on tuesday night, one of my greatest pleasures, guilty or otherwise, limped off the air into nothingness: upn's roswell. of course, these tragically hip teen aliens didn't start out in television's armpit. arriving on the wb in fall 1999, roswell delivered episode after episode of romance, intrigue, deception, and revelation. i would venture that the first 10 episodes were the most crisply-scripted, sensitively-characterized, deftly-plotted opening salvo for the genre in some time. roswell developed a devoted fan base, but never really acquired an audience. clearly retooled to expand its reach, the focus shifted to the relationships between the characters, drifting from the "aliens among us" theme and toward the typical teen drama schmaltz the wb is famous for. for the season's climatic episodes, the threat of discovery and exposure reasserted itself as the driver of the series, as the lead character was captured and tortured by the Special Unit, an elite goverment corps of alien hunters. in an immensely satisfying season finale, our heroes foiled the Special Unit and discovered their own history and purpose. the fact that they were engineered alien/human hybrid clones of a deposed king and court of their home world was imparted by very special holographic guest star Genie Francis (that's right, general hospital's laura, as in luke & laura, one of daytime's most beloved couples).

season two began on a new night, mondays, to make room for felicity's return to wednesdays, after the disastrous haircut season on sundays. the camdens of 7th heaven made for a dismal match and ratings slumped even further. the season premiere introduced a new threat, the aliens that had deposed and offed them last time around. this next logical step in the mythology of the show was compelling and superbly executed, including the revelation of a stunning betrayal in their past lives. but it was after the climax of this story arc mid-season, that roswell jumped the shark. frequent pre-emptions added to the chaos of a complicated story line involving the death of a major character and the guilty party's increasingly desperate attempts to cover it up. add to that an unexpected (and preposterous) pregnancy, breaking up the romantic center of the show. the finale bravely attempted to make sense of all this nonsense, but one hour was not enough to write themselves out of the enormous hole they had written themselves into. all that remained was to fill in the hole and bury roswell for good.

in stepped upn, snatching our teen aliens from certain cancellation. season three sucked from day one. all we got in the way of dramatic tension was a search for max's alien baby. snore. except for a brilliant spoof of 60's sitcoms entitled "So I Married An Alien", each episode was more dreadful and disconnected than the last. the show became almost exclusively character-driven, focusing once again of the central relationships of the show. snooze. i continued to watch, partly out of habit and partly out of a twisted desire to see just how low it could go. try bad to worse. as the season wound down, both the governmental and alien threats returned, haphazardly and unconvincingly. which brings us to tuesday's series finale. and i've got some bones to pick.

this season, liz has developed several powers, including in the finale, that of premonition. in fact, she "saw" that she had gotten into Northwestern by touching the letter-sized envelope (Now, am i wrong or doesn't everyone know that LARGE envelope means acceptance; LETTER means thanks but no thanks). no attempt whatsoever was made to explain these developments. none. zero. zilch. disappointing, not to mention lazy. after months of basically treating each other like shit, michael and maria end up together? this was not satisfying, simply expedient. kyle goes off with them at the end? KYLE? i suppose, this was to find the "purpose", which, it was explained 30 minutes earlier, his life lacks. ok, the writers had a whole zen, buddha thing to work with to lend credence to this choice. instead, they relied on some crap about some bubba boss that wouldn't make him a partner at the gas farm. L, A, M, E, lame. and with the entire season orbiting around isabel and her lame-ass lawyer lover, she leaves him behind? oh yeah, so he can take that ligitation job in boston that pays $350,000. of course, it does. at least, daddy got his badge back after that foolish stint as lead singer of the Kit Shickers.

and liz parker? she's happy.

and me? well, i just feel gypped.