Episode Report Card Sars: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Have yourseeeeeelf a greeeeeeeeeasy little Christmaaaaaaas
By Sars | Season 4 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.28.2000
Quick sidebar. I find Dawson's whole film "thing" pretentious and overwrought, ordinarily, but I can -- gulp -- sympathize with him here. It's really hard to apply to arts programs and to have to explain why. When I applied to MFA programs, the essays asked me to explain why I wanted to study writing, and I didn't really have an answer. I made up an answer, because I had to, but it's not a matter of "wanting" to write or "becoming" a writer, it's just…this thing that I do, that I never made a conscious choice to do but just, you know, do. So now I sound pretentious and overwrought, and the writers probably got this to feel genuine by accident anyway, but Dawson's block isn't totally affected.
Anyway, moving on. Mr. Brooks gruffs that, if Dawson "can't do better than that," perhaps he should fill out an application to work at "MAC-Donald's" instead. Dawson sighs heavily but doesn't take the bait, saying that he needs to know why Mr. Brooks stopped making movies. Mr. Brooks demands, "What's that got to do with anything?" "'Cause I've stopped too," Dawson says intensely. "Well, that's a tragic loss for the arts," Mr. Brooks quips. Zing! And, WORD. Dawson protests that he's "serious," that he "was going full-steam ahead" with filmmaking but "life got in the way." Mr. Brooks peers at Dawson as though he's discovered a particularly loathsome new species of insect. Dawson says that he had "a crisis of faith." Mr. Brooks snorts in a tone of disbelief that Dawson's a little young to have had a crisis of faith -- thus echoing the hundreds of times that Wing and I have told Dawson to give the midlife-crisis routine a rest for another thirty years or so -- and asks, "What are you, fifteen?" Ha! "Seventeen," Dawson corrects him wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose all embattled Drama Club vice president, and Mr. Brooks declaims, clearly amused, "Seventeen, and already had a crisis of faith!" More nose-pinching from Dawson, who then stammers that he thought they'd gotten "beyond this" and "moved on," and he gets up to deliver a whimpery indictment of Mr. Brooks, thus costing him the itty bitty shred of sympathy I mentioned before: "I guess…whatever happened to you made you the kind of person who would tear on a seventeen-year-old kid whose only mistake was to equate talent with kindness and wisdom, so…" Who equates talent with kindness and wisdom? Damn, Dawson -- pick up a copy of Vanity Fair sometime and get a clue. Dawson flounces out, slamming the front door behind him. Mr. Brooks shakes his head, befuddled, as we go to commercial.
The Yacht Club. The String Quartet Of The Class Struggle saws away at their violin strings as Joey and Pacey enter the Worthington party. Pacey says it's not too late to turn around; Joey mutters nervously that that sounds "incredibly appealing." Pacey is kitted out in a charcoal suit and grey t-shirt-type thing underneath, and looks very nice; Joey is wearing the weather-inappropriate brown strappy dress we saw her trying on earlier, and has a lavender-grey wrap slung over her elbows, so she's evidently working Worthington's color-blind quota. Joey accuses Pacey of "grinning like an idiot," and he says that he's "the only guy at this party who gets to walk in with Audrey Hepburn on his arm." Aw. Still, let's not get carried away -- Katie Holmes is quite fetching, but she's no Audrey Hepburn. Joey smiles.