Episode Report Card Wing Chun: D | 1 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Parental Discretion Advised
By Wing Chun | Season 2 | Episode 22 | Aired on 05.25.1999
Props to Mister Patrick Leswick, Daniel, ragdoll, Glark, and Sars.
A kind of calm settles over me as I realize that this is the last wrap I'll have to write for a long time, and the last I'll have to put off until days after the episode airs. Sweet! Nothing says summer like the end of the TV season.
In the Sanctum Dawsonorum, The Age of Innocence plays on the TV -- a scene in which Michelle Pfeiffer as Ellen Olenska is asking Daniel Day-Lewis as Newland Archer if he intends to keep her as his mistress. Archer says he'd like to go somewhere no one uses that word. Ellen laughs ruefully: "Oh my dear. Where is that country? Have you ever been there?" I only include the dialogue from the lead-in mood-setting expository-shorthand movie because it's the best line of the episode. Anyway, after Pfeiffer delivers it, Dawson "Cream of Defeat" Leery peremptorily turns the tape off. Slightly peeved, Joey "Boomerang" Potter asks why, and he tells her he's had enough unrequited love for one evening. Joey muses about what "sick part" of her gets off on these kinds of stories. Dawson asks if she means "the kind that end unhappily?" She replies that she's thinking of "the kind that never end," and then opines that the love between Ellen and Archer, which has no chance whatever of thriving, is evidence of a real romance. Dawson disagrees, saying it's a "tragedy." (No it's not, and I could tell you why, but I'd rather Dawson just looked it up.) ["So could I, but I'll refer Dawson and Joey to the junior thesis I wrote on the book instead." -- Sars] Joey points out that "not all love stories have a built-in happy ending." Dawson says, "True, but why revel in the ones that don't?" Joey says that sad stories are more powerful, and that she prefers them. After a moment's hesitation, Dawson asks, "Do you think that that kind of preference has some kind of effect on your own love story?" Joey says it "absolutely does," but that it doesn't worry her because "the effect is positive. I mean, it's movies like these that remind me of how immovable and strong love can be." Dawson, determined to ignore what she's actually saying, insistently repeats, "But they don't end happily." Joey says, "It's not their fault. It's just the circumstances." Dawson says, "But what good is their love if it's not strong enough to overcome those circumstances?" Instead of saying, "Maybe if we watched the rest of the movie, we would know," Joey says, "Because in spite of the circumstances, they never stop loving." She lays back down on her back, artfully arranging herself in order to best accommodate Dawson. Ew. He leans over her and says, "So tell me, Joey Potter: will you always love me, no matter what the circumstances?" She kisses him and says, "It doesn't matter; we get the happy ending." They suck face some more as the opening credits roll. Boy, I sure hope nothing happens this hour to belie her! That would be so tragically ironic! And such a surprise, too! No wait. It wouldn't. It would be the opposite of that.