Ten things I realized re-watching “Felicity”

When Felicity started college in 1998, I was a young, impressionable middle school sponge, eager to soak up the life lessons this curly haired high school graduate was going to teach me. The first time through, I picked up a lot of useful tips, like:

• Don’t get really dressed up for Halloween parties (you might have to vomit or bring someone to the hospital and you look like an idiot).
• It’s okay to cry about a bad hair cut.
• In college and after, you can drink beer whenever you want.
• It is very hard to add new people to an established group of lasting friends (or, apparently, to find new people to live with/sleep with).
• Everyone is trying to steal your boyfriend.
• If you have too many red-headed susies at a frat party, your picture will end up on the Internet.
• Don’t be an art major.
• You can do all of your assignments the night before and still have extra opportunities thrown at you by professors.
• If life doesn’t hand you lyrics, you can always change your theme song.

I just finished a complete rewatch of this series thanks to netflix instant and, this time around, I came to a few realizations I missed during my first viewing. I discovered some truths about these characters that I missed before because I was, like everyone else, completely absorbed in whatever it was Felicity was doing. Here’s what the older, wiser me realized (I’d say, “Spoiler alert!” but it’s been ten years):

1. Noel never had a chance. I used to think that “Ben or Noel?” was a question on the same level as “Taco or quesadilla?” Both having advantages and disadvantages, depending on your mood. That just isn’t true. Noel is the Boost Mobile to Ben’s iPhone. It used to be a tragic, impossible, no-win decision Felicity had to make—now it’s just pathetic that Noel didn’t catch on sooner. Noel on beets? Maybe.
2. Turns out Felicity is a real sloot. Eli? ELI? No. Not okay. Though, I do understand why she has so many options, I mean: She’s like, really pretty. But to sleep with Noel after Ben blossoms into buzz-cut, doctor-driven guy? To quote the ever-whispering Ben, if it had happened a year ago then—no. No, Ben, I never will understand it. I wouldn’t have played you like that. I think Felicity should take a good hard listen to Taylor Swift’s “Should’ve said no.”
3. Blondes are disposable. What do Ruby (Felicity’s advisee who Noel didn’t knock up), Avery (the zombie who came for Ben), Zoe (cough, finds men working at her father’s company), and Maggie (of catering and having a husband) have in common? They were all blonde and they all went away. Nothing kills a storyline arc like a blonde girl. Yellow hair, red flag. I mean most of them even ended up with Noel! Double tap.
4. Meghan was the best—and the most ethical of everyone. She was bad-ass, honest, funny, kind, and real. She had a mysterious box! I wonder why I didn’t see it there before. I love how confident she is about liking what she likes. That is, liking what she likes as long as no one else likes it… which explains her ties to Sean.
5. Javier would have been a YouTube phenomenon.  Imagine the numa-numa guy with yellow glasses and an accent. Is it Javier? I thought so. He was a few years too early for the medium that would have made him.  …And also for being real…
6. You don’t need a cellphone. Or, you didn’t when there were pay phones and home phones. It was a simpler time. I wish Richard had a cellphone so the gang could call him and find out where he went.
7. Julie had to go. She was boring. Really, really boring. She was almost literally depicting what would happen if pink Power Ranger Kimberly shirked her double life and went to college. The most interesting thing she did was write a mean song about Felicity, which was never played. Song starts—COMMERICAL BREAK!—song ends. Sorry, Julie, but that was boring. Life lesson: It’s okay to drop friends who don’t make the cut. At least Molly was a real mess with an accent. Julie, you gotsa go.
8. The girls’ junior/senior year apartment is. So. Not. A dorm. I went to college in a city and lived in an on-campus apartment. The city wasn’t even New York and and the whole place was smaller than their wide-ass hallway.
9. Felicity rocked the bang braid first. Lauren Conrad bit that chew. She straight scooped Felicity’s do. The film evidence doesn’t lie.
10. I am always down for time travel.