Episode Report Card Sars: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Baby
By Sars | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 02.23.1998
In the men’s room, Dawson asks incredulously while washing his hands, "She said she’d go to Providence with you?" Pacey, taking a whiz, comments, "Well, she didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no, either." He flushes, adding, "She gave me that ‘I really want to, Pacey, but I just can’t’ look," and predicts that once he gets his learner’s permit, TaMAHra will "cave completely." Then Pacey checks under the stall doors for feet, to make sure nobody overheard their conversation, explaining to a puzzled Dawson that they "really can’t be too careful with this information." Dawson says wryly that he really feels for Pacey, "spending all [his] time trying to get Miss Jacobs out of the bedroom." Pacey wags his finger at Dawson: "Listen, this relationship is not all about sex, okay? I mean, luckily for me, some of it is." The bell rings, and Dawson makes a snide comment about not standing up Pacey’s girlfriend; then he tells Pacey, "Hey, dude, you’ve gotta be careful, too." As they leave, the camera lingers on the closed doors of one of the stalls, then cuts to a stoner hunched on top of a toilet, coughing and muttering gleefully, "Ohhhh, man." Ruh roh!
Outside of school, Dawson comes running up to Jen, who has on an attractive long dress but who mars the effect of said dress by walking like a backhoe, and announces that he "may have finally found an upside" to his parents’ "marital woes." Then Dawson comments humbly, "Since it isn’t really about me, I’ve decided to chill." Oh, wait, he doesn’t say that at all, telling Jen instead that Gale "You Don’t Love Me, You Just Love My Doggy Style" Leery and Mitch "The Flash" Leery have couples’ therapy this weekend and have "left Leery Manor [sic] in my sole possession." Translation: the producers cheaped out on the actors’ payroll.
Jen says hurriedly, "Okay, that’s nice and everything, but --" and Dawson interrupts, "’Nice’? I was hoping for something a little bit more illicit than that," and I think he meant "enthusiastic," but anyway, Jen finally gets a word in edgewise: "Okay, listen, there’s this kind of weird Pacey rumor going around school -- have you heard this?" Dawson, dismissively: "What, that he finally handed a homework assignment in on time?" Jen, with relish: "Not exactly, and it’s not just about Pacey. It also involves Miss Jacobs." Dawson, getting suspicious: "What about them?" Jen: "Well, let’s just say that for a student and teacher, they have an exceptionally close relationship -- so close, in fact, that it’s considered illegal in about thirty-five states." Dawson, thinking aloud that maybe they can still "nip this in the bud," asks Jen who told her, and Jen says that he should really ask who didn’t tell her -- "it’s out there, it’s prevalent." Dawson sighs and heads for the front door of the school, mumbling, "We gotta find Pacey," and Jen dashes after him and wants to know, "Is it true?" She has to ask a couple of times, and Dawson -- whose hair looks like a wilted version of Jim Carrey’s coif in Ace Ventura -- says he can’t lie to her, so she should just forget she ever asked.