Episode Report Card Sars: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT First Encounters Of The Close Kind
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 10 | Aired on 12.14.1999
The Witch Island screening. Dawson watches the screen, looking tense but self-satisfied. Then he sneaks a peek at the audience's reaction and sees people laughing -- not with him, mind you. At him. One guy a few rows back has fallen asleep. The film ends and the lights go up, to very weak applause, and as a disoriented Dawson glances around, a woman two seats down from him gets up, mutters, "Been there, seen that," and swings her coat onto her shoulders so that it just misses hitting Schlemielberg in the face. An MC gets up and announces the Q & A to a rapidly dwindling audience, and Dawson sinks down in his seat, hoping to avoid notice. Eventually, though, he goes to the podium. Naturally, he speaks into the mic too loudly, causing a feedback whine, then introduces himself and asks for questions; in the audience, Sassy looks embarrassed on Dawson's behalf. For a moment, silence, before a girl in a motorcycle jacket raises her hand and asks, "Where's the Joey chick -- she here? She is hot!" Her girlfriend smiles lasciviously. Haw haw haw! Dawson doesn't answer. He and Sassy both squirm. ["Oh, I could drink a case of this and still not be full." -- Wing Chun]
We return from the commercial break to find Dawson stalking out of the screening room, Sassy in concerned pursuit. She asks if he's okay. "Fine," he snaps. She manages to stop him, finally, saying sympathetically that she knows "it can get pretty brutal when the lights come up." Dawson says he can handle that: "So what if my movie's not hip enough to arouse the interests of these pseudo-intellectual art-house snobs?" Sassy jokes that at least nobody "threw things"; Dawson, resolved not to have a sense of humor about it, snorts, "Thank god for small favors," and resumes stalking off. Sassy says, "You are upset." "Wouldn't you be?" Dawson demands. Sassy again expresses her condolences over "what happened in there," but points out gently that, by "riding the coattails" of TBWP, Dawson probably should have seen it coming. Dawson sputters in protest, "Before you eviscerate my work any further, why don't you at least tell me your name?" Sassy introduces herself as Nikki, "Nikki Greene," and continues to list the flaws of Dawson's film; of course, she points to the Joey character as "the most interesting part of your story." You lost me there, Nikki. Dawson says wearily, "Well, aren't you perceptive," to which Nikki snaps, "Don't patronize me. I'm trying to give you an honest assessment here." Dawson says something snide about an "unsolicited note session," and Nikki says something equally snide back about Dawson's not wanting to hear her out just because she's a "volunteer paper-pusher," and she sarcastically apologizes for trying to help, whacks him on the chest with the flat of her hand, and walks away.