Episode Report Card Sars: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Guess Who's Coming To Dinner
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.23.1999
Gale comes into Dawson's room and starts adjusting the drape of his sweater. Dawson says, "Mom," and she stops. Dawson sits on the bed to tie his shoe, and Gale says that she didn't want to mention it earlier in front of The Flash, but she ran into Helen Lindley earlier that morning. She asks Dawson what he thinks that means; Dawson feigns ignorance, and Gale prompts him, "You think it's not possible, at this very moment, the two of them could be discussing a certain half-sister?" HOLD on, WAAAAAAIT a minute (tm De La Soul) -- how did Gale know about that? When did Dawson tell her? Oh, I see. Dawson did tell her, but if we don't visit the Desktop, we have no way of knowing that, because we foolishly expect the show itself to tell us what we need to know about the show. But seriously, producers -- stop breaking plot points on the freakin' Desktop, will you? Anyhow. Dawson says he doubts that, because Jen still doesn't know she has a half-sister in the first place. Gale can't believe Dawson didn't tell Jen: "I'm impressed; I had no idea that you had such self-control." Dawson, to his credit, replies that he'd like to call it self-control, "but I think it was more gutlessness than anything." I'd lay the blame squarely at the feet of the writers for imbuing Dawson with such an uncharacteristic instinct to mind his own beeswax, but in any case, Gale shrugs, "Well, then it's just a coincidence," and Dawson asks, "What's just a coincidence?" Gale says pointedly, "Well, that one week you discover a skeleton in the Lindley closet, and then the next the aforementioned family just happens to get together for the first time in over a year." She leaves Dawson alone to think that one over.
The dock; Jen brooding. In shirtsleeves. On Cape Cod. In November. (Get used to that sentence construction, dear reader, because you'll see it several more times before you finish reading this recap.) Grams approaches and says gently that Jen has spent nearly half an hour out there, and she'll "have to come up sooner or later." Jen asks why Grams didn't tell her about Helen, and Grams says that she didn't know: "She just -- arrived. It seems your father was detained unexpectedly in Europe on business." Jen says wryly that she can believe that, and speculates that her father is drinking a vodka martini and drowning his sorrows as they speak, "as if he actually felt any." "Be generous, Jennifer," Grams reproves her, but Jen snaps, "Why? My mother isn't here 'cause she really wants to see me. She's here 'cause she's got nowhere else to go." Grams points out that Jen doesn't know that for a fact, and Jen admits that no, she doesn't, "and how would I? The only contact that I've had with her in the past year was a phone call." And not a terribly auspicious one at that, if memory serves.
Grams says that she thinks maybe Jen is actually pleased to see her mother; when Jen makes a skeptical noise, Grams says, "Well, maybe 'pleased' isn't exactly the right word, maybe it's more like -- 'prepared.' You are prepared to deal with the past, you're prepared to start facing the problems between you." Jen says softly that she can't even look at her mother, "let alone talk to her," and Grams says, "Well, maybe you can't find the right words because there's too much to say." Jen turns to look at Grams, and Grams goes on, "Jennifer, for the past fourteen months, I've been watching you. I've watched you change. You're more serious now, you're more at peace with yourself, it's -- it's like you've, you've crossed some kind of a threshold." Jen categorizes it as more of a crossroads, "like I could just go either way," and Grams tells her she knows Jen will choose the right way. She squeezes Jen's shoulders, and Jen rests her head against Grams's -- awwww -- and says with her eyes closed, "But in the meantime?" Grams says evenly, "In the meantime, one foot in front of the other, starting in that direction," and she indicates the house. She gets up and begins to pull Jen towards the house, saying that people have started to arrive and that Jen can't stay down there all day, and besides, she bets Helen feels just as nervous as Jen does. Jen says, "You think?" and Grams says that, in some ways, "the two of you are more alike than you know."