Episode Report Card Sars: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Dear old golden rule days
By Sars | Season 4 | Episode 17 | Aired on 04.10.2001
Witterschloss porch. Pacey broods. Don't these people ever read a book and brood? Watch TV while brooding? Listen to music? Anything? Because I'm all for brooding in the great outdoors, but they do way too much of it on this show. Anyway, the Potter Pick-up pulls up, and Joey approaches silently and sits at Pacey's feet. He looks at her expectantly, then asks, "So are we going to Worthington?" "We"? Pacey, dude -- oh, forget it. It's not even worth it. "No," Joey sighs, tucking her hair behind her ears. But she did go and talk to Dawson? She did; she had to tell him something that she should have told him a long time ago. Oh, whatever. "Something about us?" Joey nods gloomily. "Something about…us and sex?" Joey doesn't know why she lied, but she did. Pacey lets her off the hook, saying that it's okay; at least she told the truth in the end. In the spirit of honesty, Pacey then admits that he didn't feel that upset when Joey didn't get the financial aid, and it's not that he doesn't want Joey to "realize [her] dreams," because he does, but for the first time he felt like it wasn't he that was holding her back. I…okay, what? Joey says that he's never held her back, and how can he even think that, but Pacey makes her promise that, if the day ever comes when he is holding her back, she'll cut him loose. Joey sputters. Pacey insists that she promise. Joey indignantly says she won't: "You're asking me to promise to let you go!" Pacey looks at her, his face softening, as she adds in a whisper, "I can't do that." She puts her head on his shoulder. He shields her from the cruel world. What. Ever.
Fishbowl-cam. "Exactly what is it we're doing, again?" Jack asks, peering at the fish. Jen, also peering, says it's an exercise to clear her mind so that her memory returns: "It's kinda like self-hypnosis." She rambles on absently about recalling why she's angry at her father and herself, resolving the anger, and going to school in New York City; meanwhile, Jack is completely entranced by the fish and is making hilarious faces at it. After a moment, he observes that it's only since she started seeing Tom Frost that Jack has started to think Jen "may in fact be…crazy." "Jack, do you wanna go to school in New York?" "Yeah." Ska-esque Music Of Hilarity. "Then shut up and watch the fish." Fishbowl-cam. I can't do justice to that scene, but it's cute.
Aaaaaand here's cute's complete opposite…Dawson, standing on the end of the PB&B pier and, not coincidentally, casting a very long shadow. Joey finds him there, and she's "a little surprised, considering," but Dawson tells her mildly, "I think you underestimate me." Well, based on your prior bad acts, you can't blame her, o not-quiet-enough and not-particularly-heroic one, but anyway, he adds, "I think we underestimate each other." Joey looks uncomfortable. Dawson says that, that night at the movie theater, he felt the rightness between them too, "and nothing will ever change that -- not going to school on different coasts, not meeting people who we're meant to love forever, nothing." Does this signal the long-overdue demise of his soulmate obsession? I can only hope. "And I want you to have this." Dawson holds out an envelope, presumably containing a check. Joey starts to protest, but Dawson interrupts to say that, while he doesn't know how he feels about her sleeping with Pacey, or how he'll feel about it in the future -- excuse me. Excuse me, Dawson? Nobody CARES how you feel about it, because it's NONE of your GODDAMN BUSINESS! So SHUT UP about it! GAAHHHD! Sorry. So he doesn't know how he feels about it, but he's "absolutely certain" that giving Joey the money "is the right thing to do," because he's certain about what he and Joey "mean to each other." Joey stares at him, trying not to cry, and nods as he finishes, "And I think you are too." Biting her lip, Joey abruptly hugs him, and over his shoulder she smiles, and then she says weepily, "Thank you," and over Joey's shoulder, Dawson closes his eyes and smells her hair. It's actually a nice moment, considering the crappy story in which it dwells. "You're gonna have some of the best years of your life at Worthington," Dawson tells her smugly as she stares down at the check, "and I wanna hear all about them." The camera pans up and away from the two of them standing together at the end of the pier, and The Piano Of Friendship plays, and so we learn that the price of a backbone is $60,000 USD.