Episode Report Card Jessica: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT 100 Light Years From Home
By Jessica | Season 5 | Episode 19 | Aired on 04.16.2002
Dawson and Pander are driving to New York, New York. Apparently, Dawson hasn't spoken in the past ninety minutes, and Pander'd like to know what's on his mind. "Or, shall I say, who?" he asks. Dawson hems and haws that he wasn't thinking about anyone. Or anything. Pander tells Dawson that if he doesn't spill, Pander will have to sing. "Be my guest," Dawson chuckles. And Pander launches into a rather humorous Elvis imitation, to which Dawson very quickly puts a stop. "Joey!" he says. "Don't ever do that again, please." Pander grins and announces that he wants "the story on that one." Dawson rolls his eyes and says it's "a long one." Pander raises a brow. "Does it look like I'm going anywhere, sport?" Dawson purses his lips and steers violently. "All right," he says. "Stop me if you get confused." And this cues a long series of sepia-toned flashbacks. I'd get more detailed, but you know the story: Dawson used to have really unspeakably bad almost mullet-like hair, Joey loved him for some reason, and then they started doing a lot of yelling and hair flinging and crying horrible tears of angst.
Fade to Joey reading a book on the beach in Florida, all covered up and studious in the midst of mostly naked co-eds. Because the mere suggestion of the pleasures of the flesh offends her saintly and delicate sensibilities. Audrey waves at her sanctimonious roommate from the balcony of a nearby beach house, and is shortly thereafter swept off her feet -- literally -- by Pacey, who carries her into a bedroom and tosses her onto the bed. Pacey kisses her and exposits that this is her parents' beach house. "Do your parents even know who I am?" he wonders. "And why would Southern Californians have a beach house all the way in Florida, when Malibu is so close?" Audrey sucks his face and murmurs that they don't know about him, and that the place is in Florida because, later, when Dawson gets a bee in his bonnet about Joey for the one thousandth time, he'll be able to hop in the car and drive to her. Pacey laps up her lower lip and tells her that his parents don't know a thing about her, either, and that he's sick of all the contrived plot points on this show, especially regarding the apparently extremely fluid geography of the United States. Audrey pulls her face away from him, and wonders what she'd tell her parents about him anyway, and also says that he needs to work on his suspension of disbelief. "You could tell [your parents] I'm good in bed," Pacey suggests. Audrey laughs, then looks sort of thoughtful. Pacey pulls back to stare at all the moles on her neck in silence for a moment, then repeats that they agreed not to tell their parents about each other, and that's still the plan, "right?" "Right," Audrey says sadly. Cue more yammering, the upshot of which is that Audrey and Pacey aren't officially an item. So what happened last week, then?