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List Price: $29.99 | | Label: Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Salesrank: 42280
Released: November 5, 2002 |
| Our Price: $21.79 |
| Used Price: $14.22 |
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MPAA Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
It's high school graduation day and from the moment shy, beautiful Felicity Porter asks handsome Ben Covington to sign her yearbook, the course of her life is changed forever.
Description of Felicity - Freshman Year Collection (The Complete First Season):
"Sometimes it's the smallest decisions that can change your life forever," states Felicity in the pilot episode of this fervently loved series. Not that impulsively defying your parents, ditching plans to go to Stanford Medical School, and moving 3,000 miles to New York to follow an unrequited high school crush who doesn't even remember your name is a small decision. But it does indeed change our winsome heroine's life forever. Golden Globe winner Keri Russell lights up the screen in her star-is-born role as the luxuriantly maned Felicity. For its audience demographic, the "previously on Felicity" soap opera elements make this series' freshman year as compellingly watchable as the early years of Beverly Hills 90210 and Dawson's Creek.
Propelling the first season is the triangle of Felicity, the charismatic Ben (Scott Speedman), and charming doofus Noel (Scott Foley). But at the heart of the series is its real-world portrayal of college life, and Felicity's struggle to forge a life independent of her disapproving but ultimately supportive parents. Her sardonic, spell-casting now-you-see-her-now-you-don't roommate Meaghan doesn't think Felicity will last the year. "This might all be a colossal mistake," Felicity admits early on. (No, that would be your ill-advised haircut in Season 2.) Felicity's ensemble also includes former pink Power Ranger Amy Jo Johnson as Julie, Felicity's best friend and later rival for Ben's affections, whose own personal travails include searching for her birth mother (Malcolm in the Middle's Jane Kaczmarek). Look for a pre-Alias Jennifer Garner as Noel's old girlfriend Hannah in the episode "Thanksgiving," and listen for Janeane Garofalo as the voice of the unseen Sally, with whom Felicity shares audiocassettes relating her coming-of-age experiences and hard-earned life lessons. --Donald Liebenson
Felicity - Freshman Year Collection (The Complete First Season) Reviews:
Felicity-Freshman Year 
2009-05-18 - I have always loved watching Felicity when it was on tv. It had been years since I had last watched it. This video brought it all back. Now I remember why I loved the show so much. Enjoyed it all over again.
Emotionally available....
2008-11-09 - I grew up during the golden age of television in the '50s and I would have to say that Felicity is one of the finest crafted series I've ever seen. Being a fan of Keri Russell's more recent work in the films Waitress and August Rush I decided to backtrack and checked out the first season DVD from the local library. Well, needless to say it was a revelation and I'm totally hooked. [I hadn't watched the show when it originally came out on the WB channel as I don't like commercial interruption.] My wife is an actress with a fair amount of stage and film experience (e.g.studied method acting with Lee Strasberg) and she is hopelessly addicted, too.
Yes, the acting, writing, direction, camera work, and editing are superb. But what really grabs me is the emotional availability of the characters. At the finish of just about every episode, one or more of them has captured my heart. I've laughed, felt love, experienced pain, and shed tears watching season one. It brings up a lot of older memories for me....for example, that initial sweet, wonderful feeling of falling in love as well as the wrenching sense of loss following the breakup of a relationship. Just about everyone can relate to that.
Well, no matter what happens in the storyline the love always does seem to persist doesn't it? Like energy it can't be destroyed but just changes form.
Eh 
2008-10-31 - I should start by saying how much I loved Felicity in late high school/early college. I was only a year younger than Felicity, so I was able to relate pretty well. But, I stopped watching the show about mid-way through the second season. Looking back, I assumed that it was because I was actually in college now and too busy to watch it. So, I saw it on Netflix this year and decided that I was going to watch the series again - start to finish. Once again, I got as far as the middle of the second season and stopped. Now I remember why:
The first season really gets you into the show. Felicity is totally adorable - pretty, quirky, smart. Ben is gorgeous and Noel is the sweetest guy alive. The friends are all unique and have interesting story lines. It adequately describes so much of what I went through in college. So, at this point, I have finished the first season, pleased with what I saw and ready to jump into season 2. Then, I decided to read an episode by episode breakdown of all the episodes. I was floored - in a bad way. The plots got worse and worse - and more and more unreal. You start to see that Ben really is a shmuck and wonder how Felicity can't get past it to be with Noel, who was so good for her. Julie becomes pathetic and you stop feeling sorry for her. Ben's roommate (the inventor guy) just becomes a loser instead of unique and amusing.
So, I stopped watching. It didn't hold my interest because nothing was coming together. The characters simply stopped being lovable. That's my two cents.
Arguably the best series about college life ever made
2008-07-20 - For some reason American television has struggled when it comes to college. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, which portrayed high school life so vividly and powerfully, faltered somewhat as Buffy and Willow made the transition to UC-Sunnydale. And the show that perhaps emulated BUFFY's high school formula best, VERONICA MARS, also was less compelling once the scene shifted to undergraduate life (though in large part this might have been because of multiple restrictions the CW placed on Rob Thomas and Co., especially in making the series focus more on standalone episodes rather than very long arcs). I've only recently gone back and started watching FELICITY. I can confidently say that no show has ever depicted college life as convincingly or as well as it. I think THE GILMORE GIRLS comes a strong second, but most other shows either fail (A DIFFERENT WORLD) or use it as take off for other purposes (e.g., the funny but not particularly realistic UNDECLARED). [For the record, I have not seen GREEK.]
As is well known, FELICITY tells the story of Felicity Porter impulsively following Ben Covington, an unrequited high school crush, to NYU instead of Stanford after he writes a long entry into her high school annual. [I'm not certain that they ever actually state that the school is NYU. I am certain that they don't refer to it by name in the second half of Season One, but because I Netflixed this I don't have the early season discs to verify this one way or another. But it is clearly a major university set directly on Washington Square, which fits the bill.] I personally detested that initial premise, but it quickly moved on to transcend it by developing a strong cast of characters and exploring their life at college together. Much of the series revolves around Felicity's interaction with Ben, with whom she develops a close friendship (though the initial romantic underpinnings remain a subtext throughout Season One), and her increasing attraction to and complex relationship with her resident assistant Noel.
What I like about the show in Season One is how it -- for the most part -- avoids cliché in exploring college life. The last season arc dealing with Ben's gambling problem seemed forced and artificial, but otherwise most of the arcs seemed natural and organic with the rest of the narratives. There is also very real and believable character development throughout the season. Felicity and Ben and Noel and Julie and the others are different characters at the end of the season, which is always the mark of a good show (just as a lack of character development is the mark of a bad one). And most of the narratives are compelling and interesting, rarely resorting to melodrama. The show continually pulls you into its stories, so that by the end of the year you feel quite invested as Felicity sits in the taxi as it comes to an end, deciding whether she is going to take a road trip across America with one guy or fly to Berlin with another.
Any show whose title consists of a character's name sinks or swims depending on how well that character is portrayed. Luckily, the producers hit a home run in casting Keri Russell in the central role. She manages to play Felicity as both enormously likable if often believingly flawed. She often makes mistakes, but they are the kinds of mistakes that feel all too familiar. She is too surreally beautiful to be completely believable as someone who would experience unrequited love, but once you allow yourself to accept that initial premise, she is a wonderfully loveable yet vulnerable character. And has anyone in the history of TV had more beautiful hair than Keri Russell in Season One? Her cutting her hair in Season Two often shows up on lists with titles like, "Worst Mistakes in TV History."
I'm sorry that I didn't catch this when it first was aired, but at least we have the DVDs. I anxiously await viewing the rest of the series.
Felicity - Freshman Year 
2007-12-27 - I was always curious about this show but resisted watching it during its initial airing because I did not feel that I'd be able to relate to the characters. I just watched the last episode and can only say "wow" - the Felicity character and her experiences drew me in and caused me to reflect on my own freshman year experiences.
Kerry Russell shines in the leading role and deservedly won many accolades for her portrayal of a young girl who alters her life to follow an unknown path all in the belief that she has a chance to build a relationship with her high school crush. The supporting actors, Scott Foley, Scott Speedman, Tangi Miller & Amy Jo Johnson were excellent foils for not only Felicity's experiences but their own trials & tribulations as university students.
I'd recommend it for its intelligent & engaging storytelling, honest portrayals and exceptional acting.
