Roswell Season 1 was a landmark for the WB and much like Buffy and Dawson's Creek was. It is a story about a girl named Liz Parker and the 3 human looking aliens that were a result of the 1950's crash in Roswell, New Mexico. The story begins inside an alien themed diner that Liz works at and accidentily she gets shot during a hold up. Max, one of the aliens, who happened to have a crush on Liz rushes over to Liz and uses his alien molecule altering powers and dissolves the bullet and heals her wound, yeah that's a mouth full. But this is what sets the whole series in motion as the 10+ year secret of Max, his sister Isabelle and their slightly perturbed buddy Michael is revealed to too many people for it really to be considered a secret.

The box set itself is packaged quite nicely, inside the cardboard slipcase is some paperwork that look and smell just like Fox DVD ads and 6 "skinny" DVD cases that each have it's own cover art and episode list on the back of the case. The art is really, really nice, each cover contains a retro looking photo of the main characters of the show. By retro I mean they look grainy and techocolored, kind of like they photos were taken in black and white and then recolored. It was actually quite cool to look at. The only main character missing from the covers was Colin Hanks who is the son of Forest Gump himself, Tom Hanks.

Speaking of Colin Hanks his character Alex for the first 6 or so episodes is nearly nonexistant. Yet he had a nice cozy credit shot, one would think that it was to appease his famous father or just to cash in on the Hanks name. But once he actually gets to play a actual part in the show it does shine through. For a few episodes Buffy and Angel's Julie Benz guest stars as a FBI agent who goes to Roswell High to investigate the mysterious Max and company.

The general feeling being a new viewer to this series I felt that the show seemed very much like Smallville version 1.0. Only the show was from the perspective of the raven haired love interest rather than the humanoid alien with super powers. The show does generally focus on Liz Parker (Shiri Appleby) to begin with but as the show changes pace midseason the focus draws more over to the aliens which was much more interesting. What annoyed me early in the show was that every episode began with Liz's "journal" which with every entry ended with "I'm Liz Parker and this is my life", it just seems silly that one would finish every journal entry, even in their bizarre life where they are pining over an alien who has yet learned to emote past stoic, with such a cliche saying. But like I mentioned earlier it only lasts for about half the season and at least we don't get anymore inner monologues after that.

Jason Behr as decent of an actor that he is, is so amazingly "BLAH" in this show that I hated him as much as I hated Liz's journal entries. This also remedies itself mid season, but only slightly. In every scene it seemed as if Max was trying to act normal while squeezing his cheeks together to hold in the prarie dogging poop coming out his ass. Short of the episode that he gets drunk from a "swig" of liquer and the one where he's going through electrical shock torture he wasn't much on the emotional side of the acting spectrum.

Brendan Fehr, who played Michael on the otherhand was fantastic, he was the typical angry teen who lived in the trailer park with his foster father and has terrible control of his alien powers. Ok that's not THAT typical but he played his part probably the best of any of the cast on the show. He started off being whiny but later on the personality of his character pushes the story along by doing hot headed things that just makes things happen. Brendan was able to pull off being a jerk, who has a heart and is only a jerk because he was mistreated in his childhood. His scenes with Maria (Majandra Delfino) worked really well, you could feel the tension between these two actors and it's a wonder they didn't hook up in real life... or did they?

Majandra Delfino as Maria was pretty good, like she states herself early in the show she's the goofy sidekick. So that's all she really is, she hangs around Liz and makes out with Michael. Not much to her, just there for some drama, her acting was a bit over done at some times but she's young and she gets pretty hot looking by season 2 and 3.

Katherine Heigl was completely misused. Her character started out as a self centered bitch type character but later on she was pretty much dumbed down to just moping about their situation. She actually adds very little to the show in the first season other than the some eye candy and very, very limited drama. What the show should have done with her was put her next to a pool in every episode in a tight pink bikini with little frills along the..... ahem.... anyway. Her acting was as good as the script could give her and most of the time she didn't get very much.

The overall transfer of the DVD is really nice. It's a lot brighter than sister WB shows Angel and Buffy, you can actually see the characters most of the time. Didn't stop me from brightening the view though still, just looked better to me. The DVDs are mixed in only Dolby Digital 5.1 which though pretty nice is a half assed job. None of the sound effects were mixed to the left, right or rear speakers. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING came out of the center speaker except for the music. Very cheap way of doing 5.1 but I guess it works. The reason for the 5.1 remix was soley because they couldn't get the rights to most of the songs that they used in the actual episodes. So you fans of the series, you're in for a treat, this is like Roswell REMIXED, short of 2 or 3 song and the opening theme the entire soundtrack is changed. Whoo-hoo! This ain't the Roswell you remembered! Why they used this as a selling point on the packaging is beyond me but since I never saw the show originally it affected my enjoyment of the show somewhere between "not at all" and "zilch". There were only 2 documentaries one on the show and one on "Roswell High" the book which were mildly interesting. The two screen tests were ok but grainy and really not very entertaining because one of the scenes was word for word of an episode. Add a few commentaries and some terrible music video and that's about it for the features... a bit on the short side. I'd like to see bloopers. Bring me the bloopers!

Overall season 1 of Roswell is quite a fun ride, I am actually excited to check out season 2 when it is released. I enjoyed the overall story which really only picked up near the end of the season but it's great buy to pick up if you want some entertaining, supernatural teenage drama. At around $42 online you get 22 hours of interesting storytelling fun. It's quite a good deal. The extras aren't very much to look at but at least they added 5.1 Dolby Digital even though they cheated on the mixing. The Transfer is pretty and some of the acting is decent. I'm hooked to this show now, so bring on Season 2!!