Episode Report Card Sars: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Breaking the waves
By Sars | Season 4 | Episode 20 | Aired on 05.01.2001
Elsewhere, Joey pulls Pacey along by the hand. He asks where she's taking him, and in response she plunks him down on a bench and starts smooching him. He asks through her lips, "What's that for, Jo?" She just got "caught up in the moment," she guesses. Pacey does some awkward throat-clearing; Joey, getting the hint, sits down beside him and says that now he can tell her what's going on. "A prom," he dodges. She's serious. Pacey claims that he "absolutely would tell" her if he had something bothering him, but, though he hates "to disappoint [her]," there's nothing. She stares him down: "Come on." Pacey laughs that he just told her "that everything's great, so what's the problem?" Joey rolls her eyes and responds that the "everything's great" is the problem -- ever since he came back from the fishing trip, "or whatever it was," he's "been walking around like the Stepford Boyfriend or something, talking about how everything's perfect." Pacey interrupts to say that "it's not me" -- meaning, presumably, the prom, although it's not clear -- but it's her time to have fun and be happy, so he's trying to be who she wants him to be. Joey, confused, sputters that she doesn't want him to be anything but himself, and in Joey's defense (for a change), I think that's the truth. But Pacey thinks she wants the perfect corsage, the perfect limo, the perfect prom, and the perfect boyfriend, and Joey objects again, saying that that's totally untrue -- she never said any such thing, and she didn't say word one about the limo or the corsage either, "because that stuff doesn't matter to [her]," and Pacey knows that. But instead of taking heart, Pacey gets more annoyed, grunting, "Well, then why don't you just tell me how you want me to act?" Oooh, that's a no-win question right there -- don't touch it, Joey. Pacey says he can't win with her -- if he acts happy, she gets angry, and if he acts unhappy, she gets angry. Again, I have to defend Joey here; she's acted bitchily to him, god knows, but not for the reason he's claiming here. Joey suggests angrily that he "stop acting and just talk to me," and I agree, but Pacey says in a hard, weary tone that maybe he doesn't have anything left to say. Joey's face half-melts into a "you have got to be kidding me" expression, and she makes her patented "uch" sound as Pacey gets up and walks away from her.
Sidebar time. I want to say it now so I don't have to keep saying it later. Dear "writers": Okay, so ostensibly Pacey is dumping Joey because she makes him feel like less of a man or whatever -- because she's too good for him, and they both know that. And it's among the laziest, most artistically bankrupt choices I've seen you make, and that's saying something. Pacey has a handful of perfectly valid reasons to break up with Joey, among them: she's not over her obsession with pleasing Dawson; she's moody, unreasonable, and passive-aggressive; she lies to Pacey, and about her relationship with Pacey. But she's never said, or implied, that she thinks she's better than Pacey because of her educational prospects, not that we've seen. Furthermore, we haven't seen these two have a conversation about his arrest, or the reasons behind it, or his academic standing, or her pregnancy scare and the stupid handling of same, or anything else that might have provided even the slightest bit of lead-up to Pacey deciding that he's going to make her hate him so that she'll dump him and feel good about it. Not. One. Thing. It's abrupt, it's stupid, it's a cheap payoff that you haven't come close to earning, and it's unfair to the Pacey character and to Joshua Jackson, who has to play the hack swill in your so-called "script" as though he believes it. I understand that you want to get Joey and Dawson back together; I think it's despicable pandering, but I could tolerate it if you'd ever shown even the faintest grasp of narrative structure. Well, here's a tip: It's called "a story arc." It's called "motivation." It's called "understanding the characters as written thus far." Read a book. Watch a movie. Look it up. Then look up "credibility," because you've got none. No love, Sars.