Episode Report Card Sars: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Discovery
By Sars | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 02.09.1998
Over at the station, Jen dubs her screams onto the movie. The sound guy asks Dawson if he's seen his mother yet this morning. Dawson says no, and the sound guy says he'll track her down later. Dawson gives Jen direction on a scream, which she messes up, and then he suggests they take a break. After an agonizingly long product-placement shot of a Diet Pepsi, which follows the can from its arrival in the dispenser tray all the way through a labored fifteen-second upswing of James Van Der Beek's arm, during which he holds the can really awkwardly on its side so that we can clearly read the writing, and into Jen's hand -- oh, wait, suddenly I feel thirsty. What should I have to drink? Hey, I know! How about a Diet Pepsi? Yeah, that's it -- a Diet Pepsi! I think I'll run out and buy large quantities of cool and refreshing Diet Pepsi right this very minute! I won't even put on shoes first -- I'll just run straight into traffic in bare feet so that I can get to the deli across the street as fast as possible and guzzle down liter after liter of delicious Diet Pepsi until my bladder explodes and I die of septic shock! Oh, wait, hold on a second. Memo to the advertisers: I WON'T DO THAT AT ALL.
Anyway. Dawson apologizes for his perfectionism, and Jen says she likes a man who knows what he wants, and Dawson asks, "Sorta like me?" and Jen says, "Sorta," and I'd like to know how the advertisers expect me to keep their crappy soda down while watching "dialogue" like this. Then Jen looks down the hall and says, "Dawson, look, there's your mom," and as The Guitar Of Sexual Profligacy shrieks on the soundtrack, we see Bob grab Gail by the shoulders and start sucking her face off. No, seriously. The camera zooms -- and I do mean "zooms" -- up into Dawson's face as his nostrils triple in width.
Cut to the dock. Dawson and Jen sit on a bench in the fog. Get it? "Fog"? Memo to the writers: we got it, okay? The Guitar Of Speechless Fury thrashes away as Dawson, whose nostrils now serve as a temporary shelter for half a dozen homeless families, stares bleakly into space and Jen fluffs her hair. Jen tries to comfort Dawson, saying that she knows he only has her, "a semi-stranger," to help him deal with this right now, and also they've never really talked about anything serious, but that if he wants to talk, she'll listen. Dawson whips his head around to look at her, but doesn't seem to see her and doesn't say anything. Then he turns around to face front again. Poor Jen -- every time she tries to act nice, she gets shot down.