#I better become a neurotic mess and ask my roommate/partner if everyone actually hates me 70 times before deleting the post | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

summerspn · 4 years ago

Text

Felicity

Tv series (1998-2002)

Spoilers...

I’ve gradually been watching Felicity for the past few months & have completed watching the series. I gotta say it’s charming & oddly addictive.

At the beginning of the series Felicity (Keri Russell) is an extremely shy & introverted character. She’s adorable. We see her proudly graduating high school but also feeling some trepidation about it. Naturally.

She sees her high school crush, Ben Covington, (Scott Speedman) at their high school graduation & decides to just go & talk to him. She regretted not getting to know him before. So she fixes that. Her yearbook had some sort of printing issue so they gave it to her on graduation day. So she asks Ben to sign her yearbook.

Surprisingly he sits down & writes a very thoughtful message to her. It’s sweet & inspiring. She decides to follow him to New York & she gets into NYU.

In tv land one can get into school in just a couple months - ya know completely ignoring the hundreds of people waitlisted lol That made me chuckle when watching. No big deal though.

Felicity gets to school & realizes Ben was just a nice guy & wasn’t in love with her of course. So she gets a bit of a reality check.

She makes a few friends & lives in the biggest dorm room on the history of planet Earth!

My room in my old dorm was ‘big’ and it had 3 feet of space between the beds...much bigger than my sister’s dorm lol

Felicity is likeable because she’s sweet, smart, shy & confused & just trying to figure her life out. All she knew is she didn’t want med school as her parents kept trying to shove it down her throat.

Ben is a nice guy who struggles with feeling stupid sometimes (though is actually really smart). He struggled with some of his classes & lacks a clear path for his major.

Occasionally Ben has these lines & that message in the yearbook which made me stop & go ‘you’re a writer’. I kept thinking he was going to become a writer...then in season four he decides to be a doctor. Okay...it was an alright decision & I like his academic plot lines in season 4 so no real complaints there.

We meet Noel Crane (Scott Foley)who is super dreamy. He’s smart, nice, outspoken but sensitive. A straight laced student & Resident Advisor (RA) who becomes Felicity’s friend & has a crush on her.

Throughout the series that’s the love triangle. It was interesting but there was far too much emphasis on it. Often it overshadowed the more interesting storylines on the show, IMO.

Noel pines for Felicity & loses sight of his life then soon graduates without a plan then later develops depression. I thought that was a great storyline. Noel’s family history of depression was compelling & how the character described it was very well done.

Back then tv shows didn’t talk about mental illness but this was handled delicately.

Noel gets help & gets better. He gets his life back on track, pursuing his dream of graphic design. There’s a line where he gets teased for liking computers...ya know as only ‘nerds’ like that stuff 😂

Felicity’s roommate Meghan Rotundi (Amanda Foreman) is a bit of a goth/Wicca practitioner. Every other character wear clothes I assume that are from The Gap so Meghan looks very different in her black mesh clothes & dark makeup. Nice contrast but I feel like Meghan’s development was overlooked for the most part of the series. She’s very blunt, unapologetic, sometimes mean...but she also cares for others even though she’ll deny it.

In her romantic life there’s growth but not academically. It’s only in the end of the last season does she realize she wants to pursue psychiatry. I think there were some missed opportunities there.

Though I will say I like that her uptight parents accept her for her quirks & clothing choices.

Sean Blumberg (Greg Grunberg) ...I have mixed feelings about his character. He’s an ambitious inventor & sort-of businessman. He owns a loft where Ben sublets /shares with him. Sean’s nice, caring & excitable. He’s also several years older. Around 5 or 6yrs difference I think.

His age difference was brought up several times, as if it were supposed to be important. In my last year of school I lived with a woman who was 15 years older than me. So what? Not a big deal. I’m not sure why the show kept pointing it out.

The only issue with his age is that at one point he’s 27 and STILL has no steady job. None! He’s all-in with his inventions that make no money & his family isn’t rich so how does that work now? He has a loft in New York with zero income? One episode talked of him owing money but come on, get rid of the loft, downsize then get a job, even if part time. *sigh*.

At the start of the series I liked Sean but then they turned him into a pathetic leech who gets mad & throws tantrums easily. He became incredibly annoying.

When I was near the end of the series I started to think that Sean would actually make a good salesman. Imagine him trying to sell cars, just the right amount of pushy. Though they put an episode in that made him look like a buffoon when making a sales pitch. So I feel like the writers were confused or trying to sabotage his character because he still ends up leeching off his buddy Noel & they end up business partners. 🤷‍♀️

Sean & Meghan date & eventually marry. I thought they were cute together at first but not as long term. I feel like Meghan would murder him due to being sick of his shit.

Elena Tyler (Tangi Miller) becomes a good friend to Felicity. All the ladies care for each other a great deal. Elena is very intelligent & a hard worker. She had a few romances & nearly got married. But I’ll be honest I found her boring. Not sure why. I think the most interesting part of her character was that she chose not to marry her fiancé Tracy. I thought it was a very smart move. And I found her background with her mom interesting but they didn’t do much with that.

Richard Coad starts out as an annoying member of the dorm. He & Noel become friends then later gets befriended by the group. Richard is a neurotic, blunt talking mess. He’s somehow still kinda adorable though does have some rough spots. I really liked him up through season 3. Season 4 he was in much less and then the writers turned him into a racist moron. Even if he had those thoughts I feel like his character would be more subtle & not as rude due to his overly developed sense of self preservation. Plus he’s not stupid, just blunt & a bit disconnected.

He did apologize but still it felt just so...wrong. Out of character even.

In any case I think the writers should have made him a little more like Rob Benedict, the actor who played him. Rob’s loveable.

Javier Quintata (Ian Gomez) is the owner at the coffee shop Dean & Deluca. He’s the boss but becomes very close with everyone, especially Felicity. I really liked him at first. Eventually his personal favours become outlandish & his stories started to make my eyes roll.

He & his devoted husband break up over non-issues. Why? It added nothing to the plot. Javier also wants to pursue acting at NYU. He’s really not good so it came off as a dumb idea & all scenes in acting class become annoying. I feel like the writers didn’t know what to do with him. I’d have preferred if he pursued a different dream- one that made sense. Like maybe all the years working with coffee & pastries inspires him to want to be a chef? 🤷‍♀️

Felicity. Throughout the series she’s shy, gradually getting more of a backbone. She admits to loving art & wants to pursue it. Her parents constantly pull her down , try to talk her out if it, even bully & manipulate her. She is for the most part uncompromising. I loved that! She held her ground & from a person like her, who always kept the peace at the expense of her own happiness, that’s amazing.

We see her grow though she spends far too much time angst-ing over Ben & Noel. Often she seems tortured with very few moments of being free & having fun.

I loved how in season 4 she befriends fellow artist Owen. I feel like that was huge. I loved how they went to galleries together & talked about their art & life. It was refreshing. I love that Felicity’s honours art class was so important to her & everything around that plot.

I hated however, how she always put others first.

So...I have to mention Felicity’s haircut from Season 2. I didn’t find it that bad...but apparently Keri Russell got death threats from it. Complete insanity!

Though I do think as it was 1999 back then, people were more uptight with personal style. If she had dyed her hair pink instead people would have flipped out too.

I do think there were better hair styles to choose from though. I think if she had a cut her hair to chin length & straightened it it could look pretty & still have a big impact. Something like that.

But honestly it’s just hair. I had a horrible haircut one year in university but it grew out on a few months & was fine. No big deal....but I wasn’t on tv so no one cared I guess 🤷‍♀️

In the ‘series finale’ , Felicity abruptly chooses medicine. Why??? That uncompromising love for painting just gone....And back to medicine? I wanted her to be an artist!

Every artist has a day job to support them. Felicity was acting like she was going to starve because she couldn’t sell her paintings.

I wish they found her a day job she really liked to support herself. I wanted her to be all-in.

Or they could find her a middle ground. That internship at the architectural firm, she could have realized she wanted to be an architect or something. Something other than medicine.

I really like though that she chose herself finally. Then Ben follows her to school. That was perfect. I just wished she didn’t want to be a doctor. I feel like that goes against everything she wanted.

Overall a great series. I love how they approach mental health - Felicity’s too. She was getting therapy regularly. It was nice to see. Very healthy.

I like JJ Abrams’ work but I (like everyone else) question the last several episodes. Nonsensical & out of place.

Personally I think the show should have put less emphasis on the romantic relationships & drama & more on self discovery by all characters. That’s more interesting...then sprinkle in a few moments here and there. A few episodes on love etc each season. We didn’t need the constant longing looks & drama of Will they won’t they.

I know I’m in a minority when it comes to such things but I feel the media - tv & movies especially focus WAY too much on the romance.

Then of course people like me who are borderline Asexual (except when it comes to fictional characters lol), I find it exhausting to always be bombarded with romance from all angles. However, if Felicity (and other shows) just used it occasionally & not every single episode I wouldn’t mind.

It’s just hard to care about a show if it just feels like it’s only about relationships and not much about life. But that’s just me.

The storylines that had me intensely interested in this show were:

- Ben’s relationship with his dad

- Ben gaining self confidence & realizing he’s actually smart

- Noel’s graphic designs & career

- Noel’s mental health

- Meghan’s rebellious nature & wanting to see what happens when she gets over the need to rebel (though we didn’t see much of it).

- Felicity’s parents’ attitude - I wanted them to see that they were wrong & admit it to her (though they don’t) 😞

- Wanting to see Richard find something he was really interested in & good at (which never happened)

- Wanting Felicity to have fun! Random silliness or parties...they rarely partied or did weird outings to things like paintball or bowling. College is for doing a million things. I wish tv land would do more if this

- Wanting Felicity to stop making decisions because of her love interests

- Wanting Felicity to go on a summer trip or internship to Europe on her own (never happened)

- Wanting Felicity to choose art (also didn’t happen) & support herself with either a job she simply likes (dog waking, tutoring, retail etc) or something in the art field (art therapy, illustrator etc)

To me these should have been the priorities & add romance occasionally...

But overall the series was good. The acting was really good from everyone. Even minor characters had pretty good actors. So well done!

The actors are great in other projects too. Keri Russell was in The Americans, even the Rise of Skywalker. Never saw them but I heard great things. Personally I really liked her in Austenland, August Rush, Mission Impossible 3 (small but great role), and I LOVED her in the movie Waitress.

Definitely give the actors a watch in other projects, even if you have mixed feelings about them in Felicity. They’re all good.

16 notes · View notes