Episode Report Card Sars: D | 5 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Detention
By Sars | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 03.02.1998
Credits. A steamroller running repeatedly over a cat's tail.
Scenes of Capeside High -- some exterior, some hallway, all pointless filler. Joey gives an oral report on the Japanese shogun era, only to suffer an interruption by the late-arriving Abby "My Days Are Numbered" Morgan. Abby makes her excuses to the teacher and shimmies to her seat, simpering at a football player, and Joey continues her report, and when she gets to the part where six hundred women service the feudal lord, the football player raises his hand and asks, "Did you say that six hundred chicks were all in service to just one dude?" Joey, rather patiently under the circumstances: "Well, I didn't say 'chicks,' but yes." The jockstrap asks if that means "sexual service," and the teacher warns the jockstrap -- a.k.a. "Grant" -- to calm down, but Joey answers yes, each night the shogun chose one from hundreds of concubines, at which point Grant exults, "No way, that's intense!" Joey attempts to finish her presentation, but Grant has another question, and when Joey pointedly says that she'll take questions at the end, Grant ignores her in that revoltingly entitled way male athletes so often have and asks if the concubines had to "doink" the shogun, or if they could say no. "Doink"? The teacher intercedes again, but Grant talks right over him, and Joey growls that "it was a great privilege to be chosen" by the shogun, whom Grant then compares to "the school stud -- every chick wanted a piece of him, right?" The rest of the class cracks up as Joey sneers, "You know what, they didn't want a 'piece' of him," and she walks towards Grant as he says smugly, "Sounds like they did to me," and Joey snaps, "That's because you have a low IQ," and the rest of the class says, "Ooooh," as the smile fades from Grant's face and Joey glares at him. Go Joey.
In the hallway, Dawson -- whose hair looks like Val Kilmer's wig in Willow -- spots Jen "Piiiiigs Iiiiin Spaaaaaaaace" Lindley making flirtatious-looking conversation with Pacey "Mr. LeTourneau" Witter. Dawson heads over at top speed as Pacey tells Jen that people used to call Dawson "Oompa Loompa," and I don't know if you've seen Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, but the Oompa Loompas have very large foreheads indeed. Anyhow. Dawson asks what's so funny, and Pacey says "nothing" about ten times as Jen continues to giggle, and Dawson asks again, and Jen tells him to forget about it, and Dawson smells a rat. Pacey announces the arrival of Dawson's favorite time of the day, "gym time," and proceeds to make fun of Dawson's lack of athletic ability by reminding him not to kick the basketball or hit it with a baseball bat, and Jen guffaws at Pacey's so-lame-they-need-crutches jokes. Dawson tells Pacey sharply that he'll see him later. Pacey takes off, and Jen and Dawson walk down the hall together, and Jen grouses about health class with Mr. Pickering, "just another person in Capeside who has some inexplicable grudge against me," and Dawson barely listens, telling her she looks "incredible today" and giving her a super-goofy kiss on the cheek, and she says politely, "Well, thank you." Dawson takes her hand and needles her about what she and Pacey found so funny before, and Jen gets a little annoyed at the Grand Inquisitor routine and tells Dawson she doesn't even remember, and she says she's glad it's Friday because "school is making me stir-crazy," and she proposes doing "something wild this weekend" like river-rafting or jumping naked out of a plane, and Dawson says okay, and they kiss, and Jen goes into class. On the one hand, the thought of Dawson naked gives me hives, but on the other hand, maybe "naked" means "no parachute," in which case I could totally live with it