Episode Report Card Sars: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.23.1999
In the kitchen, Grams bustles about. Joey and Dawson offer to help, and Grams instructs them to "pray." Dawson asks if they should pray for anything in particular, and Grams hefts a stack of plates and says, "General prayer would be fine." Heh. Grams leaves, and Jen rumbles into the kitchen in third gear, and her hair looks like a bike helmet that got stomped on by the world's largest crinkle-soled Puma Clyde. Dawson asks about Jen's mom, and Joey wonders if they'll get to meet her; Jen, trying without much success to stifle tears, says she'd love for them to meet her, "it's just that we seem to be having a little failure to communicate right now." Jen continues futzing around in various drawers and cupboards as Dawson prods, "Did you know she was coming?" Jen shakes her head, "Big surprise. Guerrilla style. Seems my mom is a graduate of the Ho Chi Minh school of parenting." "Ho Chi Minh"? Despite the fact that Jen has tears running down her face and seems downright unwilling to meet his eye, Dawson sallies forth with yet another nosy inquiry: "Is she here for some reason other than Thanksgiving? Any news on the home front?" Jen turns to glare at Dawson before saying sarcastically, "You mean, is she begging me to return home to the familial fold [block that metaphor!]? I don't think so." Dawson keeps pressing, asking if Jen talked to her mother, whether her mother said anything, and Jen asks what exactly they would have said, and Dawson guesses that maybe Helen said she missed Jen and feels sorry she sent Jen away. Finally, Jen cuts Dawson off, saying that since she was thirteen, "that woman has done nothing but stare at me with a look of mild disregard [sic], like I was some stranger who spilled a cocktail on her carpet." Joey, silent thus far, interrupts to play the My Mother Died card. Again. Joey we don't know our parents blah blah blah they don't know us blah blah blah before we get the chance to ask them things, they're gone blah blah blah orphancakes. Jen whispers, "I'm sorry," and tries to stammer that she didn't think of how Joey must feel, and Joey tells Jen to give Helen a chance, because Helen came to talk to Jen, and Jen owes her that much. Sorry, Joey, but your mother's untimely death doesn't automatically forgive all the other mothers in the world for crappy parenting. Oh, and also, we get it.
Helen gazes out over the marsh. In a gabardine blazer. Outside. On Cape Cod. In November. Dawson approaches and introduces himself; Helen remembers him as "Gail's son," and I believe Jen mentioned having met Dawson several times as a kid in the series premiere, so I think Helen has met the whole Leery family before, but anyway, Helen makes "beautiful day" noises. Dawson mentions, apropos of nothing, that he and Jen used to date and have since become "very good friends" (whatever), and he cares "very deeply" about her (again, whatever). Helen looks at him blankly and says something polite. Dawson informs her that "there's something else" she should know, and he'll just blunder ahead with it and let Helen tell him "if I'm out of line," and Helen says, "I'm listening," so Dawson launches into The Story Of Eve, and Helen doesn't see what it has to do with her, and Dawson says that Eve had a picture of Helen with her. Helen looks down, then asks, "Where is she? Is she still here in town?" Dawson says no, and that Eve left by the time he realized who she was. Helen nods vaguely. "So it's true," Dawson says. By way of answer, Helen asks if Jen knows anything about it, and Dawson says no: "I wrestled with telling her, but I ultimately decided it wasn't my place, which is why I'm really glad you're here." Helen more or less says she doesn't plan to tell Jen; Eve has left town, so Helen doesn't see any reason to rock the boat. Dawson points out that Eve could come back. "Eve?" Helen asks. Dawson says that's the girl's name, "Eve Whitman." Dawson goes on to suggest that Eve might well tell Jen herself if she returns, and that Jen would take hearing it better from her mother than from Eve. Helen tells Dawson to mind his own business. Dawson respectfully submits that he knows what can happen "when families keep these kinds of secrets from each other." Helen looks at him with asperity as he adds, "I just don't want to see Jen get hurt." "Neither do I," Helen whispers, and she leaves him standing alone on the dock.