Episode Report Card Wing Chun: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Decisions
By Wing Chun | Season 1 | Episode 13 | Aired on 05.18.1998
Pacey ambles into the Icehouse as Joey cleans up. She tells him the kitchen's closed. He sarcastically implores her not to make him "eat dinner with the Stepford family." She feebly ranks on him: "I guess I can scrape something up; I think I saw some rat droppings behind the oven." Pacey amiably tells her to toss them in the microwave. Joey slowly turns around and marvels, "That was weird. For a second there, I was overcome with this wave of sympathy for you. It'll pass." She sinks onto a bar stool; Pacey sits next to her and asks exactly when it happened that he was "designated the town loser" and "a walking, talking embarrassment to [his] perfect family." Joey rolls her eyes and says he's not an embarrassment to his family. Pacey replies, "According to Deputy Doug, I am." Joey one-ups (or one-downs) him: "At least your whole family isn't an embarrassment! I just got back from visiting my dad." Pacey asks how it went. Joey folds her arms, and shrugs. Pacey offers, "Fathers are weird creatures, you know that?" He tells a story about playing pee-wee baseball when he was eight, and striking out in a big game, and the huge talking-to his father gave him, and how, the next day, he overheard his dad telling Deputy Doug the story and adding, "At least I have you." Oh. Ouch. Joey sighs sympathetically. Pacey admits that he's never told anyone so, but he wishes he'd never heard the Sheriff say that. Joey suggests that Pacey have a talk with his dad, and tell him how he hurt Pacey. Pacey quietly asks, "Is that what you did?" Joey blinks, and says, "No. But I'm going to." She springs up off her bar stool and tells Pacey that she has to go back tonight, and tell her father how he hurt her. Pacey tells her that the buses don't run this late, and Joey asks, "Can you help me? When have I ever asked you a favour? Can't you steal your dad's car or something?" Pacey says he prefers to call it "borrowing." Joey thanks him, and they book. Man, EVEN THEN these two were better together than Dawson and Joey were. Have I mentioned that I hate Dawson? I really do.
Hospital. Gramps is hooked up to all manner of machines. Man, I already wrote the ER recap! Enough with the medical shit! Jen slips in, sits beside his bed, and delivers a speech so selfish that I have to keep freezing the tape to make sure that it's her and not Dawson speaking: "I've missed you. You know, just when I thought I was going to get you back, you go away from me again? What am I supposed to do? What can I do to get you out of this bed and back into my life? Because I feel so helpless sitting here right now, because I want to help you so badly, and I can't. Because I want you to help me. I want you to smile at me, and I want you to listen to me, and I want you to magically uncomplicate my life the way you used to." Gramps breaks the land-speed record sprinting toward "the light."
Pacey is up at the booth, talking to My Favourite Prison Guard (this fall on the WB Sunday Night), and asks to speak to the guard alone. As they stand apart, Pacey shakes the guard's hand, and they have an inaudible conversation, and then the guard invites Joey to follow him. Joey asks Pacey what he said, and Pacey, looking smug, admits that he slipped the guard a twenty.