Roswell 1.07 River Dog (Part 2)

We’re at the point in Roswell where the big reveals are a little too enmeshed between weird mumbo jumbo. Despite the strangeness of the execution, it’s satisfying to be actually getting some answers this early on. It’s fine to piece together puzzles like this gradually, but they always work best when the answers that we get aren’t a big question themselves.

River Dog follows-up the fun cliff-hanger we were left on last week by giving us some fun action to get us back into the episode from the outset. That quick pace permeated the majority of this episode which highlighted the urgency and the intensity of the teen’s current situation. Being chased down and hunted by the government isn’t all that usual an occurrence for kids this age, and I liked that they took the time to feel scared and anxious over what might happen next.

There’s harshness to the male cast in Roswell that sort of makes it difficult to like them sometimes, and later on it really affects the viewers’ ability to see what these girls see in such obnoxious guys. It’s a subtle thing here, Max’s stubbornness to let Maria help work through the files they found could be due to the fact that he’s just trying to keep his own past to himself, but didn’t they just agree not to keep things from each other? This stubbornness reflected badly against Liz, who was brave enough to risk her own safety to help him find answers when she volunteered to visit the reservation.

The same goes for Michael, and though they play his terrible, unlikable qualities well against Maria, and it easily transforms into sexual tension thanks to Majandra and Brendan’s performances, it’s hard to feel for someone who hates spending time with “two chicks yakking”. Ugh. A lot of his vulnerability from last week stays put though and you can tell that what he feels for Maria is more than just sexual curiosity.

A lot about this episode felt more comfortable than the show has previously, with some great bits of humour throughout, and the pace increasing nicely. You can tell the show is starting to really go places, and though the ambiguity of some of this week’s findings is slightly frustrating, it’s still exciting to see things moving on so well, now that we have more to go on than a weird painting and a key.

7/10