He showed her pictures of an unsolved murder case from 1959 where the victim was found with a similar handprint left behind. It turns out Jim\u2019s father worked on that case, and it is hinted that he eventually drove himself crazy over the circumstances surrounding it. The apple may not have fallen so far from the tree because, like his father, Jim is very interested in getting to the bottom of this story.<\/p>\n In order to find a way to throw the sheriff off Max\u2019s case and allow Max and company to stay in Roswell, Liz comes up with a plan for the upcoming Crash Festival by staging a similar accident where there are bound to be witnesses. Maria plays the \u201cvictim\u201d of a hit-and-run in the parking lot while Michael, dressed in a cliched alien costume, runs over and places a hand of silver paint onto her. Liz has her timing down pat as she makes sure that even the tourists who were so interested in her after the shooting at the cafe witness this scene.<\/p>\n Valenti chases after the person in the costume, only to be led to his own son, Kyle. Obviously shaken up, Valenti has no choice but to lay off of Max for now \u2014 but not before he vows to find out the truth eventually.<\/p>\n As if Max and Liz\u2019s chemistry isn\u2019t obvious enough, there are literal sparks flying in the background when they talk about how they really shouldn\u2019t be together because it\u2019s just too complicated. With the addition of Dave Matthews Band\u2019s \u201cCrash into Me,\u201d this is an admittedly cheesy ending, but it works so well. It definitely stands the test of time, as this pilot remains on my list of favorite episodes.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll be highlighting the 10 most essential episodes spanning the course of this series. Feel free to follow along and share your comments with us! Whether you\u2019re watching Roswell for the first time or you\u2019ve lost track of how many times you\u2019ve rewatched the series, let me know what you think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Jen Winkler, Community Contributor Jun 20, 2014 | 11:03AM The story is as old as time: Boy likes girl,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":31933,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"coauthors":[2262],"class_list":["post-44347","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44348,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44347\/revisions\/44348"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=44347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}