Episode Report Card Sars: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Baby
By Sars | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 02.23.1998
Oy. Bessie, thoroughly exhausted, drenched, and looking like she might puke, tries to push at Grams’s urging. Jen, holding the sheet up, says she can see the head. Finally. Jen and Grams cheerlead for "one more little push," which Bessie says she can’t do -- "I’m too tired" -- and Joey comes in and kneels down beside her, accompanied by The Piano Music Of Sisterly Affection, and Bessie rolls her head sideways to look at Joey, and Joey puts her hand over Bessie’s, and Bessie grabs Joey’s hand with hers, and as Dawson rolls tape again, Bessie gives one more giant push, and we hear the sound of crying. Jen gasps, "He’s out!" and Bessie asks, "He’s okay?" and Joey smiles. Grams says, "He’s better than okay, he’s beautiful, and he’s all yours," and she hands the baby to Bessie wrapped in a Fieldcrest towel. The captions read "[baby fussing]." Heh. Everyone shares a miracle-of-childbirth moment, except Bodie, who probably thought he’d gotten written off the show already or something. Aw.
Heathcliff stalks across the moors, raging -- no, no, no, sorry, just Pacey wandering through the dune grasses towards TaMAHra’s house with his Bad Idea Jeans on. TaMAHra, her hair up in a ponytail, lifts a glass of red wine, then spots Pacey and smiles. Pacey asks if they can talk, or if he needs "a lawyer present." TaMAHra just says, "Hi, Pacey." After a pause, she says that if he’s come to apologize again, he needn’t bother -- she deeply appreciates what he did. He climbs the porch steps to sit beside her, saying, "Well, actually, I was kinda hoping that I could assume that all that talk about breaking up was said in the heat of the moment?" He goes on to say that it won’t happen again, that he won’t tell a soul, as TaMAHra nods ruefully as he speaks, then says that it won’t happen again because she won’t let it. Pacey pats her leg and says, "Neither will I," and she remarks that perhaps he doesn’t understand: "There will be no further gossip because there will be no further subject. I’m leaving Capeside." Pacey laughs, at a loss, as she says briskly, "I’ve already turned in my resignation to Principal Geiger, and I should be at my sister’s house in Rochester by tomorrow evening." Pacey: "Wow. You don’t waste any time, do you?" TaMAHra, gently: "Pacey, you knew this day was inevitable." Pacey, sarcastically but trying not to cry: "Oh, I think I’d have to disagree with you there, Miss Jacobs -- never in a million years would I have predicted Rochester to be a plot point in our little saga." TaMAHra gets all condescending: "I meant us [sic] ending was inevitable. Hey, maybe you’d graduate, maybe I’d meet someone my own age. Maybe you’d meet someone your own age." Pacey says nothing. TaMAHra adds, "But you knew there was a ticking clock inherent to us and to everything about us." Damn, they’ll let anyone teach English in Massachusetts, won’t they? Anyhow. TaMAHra explains that, although she cares for Pacey more than she expected or wanted to, she’s thirty-six, and she wants to have children, and "I want to be their mother, not their girlfriend." She confesses that she still doesn’t know what to say in situations like these, and asks him, "Please, let’s just say goodbye now, before I get maudlin and embarrassing and entirely too truthful." Pacey asks for "a farewell kiss." TaMAHra thinks that that got them into this mess to begin with, and as Pacey massages her hand, he tells her he thinks he can handle it, and TaMAHra says tearfully, "I’m not sure I can," and withdraws her hand and tries to smile bravely. They embrace, both crying, and TaMAHra kisses him on the forehead, and he says, "Okay, well, I hope you enjoy Rochester," and she says, "I hope you enjoy high school," and waves as he walks away. Or at least I think it happened like that -- I could barely hear the dialogue over the seventeen coffee grinders I had going at once.
Evening. A napping seagull. The lit-up Ryan house. Cut to Grams, doing a crossword at the dining-room table. A freshly-showered Jen comes down to wish Grams good night and says, "Long day, huh?" Grams doesn’t say anything, which I guess makes Jen feel unwanted, so she starts to leave, but Grams stops her: "Just because we don’t say certain things to each other, doesn’t mean we don’t feel them." They smile at each other. Jen starts to leave again, but Grams stops her again and asks her, "After what you experienced today, can you honestly tell me you still hold no belief in God?" Jen says she doesn’t know about God, but she "may have come around a little on man." She goes upstairs as Grams half-smiles.