Episode Report Card Sars: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Dance
By Sars | Season 1 | Episode 2 | Aired on 01.26.1998
Enter Pacey, clad in one of his endless supply of Kramer shirts. He cases the joint for TaMAHra, and sees her making small-talk with a dorky science-teacher type by the punch bowl. Memo to wardrobe: if you want TaMAHra to look sexy, try not dressing her in outfits straight from the pages of Chadwick's of Boston, because she might teach English, but that doesn't mean she has to frump around in knee-length peach linen pleated skirts and floral rayon shells that make her arms look fat. Anyhow. Pacey walks up behind her, and without turning around she asks him how he's doing, and he responds, "Confused, perplexed, bewildered, mystified -- a thesaurus of emotion." Cheesy, but I sort of like the phrase "thesaurus of emotion." TaMAHra looks exasperated and says, "You know, I'm a chaperone, and I -- should make the rounds." She begins to walk away. Pacey asks her to dance, and she whirls around and with a half-angry, half-flirtatious expression, she tells Pacey, "That's not a good idea," and Pacey says he knows that, but if "things were different," would she dance with him? She smiles, which seems to mean yes, and says she has to go.
Oy vey. Clomping in from stage left, Dawson, wearing an XXXL button-down shirt over a sweater vest (insert speeyacking sounds here) and khakis and accessorized by that so-'94 tear-drop necklace, and looking determined; and Joey, clad much more casually in jeans and a little Indian-type top and looking amused. They stop and look at Jen and Cliff as they engage in some sort of electric-slide-meets-rumba flailing, and Joey asks Dawson his "plan," and Dawson admits that he hadn't gotten that far. Dawson's nostrils tent out like little mushrooms opening after a rain. Joey tells Dawson that he'd better do something, and fast, because "in some moral sectors, what [Jen and Cliff] are doing is known as foreplay." "Sectors"? As Jen flips her ringletted hair around, Dawson asks Joey, "Do you dance?" Joey pleads Brandon Walshitis and says, "No." Dawson grabs her hand and leads her to the dance floor anyway, telling her to move around and "shake [her] ass back and forth."
At that moment, the music changes to a slow dance, and they stand there very awkwardly before Dawson takes Joey in his arms, and Joey sort of rests her chin on Dawson's shoulder and looks by turns agonized and dreamy while Dawson scans the crowd for Jen over Joey's head, and he can't find her, and he continues to twirl Joey around and do complicated arm moves and turns while barely paying attention, and his peculiar skill at dancing prompts Joey to stare at him, but he doesn't notice. She winds up back in his arms, and they exchange a look, and he compliments her on her dancing, and their faces get a little closer together, and Joey looks very hopeful indeed, but Jen breaks the spell by saying, "Hey, you guys." As it turns out, she and Cliff have danced right up next to them. Dawson and Cliff talk a little about film class, and Jen interjects that Dawson "is a very talented filmmaker." Cliff asks if Dawson is "into movies," and Dawson makes a "whatever" face and says, "Yeah," and Cliff says, "Cool," and Dawson says with abrupt cheer, "I'll see ya," and tangos Joey in a different direction, and Joey chaffs him, "That went brilliantly." Where have you gone, Old Joey? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you! Woo hoo hoo!