Episode Report Card Wing Chun: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Beauty Contest
By Wing Chun | Season 1 | Episode 12 | Aired on 05.11.1998
Inside, a very mopey Joey carries her tray over to where Jen is sitting staring at her. Jen notes that it's "slow," and Joey agrees: "As the tourists go, so do the tips," adding, "I'll put it to you this way: Higher education for me will be no further away than Capeside Community Vocational Institute." Jen says, "You're smart; you can get a scholarship." "Yeah, but I can't bank on a full one," Joey replies. Jen says, "Look, Joey, you know, now that the proverbial wedge we so fondly refer to as Dawson Leery is no longer between us, we could actually be friends." Ah, yes -- the proverb about the mistrustful wedge and the good samaritan who shared her water with it. Joey stares at her blankly, and Jen says, "I know, I know, it's a bizarre concept, but we might find out we have more in common than just the boy next door." Joey breaks the olive branch in half and runs an eighteen-wheeler over it...in other words, she responds by looking askance and half-smiling, and Jen shrugs kind of sadly and says, "Or not," sliding off her bar stool and starting to stomp away. Before she has a chance to go very far, Joey reluctantly stops her by saying, "We don't have to, like, wash each other's hair or do each other's nails, right?" Jen smiles, but as we all know, it won't last.
As some toothless post-Benatar squalls on the soundtrack, we fade up on Capeside High. Pacey anxiously pulls things out of his locker and dumps them on the floor. Dawson approaches and Pacey mutters through gritted teeth, "I can't find my pen!" Amused by his friend's obvious distress, Dawson locates the pen and asks, "Are you okay?" Pacey shoulders his bag and says, "Oh yeah. I just spent the entire morning with my father telling me what a scholastically inept, athletically challenged, underachieving loser I am -- I'm fine." Dawson SMIRKS SOME MORE and asks, "He said that?" Pacey says, "First he starts on with the failing-biology thing, and then he goes straight into the skipping-school-to-do-Providence thing." Dawson is practically beaming as he adds, "He forgot the stealing-his-car thing." Instead of sucker-punching Dawson, Pacey exclaims, "Borrowing, stealing -- look, it's not like I killed anybody, all right? And if I have to hear the words, 'Why can't you be more like your brother Doug?' one more time, my head is going to explode."
Dawson offers to let Pacey "crash" at Casa Leery "for a few," and Pacey says he had "something more permanent in mind." Dawson scoffs, "Pacey, forget about it. Your father is never going to let you move out of his house." Pacey, somehow not finding the whole situation as uproariously funny as Dawson does, murmurs, "Actually, he told me that as soon whenever I want to become an emancipated minor, I should just show him where he needs to sign." Um, ow. Dawson's smile fades. Pacey hands him a folded newspaper indicating an apartment available for $250 a month. Dawson says, "That's Mill Street, Capeside's only official tenement." I don't know about Cape Cod, but in the smallish cities where I grew up, even when I was in university you could get a pretty decent one-bedroom for about $250. Glark's last apartment in St. Catharines was a pretty big two-bedroom with free parking on a major street and it was only $425. Because that's what you all read the recaps for -- comparative real estate. Anyway. Pacey says, "Yeah, well, it beats the Witter Family House of Horrors, doesn't it?" Dawson asks how Pacey plans to pay for "this roach-infested bachelor pad?" Pacey agrees that his video-store wages couldn't buy him "a two-man tent," and asks whether Dawson needs an assistant to help him cover the beauty pageant. Dawson says he isn't getting paid at all, and that the only person who'll benefit financially from the whole affair is "Little Miss Windjammer herself." Pacey walks back to pick his books up off the floor and close his locker and jokes, "Maybe I'll just toss my tiara into the ring. You know, a five-thousand-dollar award -- that would get me into one of those executive bachelor pads downtown." Dawson thinks that Pacey's "god-given ability to relieve [him]self standing up has rendered [him] ineligible." Pacey jokes, "Once again, sexual discrimination rears its ugly head." As Dawson walks off, Pacey glances at his newspaper and murmurs, "Now, wouldn't that just piss my dad off?" I thought he had already met that particular goal.