The Best Years - Felicity redux?

I watch pretty much everything on the N so it was really only natural that I check out their latest series, the Best Years. They've graduated from high school and are attempting to do a college series, but with really all the same "go there"-ish stuff that the N is known for. I mean, there was a death in very first episode! So it's not really anything that new or interesting, but I'm generally a sucker for this kind of stuff and will probably stick with it for awhile despite some pretty stupid/annoying things about the first episode.

The main character is Samantha, an orphan and foster child who's on scholarship at the fictional Charles University in Boston. The actress who plays her reminds me a lot of Carly Pope from her Popular days (whose character was named Sam too). This Samantha is alright...I feel like they could have made her a lot more annoyingly tough or whatever, but they didn't. Her roommate is Kathryn, a spoiled, rich, small-town girl with a serious superiority complex. They get along fine initially but that gets completely reversed by the end of the premiere, which I kind of appreciated because roommate problems are really par for the course in freshman year. I also kind of appreciated that Samantha befriended the nerdy Asian girl, Cynthia, even though it appears from the promos that they'll be going the route of making her go wild and then end up hating herself, etc. And of course, they had to set up some romance, and that was with Devon, the basketball star, who I found somewhat bland.

Other characters include Dawn, a teen soap actress (they slip in some pretty funny not-so-veiled barbs at Degrassi), and Trent, another student and bartender at the local hot club, Colony.

As for the stupid things...

Stupid thing #1 - The dean of admissions randomly meets Samantha as she gets off the bus and leads her to her dorm room? No sense whatsoever.
Stupid thing #2 - I know that weather means nothing to anyone on TV but it is not cold enough for jackets and scarves at the beginning of a school year in the Northeast.
Stupid thing #3 - Sam arrives at college with one duffel bag. No WAY she fit could fit all those sweaters and boots in there.
Stupid thing #4 - Sam finding out that the bathroom were co-ed when she sees a guy coming out of one while she's in there. Did she not notice the sign on the door when she went in?
Stupid thing #5 - I don't know why TV shows keep insisting that colleges, especially Ivy-League-ish ones, give full academic scholarships. They don't. They give financial aid. A private scholarship from a private benefactor is something else...