"Felicity: Junior Year Collection" is an improvement over year 2--perhaps inevitably, as the characters are lurching toward adulthood more rapidly and definitively. For the most part, Felicity (Keri Russell) and the gang still face the same challenges--commitment, academic momentum, conflicts over values, pressure from parents--but the stakes are higher because everyone has outgrown adolescent defenses and revealed more of themselves to lovers and friends. The third season begins with lots of smiles and hopes as Felicity, boyfriend Ben (Scott Speedman), would-be filmmaker Sean (Greg Grunberg), kinky Wiccan Meghan (Amanda Foreman), and the rest return from a summer break to get reacquainted. Felicity, expected to move in with pals Julie (Amy Jo Johnson) and Elena (Tangi Miller), impulsively decides to move into an apartment with Ben instead--without telling Ben. The funky hovel becomes a source of conflict (even more after Ben lets a beautiful neighbor take a bath in his and Felicity's living-room tub) that exacerbates the couple's ambivalence about one another.
But a lot of things do that, including a visit from Felicity's mom (Eve Gordon) that finds the latter lobbying against Ben (who hasn't chosen a career and gets into a couple of fights this season) and for Noel (Scott Foley, whose character seems destined for success and who remains, secretly, in love with Felicity). Meanwhile, Sean and Meghan deal with the former's possible testicular cancer, Elena grapples with her virgin boyfriend's insistence on no pre-marital sex, Julie disappears while depressed over her relationship with her father, and newcomer Molly (Sarah-Jane Potts) tries to break off a relationship with a gun-toting drug addict (Robert Patrick Benedict). Typically, season 3 has frequent, jaw-dropping dramatic highlights, including a shooting that results in a profound experience for nearly everyone, an episode in which Felicity wakes up naked in a fraternity house, and another in which she is the recipient of an awkward pass by Ben's alcoholic father (John Ritter). Life is never dull in this series executive-produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, and the subject of growing up, when treated with as much insight as "Felicity" offers, is always interesting. Among the special features is a great parody of the series from "Mad TV". "--Tom Keogh"