Liz needs one last favour from Kyle, who isn’t sure quite what he’ll do with himself when he’s no longer needed. Michael and Alex continue looking for clues as to Nora’s history and end up finding more than they bargained for. Isobel considers how she might help out Liz and Rosa.

After its… socially charged examination of the issue of abortion through the perspective of an alien abuse victim ridding herself of the child of her evil (and dead) ex, Roswell might be forgiven for navigating to calmer narrative waters, but instead it just decides to plunge elsewhere instead.

Liz and Kyle’s relationship has always been complex, and never more so than since he started helping her to try to reanimate her dead current boyfriend. That said, he’s asked again to risk his career in helping Liz ‘borrow’ one more piece of equipment from the hospital. He might not have considered the complexity of his situation of course, had he not been forced to re-examine it from the perspective of an outsider in the form of the Dean of Medicine’s daughter who he runs into yet again here. More than once, in fact, and not always in the best of ways. What’s clear here is that whereas Kyle might have traditionally been a bit of an asshole, it’s now Liz who is unthinkingly taking advantage, and that realisation stops her in her tracks somewhat.

Elsewhere, with Maria not talking to him and everyone else busy, Michael turns to Alex to help him in tracking down more details about his mother. Although this is the storyline which is actually expanding on the mythos of the show in terms of telling us more about how the aliens got here, what they can do etc, it’s also the least interesting part. Roswell works best when it’s about the people and their relationships, and Michael and Alex work best when that simmering sexual tension between them is bubbling away. This plotline right now lacks both these fundamentals, and even the flashbacks that thread through it can’t save it from being just a little dull.

On the other hand, watching Isobel trying to find a way to repay Liz for what she’d doing and Rosa for what happened to her is a sheer joy. Isobel free of both her ex-husband and the spectre of his child is a genuinely nice person who wants to put some joy back in the world, and her plan to help both sisters and their father is touching and surprisingly sensitive to a lot of issues.

Overall, it’s another great jump into the lives and loves of this small New Mexico town. Jenna seems to get the short end of the stick as we get some hastily shoehorned-in background on her sister which feels very retconned, and that’s a shame but apart from that, good things seem to be brewing.

Verdict: Not the strongest episode in the series to date, but some really nice character work from unexpected corners of the cast really lifts it. 8/10

Greg D. Smith