Episode Report Card Sars: D | 2 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT Home Movies
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.19.1999
After a brief commercial break, during which I arrayed every knife in my kitchen on the table in front of me in ascending order of sharpness, the better to keep myself awake during the interminable football scenes to follow, we fade up on the field. Jack catches a ball, Kerr Smith's body double gets sacked, lather, rinse, repeat. During one vicious pile-on, a member of the opposing team snarls at Jack, "Go back to tetherball, ya limp-wristed homo." Then he clocks Jack with an iron skillet. Oh, sorry, that was the writers clocking me with an iron skillet. On the head. Again. Anyhow. In the stands, Jen and Dawson look worried; on the sidelines, The Flash shouts orders and tells Jack to "walk it off." Jack cracks wise to The Flash under his breath. Dawson asks Jen if the debacle on the field is all his fault. Jen says, "In a word -- yes." Once again, I must say in Dawson's defense that I could spend an entire day listing things that Dawson is to blame for, and the debacle on the field would rank dead last. I mean, who outed Jack? Mr. Peterson. Who made him join the football team? The Flash. Who aired the story? The Hussy. Did Jack refuse to participate? No. Did Dawson encourage the anti-gay attitudes of the other team? No. Did the writers reach into the barrel with a long-handled spatula and scrape the bottom until they came up with something, anything, to stretch out Jack's subplot without having to write a man-man kiss into the script? Yes. In short, whatever. Jen goes on to say that at least Dawson won't have to kiss a guy with "furry teeth and halitosis" after the game. Shut up, Jen.
Sidelines. Principal Green's box held the Minuteman Mule costume, and now Joey and Pacey argue over who gets the front end of the mascot and who gets the back end. Pacey says he tends "to get a little carsick in back seats." Joey puts the mascot's head on Pacey.
Andie delivers a heartfelt speech of apology to Principal Green. The camera pans slowly around her and her extra-crispy bangs in extreme close-up as she compares Pacey to a light pouring into her mind and says that "just as suddenly, the room got dark again, in my mind, I mean." Andie begins to cry. She admits that she went to a Bed-And-Breakdown (tm Sarahnova) over the summer, and although she got better, she lost Pacey, whom she calls "my soulmate." Gah. She compares the experience to having her "heart literally ripped from" her body; she does not explain why, if she felt so bad about losing Pacey, she acted like she couldn't have cared less in the previous episode, but she does say that she felt "cold and empty, my future slipping away." She didn't want to lose her life too, so she freaked out and stole the test and cheated on it, and she knows she messed up. "Now all I can ask for is your compassion," she finishes quietly, and the camera cuts to her standing in front of a mirror. She wrings her hands and walks out of the room. All righty, then.