Episode Report Card Sars: F | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Scarlet N
By Sars | Season 4 | Episode 15 | Aired on 02.13.2001
Cut to another couple PDAing it up on a Shaker settee. Pacey and Joey sit down on a neighboring sofa, look at the couple, look at each other, and chuckle. It's a nice genuine moment -- very couple-y of them. Then Pacey turns to Joey and informs her that "typically," when couples have sex for the first time, "there's some sort of morning-after discussion." Ohhhh here we go. Joey arches a brow. Pacey clarifies: "Like a...post-game wrap-up." Okay, not that couples shouldn't talk about stuff the next day, but it's hardly on an officialdom par with registering to vote, Pacey. Joey nods and says that Pacey wants to know "if [he was] any good." Pacey makes a slight correction: he wants to know if it "was good for [her]." Joey gets in a dig about how of course he does, since he's Pacey Witter, "friend to woman and all." Ouch. She looks at her hands, smiles to herself, then turns back to him: "It was very nice." Pacey chews a potato chip and stares at her: "It was nice." "Yes." "Just 'nice,' huh?" Joey furrows her brow: "What's wrong with 'nice'?" Yeah, really -- in my experience, "nice" is about the best a girl can hope for the first time, and you'd think Pacey would have absorbed that by now, but whatever. Pacey says in a joking-but-not-really tone that it's fine, but there's nothing wrong with "mind-blowing" or "transcendent" either. Joey, stung, snaps that she left her thesaurus at home, and she didn't know she'd "get yelled at for [her] vocabulary." Pacey's not worried about her vocabulary. He eats his chips. Joey stares at him, then snips that maybe "nice" means everything to her, and maybe "nice" is the best she can do the morning after her first time, since she's never experienced it before and has nothing to compare it to. Pacey points out that "there are certain benchmarks in the sexual experience," certain things that "happen or don't happen," and she asks all offendedly if he's asking if she had an orgasm, but before she gets there, he splutters, "Yes!"
Sidebar time. Uh, Pacey? First of all, a woman's orgasm is pretty hard to miss if you've paid attention. If she'd had one, you'd probably know about it. Second of all, again, it's her first time. Nine times out of ten? Not gonna happen. Third of all, it's your lookout. If you thought she didn't have one, you should have asked last night and then gotten on that, not waited until you both got dressed to make her feel guilty about not feeling the earth move. And finally, LEAVE it ALONE. Joey doesn't need an extensive post-mortem; she needs a few days to get used to the idea that she's had sex, so let her sit with it, because you should know by now that, in situations like this, you won't hear what you want to hear from her in the second place.