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'''''Felicity''''' is an American drama television series that ran on The WB from September 29, 1998 to May 22, 2002, for a total of four seasons and 89 original episodes, with each season corresponding to the traditional American university divisions of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years.
 
'''''Felicity''''' is an American drama television series that ran on The WB from September 29, 1998 to May 22, 2002, for a total of four seasons and 89 original episodes, with each season corresponding to the traditional American university divisions of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years.
   

Revision as of 04:57, 6 May 2017

Felicity logo

Felicity is an American drama television series that ran on The WB from September 29, 1998 to May 22, 2002, for a total of four seasons and 89 original episodes, with each season corresponding to the traditional American university divisions of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years.

It was created by J. J. Abrams and Matt Reeves and produced by Touchstone Television and Imagine Television for The WB. Brian Grazer and Ron Howard were executive producers through Imagine Entertainment.

The series revolves around the fictional college experiences of the title character, Felicity Porter (portrayed by Keri Russell), as she attends the "University of New York" (based on New York University), across the country from her home in Palo Alto, California.

In 2007, Felicity was one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-Time." AOL TV named Felicity one of the "Best School Shows of All Time." In June 2010, Entertainment Weekly named Felicity Porter one of the "100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years".

Production information

  • Genre: College Drama
  • Number of episodes produced: 84
  • Original network(s): The WB
  • Original airdates: September 29, 1998 – May 22, 2002
  • Created by: J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves
  • Executive Producers: J. J. Abrams, Brian Grazer, Tony Krantz, Matt Reeves, Jennifer Levin, Ron Howard, John Eisendrath, Laurie McCarthy
  • Narrator: Janeane Garofalo, Keri Russell
  • Location: New York City, Los Angeles, University of Southern California
  • Run-time: 42-45 minutes
  • Production company(s): Touchstone Television, Imagine Television
  • Distributor: Disney–ABC Domestic Television (formerly Buena Vista Television)
  • Music by: Judith Owen, J. J. Abrams, Andrew Jarecki

Plot

The series opens at Felicity's high school graduation, where she asks Ben Covington, a classmate on whom she has a crush, to sign her yearbook. Moved by his comment that he wished they had gotten to know each other further, she changes her education plans completely, deciding to follow Ben to New York rather than attend Stanford University as a pre-med student. Felicity's overbearing parents, concerned about Felicity's seemingly rash decision, come to New York to try to persuade 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 discover her true inner self.

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. Eventually, romance ensues, and the relationships among 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, a goth Wiccan who occasionally "casts spells" on Felicity and others. Julie Emrick is one of Felicity's best friends, as is Elena Tyler, who often takes classes with Felicity. Felicity also has male friends, including Sean Blumberg, who is always trying to produce new off-kilter inventions, and Javier Clemente Quintata, who manages the coffee house Dean & DeLuca, where Felicity works for most of her college career.

A recurring episode opener of the show is a stark camera shot of Felicity sitting in a dormitory 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 provides a method for Felicity to narrate an entire episode. At the end of episodes like this, Felicity is often shown to be listening to a tape that Sally has sent in reply.

Cast and Characters

Main article: Characters

Episodes

Main article: Episode Guide
Season Episodes First air date Last air date Network
Season 1 (Freshman Year) 22 September 29, 1998 May 25, 1999 The WB
Season 2 (Sophomore Year) 23 September 26, 1999 May 24, 2000
Season 3 (Junior Year) 17 October 4, 2000 May 23, 2001
Season 4 (Senior Year) 22 October 10, 2001 May 22, 2002

Production

Setting

Felicity was filmed in part in New York City, and is set at the fictional University of New York (UNY), based on New York University (NYU). Like NYU, UNY is located in Greenwich Village near Washington Square Park, and the school is an important part of the show. Although like other universities, NYU normally welcomes being mentioned in film or on television as free product placement, the university refused permission for the show to use its name, stating that "[t]he negatives kind of outweighed the positives."

Ratings

DVD Released

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released the DVDs over a period of four years. Because of high music licensing costs, many of the songs from the original broadcast episodes were replaced in the DVD releases, some of them with songs by artists from the independent label Rescue Records.[citation needed] Blaire Reinhard ("Over and Over" and "Can't Let Go"), Mike Schmidt ("Just Wave Goodbye"), and Beth Thornley ("Mr. Lovely") are some of the artists whose music was used for the DVDs but not the original broadcasts.

In a commentary track on the final episode of Disney/Buena Vista's original Freshman Year Collection DVD release ("Felicity Was Here"), co-creator Matt Reeves said the pilot and season finale contained the same music as when the show originally aired, but some other episodes contained changes. "One of the sad things about going into syndication is that certain rights that we were able to get in the first year we weren't able to get," Reeves said. "In the pilot and in this episode we have all the original music as it appeared on the series."

Some episodes did not have proper telecine encoding and when viewed on an HDTV some interlacing artifacts are visible. All four seasons were re-released on DVD by ABC Studios on April 7, 2009 in "slimmer" packaging. These region 1 releases have been discontinued and are now out of print.

On February 9, 2012, it was announced that Lionsgate Home Entertainment had acquired the rights to the series and planned on re-releasing it. Seasons 1 and 2 were re-released on May 1, 2012 and do not contain any extras, subtitles, or other languages besides English. Seasons 3 and 4 were re-released on May 7, 2013.


DVD Name Ep # Release Date Re-Released Date
Felicity: Freshman Year (The Complete First Season) 22 November 5, 2002 May 1, 2012
Felicity: Sophomore Year (The Complete Second Season) 23 July 22, 2003
Felicity: Junior Year (The Complete Third Season) 17 September 21, 2004 May 7, 2013
Felicity: Senior Year (The Complete Fourth Season) 22 March 8, 2005

Awards