 Keri Russell Hairdo 2000 |
& other crucial Fall TV Season Issues |
Felicity gets her hair back, but woe is due Pacey on 'Dawson's Creek'
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Enough with all the suspense. You won't even have to wait 10
seconds to see Keri Russell's new hairdo for the third season
of The WB's "Felicity," which starts next Wednesday
night at 9. They throw it right in your face in the opening seconds
of the season premiere. There she is on a New York street, looking
right into the camera, drawing all eyes right to her beautiful
face -- and restored hairdo.
If you mute the sound and just watch her lips move, you can imagine what she's saying: "Hi, everybody, I'm Keri Russell, the star of 'Felicity,' and I hope you all notice that I've grown all my hair back over the summer and now you can start watching me again. Pleeease!"
No, she really doesn't say that, but they might as well have written her that dialogue. They go way out of their way to make sure no passing pedestrians or cars or long Manhattan shadows come anywhere near obscuring our view of--THE HAIR!
As we all knew anyway, it's long and frizzy-curly again, pretty much like it was in the first season when everybody fell in love with "Felicity." Incredibly, though, the love affair almost crashed and burned when Russell decided to get a haircut over the prior summer and Felicity started her second season looking like a sheep that had just donated nine-tenths of its body weight to the wool merchants of America.
Overnight, viewers started deserting "Felicity" and the hairdo was blamed. The network put out an all points bulletin for scapegoats. Many wanted to blame Garth Ancier, the network's top programmer, who left to take a similar job at much larger NBC about the time "Felicity" started to slide downhill in the numbers.
My position on this issue should be well known by now: I'd love Keri Russell if she shaved her head and wore a bone in her nose. She's a marvelous actress and there isn't a square inch of her that isn't gorgeous, hair or no hair. (Bear in mind, though, that I can't personally say I've seen every square inch of her, so maybe she has an ugly belly button or something.) I might add that I think The WB's decision to switch the program to Sunday nights at the start of the second season was the real reason the ratings slipped.
And even though rumors abound that there really was a network executive who suggested Russell get a haircut, I can't imagine Garth Ancier had time for that kind of stuff while packing his bags for NBC.
Can Keri Russell and "Felicity" come back from the hairdo debacle? If there's any justice in the universe, it can rebound because "Felicity" continues to be one of the most charming, well-written and smartly acted series in prime time. It's also back in the Wednesday night time period, right after "Dawson's Creek," another youth-oriented program that's much more compatible with "Felicity" than the lead-ins it had on Sunday night.
For that matter, the premiere episode is especially good because it finds Felicity and Ben (Scott Speedman) coming back to New York to start their junior year in college after that long summer together--and she decides, on the spur of the moment, that they should move in together.
That leads her to rent one of the all-time worst apartments in the world. All the electric sockets spark, roaches are crawling all over everything and, worse yet, there's some idiot downstairs whose plumbing rattles constantly, keeping them from even hearing each other without shouting. Naturally, the awful tenant downstairs turns out to be this beautiful model, who decides the way to make peace with Ben and Felicity is to take her baths in their bathtub from now on.
Oh, wow, this episode has it all: Julie (Amy Jo Johnson) is depressed because of a tragic event over the summer; Sean (Greg Grunberg) and, believe it or not, Meghan (Amanda Foreman) are now lovers--and she seems to be shedding her punkette lifestyle in favor of something equally weird. But the real shocker is what's been happening to handsome Noel (Scott Foley), Felicity's former boy friend.
In fact, what they're doing to Noel is living proof that there may indeed be a lunatic program executive at The WB. You may recall that Noel met up with crazy Natalie (Ali Landry), the sinister cousin of gay Javier (Ian Gomez), in the final episode last season. Result: Noel has disappeared and stays disappeared for most of the season premiere.
And when he finally turns up in the last few minutes, you start hoping he'll disappear again. Just wait and see!
Noel's misfortune may underscore the fact that networks aren't aware how times have changed. It used to be that television viewers didn't mind what physical changes came over the male leads in a TV series from season to season, but panicked if the females messed with their hairdo's or anything else, no matter how superficial.
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Dawson (James Van Der Beek) and Joey (Katie Holmes) seem to be crowding out Pacey (Joshua Jackson), at right. That's what happens to an actor who cuts his hair too short.
But the truth is the shows like "Felicity" and "Dawson's Creek" now are watched heavily by girls and young women because they're as loaded with male hunks as they are with fetching females. I'm guessing there will be a Noel backlash almost the equal of the Felicity flare-up.
And that will be nothing compared to what's going to happen when the girls of America see what's happened to Pacey (Joshua Jackson) on "Dawson's Creek" over the summer: He got the haircut that only the Nazis would have given Felicity.
In the "Dawson's Creek" season opener, which comes Wednesday night at 8, Pacey and Joey (Katie Holmes) come back from their long ocean cruise with everyone wondering, "Did they do it or not?"
I think I can answer that: Joey is a classy young woman and she wouldn't have sex with any guy whose head now resembles an egg with fuzz on it. What's more, Pacey has never been in a more grumbly mood than he is in this season's premiere show. I tried to put myself in his shoes and decided that's probably how I'd behave if I'd spent the summer on a sailboat with Katie Holmes and didn't get to have sex with her. To me, that's something only the Marquis deSade could dream up to torment a man.
Anyway,
Pacey with real short hair is a major downer. It leaves Dawson
(James Van Der Beek) a clear field as the show's last viable
hunk. He seems to know he's back in the driver's seat, too, because
we get a glimmer of a risky new romance coming his way in the
shape of Pacey's sexy older sister, who has come home from college
to re-ignite the schoolboy crush Dawson once had on her.
If you're looking for poetic justice, then you'll really enjoy
the most meaningful scene in the episode: After ditching Dawson
for Pacey last season, Joey is feeling that old longing again,
but looks profoundly hurt when she goes by Dawson's house and
notices that the ladder she used to climb up to his bedroom window
is no longer there.
Pacey was always my favorite guy in "Dawson's Creek" because he was such a rule-breaker and I have a hunch lots of female viewers share that view. That's why I'm afraid his new hairdo is going to do some visible damage to the ratings on that show.
If this sort of thing keeps happening at TheWB, it may be time for the network to invest heavily in a full set of wigs and hairpieces of all colors and styles, so the fans don't have to wait until next season for things to get back where we want them to be.
© 2000 by Ron Miller. Photos © 2000 by The WB.
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