Felicity

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Felicity
Image:Felicitylogo.jpg
Genre drama
Running time 60 minutes
Creator(s) J.J. Abrams
Matt Reeves
Starring Keri Russell
Scott Speedman
Tangi Miller
Scott Foley
Amanda Foreman
Greg Grunberg
Amy Jo Johnson
Country of origin Flag of United States United States
Original channel The WB
Original run September 29, 1998–May 22, 2002
No. of episodes 84
For other uses, see Felicity (disambiguation).

Felicity was an American television series that revolved around the fictional college experiences of the title character, Felicity Porter (played by Keri Russell), as she attended the "University of New York," based on New York University, across the country from her home of Palo Alto, California. The series ran for four seasons from 1998 to 2002, with each season roughly corresponding to the traditional freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years students attend at universities. The series was created by J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves with the assistance of many writers, and was directed and produced by many people, including Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. It originally ran on the WB Network.

Some episodes of the show began with stark camera shots of Felicity sitting in a dorm room or apartment holding a tape recorder, recalling events in order to make a cassette tape to send to an old friend named Sally Reardon (voiced by Janeane Garofalo). This occasionally provided a method for Felicity to narrate an entire episode. At the end of episodes like this, Felicity would often be shown listening to a tape Sally sent in reply. This was a staple of early episodes, but became less frequent as the series went on.

The show had 84 episodes play on-air, plus one unaired pilot.

Contents

[edit] Plots

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Felicity Porter explored New York City in Felicity
Enlarge
Felicity Porter explored New York City in Felicity

The story of the series begins at Felicity's high school graduation where she asks Ben Covington (played by Scott Speedman), a classmate whom she has a crush on, to sign her yearbook. Moved by a comment he writes, she decides to change her education plans completely, deciding to follow Ben to New York rather than attend Stanford University to prepare for the study of medicine.

Upon arriving in New York, Felicity discovers that her ideas were rather misguided. Ben has a girlfriend and apparently did not actually have strong feelings for Felicity (he has difficulty remembering her name when they first see each other). While Felicity works to sort out her emotions, she continues the basic motions of student life and moves into her dorm. There, she meets the resident advisor Noel Crane (Scott Foley). Eventually, romantic involvements ensues, and the relationships between Felicity, Ben, and Noel form the basic dramatic conflicts in the show and continue until the end of the series.

A number of other characters appear throughout the series. Felicity's college roommate for the first two years is Meghan Rotundi (Amanda Foreman), a goth Wiccan who occasionally casts spells on her for good or evil. Julie Emrick (Amy Jo Johnson) is one of Felicity's best friends for three seasons, as is Elena Tyler (Tangi Miller), who often takes classes with Felicity. Felicity has male friends, including Sean Blumberg (Greg Grunberg), who is always trying to produce new off-kilter inventions, and Javier Quintata (Ian Gomez), who manages the coffee house Dean & DeLuca where Felicity works for most of the time she is in college. John Ritter also guest stars on the show as Ben's father, and Jennifer Garner made two appearances in the first season and one in the fourth as Hannah Bibb, Noel's ex-girlfriend.

[edit] Ratings controversy

The show's ratings declined in the 1999–2000 season. Executives at the WB blamed this partly on a new hairstyle by the show's star. Known for long and curly locks, Russell went along with the producers' idea that she snip her hair short early on in the second year after her character had a rough breakup with Ben. The network was bombarded with letters and e-mails from fans, who stated that they hated the haircut and they didn't recognize the title character anymore.

WB network executive Susanne Daniels said in early 2000, "Nobody is cutting their hair again on this network." In reality, the network didn't become that strict, but new policies were enacted requiring hairstyle changes to be approved by management [1].

Russell herself was surprised at the reaction, later stating:" People still take it really personally. They come up to me at breakfast places like, 'When are you growing your hair back?' ".

The ratings drop also coincided with the show's move to Sunday night, so it is unclear exactly how much effect the hairstyle change actually had.

[edit] DVD

The DVDs were released over a period of four years. They have been criticized for a few reasons, most notably because the soundtrack includes different music than the TV version. Some of the songs were changed, reportedly because high licensing costs would bring up the price of the box sets. On a technical level, some episodes did not have proper telecine encoding, so viewers using HDTVs could sometimes see interlacing artifacts (though this problem can be mitigated in a few ways). The yearly sets are listed below with their American release dates.

[edit] Release Dates

Season Region 1

North America

 Region 4

Australia

 No. of Discs No. of Episodes
One November 5, 2002 November 4, 2003 6 22
Two July 22, 2003 Withdrawn 6 23
Three September 21, 2004 Withdrawn 5 17
Four March 8, 2005 Withdrawn 6 22

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

season 4

[edit] Trivia

  • Grace of NBC's sitcom Will & Grace said in a 1998 & 2001 episode:

1998 (Epsode #8 The Buying Game)

GRACE: [TO WILL] And I was at Bloomingdale's this morning waiting in line to buy wrinkle cream, and this Jennifer-Love-Michelle-Sarah-Felicity looking thing bumps into me and says, 'Excuse me, ma'am'.

2001 (Epsode #70 Crouching Father, Hidden Husband)

GRACE: [TO THE GIRLS] Don't worry. I know what you guys are going through, and I can promise it's not always gonna be this hard. I'd like to tell you the story of a plucky young girl who went through the hell of adolescence, came out the other side stronger, self-possessed, with a damn good head of hair, if I do say so myself.

GIRL #1: Felicity?

GRACE: No, you weirdo! Me!

  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer's 4th season, when the characers were in college, in an episode called Where the Wild Things Are, in a frat house infested with the poltergeists of repressed, abused orphans, a girl is crying and cutting off her long curly hair as an effect of the possession. The character Xander says, “Anya, look around! There’s ghosts and shaking, and people are going all Felicity with their hair…”
  • In an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Sabrina says "Everyone is looking at me like I was the girl who told Felicity to cut her hair."
  • In an episode of Dawson's Creek, Dawson and Eve are shown to be watching an episode of Felicity.

[edit] References

[edit] International

[edit] External links

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