Felicity

Felicity
Felicity intertitle
Genre	drama
Format	1-hour drama
Created by	J. J. Abrams Matt Reeves
Written by	J. J. Abrams Matt Reeves
Starring	Keri Russell Scott Speedman Amy Jo Johnson Tangi Miller Greg Grunberg Amanda Foreman with Ian Gomez and Scott Foley
Narrated by	Janeane Garofalo
Theme music composer	Judith Owen ("Felicity Theme") J. J. Abrams, Andrew Jarecki ("New Version of You")
Opening theme	"Felicity Theme" by Judith Owen (seasons 1-2) "New Version of You" by J. J. Abrams and Andrew Jarecki (seasons 3-4)
Composer(s)	W.G. Snuffy Walden (1998-2000) Danny Pelfrey (1999-2000) John Zuker (2000)
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	4
No. of episodes	84 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	J. J. Abrams Brian Grazer Tony Krantz
Location(s)	Los Angeles, CA University of Southern California
Cinematography	Robert Primes (1998-1999) Michael Bonvillain (1999-2001) Marshall Adams (2001-2002)
Camera setup	Single camera setup
Running time	42-45 minutes
Production company(s)	Touchstone Television Imagine Television
Distributor	The WB Television Network Buena Vista International
Broadcast
Original channel	The WB Television Network
Picture format	NTSC (480i)
Audio format	Stereophonic
First shown in	United States
Original run	September 29, 1998 – May 22, 2002
External links
Production website

Felicity was a Golden Globe-winning American primetime television drama produced by Touchstone Television and Imagine Television for The WB network. The series 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 show ran for four seasons from 1998 to 2002, with each season 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. Notable guest directors included Brian Grazer and Ron Howard.

A recurring episode opener of the show was a stark camera shot 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.

Plot

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 his comment that he wished he had gotten to know her, she changes her education plans completely, deciding to follow Ben to New York rather than attend Stanford University for pre-med. Felicity's overbearing parents, concerned about Felicity's seemingly rash decision, come to New York to try to convince her to return home and 'get back on track.' Felicity has second thoughts about her decision, but soon realizes that she came, not only to follow Ben, but to find herself.

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, romance ensues, and the relationships between Felicity, Ben, and Noel form the basic dramatic conflicts in the show throughout the series.

A number of other characters appear and play large roles in Felicity's life. Her roommate for the first two years is Meghan Rotundi (Amanda Foreman), a goth Wiccan who occasionally casts spells on Felicity and others. Julie Emrick (Amy Jo Johnson) is one of Felicity's best friends, as is Elena Tyler (Tangi Miller), who often takes classes with Felicity. Felicity also 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 her college career.

Cast

Felicity maintained an ensemble cast, keeping most of its characters for its entire four season run. Numerous secondary characters, including friends and love interests for these characters, appeared intermittently to complement storylines that generally revolved around this core group.

Keri Russell (Felicity Porter), Scott Speedman (Ben Covington), Scott Foley (Noel Crane) and Tangi Miller (Elena Tyler) were the only four original series regular cast members who remained with the show throughout all four seasons of the show. Keri Russell, Scott Speedman and Scott Foley are the only three cast members who appeared in all 84 episodes of the show. Tangi Miller made appearances in 65 episodes.

Amy Jo Johnson as Julie Emrick, an original series regular for the show, left the series halfway through the show's third season for personal reasons relating to a death in her family. However, she later reprised her role during the show's final season in a guest starring capacity. Johnson appeared in a total of 50 episodes.

Greg Grunberg and Amanda Foreman as Sean Blumberg and Meghan Rotundi, respectively, were major recurring characters through the show's first season and were later added as series regular cast members during the show's second season. Both of them remained with the show through the rest of its time on the air. Both Grunberg and Foreman appeared in 61 episodes.

Ian Gomez as Javier Clemente Quintata, originally a recurring guest star beginning with the first season, was the final cast member to be added as a series regular during the last half of the show's run. Gomez appeared in a total of 39 episodes.

The regular cast:
(back row, left to right) Foreman, Grunberg, Johnson, Speedman;
(front) Foley, Russell, Miller.

Controversies

Writer's age

In 1999, a publicly hyped young writer for the show, Riley Weston, was disclosed as a fraud for claiming to be much younger than she truly was. At the age of 32, she began marketing herself to television studios as a recent high school graduate. (She claimed that her husband was her older brother.) She was soon hired by the WB Network as a writer for Felicity. Hailed as a child prodigy and "wunderkind," she was featured on Entertainment Weekly's October 1998 "it list" of the "100 Most Creative People in Entertainment," which described her as an up-and-coming 19-year-old. Shortly thereafter, she was offered a half-million dollar screenwriting deal with Disney. Her real identity and age were exposed after a Felicity producer checked her social security number. Soon after, her contract with WB expired and was not renewed, and her deal with Disney fell through.

Hairstyle Change

Russell's long and curly hair was one of her character's defining characteristics, and a drastic hairstyle change at the beginning of the show's second season was considered to be the cause of a significant drop in the show's television ratings.[3] As a result, new policies were enacted at the network requiring hairstyle changes by cast to be approved by the network's executives. Felicity 's ratings drop also coincided with the show's move to a Sunday night time slot, so it is unclear exactly how much effect the hairstyle change actually had.

Ratings

The series debut garnered 7.1 million viewers. [2] The show's ratings declined in the 1999-2000 season. The popular press blamed this partly on a new hairstyle by the show's star[3]. 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 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.

• Season 1 (1998-1999): 4.4 ^[1]
• Season 2 (1999-2000): 2.9 ^[2]
• Season 3 (2000-2001): 3.9
• Season 4 (2001-2002): 3.2 ^[3]

Use in Popular Culture

• In the television series Greek, Ashleigh tells a lovelorn Casey: "When did you become this girl who sits around pining and making lists and second-guessing your choices? Paging Dr. Grey! No, wait, you are more like Joey Potter. No, you're worse. You're the F-word. Felicity."

DVD releases

The DVDs were released over a period of four years by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. Because of high music licensing costs, many of the songs from the original broadcast episodes were replaced with songs by artists from the independent label Rescue Records. Among them were Blaire Reinhard ("Over and Over" and "Can't Let Go"), Mike Schmidt ("Just Wave Goodbye"), and Beth Thornley ("Mr. Lovely"). 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). All four seasons were re-released on DVD on April 7, 2009 in a "slimmer" packaging.^[4].

Worldwide viewing

Although Felicity was filmed and aired in the United States, it was shown worldwide.

References

External links

• TV.com: Felicity – includes full episode guide
• Felicity at the Internet Movie Database
• Felicity at TV.com
• NoelCrane.com – site that was referenced several times in the show; it was updated during the show's run as if Noel Crane were a real person