From "Faith" on 1All_Roswell on Yahoo Groups:

You say she's changed, fine, that's your opinion and there's nothing wrong with that. I, for one, don't see that. And just like you have the right to express your opinion, others like me have the right to express why and how much we hate her. If you don't like it ignore it, delete the message and move on, I do it all the time when I see someone defending Tess, no fuss no mess.

Now let me explain my feelings, ignoring what she did last season (which she still has to make up for in my book) like so many have this season. Let's look at her action in this season alone.

For most of the early episodes in season two she was still after Max despite the fact his heart was somewhere else, it was toned down from last season but it was still there.

In EOTW Future Max tells Liz the world ends because Tess leaves because she didn't like the way the group and especially Max were treating her. Ignoring the fact that she wasn't sent here to mate like a monkey in heat with Max but to defeat an enemy who enslaved their home planet and save her people.

It never occurred to her that the way she decided to enter their lives would leave the group some what resistant to trust her. And instead of earning it she demanded it, and when she didn't get it, she left all in a huff, and basically told them and her own people, "Screw it, I'm not getting what I want, I'm gone, save yourselves I don't care!"

And for those that say that we don't know what she did with herself once she left, can you really picture Tess doing on her own to do what needed to be done to save her people? I don't think so. So of course who has to make things all right again, Liz. And to add salt to the wound Liz has to spend the day with the girl in the place that in a couple of years she would have married Max.

As for Tess' actions before this episode [Viva Las Vegas], let's see,

(1) Did anyone notice how she got a little power hungry right after EOTW,

(2) Later she "kills" the skins but some how good old Nick makes out all right, makes you wonder how many others survived. Or was all a mind warp. I don't think that was the writers intention but I couldn't help but think it anyway.

(3) Max takes her to New York where she's kidnapped but all the girl has to show for it is a mild dazed look, those dupes didn't really try that hard did they, even though as far as they knew Max was dead and they had as long as they wanted to get the information they needed out of her.

I could go on but I have class in 15 minutes, but what I'm trying to say is so far this season I have seen more to make me more than a little suspicious of her, and nothing to really make me like her. Yeah she's cool to watch with Kyle, But I think that has more to do with Kyle then anything else.

Will I ever like her, I can't honestly say no I never will, but I will continue to hate her until such a day she has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that she really has changed, for example putting the needs of others before her own, without an ulterior motive. I hope I made some sense.

Faith

From "Shayd" on Gist.com's Daily Crashdown message board:

"I won't speak for anyone else, but I, for one, don't _hate_ Tess per se, I have major problems with the plot inconsistancies and lack of development in her character. She was introduced as a shallow, poorly written character who immediately derailed over a dozen episodes worth of quality plot development in favor of afternoon soap opera quality contrived complications and dead end storylines. To make matters worse, the writers had the opportunity to exploit what little personality they had given the character and tell the story of her redemption and acceptence into the pod squad and instead opted to blank out the entire summer and simply giver her a new personality (and have everyone else magically accept her) in the fall. Tess has been the epitomy of continuity errors and writing cop-outs since she was introduced, you never know what personality she'll have from one week to the next and when the pod squad gets in trouble or needs more information to solve a problems it's nearly always Tess that pulls a rabbit out of the hat with some power or tidbit the writer's invented at the last minute to get themselves out of a corner. I liked the character de Ravin played in The Miracle, but that was not the same Tess from MITC, S&B, or any 1st season episode.
I realize it's not uncommon for shows to have fluxuations in the personalities of their characters or to have writers who need a quick solution to end an episode inside the bounds of a 50 page script (how many times would the crew of the Enterprise have gotten blown up if they didn't have a transporter, a holodeck, or Cmdr. Data to persent them with a completely unforeshadowed solution in the last five minutes of the episode?) but on a show like Roswell where even the secondary characters have real depth, growth, and development, throwing a poorly thought out character into centre stage and telling us "the characters you like trust her, that means you have to like her too" is unacceptable. Wardrobe (or lack thereof) and lust aside, we like Max, Liz, Micheal, Is, Maria, etc. because we've seen who they are and they've given us a reason to like them. Tess is a mouse designed by committee and the writer expect us not to notice the elephant in the middle of the set. BTW-None of this is a reflection on the actress herself, I think she's done the best she could with the material the writer's have given her."

On the pod squad's acceptance of Tess:

"If I were ____ (fill in the blank with ethnicity, religion, or sexual preference of your choice; I shall choose 'Purple'), I would not assume that a total stranger is worthy of my trust simply because she is also 'Purple'. For all I know 'Purples' could be cannibals and, having grown up alone, I may not realize that pretending to be a friend is what 'Purples' do just before they eat you. Remember Rath and Lonnie are pod aliens as well and we've already seen that they don't let that kinship stop them from sacreficing their own for personal gain."

On the possibility of redeeming Tess:

"I think, from a writing and fan-memory standpoint, Tess carries too much baggage to redeem at this point. It doesn't matter how much fancy trim and nice paint you put on a tar paper shack, you're not going to fool anyone into thinking it's a mansion. The character has no infrastructure to build from. I think they'd be better off ditching Tess and starting fresh with Ava. She can inheret all of Tess' more interesting potential (by virtue of the fact that we know little about her) and discard all of the failed attempts to turn a piece of the scenary into a character. The 'tragic' death of Tess could even be used as a catalyst to bring Kyle and Ava together as Ava assumes Tess' Identity to cover up her disappearance."

Fehral's essay on why Tess haters should not be Lamptrimmers
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