Felicity Mini Reviews; Episodes 4.17-4.22

Thoughts on the last half-dozen episodes of the WB's college series Felicity, obviously containing spoilers for the end of the show. Do not read this blog if you have not seen the last stretch of episodes, since some of them overlap a little, where I discuss certain things about being spoiled about the finale in the write-ups for some of the previous episodes.



4.17 - The Graduate
If I had been watching Felicity as it aired, without the knowledge that there were an additional five episodes after this one, I might have mistaken this for the series finale. There is a real sense of finality within the hour. Graduation day arrives for the majority of the characters, and everyone plans on moving on with their lives. After her break up with Ben, Felicity decides to return home to Palo Alto and figure things out, understandably resulting in numerous emotional scenes as she says goodbye to all of her friends. Oddly enough, my favourite goodbye scene being the one between Felicity and Meghan. Their relationship has really grown since season one, when Meghan was just flitting in and out of the show, making sarcastic remarks and generally providing the comic relief. However, Meghan has grown so much since the series began, and her relationship with Felicity has developed into a genuine friendship. I almost teared up.

The 'and then this happened' feel to the last few minutes felt very series finale-y, with Felicity moving back home, deciding to actually become a doctor after flailing around and diving into art for the last few years, and then magically reuniting with Ben who decided to follow her home, leading to...

4.18 - Time Will Tell
...the insanity of this episode, which felt a little like an epilogue at the beginning, with a bunch of random events occurring that essentially no one could have guessed would happen. Elena dies in a car crash! Ben cheats on Felicity with a girl introduced in this very episode! Noel is getting married to Zoe! Oh yeah, and then Meghan casts a spell that sends Felicity back in time, to the beginning of her senior year. I can safely say that I had no idea that I would be seeing any kind of time travel hijinks on Felicity. However, despite this being an absurd plot twist with little basis in reality, I kind of dug it. It makes sense that Felicity would question her relationship with Ben after their rocky year, and wonder about how things could have been if she had ended up with Noel. Travelling back to the season premiere, when Felicity and Noel finally got it on, she decides to change her past and try it out with Noel. The various nods to events throughout the season were done well, including Felicity's love bite, Ben's message from Janet, Felicity's talk with her shrink, etc. An entertaining, risky episode, it will be interesting to see where the writers take this storyline from here.

And, in a weird way, travelling back in time was an interesting storytelling choice. For the entire season, a large cloud has been looming over the show; the end of university. The future has been a pretty consistent theme this year, and all of the characters experienced this sense of dread and uncertainty at one point or another, so it should be interesting to see where this arc goes.

4.19 - The Power of the Ex
This whole time travel business has landed Felicity in a problematic situation, with her choice to travel back in time impacting herself and the people around her in unforeseen ways. I have always wanted Felicity to pick Noel, but it has never really been that simple. In this case, they are both drawn to their exes - Ben, and the returning Hanna (played by the adorable Jennifer Garner, who was probably filming the excellent Alias at this point in her career). Even with everything that has happened between them, Felicity is still drawn to Ben, and the same goes for Noel and Hanna. By the end of the episode, Felicity and Noel have realised they want to be together, but seeing as how Felicity has travelled back in time, another change, like picking Noel or Hanna popping up for the first time in years, could lead to even more crazy going down, especially with the series finale on the horizon.

Despite already seeing the consequences of changing past decisions, it was definitely fun to see Felicity react to the new version of events, and there were a lot of humourous exchanges built around her new bullish attitude, including Hanna mistakenly believing that Felicity had a terminal illness because of a certain 'running out of time' comment made by our leading lady. As well as this, Meghan and Sean broke up for the one hundreth time...without getting back together immediately. While I'm sure they will still be together in the real timeline, it is nice to see the writers playing around with the show.

4.20 - Spin the Bottle
Julie's return complicates things for everyone. They're all confused about their feelings, with most of the cast involved in romantic entanglements that are rife with drama. After last episode's kiss with Ben, Felicity is clearly more conflicted than ever. I have unfortunately been spoiled about her final decision, but the show is clearly moving toward a final choice: Ben or Noel. The gang's little game of spin the bottle brought it out in the open. When Julie kisses Ben, Felicity is clearly affected, resulting in the break-up of Noel and Felicity, when he realises that he will never 'inhabit' her the way Ben does. Which is a shame, because I loved those two together. With only two more episodes left, almost anything could happen...

4.21 - Felicity Interrupted
While an entertaining episode of television full of fun moments and unexpected drama, I don't have much to say about it. Felicity spouting off about her time travel escapades understandably led Noel and Ben to worry about her mental health, but it was still pretty shocking to see our lady leading be put under the care of a hospital. Other highlights; Meghan making a presentation to a room full of people about her break-up, Ben busting Felicity out of hospital, Noel dying in the fire that occurred earlier in the season in this timeline, and Javier's amusing lie-detector test.

4.22 - Back to the Future
While entertaining as a series of episodes, this whole time travel arc felt like a bit of a waste this late in the game, with the revelation that it was all really a fever dream Felicity had the night before Noel's wedding to Zoe. As well as this, half of the series finale was filled with clips of the show's glory years, which admittedly made me want to restart the series again, even though I only started watching last October. The series finale having about twenty minutes of new footage, a lot of which was Felicity reflecting on the past four years with some wizard-y dude, while amusing (loved the 'why did everyone have an opinion on your haircut?' snark), felt a little bit pointless.

The writers basically hit the reset button, and everything from 4.18 on essentially became pointless in the grand scheme of the show, with Felicity reuniting with Ben, the guy that just cheated on her over an extended period of time, because of a dream she had. It just left me feeling a little sour, even though I would have been fine with them staying together under different circumstances. The final sequence, with all the characters happy at Noel's wedding, felt nice, if a little odd. Particularly jarring was seeing Elena (along with Tracy, nice to see that Donald Faison returned for the finale, if only for a brief group shot), since she supposedly died in a car accident a few episodes ago...y'know, pre-time travel.

J.J Abrams's departure from the show never really bothered me until now. He wrote the season premiere (which was great), but I'm not sure how much involvement he had after that point. In any case, it would have been interesting to see how he would have handled the end of the series, since he (and Matt Reeves) created an excellent tv series and a wonderful leading lady. While this finale underwhelmed me, the show now sits alongside some of my other favourites from this time period, another great series from the WB! Definitely a show I wish I could have been around for while it aired (when it premiered in the 1998, I would have been six), but it never really gained much of an audience here in the UK.