Episode Report Card Sars: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Baby
By Sars | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 02.23.1998
At the waterfront, Pacey sulks on a bench. Joey walks up to him and says in a not unkind tone, "Hey, jailbait." Pacey growls, "Feel free to keep on walking, I won’t think you’re rude." Joey sits down, saying, "Despite first impressions, I’m not here to bust on you." She says she doesn’t know if the rumors are true, or exaggerated, or designed by Pacey to make himself more attractive "to the senior girls," but regardless, she knows how he feels. Pacey laughs bitterly and says he really doubts that. Joey: "Well, let me see. People stare at you when you walk down the hall, we’ve seen that, they whisper behind your back, you suddenly overhear your name in the conversations of strangers, and pretty soon a justifiable paranoia sets in -- whether they are or not, you’re convinced that everyone’s talking about you. Imagine if you’d done something even worse." Pacey, not convinced: "Like what?" Joey, ruefully: "Like sharing a house with your pregnant unwed sister and her black boyfriend while your father serves time on a drug conviction? Imagine that, Pacey -- we actually have something in common: providing gossip for the small-minded townsfolk." Again I ask, "townsfolk"? Joey continues, "And unfortunately for you, you’re -- tonight’s top story." Pacey stretches his neck and sighs, then asks what he should do now, and Joey says, "Same thing I did. You pray like hell for a better story to come along."
As they walk up the lawn, Jen complains to Dawson, "Grams’s way of dealing with my point of view is to pretend that it doesn’t exist." Well, at least she doesn’t mock it with unfunny jokes like, say, you do to her. Jen goes on to admit that this "of course infuriates me -- it causes me to speak emotionally rather than rationally, and I become rude and defensive and I give her even more of a reason to dismiss my viewpoints. It’s like we’re locked in this awful vicious cycle." I’ve made a point in the past of saying that I don’t like the way Jen behaves towards her grandmother, but I have to give her snaps for copping to it. Dawson tells her she has to "do something" because she can’t just ignore Grams until she leaves for college, and Jen cracks, "I can’t? Great, there goes Plan A," as Grams appears at the door and gives them the stink-eye. Jen grumbles a bit more and says she’ll see Dawson later that night, and she goes inside and tries not to mouth off as Grams tells her to get to the table for dinner at six.
Cut to Bessie, revving the engine on the pickup. The wheels turn, but the truck doesn’t move, and Joey appears and asks what happened. Bessie climbs out of the cab, relieved at Joey’s arrival, and says she "had a little mishap" on her way to the clinic, and Joey doesn’t remember Bessie having a clinic appointment that day, and Bessie says she didn’t, but she’ll probably have to reschedule, and when Joey suspiciously asks why, Bessie wails, "Because I’m fairly certain I’m in labor," and Joey begins to panic. Bessie, clutching her womb, tells her to calm down; she needs Joey to call an ambulance, but their phone "isn’t exactly in working order at this very moment," so they’ll have to go to Dawson’s house. Joey observes that Dawson’s house is the closest, but not the most convenient, and there’s really only one way to get to Dawson’s from the Bastard Barn. Cut to a sunset shot of Joey rowing Bessie across the creek and telling her not to worry, "I’ll get you there," and Bessie gripes, "At the rate you’re going, Joey, the two of us is gonna be the three of us," and then she grabs the oars from Joey and accuses her of "rowing like a girl." Heh. Joey notices that the boat has started leaking. Bessie, out of breath from rowing, gasps, "It’s not the boat, Joey." Ew.