Roswell, New Mexico Becomes TV's Most Timely Show Amid Government Shutdown

As we hit day 25 of the longest federal government shutdown in history, Roswell, New Mexico provides a look at the tensions that brought us to this point. The CW’s remake of the beloved 1999 teen drama about aliens living among us comes with some welcome updates that place it firmly in the present day, layering social commentary into the sci-fi romance that highlights our politically divided nation.


naturally, the new iteration of the show still has all of the requisite tentpoles of a young adult sci-fi drama. There’s the central alien story line, in which Max (Nathan Parsons), Michael (Michael Vlamis), and Isobel (Lily Cowles) are siblings from another planet, who have so far successfully assimilated into human culture. There’s the passion story, in which Max pines for Liz (Jeanine Mason), to the point where he tells her his secret, jeopardizing his and his siblings’ safety. There’s the drama, coming in through sibling tensions escalated by supernatural powers and through a love triangle with Liz’s ex-boyfriend, Kyle (Michael Trevino). There’s intrigue and mystery: What are these aliens hiding, and will they be noticed out?


However unlike the previous TV show, which starred Shiri Appleby and Jason Behr because the star-crossed lovers, Roswell, New Mexico takes place ten years immediately after high school, making all of their problems a little more serious, a little more intense, a little bit more adult — and because of that, a little bit more political.


Liz, a scientist, has become everything Max and his siblings have habitually feared. “It’s the science that scares us the most,” he tells her in the premiere episode. And Max, right now a cop, has become the same for Liz, the Mexican-American daughter of a undocumented immigrant in a border state.


Our southern border is, naturally, a hot allocate right now; our government is in a stalemate over funding for a wall in that very space. President Donald Trump refuses to sign any government financial range (and thus end the shutdown) that does not let for his $5 billion fence meant to prevent people from entering the nation illegally through Mexico, while members of Congress — namely, Democrats, plus an increasing assortment of moderate Republicans — resist to waste cash on a symbolic gesture that fuels racism and won’t even solve the non-existent problem it’s intended to address, preferring to as a substitute use those funds for immigration reform.


On the show, that wall is also the reason that Liz is returning to her hometown right considering that these years — her Denver lab “lost funding because someone needs cash for a wall,” leaving her jobless — and the veiled racism that fuels sobs for the wall is the same hatred targeted at Liz’s father, a diner owner attempting to contribute to his community to the perfect of his ability.


While this sounds like a properly timely for early 2019, it’s critical to note that the show was actually made in 2018, before the government shutdown and before a GoFundMe was created for a citizen-funded wall — which goes to show that the country’s latest divisions are the foreseeable results of years of underlying animosity.


piece of this was a choice, and segment of it was the organic result of aligning this iteration of Liz with the character in the book series Roswell High; choosing a present-day Latina lead meant building a political statement.


“We’re living in a global where certain people feel disenfranchised or certain people feel threatened, and I feel like those things come up in conversation all of the time in our day-to-day lives,” writer and executive producer Carina Adly MacKenzie told MTV News and other outlets at while in a visit to the show’s Santa Fe set.


And for these modern times, the allegory between the aliens and the immigrants actually works out well. “We attempt to tell the story on the sci-fi metaphorical level and then to also tell the story on a more real level,” she mentioned. “We have undocumented immigrants on our show that are feeling threatened the same way that we have aliens on our show that are feeling threatened, and I think that they’re not that different … Storytelling overall, I think, is about humanity.”


Since humanity extends behind border politics and racism, because the story progresses, the show tackles other far less talked-about nevertheless similarly prevalent social issues, like sexuality, mental health, and returning military support, all woven into the alien-dominant storyline in such a way that you almost don’t realize just how several issues we’re dealing with up until you pause and list them — sort of like marginalized issues in real life.


Taking care not to tokenize any characters and to supply varying perspectives, MacKenzie noted the in general objective was to tell “stories about what it feels like to be a ‘other’ and to feel all alone and to not have a community that you could look at” — something that we can all relate to in some way or another.


“Overwhelmingly, I think the through line is this idea of looking for a location to belong and looking for acceptance for what you are — you know, the truth of what you are and being able to be accepted for that,” Cowles mentioned. “Tolerance and acceptance, versus intolerance and feeling threatened and endangered by something that’s foreign.”


Endurance and acceptance, a message apt for Roswell, New Mexico, and for each person living In America in 2019.