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Learn of the Season's First UPN Crossover!!

I am – Hercules!!

Does “Special Unit 2” cross over with “Smackdown!”?? No!!

Does “Buffy” cross over with “The Hughleys”?? Absolutely not!!

Does “Enterprise” cross over with … “Roswell”??

It does!

In “Roswell’s” fourth UPN episode, authored by Russel Friend & Garrett Lerner and titled “Secrets and Lies,” teen alien Max Evans will find himself in Hollywood, investigating the death of a guy we’ll see shooting at Michael in the Oct. 9 UPN premiere.

This suspicious demise will lead Max to probe the Paramount Pictures archives (!) in search of proof connecting the present-day murder to one from the past at the hands of the same alien. This proof, insists Max's true love Liz, can be found in the dailies of a Paramount science fiction feature titled “They Are Among Us.”

How does Max get on the Paramount lot? A talent agent he meets at the dead man’s funeral puts Max up for an “Enterprise” audition. Who is Max auditioning with? “Enterprise” star Scott Bakula. Who is directing the “Enterprise” episode? “Star Trek” vet and “Roswell” executive producer Jonathan Frakes. (Behind the scenes, Frakes is also directing this episode of “Roswell.”)

For which “Enterprise” role is Max auditioning? An alien. Specifically “Korgan of the Bantoo,” who suspects Capt. Archer has invaded his sector of space to steal dilithium crystals. The audition doesn’t go particularly well: Frakes tells Max he’s not very convincing playing an extraterrestrial. The pitiless irony!

Some other tidbits:

* Ferrini, the thug who shoots at Michael in the premiere, dies in the 3.4 teaser. He’s on Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills with a young hooker. While the hooker wanders off for a smoke, the street is suddenly bathed in blinding light. A shadowy figure is glimpsed running down the street. The hooker, Bunny, quickly returns to find nothing left of her date but a charred husk. The detectives find the number of Michael’s license plate in the glove compartment.

* Max meets Ferrini’s talent agent, Jules Walters, while attending Ferrini’s funeral. Ferrini, it turns out, wasn’t only a thug – he played them on in the movies and on TV. And now that Jules is down a client, he sees Max as leading man material. “I’m not an actor,” Max points out. “And Ben Affleck is?” counters Jules.

* While Jules schmoozes, Max rifles through the agent’s palm pilot and learns Ferrini’s address. He finds a videotape of Ferrini rehearsing for his “role” in Utah.

* Max encounters Bunny at Ferrini’s house, and she leads him to where the spot on Mulholland where Ferrini was incinerated. Bunny tells of a tall man who ran off and seemed to disappear afterwards. When Max asks Bunny about who cast Ferrini for his job in Utah, she replies, “He wouldn’t tell me. Said it was a secret. When he got back, he started acting really funny – kept saying he knew something. Something big. Something that was going to make him a rich man.”

* Meanwhile, back in New Mexico, Jesse and Isabel are keeping their whirlwind engagement a secret -- and Iz’s dad begins to wonder if the reason his handsome new underling hasn’t hooked up with some of the local talent is sexual orientation.

* Also back in New Mexico, Liz and Kyle are teamed by a teacher to act as video journalists for a class assignment. They use this circumstance as an excuse to investigate the alien murder from the past. One witness, a seventysomething hair and makeup artist named Bess Covendall, remembers an actress who was “hit by lightning on a clear day.” The doomed actress was, at the time, torn between her leading man and a lowly member of the crew. Kyle’s cranky grandad thought the crew member was an alien.

* We get to meet Kyle’s cranky granddad, who even sees aliens when aliens are not about.

Somebody’s shooting at Michael? Isabel’s engaged? Max and Liz were in Utah? Herc’s extensive precap of the first three “Roswells” to air on UPN can be found here.

I am – Hercules!!





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