Episode Report Card Wing Chun: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Crossroads
By Wing Chun | Season 2 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.13.1998
Then we get a shot of Jen's back in a lycra-looking short-sleeved t-shirt patterned with butterflies and burgundy pants, sitting on a dock drinking what appears to be coffee, as Pacey ambles up and sits down beside her, and after heys are exchanged she immediately asks, "What are you bumming about?" and he at first says "nothin'" and then after a beat and no prompting admits that he's "got a bad case of the Molly Ringwalds today" which I guess makes this the second John Hughes Brat Pack movie ripoff episode, after last season's Breakfast Club homage, as Jen considerately reminds us by answering, "Let's see, in Breakfast Club she gets a detention, Pretty in Pink she gets dumped before prom, Sixteen Candles everybody forgets about her birthday," and before she gets to For Keeps (gets knocked up) and Betsy's Wedding (gets married in a dress unmatched in hideosity except by her PiP prom don't), Jen clues in and asks, "Is that it?" as he nods, and she asks "Is today your birthday?" to which Pacey responds, "Big one-six, whoopee," and Jen says quite sincerely and nicely, "Happy birthday, Pace," and he ruefully says "thank you," and continues, "It's not so much that my family forgot, okay? They never make a big deal out of this anyhow, but Dawson always made up for it. You know, he'd always plan some crazy outing for my birthday -- we're supposed to be on a road trip to Maine right now, but that's obviously not going to happen."
Jen manages to make it all about her by answering, "Lemme take a stab at it. Joey and Dawson are so caught up in their...budding romantic entanglement that they forgot about your birthday," and let me interject here that Jen wasn't so blasé about romantic entanglements when she was involved in one like bitter much? And Pacey answers, "I should be happy for them. I mean, I am happy for them," and Jen somehow manages to gasp out, "Me too," and Pacey rightly calls her on it, answering, "No, you're not," and she admits, "I know" and they both chuckle like the world-weary sophisticates they aren't and then Jen says, "You know, I've never really been one to pass up a chance at some good, old-fashioned self-pity" which is the understatement of the millennium, and I would also like to point out that her self-assessment should also extend to her ability to invent opportunities to wallow (tm Sars) in said self-pity (as we shall see soon enough), and she continues, "but why don't you give yourself a break. I mean, today's your birthday. Celebrate" and yes, all that was delivered as flatly as it looks. And she goes on with really bad dubbing, "It could be good. Remember how Sixteen Candles turns out? Molly Ringwald gets the hottest guy in school" (whatever). "Could be you!" (major whatever which I am not even going to touch given the recent events on the forums of this site, except to say that even in my adolescent fantasies, the pink guy standing by the black Corvette was not Pacey, nor was it Steve Sanders, but I digress). And Pacey says, "Yeah! Cake, party hats [no comment], balloons, rock on! Yeah!" and Jen protests, "I'm serious. Look, so Joey and Dawson forgot all about you. So forget about them" and if I were Pacey I would be more irritated that my family had forgotten my birthday, but whatever, and once again it's all about Jen because she can't resist adding, "In fact, I think they've forgotten about all of us recently," and she tells him to go out and meet some new people and he agrees in a very meta way, saying that he's "sick of being Dawson Leery's sidekick" and is going to "get [his] own storyline" and if that storyline is at all dependent on Andie, he should call his agent, and he leaves and then after he's gone, Jen, apropos of nothing, says, "Yeah."