Episode Report Card Sars: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Baby
By Sars | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 02.23.1998
Joey sits in a lawn chair, making it all about her. Dawson comes out of the house and stands next to her. His hair once again adopting the Hanna-Barbera-lion style, he jokes, "I can’t wait to see my mom’s face when I tell her what happened in the living room." Like, ha ha. Not. Dawson again tells Joey that Bessie will be okay: "As frightening as Mrs. Ryan is in daily life, I think she’s incredibly capable when it comes to medical emergencies. Joey says impatiently, "I know, Dawson. FYI, I’m not out here because I’m too worried about Bessie to stay inside. I mean, I’m worried, but," and Dawson asks what’s up, and Joey says, "It’s nothing, it’s -- it’s okay. It’s stupid." Dawson tells her that he may not always agree with her, "but your reasons are never stupid." Yeah, right. Let’s hear her reasons for going out with you, then. No? Didn’t think so.
Anyhow, Joey asks Dawson who Bessie reminds him of. Dawson says gently, "That’s easy. Your mother." Joey, not looking at Dawson, remarks, "There are times when the resemblance is merely a passing one, and then others when Bessie says or does something, and -- it’s like my mom never died, you know?" Dawson looks at Joey sympathetically as she keeps talking: "When she got sick, when she had chemo every month -- it left her in this terrible pain" -- Joey begins to cry a little bit -- "and I would come home and I would sit with her and she let out these cries that I had never heard before, and I prayed to every available higher source that I would never hear them again from anyone or anything, and somehow somebody listened, ‘cause luckily I never did, you know?" Huh? "Until today," Dawson finishes, and Joey says, "Yeah." Dawson asks her, "Joey, when your mother was in all that pain, why did you sit by her?" Joey tells Dawson fretfully that her mother needed her, that she could tell that even though her mother never said so, and Dawson asks, "So what makes you think that Bessie needs you any less?" I hate to admit it, but the guy’s got a point.
Back at the courtroom, TaMAHra leaves the room, fiddling with the front of her suit jacket. Deputy Doug follows her out and smarmily apologizes for Pacey; he doesn’t want TaMAHra to tar the entire Witter family with the same brush, so he uses words like "bane" to describe his brother. What a prince. TaMAHra says, "Well then, you must be very proud." Doug doesn’t follow. TaMAHra adds, "Of the way he’s grown up," calling Pacey "a sweet, sensitive, intelligent young man." Doug looks at his feet as TaMAHra starts to walk away, then stops and says, "And Douglas? It’s ‘Miss Jacobs.’" I sort of hoped she would add "if you’re nasty," Janet Jackson-style, but she doesn’t. Oh well. Outside, TaMAHra climbs into her red convertible and starts the engine as a Lilithite burbles, "You better listen." As she reverses out of her parking space and pulls out, Pacey watches her go, hands in his pockets.