Roswell
"A Roswell Christmas Carol"

Airdate: December 18, 2000

While searching for a Christmas tree awfully late in the season, Max and Michael witness a man give his life for his daughter and do nothing. Big surprise, eh?

But this time, Max's inaction costs him his sanity as the dead man's ghost haunts and taunts him for letting him die. It seems that Max made a big boo-boo by caring more about hiding his alien ancestry than helping others and now must "restore the balance." Whatever the hell that means.

Maria in her eye-strain inducing holiday finery.

In this case, "restoring the balance" involves healing a bunch of kids in the pediatric oncology ward of a hospital that obviously doesn't believe in IVs or any kind of heart or respiratory monitor for their dying patients. The healing process is similar to that which saved Liz Parker back in the pilot episode (dammit!), only here it looks... Well, lets just say if I saw some strange guy hovering over either of my nieces' beds doing that, I'd rip his heart out with my bare hands and feed it to him while it was still beating. Jane Sibbery's "Calling All Angels" playing in the background or not.

On the home front, everyone seems to be pairing off. With the exception of the siblings Evans and Miss Parker, of course. Tess' matchmaking efforts on behalf of Amy De Luca and Sheriff Valenti bring her closer to the increasingly yummy Kyle while Michael, displaying a sensitivity belied by his hairdo, actually comes up with a very thoughtful Christmas gift for Maria.

But not being paired up doesn't mean that Isabel is left with nothing to do. Oh, no. In what I'll take as an honorarium to Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi" (instead of, you know, a sick joke that references a group hell bent on genocide), the Evans sibling that actually has some leadership potential is cast in the role of the "Christmas Nazi." Barking out orders and bending people to her will, Isabel is here how she should always be: in charge. Although normally painted as beautiful, but purposeless, "A Roswell Christmas Carol" shows that when it suits her, she can be charismatic, driven and, above all, organized! It's disheartening to think that these characteristics are certain to disappear come the next new episode and we'll be back to being force-fed the idea of Max being some great leader.

Somebody pass me the Pepto-Bismol. I'm getting nauseous just thinking about it.

Able to direct Christmas pageants and leap tall buildings in a single bound.

In many ways "A Roswell Christmas Carol" plays like a first season episode with its emphasis on the characters' romantic relationships (do they have any other kind on Roswell?) rather than the science fiction aspect of the story. Maria even wore some horrendously bad outfits that had me covering my eyes. It was just like the bad old days. The only thing missing was ten full minutes of the patented, IQ point killing, Moo and Monotone stare. Then again, whenever those two share screen time I find my eyes wandering lest I catch too much more of that and, suddenly, can no longer resist the urge to hurl my shoe at my television set. But my television is unharmed so there probably wasn't an indigestible amount of bovine action going on.

As a light comedy with touches of cliché'd holiday moments sprinkled throughout, "A Roswell Christmas Carol" wasn't that bad. It was only when it veered towards the serious, and therefore the Max and Liz end of the suckdom spectrum, that it seemed to lose focus and ended up giving me a headache while I tried to figure out what exactly the point of it all was supposed to be. On one hand you had the ghost demanding that the balance be restored and giving his blessing to the idea of healing all the children instead of just the one that Max had come for, but then we were subjected to Liz's nearly incomprehensible speech about how Max wasn't God and therefore shouldn't go healing everyone all willy-nilly because maybe there's a reason behind the suffering in the world.

That Liz. She's just a big ole' font of Christmas spirit, ain't she?

So... To heal or to cower in a corner and quiver like a girly-man. That is the question. At least I think it was. Or maybe it was about doubting the existence of God in the face of miraculous powers in the hands of a really dull extra-terrestrial. Either scenario isn't well drawn out and, in the end, the purpose of this episode is left a mystery.

In other words, it didn't make no kinda sense. Then again, with Roswell, when has anything ever really made sense?

-- Linda M. Najera

Roswell airs Monday nights at 9pm EST on The WB.

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