Episode Report Card Sars: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Neverland
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 18 | Aired on 04.04.2000
Angry taps away on a calculator in his study. Jack materializes in the doorway, wearing a bathrobe. A bathrobe? Did he come downstairs by way of the The Ropers soundstage? Anyway, Angry says coldly, "It's late. What is it?" Jack slumps into a chair and says he wanted to ask Angry why: "Why this weekend, why this trip, why now, when for the past year you've treated me like a leper." Angry removes his drugstore bifocals wearily, gets up, and goes to sit in the chair opposite Jack: "It was just -- time." Apparently, Angry got to talking with one of his co-workers, whose son just failed out of college for the fourth time and has a drug problem and stole a car and a bunch of other bad stuff, and "it just suddenly occurred to me: Jack is a good kid." Jack looks touched as Angry continues, "I have a good kid, and I don't even know him. [Long pause.] But I want to know him. So I cancelled my trip." The lower half of Jack's face crumples into crying position; Angry says briskly, "Look, I don't see what the big deal is. Somebody had to make the first move." Jack gets it in hand and says mildly, "I just didn't think it would be you." Now it's Angry's turn to try not to bawl, and he picks up a pawn from the chess set they're sitting beside and moves it forward; Mark McGwire steals up behind the couch and prepares to bludgeon me with The Baseball Bat Of Belabored Visual Metaphor. Jack moves a chess piece also. Father and son gaze at one another with tears in their eyes. Jack smiles. A familial-resolution-type flute tootles.
Campsite. Pacey finishes packing up and says he'll see Dawson later, and he prepares to herd the young'uns home. Buzz tells Dawson to watch out for "Max and his bloody axe," although I suspect even Paul Bunyan's axe would have a job of work splitting open Dawson's giant head. Dawson sighs a Sigh Of Reminiscence. Whatever, L'il Proust.
At a general store, Buzz announces his intention to get all sugared up on Pixy Stix and cola. Pacey suggests a healthier snack like pretzel sticks. Buzz tries to bargain, but Pacey stops listening, because Joey has just emerged from a nearby aisle. Pacey, hypnotized: "Hey." Joey, unprepared but remaining calm: "Hey." Katie Holmes looks very pretty in this scene; I like the redder lipstick. Buzz, gleeful: "Hey!" Pacey tells Buzz that, if he'll give Pacey and Joey ten minutes alone, Pacey will give Buzz ten sodas and a box of sugar, "what d'you say?" "Done!" Buzz says. Pacey gives him a crumpled bill and Buzz heads for the candy counter. Pacey says "hey" again. Joey says "hey again," and they both start to apologize for "the other night," and Joey tells Pacey to go first; Pacey stammers that he wanted to say that he's sorry, that Joey's right about the ripple effect and pissing Dawson off and everything, that what he did "was monumentally stupid." Joey's face goes dull with disappointment, but she covers it and nods along while Pacey adds that "it was an impulse, plain and simple, one that has left my body. Permanently. Promise," but as he finishes the sentence, his eyes look very sad, and it's clear that he's trying to convince himself as much as Joey. Joey reassures him with a too-broad smile, admitting that "it's okay, I mean -- I totally overreacted, I mean, something isn't a big deal unless you let it be, and, and it's, it's not a big deal. Why get so upset?" We know she's full of it, but still -- ouch -- and Pacey's face treats us to a reenactment of Ralph Wiggum's heart breaking in slo-mo after Lisa dissed him at the Krusty show on The Simpsons. Joey keeps going in the same convincing-herself vein that Pacey did, blathering about how "it obviously meant nothing . . . right?" "Right," says Pacey, in a trance of defeat, "because what I did was a mistake." "Okay," Joey says too brightly, and Pacey tries to shake it off: "Right, well, uh, I guess that puts us back to just being friends." He holds out his hand with a weak smile. Joey takes the hand with a too-wide smile of her own and says, "Definitely," and they shake on it. Both their faces fall immediately afterwards, though, and Pacey makes to get the hell out of Dodge City, saying that once Buzz gets all that sugar in him blah blah blah midgetcakes, and Joey smiles and says she guesses she'll see him later, and Pacey says softly that he'll see her later, and he walks off, and Joey looks down and sighs a sort of Ally McBeal-esque "well, that went well -- not" sigh, and then she watches Pacey leave with Buzz.