Max and Michael begin to worry when Isobel goes missing. Liz approaches local UFO nut Grant Green for help after a new lead points her in his direction. Kyle makes a surprising discovery about his father that poses more questions than it answers.

If there’s one thing that Roswell really has nailed it’s melodrama – long, drawn out scenes wherein characters deliver numbingly obvious monologues to one another as music rises dramatically up and down interminably in the background. This episode gets that in spades.

Isobel’s disappearance causes concern for Max and Michael as they have seen this sort of behaviour in her before, and they think that they know the cause. The problem is that they are both wrong – the cause goes deeper than they know, and relates to secrets that have been kept from one sibling by two others. Worse, as the episode goes on it turns out there are other secrets as well, as it transpires that this secret alien family who are so very involved in one another’s lives and only have each other to trust all seem to be lying to one another on various levels. There’s probably a decent message in there, mangled as it is beneath the heavy iron-shod wheels of the show’s over-egging it.

Meanwhile Kyle is still trying to come to terms with the idea that his late father, the town sheriff, may have been having an affair with a drug-addled teenager. A particular clue leads him down an unexpected trail (and a happy re-appearance by one of the show’s stronger characters) and into the sort of twisty-turny plot contrivance of which the writers of any popular soap-opera would be proud. Turns out that Valenti Snr was an incredibly complicated man after all, and in a show that’s been quite ham-fisted in its treatment of characters as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ it’s a surprising and welcome dose of nuance that isn’t quite suffocated by the dialogue surrounding it.

And Liz – oh, poor, sweet Liz, and her endless quest for the truth. An unexpected lead (which derives from the most predictable bit of personal invasion ever) leads her to a conversation with local UFO enthusiast and podcaster Grant Green, who she believes may be a key witness in her crusade to find out exactly what happened to her sister. At this point, I am genuinely starting to feel a little bit of intrigue as to Rosa’s fate, which seems to potentially have been something very different to what the show initially told us, but I do wish that the show would hurry up and get to where it’s going with it, as the long drawn-out journey is starting to grate and honestly all I really want is more of the Michael and Alex show.

Verdict: Despite myself, I find I’m starting to get drawn into this as bits of actual interest start to appear. Pacing and writing are still issues, but there is a good story in there somewhere. 5/10

Greg D. Smith