No matter solely airing for 4 seasons, The WB’s college drama Felicity stays as present in trendy custom now as a result of it was when it first debuted. Even Trendy Family’s Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell) admitted that if he may time journey once more to the ’90s, he would inform Felicity Porter (Keri Russell) to not cut back her hair. Actually, Felicity quickly turned ingrained in our cultural conscious all through its first season in 1998, following a present high-school graduate as she decides on a whim to fluctuate all of her college plans to look at a boy from highschool she barely knew, Ben Covington (Scott Speedman), to New York Metropolis.
From a essential standpoint, it was a lot much less a girl blindly following a cute boy who spoke to her as quickly as all through the nation for no motive (although it was a bit little little bit of that, and I might have utterly executed the an identical for 1998 Scott Speedman) and further that his comment written in her yearbook unlocked an urge for her to lastly turn into one other particular person other than who she’s been. Or, as a result of the theme music from the gathering’ final two seasons put it, a model new mannequin of you. “I bought right here proper right here as a result of Ben, nevertheless I’m staying as a result of me.” That’s what purchased the gathering previous the wide-eyed ingénue with the dreamy gold curls with two irresistibly charming guys out of the blue fawning over her set amidst the backdrop of a merely pre-9/11 Manhattan.
‘Felicity’ Was Recognized for Inventive Plot Twists
Sadly, Felicity didn’t on a regular basis preserve the promise of its inaugural season, which in a method felt like an allegory for the college experience and/or youthful grownup life, the place nothing feels certain and each little factor can go unsuitable. Or it was merely guide of a creator’s room that didn’t exactly know the place they wished the storyline to go at any given second. That’s likely how we ended up with a Twilight Zone-inspired episode shot solely in black-and-white, Eddie Cahill collaborating in a homicidal drug vendor, and most infamously, Felicity decreasing off all her curls for the sake of a change firstly of the second season.
Second in line to the precept character’s haircut as basically essentially the most hated plot twist (for many who could even justify a haircut as such) on Felicity was the way in which through which via which the creators chosen to complete the gathering after its fourth season in 2002. On the time, the gathering was marketed inside the kind of American college years, as a result of this reality it solely made sense that Felicity would conclude after “Senior Yr.” It moreover would have been cancelled anyway as a result of a gradual decrease in top quality, nevertheless that’s neither proper right here nor there. What’s proper right here is that, after a well-deserved and principally satisfying conclusion to the gathering’ storyline inside the season’s seventeenth episode, its remaining six episodes have been dedicated to a special inventive flip: Felicity travels once more in time.
Did Felicity Really Journey Once more in Time?
On paper, it sounds ludicrous. No matter its one questionable experimentation with a sci-fi fantasy, Felicity did not fall into that fashion. It was a dreamy ‘90s teen drama with an applicable if not a bit excessive amount of craving and emotion. So did Felicity Porter really time journey on the end of her final season? Appears she did: A yr after their graduation, Felicity discovers Ben has been dishonest on her. Once more in New York for Noel’s (Scott Foley) bridal ceremony, she wonders what life would have regarded like if she’d chosen Noel over Ben. Thus, her pal Meghan (Amanda Foreman) locations a spell on her that efficiently sends her once more to the beginning of Season 4, having merely slept with Noel on a rooftop.
What follows is a dilemma of the perfect post-graduate regard: Does she merely go along with it and repeat her senior yr courting Noel so that each little factor will sometime work out? Sooner than she is going to have the ability to reply that question, she begins to understand that merely the movement of touring once more in time begins to mess with the order of events as she is conscious of it. So when she tells Noel and Ben that she has time traveled from the long term, she results in a psych ward—until she predicts one factor to Ben, and he realizes she should be telling the fact. Then Noel winds up killed in a fire that he and Felicity escaped earlier inside the yr. To make sure that the nightmare to complete, she ought to go to the one that wrote the spell that Meghan carried out so that he can reverse it. As a approach to do that, she ought to recount her entire college historic previous to him, with the help of keepsakes from utterly completely different life events.
What started as a closing attempt to make a dying current’s storytelling attention-grabbing for plenty of further episodes ends up being a number of the inventive plot twists I’ve ever watched on television. Felicity’s assortment finale, which follows the character as she tells the spell’s creator the story of her college years, serves as an environment friendly reminder to all the points that the gathering acquired correct: youthful, relatable characters in life like (for basically essentially the most half) storylines. I’m personally glad that the three-way chemistry between Russell, Speedman, and Foley was what saved Felicity alive.
‘Felicity’ Was Not a Fantasy … Correct?
Although the gathering was technically not a fantasy, it moreover sort of was: I watched it for the first time all through my very personal turbulent college years, attempting to manifest one factor out of its magical premise for myself. I can’t help nevertheless take into account that was the premise of Felicity’s attraction, as an aspirational portrayal of the American college experience which may have solely existed on The WB between 1998 and 2002. As an alternative of merely ending the gathering with Ben and Felicity graduating, going dwelling to the an identical grad college, and residing happily ever after, current creators Matt Reeves and J.J. Abrams dared to ask, “Nevertheless what if this occurred in its place?” It’s a question all of us in that stage of life have requested ourselves from one time or one different, in a single state of affairs or one different.
It’s moreover easy to know the controversy that surrounded Felicity’s time journey, supplied that these daring closing six episodes would have aired from one week to the following, and by no means consumed multi operate afternoon on Disney+ under a blanket in a second of my very personal post-university melancholy. What would have be taught as bonkers in 2002 may want had a definite landing inside the streaming age, with out having to attend each week in between explanations. It merely contributes to the case for reviving the fashion of WB assortment like Felicity for a model new period, maybe inside the kind of a PG-13 mannequin of Euphoria. A method or one different, tales like Felicity’s matter, no matter how overemotional or privileged, and it’s time to begin out discovering new strategies to tell them.
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