Regardless of solely airing for 4 seasons, The WB’s school drama Felicity stays as current in standard tradition now because it was when it first debuted. Even Trendy Household’s Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell) admitted that if he may time journey again to the ’90s, he would inform Felicity Porter (Keri Russell) to not minimize her hair. Certainly, Felicity shortly turned ingrained in our cultural acutely aware throughout its first season in 1998, following a latest high-school graduate as she decides on a whim to alter all of her school plans to observe a boy from highschool she barely knew, Ben Covington (Scott Speedman), to New York Metropolis.
From a vital viewpoint, it was much less a lady blindly following a cute boy who spoke to her as soon as throughout the nation for no purpose (though it was a bit little bit of that, and I might have completely completed the identical for 1998 Scott Speedman) and extra that his remark written in her yearbook unlocked an urge for her to lastly change into another person aside from who she’s been. Or, because the theme track from the sequence’ remaining two seasons put it, a brand new model of you. “I got here right here due to Ben, however I’m staying due to me.” That’s what offered the sequence past the wide-eyed ingénue with the dreamy gold curls with two irresistibly charming guys abruptly fawning over her set amidst the backdrop of a simply pre-9/11 Manhattan.
‘Felicity’ Was Identified for Inventive Plot Twists
Sadly, Felicity didn’t all the time preserve the promise of its inaugural season, which in a means felt like an allegory for the faculty expertise and/or younger grownup life, the place nothing feels sure and all the pieces can go unsuitable. Or it was merely consultant of a author’s room that didn’t precisely know the place they needed the storyline to go at any given second. That’s most certainly how we ended up with a Twilight Zone-inspired episode shot fully in black-and-white, Eddie Cahill enjoying a homicidal drug supplier, and most infamously, Felicity reducing off all her curls for the sake of a change initially of the second season.
Second in line to the principle character’s haircut as essentially the most hated plot twist (for those who may even justify a haircut as such) on Felicity was the way in which through which the creators selected to finish the sequence after its fourth season in 2002. On the time, the sequence was marketed within the type of American school years, due to this fact it solely made sense that Felicity would conclude after “Senior Yr.” It additionally would have been cancelled anyway because of a gradual lower in high quality, however that’s neither right here nor there. What’s right here is that, after a well-deserved and largely satisfying conclusion to the sequence’ storyline within the season’s seventeenth episode, its remaining six episodes have been devoted to a different inventive flip: Felicity travels again in time.
Did Felicity Actually Journey Again in Time?
On paper, it sounds ludicrous. Regardless of its one questionable experimentation with a sci-fi fantasy, Felicity didn’t fall into that style. It was a dreamy ‘90s teen drama with an appropriate if not a bit extreme quantity of craving and emotion. So did Felicity Porter actually time journey on the finish of her remaining season? Seems she did: A 12 months after their commencement, Felicity discovers Ben has been dishonest on her. Again in New York for Noel’s (Scott Foley) wedding ceremony, she wonders what life would have regarded like if she’d chosen Noel over Ben. Thus, her good friend Meghan (Amanda Foreman) places a spell on her that successfully sends her again to the start of Season 4, having simply slept with Noel on a rooftop.
What follows is a dilemma of the best post-graduate regard: Does she simply go along with it and repeat her senior 12 months courting Noel in order that all the pieces will someday work out? Earlier than she will be able to reply that query, she begins to appreciate that simply the motion of touring again in time begins to mess with the order of occasions as she is aware of it. So when she tells Noel and Ben that she has time traveled from the longer term, she results in a psych ward—till she predicts one thing to Ben, and he realizes she must be telling the reality. Then Noel winds up killed in a hearth that he and Felicity escaped earlier within the 12 months. To ensure that the nightmare to finish, she should go to the person who wrote the spell that Meghan carried out in order that he can reverse it. With a view to try this, she should recount her complete school historical past to him, with the assistance of keepsakes from completely different life occasions.
What began as a final try to make a dying present’s storytelling attention-grabbing for a number of extra episodes finally ends up being one of the inventive plot twists I’ve ever watched on tv. Felicity’s sequence finale, which follows the character as she tells the spell’s creator the story of her school years, serves as an efficient reminder to all of the issues that the sequence acquired proper: younger, relatable characters in reasonable (for essentially the most half) storylines. I’m personally satisfied that the three-way chemistry between Russell, Speedman, and Foley was what stored Felicity alive.
‘Felicity’ Was Not a Fantasy … Proper?
Though the sequence was technically not a fantasy, it additionally sort of was: I watched it for the primary time throughout my very own turbulent school years, trying to manifest one thing out of its magical premise for myself. I can’t assist however imagine that was the premise of Felicity’s attraction, as an aspirational portrayal of the American school expertise that might have solely existed on The WB between 1998 and 2002. As an alternative of merely ending the sequence with Ben and Felicity graduating, going house to the identical grad college, and dwelling fortunately ever after, present creators Matt Reeves and J.J. Abrams dared to ask, “However what if this occurred as a substitute?” It’s a query all of us in that stage of life have requested ourselves from one time or one other, in a single scenario or one other.
It’s additionally simple to grasp the controversy that surrounded Felicity’s time journey, provided that these formidable final six episodes would have aired from one week to the following, and never consumed multi functional afternoon on Disney+ below a blanket in a second of my very own post-university melancholy. What would have learn as bonkers in 2002 might need had a unique touchdown within the streaming age, with out having to attend per week in between explanations. It simply contributes to the case for reviving the style of WB sequence like Felicity for a brand new era, possibly within the type of a PG-13 model of Euphoria. A technique or one other, tales like Felicity’s matter, irrespective of how overemotional or privileged, and it’s time to begin discovering new methods to inform them.
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