Shark Bytes

Too much of a focus on Isabel's character. The only season I didn't find her irritating was in the 2nd one. In the 1st she was too bitchy and in the 3rd it was all about her rushed marriage to some random guy.

I understand why so many people hate Tess, her character was designed to incite hatred, but I don't understand why people see her as a reason the show jumped??
Tess kept the show alive for most of Season 2, it was fast becoming a yawnfest before she showed up, and the Max/Liz relationship would definitely have sent viewers to sleep if Tess hadn't shaken things up.
I hated her for killing Alex, but even that twist helped the show along IMO, because after Alex's death is the first time Liz ever demonstrates that she actually has a spine, and I think it made a lot of people respect her as a character, instead of just finding her slightly annoying.
For me, the show jumped with Season 3. It was just embarassing to watch. If you want to talk about one character being responsible, then I have 1 word for you- JESSE. What the hell? Muppet-faced dull-as-ditchwater totally pointless character, who never had anything of interest to say except to address the oh-so-controversial (read: boring) topic of him being 'Latino'.
There wasn't a gram of chemistry between him and Isabel, and it didn't help that the actor (whatever his name is) was wooden as a plank in every scene. He only had 2 expressions- gurning and not-gurning.
Isabel's hairdo also sucked, and speaking of Katherine Heigl, her disdain for the series and reluctance to remain part of it became painfully apparent onscreen by Season 3.
And we can't mention bad hairdos without mentioning Michael's ratty Barbra Streisand hair and Maria's plastic extensions!
It also irritated me how they tried to turn Liz into some clichéd 'bad girl' for no apparent reason. A large part of Liz's charm as a character was her inherent sweetness and good nature. Once they started making her wear eyeliner, an ugly ponytail and the same massive hoop earrings in every episode, that appeal was lost and she became 2-dimensional.
Thank god for Kyle. He's the only character who got less annoying and more interesting throughout the show, sadly everyone else was the opposite.

Alex's long absences from the show (especially in the 2nd season) really sucked. His lack of screentime, mostly due to Colin's growing movie career, was irritating because he was one of the best actors on the show and the character had a lot of wasted potential. I hated the way Isabel would keep rejecting him, I thought it was unfair to see him be treated so many times like a lovesick fool.

Season 3 seemed ... Random. Many episodes were slow and didn't even amount to anything. (This can be blamed on the fact that the network did not agree to renew the show, which led to a messy wrap-up season.) Jesse was no Alex. That's the best way to put it. Whereas Alex had chemistry with everyone in the group, Jesse just didn't. Having to see Isabel tell a vision of Alex that Jesse was the only man she could ever see spending her life with was pretty painful because it just seemed to disregard whatever Alex and Isabel were supposed to have had.

The only things we can really be grateful for by the end are:
*Kyle's amazing chemistry with everyone. In fact, Kyle probably saved Season 3. Almost everything else was a mess.
*Michael telling Maria he will always love her no matter what, then her realizing she can't live without him and leaving Roswell with him and the others. I can't say how disappointed I was in the writers for keeping them apart for so long in that season; they deserved better.
*Max and Liz slowly building bridges in the lead upto their reunion. I still don't think it was realistic that they'd get over the Tess dilemma that soon, but it was similar to M/M - the writers knew they had to get them back together before the end somehow.

I find it so hard to believe that people are saying it jumped with Tess. HELLO? She was everything the first season was leading up to.
Tess and MAx doing it, and Alex's death, though they seem questionable, led to a great story beign told in season 2.
But season 3 was when it jumped. I mean, what's up with them just all of a sudden marrying off Isabel to some nobody new character? And just when she's having chemistry with Kyle!
Then, instead of continuing on with the story they've spent the last two years building up, they bring back the FBI? What the hell? Someone should write a novel that totally retcons those events and tells a season 3 like it should have hapened.

When Maria broke up with Michael in Behind The Music. It sort of made sense when she explained why they needed a break (she really loved him but she wanted to explore her passion for music and needed to get away from all the alien drama), but then it just made absolutely no sense. In the following episodes she's still hanging out with the gang - so she's still involved in all the alien situations, and she eventually gets a record deal, which lasts for all of one episode. Writing consistency when it came to season 3 was just really bad. There was no need to break up Michael and Maria, they were always a popular couple and it just seemed like they were giving Majandra a few more singing opportunities on the show. Why break MM or Max/Liz up in the final season? It meant their reunions were rushed and that's not fair on the fans.

For me Roswell was fabulous until that episode when Tess killed the skins, that was the last great episode, after that the show went downfall! And Tess killing Alex and becoming like evil alien was very stupid thing! There were some good episodes later but after episode Wipeout, the show was not that good anymore!

The 1st season had a lot going on, and it focused on following the season-long story-arc so you knew where you were as far as storytelling purposes were concerned. The 2nd season slowed things down too much. The first half was pretty boring. The second half I enjoyed almost as much as a lot of the first season. I hated Alex dying but his death created a lot of episodes which got the show back on track. I'd say most of the Michael/Maria centric eps were the best. Max/Liz had a lot of chemistry but in comparison to M/M, they kinda bored me. So I'd say the 2nd season with the whole will-they-won't-they neverending M/L drama was when the show BEGAN to jump. However, the 3rd season really annoyed me with its lack of focus on any real storytelling, as in nothing was really consistent. The writers lost track of the excellent writing they once did for the major couples and broke them up in stupid ways. The problem with the 3rd season was that you could totally tell it was the last. Everything seemed rushed and there wasn't even any real point to a few of the episodes. Take for instance Maria breaking up with Michael so that she could go pursue her dream. She doesn't even get a record contract until episodes later, then as soon as she gets it, she doesn't agree with the compromises she'd have to make and returns home, so the break-up was really contrived and was for nothing. Then Max 'died' and became trapped in the mind of an older man he'd healed. These episodes were again slow and didn't really add anything to the major story. So I'd say if you'd consider these things to be Roswell jumping the shark, then that's because the show had a major unfair disadvantage of being cancelled before any more story/character developments could've been made to improve things.

It jumped in the first season when the whole idea that Max/Tess and Michael/Isabel were 'destined' to be together was suddenly brought up. Firstly, too many people hated Max and Liz being separated (even though their romance was a yawnfest sometimes and I thought M/T was necessary drama). Secondly, nobody believed the M/I thing because he only had romantic chemistry with Maria, who was the love of his life; and too many times it had been said that he, Max and Isabel were like family so the idea of M/I was really incestuous. The episodes with the Dupes were ridiculously pointless, as was the whole boring Skins story-arc. Alex's character disappeared for ages then reappeared almost (physically and emotionally) isolated from the group. Then Tess' character was ruined in the reveal that it was her who killed Alex. That totally sucked because her character had really improved in the second season when she and Kyle got close. I hated her in the first season but the second season did her justice, until the pregnancy and the Alex reveal. Season 3 was so dumb in so many ways. The Isabel/Jesse thing was rushed and uninteresting, and his character was bland. The writing was so mixed up that it was unclear when Michael/Maria and Max/Liz were actually together. One episode they'd break up, the next they'd be back together like nothing happened. The 2 best couples were totally screwed over at times and even though the series finale did them justice, their reunions were rushed throughout the season. And where the hell did Amy and Sean DeLuca go? They were key characters before and were nowhere to be seen in this season with no explanation.

So I'd say the show jumped the shark not with Tess' character, but around the time her character was introduced.

The show jumped first with the whole is-Isabel-pregnant-with-Michael's-baby story arc. It was random and stupid, and totally got in the way of two of the best things about the show - Michael/Maria and Alex/Isabel. I didn't buy that Michael would be happy if it had been true, because he really loved Maria and the whole thing was just weird anyway because Isabel was like a sister to him. Thankfully that was resolved pretty quickly but the loss of Alex was definitely the show's downfall, despite the fact that it was probably the best episode of all 3 seasons. Amazingly well acted and written. The show's spark fizzled out with Colin Hanks no longer being on the show because the Alex-Maria-Liz friendship was significant and the Alex-Isabel relationship hadn't been explored enough. I'll admit I only kept watching to see if Michael would end up with Maria and Max would end up with Liz. Thankfully both couples did end up together, but the third season was really disappointing.

Roswell has a great love story that's why love this show

bloody hell
ive loved roswell every since it came on XD whats wrong with you people its a kick ass show you just cant understand what they were trying to do GEZZ

The show is great....but what i was wondering is why did it have to end?

I knew it reached rock bottom when it introduced Jim Valenti and the Kitshickers.

That was the lamest thing I had ever seen.

I loved Roswell, watched it all the time when it was on( even though it jumped newtworks) & like other i agree that in season 3 the show dis" jump the shark cause it was just so wishy washy

As a screenwriter (not a famous one - heh), I would be remiss if I didn't admit I have been significantly influenced by this show. Every now and then I'll watch an episode or two (yeah DVR!) and think about what went wrong from the perspective of a viewer and also the perspective of a writer, and I keep coming to the same conclusion. I think that Roswell didn't make it (I am not sure if I would go so far as to say it jumped the shark) simply because the writers and directors, and most definitely the producers, could never stay with one lasting identity for just what they wanted the show to be.

Tracing through the series, you can see the creators approach Roswell's plot arcs and the relationships between its characters from several distinct directions. I think that was due in no small part to the network changes (Fox ====> WB ====> UPN) and perceived demographic shifts in the show's viewership. But even beyond those factors, you can see what I'd almost call a 'power struggle' between the various creative entities behind the show.

Just about everyone seemed to have a very definite idea of what they wanted Roswell to be. The problem was twofold - one, those ideas weren't always very compatible one with another, and two, said incompatible ideas often showed up in consecutive story arcs or even consecutive episodes. The tug-of-war becomes pretty obvious in the second season, but you can see that the producers are still willing to meet in the middle and try to maintain some semblance of artistic unity amid the various incompatibilities.

But by the time the third season rolls around, you can tell that's pretty much out the window. The story elements that were mildly incompatible before become downright conflicting now, and very little effort seems to have been made in gathering all these stray ideas together into one unified storyline. It was more or less continuous, yes, but not truly unified, and we were all over the map right up until the final handful of episodes. To their credit, though, the creators of Roswell managed to assemble a respectable send-off for the characters in those last few episodes, and our patience was rewarded at least with an ending we could live with.

Just some thoughts. End short novel...