Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Cinderella Story
By Wing Chun | Season 3 | Episode 17 | Aired on 02.29.2000
Jack and Andie don their coats at Gale's still-unnamed restaurant, pleading nausea and begging leave to go home and test the work of no more disappointing chefs. Jen comes out of the kitchen carrying a bunch of dishes for Andie and Jack to try, and of course drops everything on the floor, at which Andie mutters, "Thank you, God." Jen promises Dawson that dish transport is a skill she will learn before the restaurant opens. Gale emerges from the kitchen at the sound of the crash, sees the seafood carnage all over the floor, and yet apparently has been away from TV so long that her every journalistic instinct has left her, and asks, "What happened here?" We hear The Flash before we see him, and he tells Gale that her wait staff is just experiencing the challenge of proper serving. Gale looks shocked to see The Flash (and not in a good way), and says, "Hi?" The Flash bends down to Jen's eye level (since she is still crouched on the floor picking up crockery) and offers to teach her how to carry a stack of dishes, and she thanks him effusively. He laughs affectionately, and Gale thanks him for the offer, but tells him she's "got it covered." The Flash defers to her judgment, and asks, "What can I do?" Gale asks what he means, and he says, "Well, I'm here. Reporting for work? As requested?" Gale says, "Who requested that you come to work?" Both parents glance at each other, and then at Dawson, who tries to look innocent. Oh, geez. I find it totally unbelievable that, given the ultimately amicable nature of their parting, and the fact of The Flash's background in restaurants (I presume, based on his years of planning to open one) that she wouldn't have asked him of her own volition to come help out before her opening. But whatever; I guess once sex is removed from the equation, the writers have to manufacture conflict somehow.
There are some who'd tell you that Buzz asks Pacey for whom he named the "True Love," and that Pacey denies that there's a girl, and that Buzz won't let it go and keeps needling Pacey until Pacey gets sufficiently annoyed to take Buzz home early and threatens not to show up the next day at all. But I disagree. John throws the football at Darrill, hits him in the chest with it, and runs further away. Darrill picks up the football and very awkwardly throws it back toward John, but strikes the back of a kid a lot bigger than John, who's standing nearby with a bunch of his also much bigger friends, holding skates and hockey sticks. When the ball hits the kid, John looks back at Darrill in horror. The kid turns around and menacingly asks John why he hit him. John says he didn't, the other kid argues, "Did so," and pushes John a little, whereupon his friends start chanting, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" Darrill walks over to break it up: "Hey, hey, stop that! Stop it! There's not going to be any fighting. There's enough of that in the world, let me tell you, so you just stop your gang-like chanting." To the kid who got hit, Darrill says, "Look, be reasonable." The kid reiterates that John hit him with the ball; John once again protests his innocence, and finally says that Darrill hit the kid. Darrill gives John a sidelong glance, and the kid asks, "You hit me?" Darrill says, "Yes, I did throw the --" and the kid punches Darrill in the face and drops him like a sack of potatoes. Darrill struggles back to his feet and tearfully says, "Stop that! You stop it! What are you looking for, a spanking? Do you want a spanking?"