Episode Report Card Wing Chun: D | 1 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Stolen Kisses
By Wing Chun | Season 3 | Episode 19 | Aired on 04.25.2000
Dawson's Creek is brought to us by Center Stage, a.k.a. Showgirls, But With Ballerinas.
Fade up on Leery's Fresh Fishcakes. Within, Jen "And Here's To You, Skanky Robinson" Lindley sits at the bar with a clipboard. Henry "Pouty Louise" Parker sets a tray of clean glasses on the bar, then sidles up to Jen and taps her on the arm. She chuckles and tells him he has "to stop trying to impress" her, and he says that "it was the coach's idea" that if Henry was going to hang around the restaurant so much, he "might as well help out." Oh, right; I forgot there were some circles in which The Flash was known as The Coach. Jen sighs and happily wonders aloud how many guys would spend their spring breaks in a "fish eatery just to be in close proximity to their" girlfriends, and adds that he's a saint. Henry says, "Well, you know what they say: There's a fine line between 'saint' and 'moron.'" Huh? From beyond, Mother Teresa asks, "The fuck?" Anyway, non sequitur delivered, Henry trucks back into the kitchen, on his way passing a waitress who does a double-take at his departing figure. The waitress asks Jen who the new "b-boy" is, and Jen tells her his name, adding, "He's a funny little creature." Condescending much? The waitress corrects her: "Make that a yummy little creature!" No. I won't. Jen says, "Hm?" and the waitress declares that Henry is "so [her] type: Tall, lanky, a branch right off the DiCaprio family tree." Jen clutches her clipboard to her bosom and vainly prods, "Yeah? You think?" The waitress goes on to exclaim that Henry has "that cute little ragamuffin-with-a-dream look -- makes you want to take him home and give him a bath...and then maybe hop in the tub with him and..." By now Jen's face has fallen, and instead of informing the waitress that the b-boy about whom she's expressing her impure thoughts is Jen's boyfriend, Jen curtly tells "Shelly" that table nineteen needs a cheque. Shelly chirps that they just got their cheque, and Jen says that someone in the restaurant must need a dessert menu. This plot is so inane that I'm going to encapsulate it for you now and save us all a little time: Shelly has the hots for Henry. Instead of telling Shelly to back off, Jen gets increasingly snitty and passive-aggressive about keeping Shelly and Henry apart, because this week the writers have decided that it's Jen's turn, and not Henry's, to be the needy baby. To that I say, "Whatever."
The Gwensketeers are in a diner. Andie subjects Will to a "quick getting-to-know-you" quiz, first asking his favourite movie. Will says that when he was five, his father took him to see "a revival of Planet of the Apes," and explains, "which, if you knew my dad, is a really big thing, so I'd have to say that ranks as my favourite, but I'm really more of a book guy." Oh, God. So I guess from that sketch we're supposed to surmise two things: Will's relationship with his dad is strained, and he's An Intellectual because he likes to read. Way to shoehorn in the character development, writers! Not! Andie appreciatively observes, staring meaningfully at Pacey, that Will's favourite movie doesn't star Adam Sandler or Steven Seagal (because Charlton Heston is a more respectable thespian, I suppose), and asks Will what his favourite book is. "Well, that's easy," Will replies. Let's all say it together, shall we? "Catcher in the Rye. Salinger's a god." So...we've all seen better movies or TV shows that contained characters whose favourite book was Catcher in the Rye, right? We know what that stands for, right? He's not the kind of stock character whose favourite book is, say, On the Road, and hence always wants to travel and flout society's conventions; he's the kind of stock character who has a crappy father and feels that he -- like Holden -- is surrounded by "phonies" although he is, himself, authentic and pure. ["He's also the kind of stock character who doesn't stray far off the assigned reading list for sophomore English." -- Sars] Got it? Let's move on.
Andie asks what he wants to be when he grows up, and he says he doesn't know: "Happy, I guess." Which, I guess, means he isn't happy now. Oh, boy. What a trooper! So unhappy and book-loving and authentic and poorly parented and badly coiffed! Boy, I just want to take him home and drop-kick him straight off the screaming balcony and onto the rusty pile of trash below. Well, I actually don't want to do that to Will, but to the writers who thought they could flesh out a character an audience could care about by means of a minute-long bullshit session in a diner. Like, you can make that cheque payable to B-A-R-R-Y L-E-V-I-N-S-O-N. Dawson tells Will that Aunt Gwen is also a Salinger freak. So that means she's...well, see above; we already covered that one. In an even more shamelessly clumsy segue, Andie asks, "So what's your Aunt Gwen like?" This question wouldn't have come up at some point before they were actually ON their WAY to STAY at her HOUSE? Like, maybe when Andie was invited? Joey says Aunt Gwen's an artist, and "incredibly talented," and "she paints, and she reads great books, and does yoga, and she lives life on her own terms." Wow, she doesn't sound like a cliché at all! As Joey winds up this description, she and Pacey lock eyes and stare at each other some more. Andie asks Dawson whether Aunt Gwen was ever married, and Dawson says that she was, once, to an "uptight lawyer" and had "the picture-perfect suburban life," but then she realized she wanted to be a different kind of lazy writer's stereotype, and met Richard -- a"crazy, bearded painter about twenty years older" than she -- and left her husband for him. Pacey asks whether they'll be meeting Richard, but Dawson says that he died last year. Andie remarks, "Wow. That's sad," but Will argues, "I don't know. Isn't it better to have a short time with somebody that you really love, than a lifetime with somebody who's basically your roommate?" Pacey and Joey are staring at each other again; she nods. Sensing I'm about to get a baseball bat to the cranium from Dramatic Irony, I duck, but when the dust settles I turn around to see that Dramatic Irony's been pinned to the ground by his cousin, Undramatic Non-Irony. Phew!