Episode Report Card Sars: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Secrets And Lies
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 6 | Aired on 11.09.1999
Credits. A cat undergoing a wash and blow-dry.
I don't think including plastic credit cards with the Sesame Street kiddie kitchen sends a very good message to the country's pre-schoolers.
Fade up outside the Insurance-Fraud Shack (formerly "Bessie's Bastard Barn"). Workmen plane boards in the background as Bessie "Sitter? I Hardly Even Know 'Er!" Potter waves a pot of coffee around and says, "It's all so exciting!" She asks Joey "Pepper" Potter and Pacey "Who's My Girl" Witter, "Now tell me, whose brilliant idea was this again?" Joey and Pacey say at the same time, "Mine." Joey glares at Pacey, who then admits that Joey came up with the idea to turn the Barn / Shack / Double-Wide into a bed-and-breakfast, but Pacey told her "how she could do it for next to nothing." Bessie tells Pacey to thank his father for "getting us the help," and Pacey cracks that he finally knows "what the police auxiliary in this town is for." Huh? Bessie bustles off, and Pacey pours a brooding Joey some coffee and asks, "Okay, Potter, what's up?" Joey is worried because the bulk of their insurance money "is gonna be swallowed up in" the B&B project, and she hopes it all works out. She adds that she "can't go back to the marina gig," and excuse me, but since when did a part-time job pumping gas pay the bills for a family of three? Oh, right. It doesn't, and it never has. Anyway, Pacey asks what ever happened with "that creep," and Joey calls it a "long story" and says that Rob went on a date with "somebody that I know," which concerned Joey, so she tried to warn that somebody, so Rob fired her the next day. "Eh, what a charmer. So who's the girl?" Pacey asks between swigs of coffee, and Joey looks away and says, "No one you know." Pacey busts on Joey's inability to lie convincingly; Joey smiles, embarrassed, and Pacey asks again, and Joey looks stricken. Pacey guesses that it's Andie. His face falls, and he says, "Oh." Joey says she didn't intend to tell him. Pacey wonders why he feels like he's "been hit with a sledgehammer." After over a year of recapping this show, I can empathize. Joey comforts him by saying that "it won't last," that Andie's "way too smart" to fall for Rob's line, but Pacey stops her and tries to shrug it off with, "Whatever makes her happy, right?" He tosses the rest of his coffee on the grass and walks away. Josh Jackson did a nice job with the whole "Ouch! Um, I mean, I don't care" acting in that scene, I thought.
Dawson arrives home from school to find Gale "The Exiled Hussy" Leery in the kitchen of Estrangement Estates. They hug. Gale says she's really missed Dawson. Sars wonders what the city of Philadelphia puts in the water supply. Gale has a nifty, nicely-conditioned new 'do, but unfortunately the mortician who did her make-up went a little overboard with the "Walnut 'n' Wild" foundation. Dawson makes what-a-surprise noises, and from the doorway Mitch "The Flash" Leery says that Gale has come home for "this year's HQ gala." I would say something about The Flash deserving the Homecoming-Queen crown more than Jen does, but -- oh, will you look at that? I just did. The Flash and his exiled bride share some passive-aggressive banter about the year in which Gale earned her crown by way of greeting each other. Could they just get divorced already? Dawson tells Gale that Jen is the HQ for 1999. Gale joins the entire Capeside senior class, not to mention most of the viewing public, in wondering "how on earth" that happened. Dawson pours himself a drink and says, "I'm interpreting it as a sign of the [sic] Armageddon." Gale looks on the bright side, saying that "at the very least, that should make for a fun time for us." Dawson asks his mother, "Have you developed a lazy eye, or were you actively looking in my direction when you said 'us'?" Wow -- Dawson gets two not-that-bad lines. In a row! Gale needs an escort. Dawson looks at The Flash. The Flash looks down. Gale looks at The Flash. The Flash looks up at Gale, then leaves the kitchen scratching his head. Gale sighs.
The cafeteria. Andie "Dream On" McPhee plops herself down at a table containing Pacey and Joey. Pacey immediately remembers he has French homework to do and gets up. Andie points out that he doesn't take French. "All the more reason" to study, Pacey mumbles, and he takes off. Andie gets all accusatory on Joey: "You told him." Joey shrugs, "[It] slipped out over breakfast." "'Breakfast'?" Andie repeats. Joey says that Pacey has been helping her and Bessie with the addition, and she lays a guilt trip on Andie about "every cent" blah blah blah "financially barely scrape by" blah blah blah tight get-the-hint-country-club-girl smile fishcakes. Andie says that it isn't her fault Joey got fired, and "even if it was [sic], which it wasn't, you can't stay mad at me forever, okay?" Joey says not forever, but for a while. Andie says she doesn't know the status of her relationship with Rob, but she can't help it -- she likes him. Joey says skeptically that Andie will get "a big fat 'I told you so'" from Joey before long.