Episode Report Card Wing Chun: D | 2 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT None Of The Above
By Wing Chun | Season 3 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.12.1999
Sars: You know, I have found that when I'm hiding, it helps not to speak.
Wing Chun: Well, especially when the person you're hiding from is still in the same room.
Sars: "Room"? Hell, he was in the same frame.
Wing Chun: Anyway, about the PSAT.
Sars: Oh yeah. I did have to take it, and it was never that big a deal. There were never prep courses, because pretty much anyone can get a scholarship -- university, in this country, is practically socialized -- and the students who were really desperate to get scholarships couldn't afford to take prep courses anyway.
Wing Chun: But realistically, would someone who's as brilliant as we're all supposed to believe Joey is get that stressed out about the test? Is it really that hard? I mean, admittedly, I never took the SAT, but I took the GRE, and I imagine it's about the same...
Sars: It is the same.
Wing Chun: ...and it was pretty easy.
Sars: Yeah. The PSAT means nothing, unless you want to get a National Merit Scholarship, and there are tons of those. And I won't even get into the incongruity of getting a test in advance of the testing date. The ETS guys drop them off in a Brinks truck, for God's sake.
Wing Chun: Well, I thought so.
Sars: Plus, you usually take the PSAT when you're a sophomore, and the SAT when you're a junior.
Wing Chun: That's how the kids on 90210 did it.
Sars: There you go.
Wing Chun: It's back.
Sars: Oh, goody.
The aforementioned Gang is all seated in the principal's office as he chews them out over "a national cheating scandal." I can already tell it's a dream, because night has followed the loss of the test, yet in this scene it's daytime and the kids are all wearing the same outfits they were when Dawson presented the envelope to them. As Principal Green works himself into a lather, Joey gets up and pulls the fire alarm. Of course, her real alarm goes off simultaneously, and she sits up, looking agitated.
Back at the school, the kids gather around the same table as the day before. Joey asks Dawson what "black-market booty" he has for them today. Dawson says he wanted to give them all a chance to rectify this situation. Thank God Jen saves me the trouble, and asks: "Well, wasn't it already stolen, Dawson?" Dawson says, "The point is that it's missing, and yesterday it wasn't." Maybe I'm just dense, but I fail to see by what possible means Dawson thinks he can claim the moral high ground on this issue. He has the divine right to have returned to him a test someone else had stolen for him? As soon as he took the envelope from Eve, he stopped being Gary Cooper and started being...I don't know. Gary Oldman, I guess. Jen says she's starting to feel like "a psychologically abused lab rat." Joey says Jen isn't the lab rat: "Dawson is." Trying for a warning voice, Dawson says, "Watch it, Joey." Joey, on a roll, says, "Throwing parties, crashing boats, upstaging marching bands -- Dawson, if your rope was any more yanked, you'd be a church bell." Pacey chuckles. Again, these two have excellent chemistry. Get them together! Dawson insists that Eve has nothing to do with this. Except giving you the test in the first place, I guess. Joey lays into him about the effect Eve has had on him, winding up by saying that it's only his friends "who have to sit here and suffer through the Dawson Leery morality play -- bleached-blonde ho-bags willing to put out need not audition." Dawson grits his teeth at Joey's dissertation, but makes no response, and instead tells the group that he'll leave his locker open, and whoever has the test should put it in there before 5:30 that evening. Pacey tells him that, having left, the thief has no incentive to return to the crime scene. Dawson says that the thief, in fact, does have just such an incentive: "To do the right thing." But...by what standard, Dawson? Have you said that, upon receipt of the twice-stolen test, you plan to destroy it? How would the thief know that returning it was the right thing -- just because you say so? Needless to say, Dawson is on very shaky moral ground here. I, for one, am not buying it, and am squarely on the second thief's side.