Episode Report Card Wing Chun: D | 6 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Show Me Love
By Wing Chun | Season 3 | Episode 21 | Aired on 05.09.2000
Dear Kruddy: I just saw a promo for your new show, and I recommend that you put a shirt on. Love, Wing Chun.
The next morning, Jen walks into Grams's house wearing the same clothes she'd had on the night before. Grams waited up all night for her. Jen apologizes (rather cavalierly for my taste for not having called), and says that she spent the whole night with Henry. Grams assumes that Jen and Henry did it. Jen is very insulted and storms off instead of just telling Grams that nothing happenened. Dude, even if it isn't true, put an old lady's mind at ease. ["And lose the 'tude. Any other grandmother on earth would have cleaned your clock for staying out all night at age sixteen." -- Sars]
At the IHOF, Mrs. Flash is passive-aggressively reading the newspaper as she snarks at the Flash that she can't believe he's helping Dawson to race. The Flash says, "Well, it's a boat race, right? It's not Ben-Hur." Flash, can you get gladiator movies off your mind for one minute? He adds that, one way or another, this is a fight that will happen, and that he's proud of Dawson for sticking up for himself. Flash, let Dawson's tiny penis fight (and lose) its own battles, will you? Mrs. Flash says she's not against fighting for what one wants, but asks whether they shouldn't be teaching Dawson to fight with his mind. Mrs. F, please see above. Then the conversation turns to a meta-discussion about their own relationship and the rekindling thereof, and no one cares about that.
At the regatta -- which is taking place in a puddle of water barely large enough to contain all the boats, much less allow them room to race -- the various crews do sailing stuff and try to look really butch. True Love pulls out ahead of Carpe Diem as the soundtrack plays someone that sounds suspiciously like Def Leppard, like, Def Leppard? As Carpe Diem gains some ground on the True Love, the TL narrowly squeezes past a big orange buoy. CD follows...okay, could this be more boring? The boats look like they're moving so slowly! Couldn't Pacey and Dawson have had a showdown in a bowling alley? Maybe a really intense power-walking race? A riveting round of caps? Some head-to-head Tetris action? In the online dictionary I checked, next to the definition for "action," there was the notation "ant." and then a little QuickTime video of THIS SCENE. Okay, so TL is in first place, but CD is coming up close behind. The Flash starts telling Dawson to give the TL "buoy room" which I at first thought was "booty room," which would have been much funnier. But Dawson pretty much ignores him, gets up way too close to the TL, and cuts Pacey off, forcing the TL to veer off in the other direction to avoid a crash. (And it's nice to see that Dawson has so little regard for a borrowed sailboat...but that we already knew.) The announcer confirms that though TL had the right of way and was forced to move by CD, CD did cross the finish line first. Then he says that CD didn't give TL any room at all, which means a guaranteed disqualification. So, in addition to everything else, Dawson's just ruined the entire regatta, the big event that's attracted all the tourists on which both his mom's business, and that of the woman with whom he's involved in a scary codependent relationship, depend. Well done.
Both the CD and the TL dock; Pacey tears off his wind suit and makes for the pier. Joey stomps down the stairs toward Dawson, who jubilantly yells, "We won!" Joey angrily replies, "No, you didn't, Dawson -- you lost. If you knew a little bit more about sailing, you would know that you got disqualified." "For nearly killing me!" Pacey screams, having, by now, joined them. "I got disqualified?" Dawson repeats incredulously, but declines to add, "How can I be disqualified, when I am the centre of the universe and created all the other boats in my mind and for my own entertainment?" Pacey yells, "I got a couple more words for what you are." Dawson snots, "Let's not forget who started this, Pacey. You're the one who said --" "Okay, stop!" Joey interrupts. "The both of you, stop this! I'm not some damn trophy." Pacey recycles the "Dawson pushed me into your arms" argument; Dawson screams that the reason he asked Pacey to look after Joey was that he "still had feelings for her; [he] still loved her," but didn't want her to hurt him again. "I still love her," he concludes more quietly, looking at Joey. His face is indescribable and really makes me wish I could do screen captures; in addition to its being, as usual, perfectly rectangular, the wind has buffeted his hair into several meringue-like peaks on his head, and his eyebrows, when furrowed, look all the blacker, and he has on so much lip gloss that he could play a young Philip Seymour Hoffman in a prequel to Flawless. Joey is appropriately horrified by the spectacle of Dawson's "love" for her, and yells, "I hate this! I hate all of this! God, I hate you for kissing me, and forcing me to figure out what it all means, Pacey, and I hate you, Dawson, for forcing me to make a choice between our friendship and what I might have had with him! And I hate myself, I mean, I wish we could go back to the way it was -- I wish I could take it all back -- but I can't! Nothing is worth going through all this! No one person is worth this -- neither one of you, especially not me!" Ah. And a novel variation on the classic Kelly Taylor "I choose me" -- the Joey Potter "I don't choose me." Pacey asks Dawson, "Happy now?" and heads back to the True Love.