The Critics

The Critics...... from: This Site

The critics were on a Monday bus tour that took them to three TV studios for interviews with casts and creators of four WB shows. In the afternoon, they found themselves in the Crashdown Cafe. It's one of the central sets of The WB's spooky and adorable "Roswell," which airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET.

The show, about teen-agers who really are alien, trades on reports that spacemen landed in Roswell, N.M., in 1947. The cafe offers the Sigourney Weaver Kick Alien Burger ($3), Spaced Out Soup ($1.50 a cup) and Unidentified French Flying Objects ($2).

Majandra Delfino, who plays the somewhat spacey waitress Maria in the show, didn't need a lot of prep work to get into her role.

"It's really obvious to me that there are aliens around," she told the scribes, gathered in Southern California for their semi-annual full body immersion into the TV publicity machine.

"Each planet, each dimension, is full of interesting stuff," she said, echoing the views of "all her friends" back in Miami.

"They're not really hippies, but they're pretty spiritual, into Zen, really crazy. They can't believe I'm on a WB show."

I mean, it's, like, so suburban -- talk about the Twilight Zone.

But "Roswell" does have its advantages and not just the cool alien and supernatural stuff. It's also well-stocked with The WB's standard stable of hot boys.

Delfino says she's trying to move her character into deeper territory, away from the straight role of wacky sidekick. But she also knows what's really important.

"I never ask the writers for anything except kissing. Just kissing. Lots of kissing."

After her success as Tina on the unsuccessful "Tony Danza Show" in 1997, Delfino, 18, says, "I was offered every sitcom that came along."

But when she read the scripts. "No way."

"I'm just a kid. I just graduated high school. I'm still living with my parents. It's not like I have to do anything."