Techtite's TV Reviews!

"This first, flawless season would be the best the series offered in its mere four-year run. In fact, most of Felicity's fans would advise you to purchase season one, only to forget they had additional seasons entirely!"

---from the review

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So Felicity clearly should've chosen Noel over Ben, eh? So, what if Noel *was* Ben...?. Interesting trivia bytes include the tale of how Scott Foley was, in fact, originally cast to be Ben in this series. The trouble is, it was so hard for the casting agents to choose someone as congenial as Noel, so Scott was given that part while they looked for someone else to be Ben. Interpret this bit of trivia as you will, though it is interesting, isn't it...?

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Felicity: 

The Complete First Season

Click picture to order this season on DVD

A Review by Techtite

(review posted November 5th, 2002)

Felicity, upon its premiere in 1998, was unlike anything the WB network offered before...and for good reason, since it was a Touchtone Pictures production, not a Warner Brothers release. Sure, this means that it had that Disney, pixie-dust whimsy to it, though therein lied most of its charm; a dramatic-yet-comedic tale of a girl who graduates high school with no real idea of what she's looking for in life, and learns the answer to this question, in college, one day at a time.

The series premiere begins on high school graduation day, when a shy Felicity Porter (Keri Russell) decides to take a chance, and finally ask her 4-year-crush Ben (Scott Speedman) to sign her yearbook. He writes something about wishing he had the time to know her better, she takes it to heart, and inevitably decides to follow her heart --and Ben-- to NYU, instead of the Ivy League college her parents wanted her to attend. Felicity's quest of self discovery begins from there.

Of course, the unattached, free-spirited Ben is none too amused at his sudden secret admirer, making it all the more difficult for Felicity to start a relationship with him. The problem is --as this first season implies-- should she truly want to? Clearly she has more in common with Noel (Scott Foley), who in season one, seems to truly love her for who she is, not who she must "become." Meanwhile, the love triangles continue when Felicity's new college friend, Julie (Amy Jo Johnson) catches Ben's eye, long before Felicity has a chance to.

Not that love triangles were all this season offered. There's the amusing running gag of Felicity's obnoxious roommate, Meghan (Amanda Foreman), whose outspoken punk-rocker personality offers some of the best lines all season. Equally unforgettable is Javier (Ian Gomez), Felicity's outspoken, lively boss at the coffee shop. So perfect was his character, Javier was given a larger role, later in the season. Even the bit players were well chosen this season, in particularly "Todd Mulcahy" (Stephen Berra), who gives Felicity a taste of her own obsessive medicine, when he comes all the way to New York just to kiss her. Of course, the season would not have been complete without art student Eli (Simon Rex), who, when fed up with choosing between Ben and Noel, Felicity impulsively (and quite frivolously) loses her virginity to. D'oh!

This first season would be the best the series offered, in its four-year run. By season two, Keri Russell cut her trademark hair, which might seem very minor, yet signaled how a changed Keri Russell --now a "celebrity"-- performed the role. Gone was a girl-next-door performance, replaced with an actress who felt she was so untouchable, she could cut her hair to look, quite frankly, like a Chia Pet. The show's approach changed as well, from a bittersweet tale of what you know you want from what you merely think you want, into a mere two-dimensional cartoon caricature. By the next season, Noel would suddenly and inexplicably become a jerk, while Ben --even more inexplicably-- would fall in love with Felicity. Why? Because naive, pre-teen girls wanted it to happen, that's all; Felicity got her cutie-pie boyfriend, and that's all that matters. Well, yeah, that's all that matters...in Archie Comic Books. Sadly, that's what this once-realistic drama quickly became; one big story of Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead. It was all downhill from there...though, in it's first season, it was fun while it lasted.

Adding to the value of this DVD set are commentary tracks by the series creators and executive producers, J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves. These commentaries are all the more amusing when you consider that this is the same duo who would move on to a little spy show called Alias. While that show seems not quite as real as this one did --sorry; an "indomitable spy" will never seem more real than a college-based drama!--  Alias surely would not have existed if not for Felicity, and the demand for more series by Abrams and Reeves. Looking at this first season, such demands are not a surprise.

---Techtite

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