Felicity is a Coming of Age Story from Imagine Television and Touchstone Television, set at the University of New York and focusing mostly on the Love Triangle between the main character (Keri Russell) and her two on-and-off paramours Noel Crane (Scott Foley) and Ben Covington (Scott Speedman). The cast is rounded out by Felicity's first friend at UNY, aspiring musician Julie Emrick (Amy Jo Johnson), competitive pre-med student Elena Tyler (Tangi Miller), Ben's landlord who is an inventor, Sean Blumberg (Greg Grunberg), and Felicity's caustic roommate, Meghan Rotundi (Amanda Foreman), as well as Felicity's boss at Dean & Deluca, the big-hearted eccentric, Javier Quintata (Ian Gomez).
One of the strongest offerings in the WB's 1998 season, this show suffered a massive ratings drop in its second season. Executives reportedly blamed the newly-shortened hairstyle of the main character (a drastic response to a harsh breakup), and WB executive Susanne Daniels famously said of the show, "No one is cutting their hair again on this network".
Early episodes featured a unique framing device, in which Felicity would record an audio tape letter to her friend Sally at the beginning of the episode briefly highlighting the major events of her past week; at the end of the episode Sally's response (voiced by Janeane Garofalo) would be played.
With declining ratings each season, the show finally ended after its fourth season. The finale (and episodes leading up to it) integrated a Clip Show and Time Travel, and then turned out to maybe be All Just a Dream.
Created by a pre-Bad Robot J. J. Abrams and Matt Reeves, which explains a lot.
This show provides examples of:
- Actress Allusion: A "Pink Ranger" can be seen in the background of the first year Halloween Episode. Amy Jo Johnson (Julie) played the Pink Ranger on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Even more humorous is that this random Pink Ranger acts as throwaway rival in the eyes of Felicity, a role that Amy Jo Johnson filled in earlier episodes.
- All Women Are Lustful: Felicity in the first season episode "Gimme an O!"
- And Starring:
- And Scott Foley.
- Ian Gomez was Promoted to Opening Titles and given the "With" credit for Season 4.
- Betty and Veronica: Felicity (Archie), Noel (Betty), and Ben (Veronica).
- Camp Gay: Javier.
- The Cast Show Off: Julie is a singer/songwriter/guitarist on the show, as Amy Jo Johnson is in real life.
- Clip Show: The series finale
- Dropped a Bridge on Her: Elena
- Eye Contact as Proof: Sean tells Ben to look him in the eyes and say, "If I knew Felicity loved me, I wouldn't freak out." Ben refuses to say this, which Sean uses as evidence that Ben needs to break up with Felicity.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Ruby in "Truth and Consequences" makes it all the way to the clinic appointment, but can't go through with it. Later, in season 4, Meghan talks her sister out of having an abortion.
- How Unscientific!: In its final five episodes, the heretofore completely realistic show threw time travel at us. The producers were caught off guard at being given those episodes, and just decided to go for broke on any crazy idea that would let them fill that space.
- Not Quite Dead: Despite Elena dying and the rest of the cast attending her funeral, Elena shows up in the final episode. Production crew later explained that they had filmed an explanation tied into the Time Travel arc, but it had been cut.
- Although that wouldn't make sense either, as it was well established that none of what Felicity did in the past had any impact on the "prime" universe (for one thing, Noel was killed in a fire, and yet he too is still alive).
- Ostentatious Secret: Felicity's witchy roommate Meghan made a big issue of no one having permission to look in her locked box. In this case the box was used as a Running Gag and its contents were never revealed. There was a Formula-Breaking Episode styled after The Twilight Zone (1959) in which it was intimated that all the series regulars were actually trapped in a magical universe within the box.
- Time Travel: Which turned out to maybe have been All Just a Dream.
- The Voice: Sally
- True Companions: Felicity, Ben, Noel, Julie, Meghan, Elena, Sean, and Javier are all basically one big extended family, a point driven home with season 1's Thanksgiving episode.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Meghan, despite being selfish, cynical, rude and brutally honest, grows to become fiercely protective of the much more naive and trusting Felicity.
