Episode Report Card Jessica: B- | 1 USERS: C YOU GRADE IT Cigarette Burns
By Jessica | Season 5 | Episode 18 | Aired on 04.09.2002
So, somehow Pander corners Jen in an abandoned classroom. Don't ask. He's nervous, he tells her, but not about the screening. "I find that I am kind of, well, nervous around you." He looks at her pleadingly. Jen blushes. "Oh," she says. "Gosh. I. I'm. I'm just going to go ahead and say this. I don't think there's a possibility of something happening between us, well, ever." Pander looks crestfallen. Jen apologizes, and says she's going to go. She turns to leave, but Pander starts blathering. He gives this big old speech about how he's not all hot, or slick or whatever, but he's going to "blow her mind in a million ways that [she's] never even imagined." Her back still turned, Jen furrows her brow. "You know it too," Pander says. "And you know, when you look at me, that it'll be different. Which is why you're not turning around right now. Because you're nervous about what you might find." Jen doesn't think so. She announces that, in fact, to prove a point, she's going to turn around. She does. And he's gone. Jen looks surprised and -- dare I say it? Intrigued.
So Jen walks down into the lobby, where she runs into Joey. They decide to go outside for some air. Once outside, they walk awkwardly together for a moment, before Joey asks if she can ask Jen "a boy question." Jen's all, "Shoot." Joey wonders if Jen has ever met a really hot guy, and got almost hypnotized by the hotness, but then realized that the hot guy was a moron? And was thus torn between the hotness and the idiocy? Man, who hasn't? Jen snorts that this has happened with every man she's ever dated except Dawson. I don't know if I'd call Henry "hot," but maybe that's just me. "Can I say something?" Jen asks. "My Grams is dating a sixty-five-year-old African-American man whose name is Clifton Smalls." This both amuses and delights Joey. Jen thinks Clifton Smalls is "really great," because he proves that no matter how many boys screw them over now, in the prime of their lives, maybe one day when they're old, they'll meet a Clifton Smalls of their very own. Joey grins, and coos that this is a very good point. "I thought it was," Jen chirps. The girls smile at each other. "But that's a long time," Joey says.
Coffee house. Amy asks Dawson why she ought to stay and see his movie. He admits that he doesn't even know. "[Pander] loves it, but he might be mildly insane," he says. He says that they worked very hard on the movie, but he doesn't think it's quite finished yet. Amy wonders what the movie is about. Really about. To him. Dawson thinks about this. He's had a tough year, he says, what with dropping out of school, and then the Flash buying the farm, and then his whole thing with Jen. He's put all of that into the movie, he says, one way or another.