Episode Report Card Sars: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Lie lady lie
By Sars | Season 4 | Episode 16 | Aired on 02.27.2001
Poetry reading. Afterwards, Tom Frost approaches Jack and Jen: "So, which one was your favorite?" Non-comedic stammering to cover the fact that they didn't really listen to the poetry. Enter the poet herself, who makes some "don't ditch me" comment to Tom before meeting Jack and Jen. There's more small-talk; Tom and the poet go mingle, and Jen and Jack infer that the poet is Tom's girlfriend, and Jen looks sad about that for some reason.
Capeside High. Joey strolls into the yearbook office to find Dawson fiddling around with Pagemaker or something, and comments on how it's the strangest place he's ever asked her to meet him; Dawson says that he decided to "pitch in -- make sure the right people ended up on the right pages." Joey raises her eyebrows skeptically. "Not buyin' it?" Dawson asks. Joey isn't. Dawson promises that "all will be revealed in good time." Oh, I can hardly wait. Not. I don't care. Dawson rolls his chair over to a coffeemaker and offers Joey a cup, and she's all "you drink coffee?" and he's all self-deprecatingly "I drink it even though I don't like it," and she's all "there's a lot we don't know about each other," like, it's coffee, not a bastard child -- don't make it all heavy when it isn't, people. Joey says sadly, "That's not how it used to be." They used to tell each other everything. Dawson doesn't know if that's a good thing. "Not a very Dawson Leery-like thing to say," Joey says, like, we GET IT. Dawson uses that remark as a segue into a sincere apology for asking her whether she'd slept with Pacey; he should never have asked her that, and he doesn't know why he did, and maybe it's "some masochistic side of" him, the one that's making him sabotage his relationship with Gretchen. Joey, silent thus far, asks if he really thinks he's sabotaging it, and he observes that "mentioning [Joey] every thirty seconds probably doesn't help." No. No, it doesn't. Good insight, Dawson. But…not one you should share with the mentionee, either. So shut up.
Dawson says that he's scared of making the same mistakes he's made in the past, so every minute he's with Gretchen is a "pitched battle" in his head -- does he show her that he's freaking out, or does he "attempt to act cool, be the kind of guy that gets the girl?" Dawson acting…"cool"? Does not compute. "Maybe you are the guy that gets the girl," Joey says. After a moment, Dawson says mildly, "I didn't get you." We know. We watch the show. We don't need every goddamn thing spelled out for us, okay? Joey looks sad. Dawson shrugs, "Anyway." Joey looks up and spots what's on the computer monitor: "Senior polls?" Dawson describes Drue as "evil, but with a short attention span," and says that Drue went to the bother of rigging the polls, but quit the yearbook staff before he could finish the job. Dawson to the rescue: "For posterity's sake, if nothing else, at least let the record reflect the truth of senior year." He cuts and pastes a photo of Pacey and Joey holding hands over a caption reading "Class Couple: Pacey Witter & Joey Potter." Thank you, non-quiet non-hero, for that selfless act of Ctrl-V. Not.