Episode Report Card Shack: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)
By Shack | Season 5 | Episode 20 | Aired on 04.23.2002
Previously on Dawson's Creek: Dawson made plans to meet with an agent in New York to pitch Charlie and His Giant Tool; Audrey and Pacey decided to go steady; the purity of Joey's saintly aura burned the sin right out of Charlie's body, and the two of them spent the night together in Florida without doing anything so crass as having sex.
It's morning as we open, and Audrey trudges down the incredibly fancy hallway of her dorm building towards her room. She's got a bag with her, so I'm assuming she spent the night with Pacey or else what follows makes no sense. Where she spent the night with Pacey, I have no idea. Anyway, she gets to her room and discovers a scrunchie on the door. She looks confused for a moment, wondering if perhaps she took a wrong turn and ended up back on Undeclared. Then she smirks in recognition.
Inside, Joey and Charlie are lying in bed together. Oh, and they're fully clothed. I don't believe for a minute that the two of them did anything at all. The show hasn't even been on for ten whole seconds and already my intelligence has been insulted. Joey wakes up and Charlie greets her, asking if she slept well. Joey whines that Charlie talked in his sleep and hogged all the covers, even though Charlie is lying on top of the bed while Joey is nestled under the comforter. Charlie counters that Joey drools in her sleep. Dear future boyfriends and/or one-night stands: if I ever try to have one of these fake cutesy conversations with you the morning after, you have my permission to smother me with a pillow. Joey tells Charlie that if he ever tells anybody that she drools in her sleep, she'll tell everybody about how he talked in his sleep about his mom taking away his Barbie dolls. Charlie tries to deny it to no avail. Joey non-sequiturs into a lengthy explanation that she enjoys spending time with Charlie because he doesn't know everything about her past because he didn't grow up with her, so she enjoys "living without the weight of eighteen years of expectations." That means that she has somebody new she can play the dead-mom card with to get her own way all the time. The Barbie doll thing comes up again, and Charlie tries to justify it by saying how hot Barbie looked naked. She doesn't have any genitals! Freak. Their bickering turns into a pillow fight. I staple my eyelids to my forehead to stay awake.