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Felicity Porter graduates, but did she LEARN anything? After "Felicity" had filmed its "final" episode, "The Graduate," whatever show was suppose to replace it in the WB's lineup quickly tanked and the network requested another five episodes from creators J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves. Their exercise in retroactive self-reflexivity almost redeems the final season, but having Felicity end up with Ben not once, but twice, is just adding insult to injury as far as I am concerned. For me the point where the show threatened to jump the shark was not when Keri Russell cut her hair but when Felicity chose Ben over Noel, so when we stopped getting the WB on our cable system I forgot about "Felicity" and worried about getting copies of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on tape. I caught the endings of this fourth season when they original aired and now with "Felicity: Senior Year Collection" on DVD, I can see what I missed. The major premise of the fourth season can be reduced to the idea that while Felicity (Russell) and Ben (Scott Speedman) are going to end up together no matter what, they should make the "no matter what" part as complicated as possible. If Felicity's concern about being admitted to the college's honors art program puts Ben's plan of becoming a doctor in danger is not enough to derail them ("The Declaration"), then maybe Felicity having sex with Noel will do it ("My Best Friend's Wedding"). It is not a true episode of Felicity if we do not get to the point where Ben is not talking to Felicity and she insists on talking anyway (e.g., "The Last Thanksgiving"). It is not enough that Felicity have a pregnancy scare ("Miss Conception"), because it is even more fun if Ben spends a night with another woman during one of his fights with Felicity and the other woman shows up pregnant ("Future Shock"). When Meghan's sister shows up pregnant ("Fire") your first impulse is to point a finger at Ben. This all underscores what I realized when I watched "Felicity: Sophomore Year Collection," which is that I watch "Felicity" despite the title character and not because of her. While Felicity and Ben go through their revolving door relationship the other characters become more important. The one-note couple of Elena (Tangi Miller) and Tracy (Donald Adeosun Faison) finally get to the wedding day ("My Best Friend's Wedding"), at which point we get to forget about them and pay more attention to Meghan (Amanda Foreman) and Shawn (Greg Grunberg), a.k.a. Shmeghan, who are much more interesting, especially once their parental units become involved ("Your Money or Your Wife"). Even Ben's troubled relationship with his father (John Ritter) becomes more interesting than his roller coaster with Felicity ("Oops...Noel Did It Again"). But my favorite part of this fourth season is when they decide that the comedy team should be Meghan and Javier (Ian Gomez) who end up taking drama together ("Future Shock"). Meanwhile, Shawn and Noel (Scott Foley), become partners in the computer graphics business ("A Perfect Match"), which is good because Noel has been suffering from depression ("Moving On"). Lord knows the man has reason. All I can say is that if Felicity was one of my students she would have failed for the stunt she pulls with that paper ("The Paper Chase"), and then everybody would have graduated except Felicity, as irony would have ruled supreme. But Felicity gets her diploma ("The Graduate") and then makes a decision concerning her future education that pretty much makes the four years she spent at NYU an absolute wash. I was going to say a farce, but they save that for the last five episodes when the producers had to come up with a creative way of telling more stories after the series has reached its natural climax. The idea that Felicity would go back in time to rectify her mistake and choose Noel instead of Ben was just the sort of thing to get my heart pumping again. It was like the heavens had opened up and a shaft of light had descended on Felicity along with that all-important dollar that would allow her to buy a clue. Hit with a pair of tragedies, Felicity confesses to Meghan that the biggest mistake of her life was not picking Noel (as opposed to following Ben to New York so she could not be a doctor). Noel is about to get married so the only intelligent thing to do is for Meghan to use a spell to send Felicity back in time to the start of their senior year ("Time Will Tell"). Of course, since there are four more episodes to go and living happily ever after is not that interesting dramatically, trying to fix her own troubled life causes some major problems for the rest of the gang. All the birds come home to roost during this mini-story arc, including both Julie (Amy Jo Johnson) and Hannah (Jennifer Garner), as Felicity undoes everyone's past. When we get to the point where Ben and Noel are both convinced that Felicity needs psychiatric help ("Felicity Interrupted"), the show turns really dark. Unfortunately, most of the final "final" episode ("Back to the Future") is a clip show done in the context of Felicity talking to Korsikoff (Kurt Fuller), the man who wrote the book from which Meghan got the time travel spell. The shift in tone does not work for me, and given that this was so much of a clip show I find it hard to believe they had to cut the deleted Elena scenes that appear in the special features on Disc 6. On the plus side, the show does end on a happy note for Noel and I can cherish that idea while reminding myself that I never need suffer through Ben and Felicity not talking ever again. This is what happens when you like "Felicity" more than Felicity.