Episode Report Card Sars: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Dear old golden rule days
By Sars | Season 4 | Episode 17 | Aired on 04.10.2001
Anyway, over at Late-Life-Pregnancy Lodge, Gale "Second Chances" Leery waddles toward the front door, and Dawson galumphs down the stairs, saying he told her he'd get the door, and she shouldn't get up in her "condition," like, shut up, Dawson -- she's pregnant, not dying of cancer. She can answer a freakin' door. Gale gives him the puppy eyes, and he tells her to stop with the "pitying-mom look," and she says she wishes she could do something "to take the sting off the disappointment," and Dawson fixes her with a look and says, "Mom. I'm fine. Really." Dawson opens the door on Gretchen "Thirty-Eight Special" Witter, who immediately starts macking on him; Gale, smirking, averts her eyes. Awkwardness. Whatever. Then Gale says she's glad Gretchen's taking him out, because he needs to get his mind off things, but Dawson interrupts with, "Mom, stop it -- you're killing me here." If only. Gale, cowed, waddles off. Gretchen asks, "So how're you holding up? Honestly." Dawson checks to make sure Gale's out of earshot before admitting that "it sucks," and if NYU doesn't want him, USC definitely won't want him, and "where does that leave [him]?" Gretchen says that NYU has "no bearing on" USC, and reminds him that "a certain A.I. Brooks" didn't go to film school. She adds that Mr. Brooks "preferred life as a teacher." Shut up, Gretchen. Dawson asks if she's saying that he should use Brooks's money to make his own movies, and Gretchen says that film school "doesn't have to be the be-all, end-all." Well, if you want to get work in Hollywood, it sort of does, but whatever -- Dawson smiles at her, and Gretchen's all "what?" and Dawson says that everyone else got in where they wanted to go, and he'd planned to wallow, but Gretchen provided an alternative. Yeah, yeah, that's very nice, but then they start kissing. Loudly. Yuck-o-rama.
Merciful cut to Jen, squirming in Tom Frost's office. Tom Frost comments dryly that Jen "and that couch have always gotten along well in the past -- wanna talk about it?" Heh. I heart Tom Frost. Jen admits that she's "having a problem with Jack" -- they want to go to the same school, or at least go to school in the same city, to prevent "freshman angst." Tom Frost approves, saying that a support system is good, especially in "foreign surroundings." That's the point, Jen says: "They wouldn't be foreign, if we go where he wants to go." "Which is where?" "New York City," Jen says, smiling grimly. That brings them back to Jen's "least favorite topic." "My parents," Jen squirms. Tom Frost asks why she thinks they "keep finding their way into this room." That sounds like a question he already knows the answer to, Jen sighs; Tom Frost thinks she knows the answer too. Jen says he's pushy today. Tom Frost deadpans that it's Wednesday: "I'm kinda pushy on Wednesdays. Fridays, I'm not so pushy." Marry me, Tom Frost. Jen mock-accuses him of trying to make her laugh, but Tom Frost says in a serious tone that he's actually trying to figure out why she doesn't talk about her parents with the "wry sense of humor" with which she addresses "every other topic." Jen's eyes fill, and she absently stalls with, "Why?" "Because maybe then we'll get some real answers in here," Tom Frost says. Jen chews the inside of her mouth. Tom Frost asks when Jen last spoke to her parents, and Jen reminds us of Hope's visit the previous Thanksgiving and the "pathetic attempt to resuscitate [their] relationship" therein. But Jen doesn't remember when she last talked to her father, and adds that it's not like she ever talked to him in the first place; he talks at people, or through them, or around them. Tom Frost prompts her to try to remember. "This is stupid!" "Pretend like it's not. For me." Jen, who's crying a little, doesn't see the point of bringing up a "ridiculous conversation" that meant nothing to her at the time; Tom Frost says that maybe it didn't mean anything at the time, but it obviously means "a great deal" to her now. Jen announces not unkindly that she wants "to leave." Tom Frost, gently: "Do you? Or do you want to stay and find out…why this is so hard for you?" Jen looks at him fearfully, hands over her mouth. Good acting by Michelle Williams there. And I am hopelessly in love with Tom Frost. Don't ask me why. There's no logic to it. I just adore him utterly and want to live with him in a little house and cook him little meals and have little Tom Frost Juniors with him. Please help me.