19 Juni 2000
By Kevin V. Johnson
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As the creators and writers for Felicity begin mapping out next season's plots this month, they and the WB network
are hoping that fan input will help the show have its best year.
Since its stellar reviews the first season, the yearningly earnest college drama has failed to live up to its hype, and at the beginning of last season, its second, plots meandered and relationships had the permanence and allure of cotton candy in a rainstorm. WB executives blamed star Keri Russell's new, short do for the show's listlessness, but co-creator J.J. Abrams faults the way the character was written. "Her focus was diffuse," he says. "Her motivation for why she was there seemed unclear. She felt rudderless." Indeed, after spending most of the first season in a single, sweetly slow romance, the golden-tressed student had unconvincingly jumped in and out of three more by the middle of the second. "It sort of was as if the show had lost its purpose," Abrams says. The problem was reflected in declining ratings. After drawing an average of 4.39 million viewers per episode in its first year, the drama drew 2.97 million when the season just ended. WB nearly canceled it. But this fall, Abrams says, as a result of story lines set in motion in the second half of this season, fans will like the show again. Abrams expects viewers to applaud the changes because he and co-creator Matt Reeves took pains to find out what fans did and did not like, then did something about it. They didn't dictate the show's direction, but they helped spotlight problems, Abrams says. The pair wandered onto the UCLA campus and asked students what they thought of the show. And they read what fans were saying online. Here are some things they learned and what they did: Abrams learned that, like Felicity's core audience of 12- to 34-year-olds themselves, fans wanted to see Felicity "taking control of her own life and finding out what that life is going to be," he says. That meant taking risks. "One of the biggest complaints we found was that Felicity wasn't being challenged. They wanted to see her character being explored from episode to episode." Action: The show's writers had Felicity stage a sit-in at the school health center when it refused to stock a "morning-after" pill to prevent pregnancy. Fans complained that relationships were formed without enough reason, so fans didn't know whom to root for. "We realized," Abrams says, "that the thing that kept the show on track (the first year) was tracking the Felicity-Noel relationship." Action: The show spent its entire second half rebuilding a relationship between Felicity and Ben. By season's end, the show's fans were dying for the two to kiss, and they got it. Fans said they loved the character of Javier, the gay manager of Dean & Deluca, the upscale grocery where several Felicity characters work. Action: For the season finale, Abrams staged a blowout "wedding" between Javier and his boyfriend. Now, Abrams says he has things where he wants them. "Our goal for Felicity was really to get her to this place where she could get involved in a relationship with a guy. And not just any guy, but a guy on her terms." "I so see the promise of pursuing the Felicity-and-Ben relationship, which is about watching two people - our principal characters - in a committed relationship with real stakes." That, he hopes, "is a show that people can sink their teeth into." |