5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The season of the haircut, September 1, 2009
This review is from: Felicity: Season Two (DVD)
I love this show, hands down, in my top 5. I saw the entire series when it originally aired on tv when I was in college, and this is one of the few I would consider re-watching, so I had to own it. I think the 1st and 3rd season are my favorite, but on the whole you should see them all. This isn't just a show for the ladies either. I'll have marathons when I'm sick, or just taking a 'couch day' and without fail, my boyfriend will show up... he might start out pretending to read a book, but next thing you know, he's asking me questions and watching it with me.
I did notice the songs were different from the original, and I'm huge music buff. But honestly, besides noticing it, it didn't actually bother me. The plot is the stand out star, not the music. It might change the mood of certain scenes slightly, but if you never saw them on tv, you'd never know.
As I've said before, I'm a huge sucker for love triangles. But, only ones that are done well, not gooey and cheesy. You will forever be torn between Ben and Noel....you may find yourself shouting out your choice(for me, I shout BEN!) trying to sway Felicity one way or the other. The 2nd season she starts to branch out and date other people, which is maybe why it's not my favorite season. But despite that, its still awesome. It's the season of the haircut!! Felicity starts to come into her own, establish herself in NYC and find out who her friends are. Not only that, but does she really want to be a doctor? You'll see her trying to figure out what she really wants to do with her life, and break away from her dependency(crush) on Ben.
Javier does comes back(YAY!), he gives you that ray of sunshine, with his happy disposition, and definitely stands out with a great dose of comedy. All the characters were cast extremely well, and you'll definitely have your personal favorites.
Timeless, excellent show. Funny, dramatic and a must see in my book.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Don't blame the hair for why it went down the tubes., April 21, 2011
This review is from: Felicity: Season Two (DVD)
Yes, Felicity got a fugly haircut this season, but that's not why ratings took a nosedive. First of all, the show changed nights - always the kiss of death on TV since it breaks a habit and could have put it in competition with something else you watch. Remember these were the pre-DVR days so your TV didn't automatically record anything it thought you might like to watch. You had to program your VCR to the right day and time and it might already be taping something else for you.
Second, the show suffered some major plot catastrophes this season that most people don't talk about. The driving force behind season one was the love triangle, sometimes square, between Felicity, Ben, Noel and Julie. Felicity stalked Ben to NYC based on something he put in her yearbook and befriended Julie who Ben took a romantic interest in causing tension between the girls. Felicity also caught the eye of Noel who tried to make her forget her unrequited crush on Ben. Season one ended with a question of who Felicity spent the summer with Ben or Noel. Season two took the entire first episode to tell you that Felicity went with Ben, something that those who paid attention knew from the previews because Felicity had on the necklace Ben gave her in season one in every shot. So basically they dragged out the "reveal" until people lost interest. Not a good start to the season.
The triangle derailed here because Noel was never given a shot at Felicity again and her relationship with Ben didn't last long. They broke up and she dated random guys no one cared about until she got back with Ben in a later season. Things started to look brighter when a Noel/Julie revenge pairing was hinted at that might have reheated the love square, but Amy Jo Johnson's abrupt departure put the kibosh on that. Noel never forgave Felicity for picking Ben and the triangle that drew so many in evaporated.
The season's third big issue was the loss of Julie when Amy Jo Johnson left. Julie was the second female lead IMO. She had big stories playing out both with her budding relationship with Noel, anger at Felicity over Ben and meeting her biological parents. In fact, she just had the bombshell dropped on her that bio mom was only coming around to get an organ donation for her hubby (Julie's bio dad) who had no idea Julie existed and bio mom wanted to keep it that way. I for one was dying to see if Julie would tell her where to go or help in hopes of meeting the dad one day. I also wanted to see where the thing with Noel went. But all that was inexplicably dropped. The show came back after its winter hiatus and Julie was gone. They did one clip of a video Julie sent to her friends at school explaining her vanishing act that tried to sum it all up, but it was a letdown.
At the time no real explanation was given for Amy Jo Johnson's departure, later they said a family member died, so I didn't know if she quit, was fired, or was on a leave to have a baby and might be back by the season finale. I have to say, she was what I missed for the rest of the show's run, not Keri Russell's curly hair. It was like the writers didn't know how to continue the main love story without Julie as angst and didn't know what stories to finish the season with w/o Julie's bio family story. If they could recast Darren on Bewitched, I think a new Julie might have helped if losing her caused them to stumble so badly. Or, and this may seem harsh, but they could have used this to deal with suicide. It would have been a perfect fit for Julie's life at the time. After all, her character who had been a party girl, was date raped, lost her boyfriend to her friend, was blatantly used by her bio mom and at was odds with her adoptive parents. They even did an ep where everyone worried where she was. Instead of Julie going home, why not have her be dead? It would have kept fans from waiting for her to return to start up with Noel or Ben and it would have had great emotional impact both for characters and fans. There would have been more closure and we might have gotten to see someone tear into her birth mom at the funeral for being such a selfish witch.
Trying to win back viewers, they went with stunts like a new British roommate for the girls and her stalker boyfriend who turned up at a party with a gun. Yawn. Notice I can tell you more what happened before Julie left than after that's how forgettable it all was.
The fourth issue, lesser than all the above, but still contributing to the show's problems was that they took them out of the dorms. Noel as straight man RA to the chaos of the younger students provided laughs. But in his anger at Felicity, he left the dorms. They tried making Felicity an RA, but it wasn't the same since she needed counseling more than she was capable of giving it. They then went into overuse of her roommate Megan, fine in small doses, but putting her on too much led to a mellowing of her character. Ben was always in an apartment, but he too wound up with roommate overuse. Carl Lumberg's character, the roommate, was funny in small bits, but got annoying being on so much. By the end of the season, all the guys lived together and all the girls lived together in apartments which took them out of college life and away from bit characters that would have injected some freshness into the scenes.
Like so many shows with great debut seasons, the second season of Felicity suffered a creative slump that had little to do with hair. The real problems were change of night, loss of a key character and the inability of the writers to realize what story drove their successful first season, leading to them bumbling around with inconsequential pairings, characters and stories that got tired fast.
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