Felicity was The WB’s lovable underachiever

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For four seasons, viewers watched with rapt attention as a young college student was constantly made to choose between two suitors on The WB’s Felicity. To be fair, there was more to J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves’ coming-of-age drama than that, but there’s no denying that the love triangle between Felicity Porter (Keri Russell), Ben Covington (Scott Speedman), and Noel Crane (Scott Foley) dominated fans’ interest. From September 29, 1998 to May 22, 2002, ’shippers of all stripes tuned in to learn which head of luscious locks their mop-topped heroine would choose to run her fingers through. And the series delivered that dose of drama, leaving Felicity to frequently vacillate between the two men, who represented two distinct archetypes. Speedman’s Ben gave every other brooding late-’90s hunk a run for their money, while Foley’s nerdy Noel melted hearts with his unwavering affection for the heroine.

The love triangle wasn’t anything new for The WB, or the small screen in general—audiences had watched one created and rearranged on Beverly Hills, 90210, most recently (at the time). And the upstart network had also introduced a similar dynamic on Felicity’s contemporary, Dawson’s Creek, though its vertices originally comprised two bright young women and one undeserving man. With its prepossessing actors and angst-ridden storylines, Felicity, at first blush, was just another block in The WB’s teen-centered programming. Sure, the college drama had skipped the high school antics to watch its lead character wrestle with being on her own for the first time, but it was very much in line with the rest of The WB’s lineup, which included Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Romantic entanglements and indecisiveness have always been the backbone of teen shows, though, so it wasn’t a real issue to have them playing out across multiple series, certainly not when The WB aimed to dominate that niche. The problem was that for all that Abrams would eventually contribute to the TV landscape, he hadn’t dreamed all that big for his first debut series. Felicity didn’t have the same thematic heft of Buffy, nor its patois; while Dawson’s Creek was more in line with it, Felicity lacked the same host of hyperverbal characters. It seemed the show didn’t have nearly as much to say, or even as memorable of a way to say it as its peers.

But while Felicity will remain in the shadows of The WB’s cultural juggernaut, its smaller impact on the small screen reflects the qualities and journeys of its characters. As played by Keri Russell, Felicity Porter was just as earnest as Willow Rosenberg or Dawson Leery, just more reticent in nature. She was easily the most judgmental character on the show, but she was also the most reserved. Not taciturn like Ben, the main object of her affection—she just wasn’t as quick to fire off a barb as Joey Potter. But after totally upending her life to pursue a beautiful almost-stranger to New York, some additional caution was advisable. It didn’t prevent her from making lots of mistakes and sleeping with a different beautiful almost-stranger in the first season, but it did make Felicity something of a standout among the other teen heroines. And it was the first real sign of the great things to come from Russell, who’s become a dramatic heavyweight herself on The Americans. It makes the furor over the infamous haircut in the season two episode “The List” all the more ridiculous—to think that her career suffered a setback because of a drastic change in her appearance, when her chameleonic ability is precisely what bolsters her current Emmy-caliber performance.

Felicity didn’t always show that restraint during its four-year run. The first season is its most cohesive and enjoyable, with familiar moments of adolescent rebellion and mortification. Speedman’s and Foley’s performances made the choice between Ben and Noel plenty difficult, though they each had their share of faults—Ben was, among other things, unreliable and kind of a dick, though the latter was a charge he frequently levied at Noel, who, in retrospect, was disconcertingly insecure. Along with Reeves, who went on to helm entries in the Planet Of The Apes franchise, Abrams kept the first season intimate and relatable. Their lead character had, after all, done something incredibly foolish in the first 10 minutes of the show. And at first glance, her reasons for it weren’t very feminist (not that that would have mattered as much on TV at the time). So Felicity—the character and the series—had some ground to recover, which the show did by the season-one finale, when she acted much more in her own interests instead of Ben’s.

But what followed were two seasons of increasingly outlandish circumstances and inappropriate partners for all of the characters, from Felicity’s boss at the health center to the older, married woman Ben has an affair with. Season three was the biggest offender, doubling down on the madness via more tertiary characters, including a British roommate who disappeared before graduation. By then, Abrams had begun working on Alias, whose “grad student by day, spy by night” premise was where he’d initially wanted to take Felicity. The lack of proper stewardship cooled The WB’s ardor for the series, and the fourth season became its last. The final season order originally called for 17 episodes, culminating with “The Graduate,” which offered a quiet ending to a series that didn’t kick up a huge fuss while it was on, but was still gratifying.

After filming wrapped, the network ordered five additional episodes, which allowed Abrams and Reeves a chance to imagine what life would be like for Felicity if she’d chosen Noel instead. Those episodes are better off unmentioned, so instead, we’re revisiting 10 episodes that best sum up the quiet allure of Felicity.