Episode Report Card Sars: D | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The Anti-Prom
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 22 | Aired on 05.16.2000
Dear WB: Please stop putting Kerr Smith in dork-assy turtlenecks. Thanks, Sars. P.S.: Please force Barry Watson to get a haircut.
Dawson flounces out of the alter-not-ive prom. Joey, for reasons I can't begin to fathom, runs after him, calling, "Dawson, wait! I forgot to plant a dyed silk pump in your ass!" Well, except for that last part, but I don't see why she doesn't just do it already. She grabs his arm to make him stop, and he turns around and snarls, "How could you do that to me?" with such force that Joey literally jumps back. Dawson asks if she's trying to hurt him, and she says no, she's trying to set an example and -- all together now -- "get things back to the way they were." Dawson screams that she can't do that, doesn't she get it -- she can't just climb through his window with E.T. and expect things to go back to normal, and she can't dance with Pacey at the prom Dawson organized and expect Dawson "not to be hurt." Joey reminds him that he himself said the prom was about their friendship, and if he really meant that, it wouldn't matter who she danced with; Dawson says that it's about moving forward: "What did you think that meant? You can't have thought that that's all I wanted." Gee, Dawson, you said that that's all you wanted, so don't get your panties in a bunch when she takes your manipulative, puerile, delusional words at face value. You've got a big enough face, god knows.
Joey closes her eyes, exhausted, as Dawson admits that he didn't suggest the alternaprom to help Jack, "it was about [her]," and he says that maybe he tried too hard ("maybe"?), but "I didn't want to miss my chance to dance with you, to hold you, to make you remember what it was like between us." Oh, barf. Dawson thought maybe if he made it perfect . . . Joey, looking sad, says bitingly, "That I would pick you? Say it, Dawson. You thought that if you orchestrated this whole evening that I would be convinced into picking you over Pacey, right?" "You have to pick somebody, Joey," Dawson says coldly, flapping nostrils darkening the lower half of his colossal face. "I just wanted to remind you of what you'd be missing if you didn't pick me." Yeah -- emotional blackmail. Whatever, dicksmack. Joey hangs her head; I can't believe Dawson's brand of bullshit works on anyone over the age of eight, but I guess it does, because she starts to cry. "'Cause you'd be missing a lot," Dawson adds softly. "Joey, you'd be missing everything." She raises her head to look at him, and he draws close to her and kisses her. Bleeeccccccch. After he pulls away, she stares at him, looking like one of those bugs that nature programs show getting stunned by poisonous frogs, and he says smugly, "That's how the evening was supposed to end." He walks away from her really stiffly, as if he has a pole up his -- oh, right. Never mind. Joey stares after him with Droopy-Dog face some more. Buck up, little camper!