Episode Report Card Sars: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Neverland
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 18 | Aired on 04.04.2000
Ryan Home. Andie perks, "I'll go first. Facials and pedicures, what do you think?" Joey and Jen arrange their eyebrows in "whatever" furrows. Andie, oblivious, squawks, "Great! Okay, I'll go get the stuff ready," and cavorts out of the room. Joey and Jen exchange a look, and Joey goes back to reading. Jen asks, "So what's up?" Nothing, Joey says without looking up. "Really?" Jen prods, and then tells Joey gently that, if Joey's "going through a particular situation" and needs to talk to a less-involved third party about it, "I just wanted to let you know I'm here." Joey asks suspiciously if Jen has any information she'd "like to share" about the particular situation in question. Jen smiles indulgently and refers to the "real incestuous little group" formed by herself, Joey, Dawson, and Pacey, and I thank the writers again for reading our bulletin board. As Joey begins to look disgusted, Jen goes on to say that she knows she's "just standing on the periphery, but it seems like there's a whole world balance that's definitely been shifting," whatever that means. Joey fumes that she'd like to know how "some meaningless, impulsive scenario which was over before it began somehow became public knowledge," and demands to know why Jen thinks Joey wants to talk about it in the first place. Jen assures her that it isn't public knowledge, and that in fact she doesn't know exactly which scenario Joey means, "but it's pretty clear from your attitude that it's not meaningless." Joey closes her eyes and runs her hand through her hair. Jen repeats her offer to listen if Joey needs to talk. Joey, avoiding eye contact, nods grudgingly. Whatever. If these two ever become real friends, I'll eat my hat.
Elsewhere in the Manor, Jack and Ethan play chess; Angry enters with a tray and asks what they're up to. "What does it look like we're up to?" Jack brats. Angry, sporting a camo Cosby sweater, lets that go, asking with forced cheer, "Mind if I join you?" "Actually, yes," Jack hisses, suggesting that his father go over to Jen's with a pair of binoculars and spy on Andie instead. Ouch. Ethan sighs under the weight of the tension in the room. Angry looks like he might cry; he takes his drink, hoists himself out of his chair, and leaves. Jack shakes his head, makes a snide comment about Angry "watch-dogging" the two of them, and apologizes to Ethan, who tells him not to worry about it (of course), because he went through the same thing with his own dad (of course), and he knows "how to handle it." Of course. Because he's the Yoda of gay teens. He's Gayoda.
Hiking trail. Pacey wonders how they "did this" at age ten, and as we pan down from the treetops to Pacey and Dawson with their backpacks on. Dawson observes that, back then, they only carried "a bag of chips and a couple of Capri Suns." Evidently, Capri Suns = Instant Nostalgia. Whatever, Grandpa. Pacey leads the witness with "I guess a lot's changed since then," but Dawson says only, "Yeah, of course." Pacey does the Discomfort Babble again, "change is good" blah blah blah "change that seems like it's bad can end up being good" blah blah blah boom!-I-got-your-girlfriend-cakes. Cut to sunset on the bay, or the creek, or whatever, and then back to the trail, where Pacey spots their old fort, "fruit of an entire summer's labor," and expresses shock that it's still standing. Um, guys? You only built the fort six or seven years ago, okay? It's not like decades have passed, Old Man River, so let's not get all "Ozymandias" about it. Dawson calls the fort "typical," and when Pacey asks of what, Dawson says, "Of me," and adds that "everything we've seen today I remember as being bigger than life. In reality, it's just ordinary. Maybe my whole life was just ordinary." Well, if we lived in a world where "ordinary" meant "pretentious and annoying," and before you break into a chorus of "It Was A Very Good Year," may I remind you AGAIN that you haven't even gotten a driver's license yet? You cannot have a midlife crisis at age sixteen! GET OVER YOURSELF! Pacey basically tells him not to read so much into it, and Dawson intones that recently, "I've been trying to connect with who I was in the past." He calls his former life "simple" and "magical" and says that "maybe I never was that person, maybe I just thought I was," and instead of rolling his eyes so hard that he gets a migraine, Pacey pokes his head through the roof of the fort and looks guilt-stricken. He clambers out of the fort and begins speaking nervously, saying that it sounds like Dawson's "looking for an answer," and that just that morning he breakfasted with Doug and Doug advised him to go to Dawson, because Dawson would have the answer that Pacey needs, and clearly he's trying confess that he smooched Joey, but before he can get it out, Dawson turns toward the sound of rustling, then asks if Pacey heard "that." Enter Buzz and his two brats accompli, yelling, "Yay, we found them!" The kids -- one of whom has a plaid baseball cap on, but turned to the side New Kids-style -- run into the fort as Dawson and Pacey look bemused.