费丽丝蒂 第一季

YDY好像才做到第三集，所以我就看了三集，因为讲的是大学生的生活，所以我还是挺喜欢的。

总觉得高中毕业时Ben写给Felicity的那段话比较经典，分享一下：

"Dear Felicity, Here it goes, I've watched you for four years, always wondered what you were like, what was going on in your mind when you were so quiet, just thinking, drawing in your notebook. I should have just asked you, but I never asked you. So now, four years later, I don't even know you, but I admire you. Well, this makes me sound crazy, but I'm OK with that. So take care of yourself. Love Ben.

PS, I would have said keep in touch, but unfortunately, we never were in touch."

    夜幕之下的世界仿佛来自另一个宇宙，安静、诡异并且弥散着一种由来自灵魂深处的、与生俱来的孤独和恐惧交汇而成的清醒，这深沉的黑色浪潮的神秘张力仿佛可以突破此时此地的束缚，将我们那被感激和愤恨改造了的过去与那永不能预见、也永不能停止幻想的未来结合起来。

 

    看了有如女主角灿烂笑容般温暖和纯真的[felicity]后，更感到当那些已经错过的可能性和那些即将错过的可能性同时出现在眼前，我们只能无法挣脱的坠入黑夜中繁星遮蔽下的漩 涡，无力的感受那些关于生命、关于命运、也关于我们自身撕裂感的主观的、本能的、蔓延着的忧愁。

    

    曾经有一个作家说过像[雨中曲]那样充满欢乐的影片是可以使人打消自杀念头的，因为它会让人感受到生活的美丽和希望。但今夜的这段观影经历却使我了解到美好的故事只能使人善良，而不能使人乐观。

 

//ww2.kqed.org/pop/2014/04/29/felicitys-ben-or-noel-conundrum-how-the-side-you-took-predicted-your-entire-love-life/

Felicity’s Ben or Noel Conundrum: How The Side You Took Predicted Your Entire Love Life

By Meghan Lewit

There’s a rather famous deleted scene from the film Pulp Fiction in which Mia Wallace quizzes hit-man Vincent Vega on whether he’s a Beatles man or an Elvis man, whether he prefers The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family, and other character-defining questions. “My theory is that, when it comes to important subjects, there’s only two ways a person can answer. Which way they choose tells you who that person is,” she states.

I’ve always found this to be a profoundly wise observation. My own cultural litmus test revolves around the love triangle at the heart of the late ’90s college drama Felicity. Or, more specifically, Ben or Noel?

The show, which first aired on the now-defunct WB network in 1998, starred Keri Russell (currently kicking ass on The Americans) as a good girl who thwarts her parents’ expectations by following her high school crush to college in New York City. (Also worth noting, Felicity was the first foray into television for a then-unfamous J.J. Abrams.) The show became a watershed cultural moment for me — partly because I was, at the time, at home in Illinois plotting my own escape to an East Coast university, but mainly because Felicity cemented my attitude toward romance for my entire adult life.

As heroines go, Felicity wasn’t particularly cool. She studied a lot, clothed herself in an unending parade of giant fuzzy sweaters, and recorded long, embarrassingly earnest messages to her absent friend Sally on a voice recorder. For a smart girl, she made the dubious choice to follow an 18-year-old boy across the country. But viewers who saw themselves in Felicity understood that the move to New York was about much more than a guy — it was about making a brash stab at independence, about carving out a place in the world where her uncoolness and her romanticism and penchant for oversized wool could flourish. In her insane, ill-considered moment of bravery, Felicity became the patron saint of nice girls who got good grades, followed the rules and more or less listened to their parents, and sometimes wondered what the hell it was all for.

And in the halls of the fictional University of New York, she found love in the form of two appealingly floppy-haired choices: Ben Covington (Scott Speedman), the mumbly, emotionally inscrutable crush she followed to college; and Noel Crane (Scott Foley), the charmingly geeky, nice-guy resident advisor. Although the Felicity love triangle came along before fans identifying themselves as “Team X” or “Team Y” had entered the vernacular, the Ben vs. Noel question became the basis of a four-season love triangle, the outcome of which can still spark heated debate among those who came of age at the turn of the millennium.

As Felicity Porter felt like my fictional spirit sister back in 1998, so her love life has provided the framework of a theory that has guided my beliefs about romance for the past 16 years: that every straight woman in the world is either a Ben-girl or Noel-girl.

Noel established his good-guy cred early in the show when he became Felicity’s confidante and Boggle partner. In the pilot, when Felicity is close to throwing in the towel on her New York adventure, he makes an endearing plea for her to stay:

Photo: FanPop
Photo: FanPop
“You’ll be the fancy doctor, with the fancy practice. You’ll be married and you’ll have like four phone lines in your home. And then, boom, it’ll grip you like a blast of freezing cold air. You know, ‘what the hell is my life?’ And you’ll be able to trace it back to this instant…when that geek RA gave you [these] words of advice: stay in New York or perish.”

From that moment we knew that Noel understood her particular brand of romantic idealism, and that he would have her back. And throughout their first season courtship and over the course of the show (with the exception of an out-of-character quickie marriage and divorce to the Doritos Girl in season 3), he remained a steadfast presence in her life.

The Noel/Ben choice reached its most dramatic climax fairly early in the show’s run, at the end of the first season when Felicity has to choose between spending her summer break in Germany with Noel, or on a cross-country road trip with Ben. The season ends on a cliffhanger with Felicity — in slow motion of course — getting into a cab en route to an undisclosed destination.

“I didn’t have to make a decision between Ben and Noel,” she tells Sally in voiceover. “But I did.”

A decade and a half later, it’s not a spoiler to report that she chose Ben, and that in season 2, just a couple of episodes into their nascent romance, he broke her heart. This event launched the infamous hair chop, and a series of forgettable romances with randoms until Ben eventually wins her back by tracking down a copy of the movie that had been playing when he stood her up (Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush). In his most swoon-worthy moment, he describes the film canister as a time machine that would allow them to rewrite their history.

Photo: Tumblr
Photo: Tumblr
And that was the trick with Ben. He wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t cruel or dismissive, although he could often be thoughtless. He was a little too good looking; a person for whom things had always come a little too easily. He was someone we have all known, and probably dated at some point. Even in the midst of their on-and-off coupledom, he remained, on some level, tantalizingly unavailable.

“You want something with me, but you’re not strong enough to have it,” Felicity tells him at the beginning of their relationship.

She had a point because in the fourth season — after Felicity and Ben have graduated and moved to Palo Alto together for grad school — Ben cheats. This earnest and heartfelt drama then takes a bizarre turn into the supernatural when Felicity’s former roommate, Meghan, casts a spell that allows a devastated Felicity to travel back in time and live out an alternate reality where she chooses Noel instead. The storyline, which is just about as absurd as it sounds, sets off a sequence of events that results in Noel’s tragic death in a fire on campus, but Felicity is ultimately able to make things right by reversing the spell and returning to her life with Ben.

It’s a deeply unsatisfying conclusion to a show that had dealt so thoughtfully with the college experience. At the end, we’re supposed to accept that she made her choice not necessarily because it was the right one, but because choosing Noel would directly lead to his untimely demise.

But the fact that the Ben/Noel question still lingers is a testament to the viability of both characters. Unlike some other notable pop culture love triangles involving young people, Felicity’s choice never felt like a foregone conclusion. (By the end of their runs, was there anyone left who was still hoping that Joey would choose mopey Dawson over Pacey; that Katniss would pick volatile Gale over gentle Peeta; or thought there was a chance that Bella would end up with the werewolf instead of her creepily possessive vampire beau?) Felicity, for all its ’90s trappings, holds up as a contemplative and authentic portrayal of the coming-of-age experience and the choices that it presents. The power of the Ben/Noel divide was that neither felt like a plot device, but rather a choice between two valid real-life archetypes: the nice (albeit somewhat predictable) guy who adores you, or the soulful sort-of bad boy you’ll never be quite sure of.

It’s also important to note that the choice between Ben and Noel has less to do with the guys themselves than it does with the girl doing the choosing. Each type has its own distinct appeal, perhaps depending on where a woman is in her life. A Ben who seems irresistible at age 20 may feel like more trouble than he’s worth at 30. A friend of mine recently noted that, if she were going to write a memoir of her dating life, she’d title it: Too Many Bens, Not Enough Noels.

Although a staunch Noel devotee, when I rewatched the entire show recently, it was easier for me to understand the Ben appeal — possibly because I’m less self-serious about love now than when I was 17. Still, when I reached the end of the series, I had to conclude that my fundamental preference hadn’t changed. While Ben-girls will always crave the challenge and unpredictability, Noel-girls just don’t need that noise.

It may seem like an over-simplification of the vagaries of love and attraction, but some things really are that straightforward. Just like with the Beatles and Elvis, at some point you have to make a choice. You can like both characters — think they’re both cute, admire their overlapping taste in flannels — but no one likes them both equally. And the one you choose says everything about you.

突然很想试试剧评，趁着大四没事干，就先拿这部最近刚看的老剧练练手吧。

之前也是在知乎上听说这部剧语速较慢，很适合练口语，于是又撩拨起了我“看美剧练口语”的心态，几番搜索，终于下到了全集（老剧真难下）。

--- Episode 01 -- 03 ---

一开始故事的人设还是很吸引我的，一个能去 stanford 的女生为了只有一面之缘且暗恋的男生去了大苹果城，很佩服女主的勇气。可惜的是喜欢的男生在留下暧昧的留言之后却火速在大学勾搭上一个女友（虽然好像是路人甲），看到这里我不得不吐槽 Ben 实在是暧昧界的高手，轻轻松松就牢牢占据了女主那颗得不到就永远在骚动的心。

前三集嘛，主要就是介绍一下故事背景，写了 Felicity 和家人一开始的异见到后来达成和解的过程，很温馨向和正能量。慢慢也浮现出了几个主要人物，F和她的美国好闺蜜 Julie，F喜欢的男生 Ben ，喜欢 F 但并不太被 F crush 的宿舍助理 Noel。好吧，我承认这是青春剧的烂俗设定，但是没办法，这就是青春啊。

插一句，以前我也觉得矫情，后来自己有了感情经历后才知道，原来喜欢的人也喜欢自己是一件太太太难得的事情了。

嗯，第三集是舞会，本来觉得没有什么高潮，结果却把 F 的性幻想录音带播出来了，我看的时候差点没把血喷在屏幕上，这也太太太尴尬了吧，如果是我的话我肯定当场杀了那个摇头晃脑的嬉皮士 DJ 。High了一晚上的 Ben 居然又来找 F 借宿，我说，那么多房间，你干嘛非来我们姑娘家住，明摆着是搞暧昧嘛，哎……

对了，关于这个臭屁化学教授，我只想说，还好我没有碰到这样的老师！因为我没带书根本就不会跟老师讲，哈！哈！

    这部剧的声音文件在我的mp3里躺了一年多，可以说，我经常在听。
    但一直很好奇，因为自己是在putclub的论坛上down下来的，可以想象出，当时的喜悦，看到众多英文原声资料的的兴奋，手指只是不停的点击download，名字内容也没有一一去对应。放到mp3里仔细聆听是在过后，却一时云里雾里，没有详细的标题，只有一个单“felicity”，i must say：i am confused。

听上去似乎是一个女生给另一个女生“Sally”的信，另一个音频文件是一个男孩的对那个女孩子说的话，最后女孩说："think about college is great it is，there’s something cruel
about it.Yeah,i mean you dont know anyone when you get
there.And all the sudden, you found yourself making connections and making friends and dating people，there's something incredible about it like anything is possible,and you go through years of that,and you get used to it.But the thing is,it's not real,because graduation comes,and whatever you've been walking towards,or whatever your plans are,just pulls you away, and if you're having,you know, a difficult time with the friends of yours, and he leaves,you dont have college any more to rely on to keep you together..."s
   虽然当时的我，没有看过电视，压根不知道这是一部电视剧，只是以为可能是npr的happy moment 节目，写一封信给你爱的人，这类似的节目。背景音乐很好，让我总是感觉沉浸在阳光中，不过确实第一次听到的时候是在4月的阳光里，坐在温暖的车厢中，周围人形形色色，我却沉浸在这段独白中，让我不仅感概我三年的大学生活。
   可我一直不去深究，这是怎样的一段记忆，让说话的人有如此感慨。知道今天早晨，蜷缩在被窝里的我，再次打开这段音频，听着柔和的女生，心里突然好奇，“felicity”到底是什么，字面上是happiness，但这几个音频的来源是什么。
   科技时代，我搜索下，终于知道，是一部清淡的美剧，到豆瓣上一看，喜欢她的人也关注“gilmore girl”，我想差不多了，我应该喜欢的。更何况这样看来的，应该叫felicity的这个女生，我已经很熟悉她的声音了。

  felicity的声音可以说已经十分熟悉，清脆，细腻的英语发音让我很惊讶，所以才会以为电视的音频会是广播里的节目，可以说真的没有什么嘈杂的，或许是我幸运，下载的几段声音里碰巧都是felicity的独白。终于看到了电视剧，很喜欢她，和我想像的差不多，原先幻想的是像natalie portman 一样的女孩，这样看来，女主角keri Russell也确实和她很像哈~~~
  更巧的是，当时看August Rush 时，非常欣赏那个拉大提琴的母亲，气质好的不行，再配上电影完美的配乐，这个女星很是吸引我。但当时不知道为什么看了后也没去深究，可能是当时的我没有这么刨根问底吧~~
  现在看来，一切都是巧合了，这是让我沉下心来看。剧情我先不大评价，只是看了半集，不过总是觉得felicity，我已经认识很久了，她微笑的脸庞，蓬松的头发，宽松的针织衫，也许这就是很多美剧，即使不再上档，还让我们记忆犹新，牵挂的原因。
   ^_^~