Episode Report Card Sars: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Discovery
By Sars | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 02.09.1998
Over at The Ryan Home For Wayward Girls, Jen unburdens her heart to her torpid grandfather, explaining that Grams and Dawson, whom she never thought would agree on anything, both think she's a slut, and she doesn't see the big deal, and in a few years nobody will care when she did it or with whom, and she says as she strokes his hand, "By the time you wake up, maybe a fifteen-year-old girl with a shady past won't be such a bad thing," and I have to say, even though I've made up pig nicknames for her and even though her taste in men obviously sucks rocks, I still think the whole sexual double standard sucks even bigger rocks, and if Jen wants to boink her way up the Cape and back down again, she should, and nobody should get up in her face about it, because as Ernie once said, "Enjoying the pleasures in life doesn't make you a ho." Right on.
Dawson watches a skillet bounce off the head of -- oh, wait, my mistake, he watches dark clouds cross the moon as he sulks in the little agora where he and Jen first kissed. Joey walks up behind him and asks, "Hanging out with all your friends?" Dawson recovers quickly with, "Yep, that's why you weren't invited." Joey rolls her eyes and says, "Phasers on stun, I come in peace," and stands in front of him before warning him, "You're gonna screw it up, you know." Dawson, annoyed: "What?" Joey: "Jen. She came and talked to me. I told her, 'Sit tight, he'll be back.'" Dawson, not sounding grateful at all: "Thanks, appreciate it, Joey." Joey goes on, sitting down beside Dawson, "I explained to her that it's just displaced anger and you're just mad about your mom and dad," and Dawson chimes in, "I'm mad at the world, Joey. I'm a teenager," and if you'll excuse me, I'd like to welcome Dawson Leery to the wonderful world of adolescence with the gift of a deluxe folding stepladder -- not that he'll use it. Joey tells him, "Oh, by the way, we're old pals now, Blondie and I, so, ah, if you have any messages you want to get back to her, let me know," but Dawson cuts her off -- thanks, he says, but he doesn't want to talk about it right now, not with her.
Joey tries to prod him into dishing about Jen by saying, "I thought that's what you did with your friends." Dawson says icily, "It is, except I'm not sure that we are." For fuck's sake, Dawson, get over it already -- and if memory serves, the honesty strategy won't work so well for you when you try it next season, Truthy Balboa, so how about shutting up? Joey mutters, "How droll. The tables have been turned." "Droll"? Dawson sits up straight and says, "This isn't just about yesterday, Joey -- it's last week, last month -- everything between us recently. We just -- we're not getting along the same way we used to." Joey narrows her eyes and asks, "So the friendship -- you don't think we're friends anymore?" Dawson exhales and tries to form a coherent thought: "I don't know, are we more, are we less, I -- all I know is it's just not what it used to be." Joey keeps staring at him as he says, "Nothing is anymore." Joey says, "It's called social evolution, Dawson. What's strong enough flourishes, and what doesn't, we look at behind glass cases in science museums." Dawson, slowly coming around: "You and I? Are we museum-bound?" Joey smiles the patented Joey Half-Smile and says, "I don't know about that," and then after a pause, "You get angry at me too easily," and Dawson jumps in, "You're way too critical of me," and they look at each other and laugh as Dawson says, "In some alternate universe we must have been married for like fifty years," and Joey says, "And I'm sure it was a wonderful wedding." "Oh, the best," Dawson says, and Joey asks, "We each brought dates, I assume," and Dawson says he had Jen by his side the whole time, and Joey poses the question of who he would take home at the end of the evening, "the date or the wife," which Dawson calls "a dilemma" and Joey deems "fascinating," but I disagree, since only by dint of stabbing myself repeatedly in the eye with a lollipop stick did I manage to stay alert during this exchange, which goes on and on and on through a rich guy at the bar, and eyes drifting, and Dawson bailing Joey out of some situation or other, and Joey asks soberly, "Did we save each other that night, Dawson?" I suppose she means "did you choose me," and Dawson looks at her, and she doesn't think he did, because her face sags a little bit as Dawson politely says it "gets a little hazy" and he can't remember, and after a little more over-extension of the already-stretched-thin metaphor, Joey says "all this subtext" has tired her out, and she starts to leave, but stops to say, "Dawson? No matter how the wedding turned out, I'm pretty sure I had a wonderful time up until the end." Dawson just says, "Yeah," and after she gets out of earshot, he says, "Me too." Dawson stays there, looking out at the harbor, and as she walks out of the agora, Joey turns to look at him, and sighs to herself, "No doubt about it. Straight to the Smithsonian." Whatever.