Episode Report Card Wing Chun: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Crime And Punishment
By Wing Chun | Season 3 | Episode 15 | Aired on 02.08.2000
At McPhee Manor, Andie is making dinner and asking Jack "Squat" McPhee whether he's heard any word of Joey since The Stormening. He says that she's "pretty broken up," and I'm wondering how he'd know that since he and Joey haven't been friends in nearly a year. Andie says, "Who wouldn't be?" and Jack says that when they catch the perpetrator, Andie will have "the last laugh." She doesn't know what he means, at first, and when he reminds her about the disciplinary committee, she tells him she's thinking about resigning her position. He reminds her that her serving on the committee will look very attractive on her college applications, and she tells him that she knows, but that it's taking up too much of her time, and her schoolwork is "starting to slip," and finally that the more she thinks about it, the less comfortable she feels "sitting in judgment of others." It's about damn time, woman. Jack doesn't say anything for a minute, and she exasperatedly asks, "What?" He tells her that he's shocked, since it's not like her to "bail on a commitment." She enigmatically says that "a lot of things aren't like" her, but that she's done them anyway. She asks him to set the table, and then turns her back on him in order to look guilty without his seeing.
At the PB&B, a male hand rings the bell in the foyer, and the camera pans up to reveal that the hand belongs to Dawson. Before anyone comes out to invite him in, he barges right into the kitchen, where Joey is clearing away dinner dishes and looking rather cute in track pants and a football shirt. Dawson makes a "room at the inn" joke which falls completely flat and Joey warns him not to lecture her. He promises he won't lecture her (which promise I would, were I Joey, get in writing and notarize before I allowed Dawson to continue), and kindly tells her that he's sorry that "what happened today happened." She tells him that "the whole thing was tragically lame to begin with -- I mean, as if painting on a wall is going to make any change or the slightest bit of difference in school." Dawson says, "Maybe. Maybe not." She looks at him suspiciously and tells him that she doesn't like the sound of those "maybe"s. Confidently, he announces his solution: "Repaint the mural." She sneers, "What?" and he tells her to "do it tonight. Surprise that bastard when he shows up tomorrow morning." Joey rather unequivocally tells Dawson that she'd "rather shove red-hot needles under [her] toenails," but Dawson is undeterred and tries shaming her into going along with his plan: "So you're going to let some stupid high school prank keep you from finishing something that you obviously care about?" Joey points out that she did finish it, and that it's not her fault that nobody else got a chance to see it. Dawson squeaks that he can't believe that she's being like this: "Defeated. Dejected. Demoralized." Joey tells him that she can't always be his "plucky little Joey Potter" (read: This little camper has no intention of bucking up), and that she's entitled to be depressed from time to time.
Dawson delivers the astounding insight that "it's not about demeanour; it's about not being a victim," which is evidently really easy for him to say. Joey leans over the counter and hisses, "It took me a month to do that, Dawson. [A month? Ooookay.] I had to conceive it, and I had to execute it, and you can't just expect me to start over." Not surprisingly, this description of the painstaking artistic process through which Joey went to create the mural has no effect on Dawson, with whose quickie movies we are all, unfortunately, too familiar, and he glibly answers, "Why not?" Joey says, "For the same reason that you haven't shot a roll of film since January." Check, and mate. Dawson claims that his case is completely different, in that he chose to quit filmmaking. Joey needles, "It had nothing to do with the fact that the film was poorly received at the festival?" Dawson claims that it didn't, and Joey drawls, "Well then, how convenient for you." Immediately she's knocked back against the far wall by the flaring of Dawson's nostrils as he asks what she means. Joey says that Dawson has the luxury of making choices without much consideration, and that he takes that luxury for granted, whereas she can't afford the time to -- wait for it -- find herself and chase her pipe dreams. Dawson's nostrils flare some more, and he tells her he thinks "this" is about her being relieved that someone painted over her mural, because it saved her from going through "the hard part" of showing her work to the world and exposing it to public judgment. She wanly shakes her head, but doesn't answer, and he tells her that the reason he came over was to give her the keys to the school (which he got, he says, from Principatundé and not, say, HIS DAD). He leaves them on the kitchen counter, and portentously says, "Do what you want," before turning on his pompous heel and taking off. Joey stares at the keys for a moment, then turns back to the sink, making her stroke-victim face.