Episode Report Card Sars: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Future Tense
By Sars | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.24.2000
Drue and friends set up a table and start dealing out poker hands. Drue needles Pacey -- does he want to play, or does he have to ask permission from "old ball and chain" first? Pacey can't even find the old ball and chain. Drue says he saw her talking to Dawson; cut to Pacey's stony face as Drue corrects himself that "she took a walk with the birthday girl," so Pacey should stay and play cards. Pacey shrugs, "Well, it's your money," and takes a seat.
Walking on a lighted dock outside the party house, Jen says in a tone of tolerant amusement that they've walked far enough, and what did Joey want to tell her. Joey, even further into her cups now, asks, "Is here good?" and totters over to a bench and clambers up onto it and sits on the railing -- and here I thought for sure she'd pull an Abby and pitch into the drink, but she didn't -- and says she wants to make a toast: "All the love and happiness in the world, to my friend Jen Lindley, on her birthday." Jen giggles and reminds Joey that it's not really her birthday. Joey shrugs that that's all right, then says in a tone of inebriated confidentiality that "we're not really friends." Jen stares at her, at once charmed and shocked by Joey's candor, and laughs, this time in disbelief. Joey says she's kidding: "We are. I think we are. Do you think we are?" She babbles on for a bit before Jen stops her: "You know what, Joey, let's not delve too far into it, 'cause then we'll just remember why we're supposed to hate each other." Joey turns to her and says all maudlin drunk, "I don't hate you -- I love you!" More laughing from Jen as Joey gives her a sloppy hug, and Jen strokes Joey's hair and tells her, "Joey, you love everybody tonight!" Then Jen asks if Joey can summon the "brain power" to answer a question, and Joey says that she can, as long as it's not about the future. Jen says no, it's about the present, and asks if she knows where Drue lives. "Ding ding ding, I do know the answer to that one. Drue lives in an apartment at the yacht club with his mother." Jen asks about Drue's father, and Joey relays the story Drue told her about the father taking off with "some New-Age chippy." Jen is taken aback.
Andie, wearing a scary keyhole top and a schizo-crimp-tastic hairdo, smiles perkily as Jack reads flatly from the cover of a book with a bow on it, "You Too Can Get Into The College Of Your Choice." Evidently, that's Andie's non-birthday birthday present for Jen. Jack hopes aloud that that's "a private joke between" Andie and Jen. Andie sulks that it's "a very helpful book." Jack says that, as a present, it "pretty much sucks." "What's your problem?" Andie grunts. Jack doesn't want to spend "every waking moment" thinking about college; he'd like to enjoy the remainder of his senior year. "And I don't?" It doesn't seem to Jack like she does, no, because ever since finishing her own applications, she's gotten on Jack's case about his, and he's sick of it -- he's happy for her, but he doesn't need her to control his life, and she shouldn't do it to Jen either. Andie: I can't just watch you ruin your future. Jack: I only had football to look forward to, and now that's gone, so get down out of my grill.