The joys of Felicity

I've been watching the Felicity season 3 DVDs that I got for Christmas and, man, this is just one of the greatest shows of all time. It's definitely better than anything I'm currently watching on TV, with the possible exception of Veronica Mars. It's the only show I've ever bought on DVD, although most of my favorite shows are now out on DVD as well. There really aren't many others that I'd want to watch straight through from beginning to end (or, well, at least to the end of season 3 - season 4 wasn't so good). It's just a perfect specimen of serial storytelling, with organic character development, rich continuity (again, until season 4 when it went a bit wonky) and sharp writing. They dealt with so many things on this show - date rape, alcoholism, cancer, adoption - that are so easy to turn into sappy and cliched storylines on other shows, and never did. This is the best season, I think, with Molly the British roommate, the shooting, Avery who was obsessed with Ben, and Sean's testicular cancer, which was the episode I just watched and was absolutely flawless.

I think part of the reason I loved this show so much is that it perfectly mirrored my college experience - Felicity was a freshman when I was a freshman and graduated when I graduated, and when college ended for me, so did the show. Even though the fourth season was very uneven, I totally cried at the episode where Felicity graduates, especially when she writes "Felicity Porter '02" (I was also an '02) on her closet wall. Sad confession: My senior year, inside my desk drawer there were all sorts of names of past students written on the bottom. Instead of writing my own name, I actually wrote "Felicity Porter '02." That's how much I loved this show.