Episode Report Card Sars: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Future Tense
By Sars | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.24.2000
At the poker table, a forty-year-old woman begins removing her top as Drue comments that he "love[s] this girl -- it's like she's trying to lose." Joey edges into the room, slits her eyes at Pacey, and then bitches him out for playing strip poker. Pacey defends himself -- it started out "as just poker poker," and then Drue lost his money to Pacey and changed the stakes, but he's done now, and they can leave. Joey sarcastically asks why he'd leave when "there's a half-naked chick in the room." Pacey tries to placate her; she keeps sniping, then decides, as we've all seen in the umpteen thousand previews for the ep, to join the game herself. She sits beside the forty-year-old, who looks uncomfortable, and demands that Drue deal her in. After Joey delivers the "what does a girl have to take off in order to play this game" line, Pacey claps his hands and declares that that's enough. She's drunk, she's "bordering on disorderly," blah blah blah patronizing-the-drunk-girlfriend-cakes, and I know I'm supposed to find Pacey's white-knight routine lovable, but, much like when he punched out Rob The Dock Dude on Andie's behalf last season, it's got a paternalistic subtext that I don't like. Dawson's "save or screw" line to Pacey is despicable, but the first part has the ring of truth; guys who think girls need protecting bug me. But that's me. Sooooo, there's more back-and-forth on whether or not Joey should leave, and she stands up, and Pacey tells her that she's forcing him "to make the ultimate guy maneuver," and then he slings her over his shoulder and carries her out. See what I mean? Love Pacey all you want, but if my boyfriend hauled me out of a party like a duffel bag, he'd have a fight on his hands…not to mention vomit down the back of his shirt. Joey crabs at Pacey to put her down. Dawson watches them go, Scorsesean brow furrowed.
What does "icy cool breath, that's what it'll do ya" mean? Anyone?
Shot of the full moon on the water. Jen can't believe she's saying this, "but thank you, for the party." Cut to Drue and Jen sitting Sixteen Candles-style on a table next to a cake full of lit candles. Very much alive prior to the airing of this episode, John Hughes promptly drops dead, inters himself in a coffin six feet deep, and begins twirling in his grave like a top. Jen says the party "turned out to not be so horrible." Drue thanks her for coming and says he hopes he got the right number of candles. "It'll do," Jen chuckles. Jen is about to make a wish, but Drue wants to give her her present first, so she doesn't "squander" the wish on "something that may actually be in this box." It's a pretty small box; I don't think a new agent would fit into it. Jen takes the box, but before opening it, she says she's sorry "about [his] parents," and apologizes for making assumptions about him. Drue urges her to open her present. She smiles that he didn't have to do this. He knows; he wanted to. She opens the box to find two moldy Sucrets inside. "What the hell is this? I hate SweetTarts," Jen mutters. Okay, she doesn't say that last part. "I think you know what it is. Halls Vapor Action, BAY-BEE!" Okay, he doesn't say that last part. "Ecstasy?" Jen chokes out. "Drue, I thought that I made my feelings perfectly clear on this subject." "You did -- too clear," Drue says, but he thinks she's "protesting too much." Jen says that she's an idiot for thinking he'd changed, and he snorts that she hasn't either: "Your hairstyle, maybe, but people don't change. Not that much." Yes, they do, Jen says, and delivers a speech on growing up and responsibility and how dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse isn't all that, and winds up by saying that she doesn't want the present. Drue says fine, then she won't mind if he leaves it "right here" (we don't see "right here," but it sounds like he puts it on the table), for "safekeeping." Jen eyes the box, then glares at Drue. I think we're meant to believe that she's tempted. Drue smiles at her and gets up off the table. Jen sits there with her cake flambé.