Episode Report Card Wing Chun: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Crime And Punishment
By Wing Chun | Season 3 | Episode 15 | Aired on 02.08.2000
Please don't invite me to join in any Reindeer Games.
Joey storms across the totally snow-free lawn of Capeside High, wearing no coat and with her shirt wide open at the neck. On Cape Cod. In February. Dawson trails behind her, telling her to wait up, but she ignores his pleas and instead angrily says, "That's what I get for answering the call of public service -- public humiliation." Dawson tells her that no one was humiliated except the person who defaced her mural for her. Joey tells him that "it felt humiliating" to her. Dawson snaps, with some completely inappropriate exasperation, "It was just a silly prank!" Joey spits, "You don't know that!" By now Pacey has caught up with them, in time to hear Dawson condescendingly say, "You put your heart and soul into that [mural], and I don't blame you at all for being angry [well, isn't that big of him!], but don't turn this into some sort of personal attack on you." Joey, I'm reminded of a line from Walking and Talking: "[snort] That's your best friend?" Pacey says, "Not to stick my nose in here, but just to stick my nose in, of course it was a personal attack." Dawson squeals, "What?" and Joey looks horrified to have her hazy and heretofore remote suspicions confirmed. Pacey points out that there were three murals in that hallway, and that Joey's was the only one touched, so either someone doesn't like what Joey was trying to say, or someone doesn't like Joey. Dawson says that Pacey's logic is flawed, and Pacey goes into an overlong disquisition on the high school caste system, leading to the conclusion that Joey may have crossed a subtle line without knowing it. Dawson snorts, "Paranoid, much?"
Pacey asks rhetorically, "You don't think there's a possibility that there's somebody out there who hates Joey just for being Joey -- who hates the way she talks, the way she dresses, the way she chews on her lower lip --" I, for one, know that Pacey's right, because those people all live on the forums. Joey protests, "I don't chew on my lower lip!" because that's the most important issue under discussion, and Pacey remembers himself and asks her if anyone comes to mind who might fit the bill. Joey yells, "Why, so we can all gang up on him and call him dirty names? Do me a favour -- just stay out of this." Dawson backs her up by yelling (oh, so now he's agitated? James -- pick a mood and stick with it) at Pacey that it was an act of vandalism, nothing more. Pacey says that explanation doesn't make any sense, and Joey yells at them both, essentially, that they're crappy friends who aren't helping in the least to make her feel better, and storms off some more. Pacey asks whether he and Dawson shouldn't follow her, and Dawson wearily tells Pacey to let her go. I HATE YOU, DAWSON!