Episode Report Card Jessica: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Appetite For Destruction
By Jessica | Season 5 | Episode 10 | Aired on 12.18.2001
Kitchen. Pacey. Jen. She muses that she hasn't had a piece of his mind yet. "Hit me with your best shot," she offers. Pacey can't help her, he says. "You'll get no judgment out of me." Jen fake-pouts that his judgments "are the best kind." Pacey pauses in his cleaning and grins. "How about this?" he asks. "I would be satisfied if everyone would just do what makes them happy and leave it at that," he says. Jen smirks that "the planets would collide and the seas would boil" if that were to occur. "Don't I know it," Pacey agrees. "But you seem happy. At least for the first five minutes. Maybe not so much after that." Jen thanks him, and tells him that she'll clean up since he cooked. "I'll take it," Pacey says, and kisses her on the forehead, and goes.
The streets of Boston. "Joey, are you seriously going to study all night? Don't you feel like going out, doing a couple of shots, and, like, punching someone in the face?" Audrey asks. "You mean, someone other than you?" Joey cracks. "Oh, that's right! Keep it up with the funny," Audrey squeals. Pacey catches up with them as Audrey's saying that an evening "with Professor Potter" sounds pretty horrid, and that she's going to tag along with Jack. Audrey takes Jack's arm, and they take their leave. "Okay," Audrey tells him as they go, "we are so going to a gay bar. Your efforts to set me up so call for revenge!" Pacey and Joey grin.
Joey and Pacey walk and talk. Joey says that she envies Pacey's ability to "see the big picture." Pacey shrugs. "I am the visionary of our group," he says. Blah blah blah he started all over himself with the whole take-off-on-the-boat, come-back-and-be-a-chef thing. Pacey thinks Joey's giving him too much credit. He only knew that he wanted to get out of town "Only later, it became a profound journey," he cracks. They walk in silence for a moment. "I just feel like I'm acting how Joey Potter is supposed to act," Joey offers. Everything she wants has shifted, she says. She feels like she's floundering. Yeah, well, welcome to college. Pacey looks at her and tells her that, in fact, she's "becoming the woman he always knew she was going to become." Joey smiles at her feet. "So, where is the flaw in that?" Pacey asks. Joey kicks at the pavement and confesses that she expected this from Dawson. "How could I possibly think everything else would change, but we somehow would remain the same?" she wonders. "I mean, promises we made before we even knew how we'd turn out? It seems a little crazy." They walk in silence for a moment; then Pacey tells her that "the things we really want always seem like a good idea at the time." Isn't that the truth? Exhibit A: My red leather pants. "Pace? I don't think I exactly wanted it," Joey confesses, and the world breathes a sigh of relief. She tells him that she's actually relieved that Dawson's out of her hands. "You just didn't expect to lose your place?" Pacey offers. "It sounds horrible," she says. Pacey shrugs that it just sounds like the truth. "And I am a firm believer that things happen for a reason. And that things have a wonderful habit of working themselves out, no matter how you plan them to the contrary." Joey shoots him a half-smile that slowly becomes a full-blown grin. Pacey hugs her. Over his shoulder, Joey closes her eyes and beams.
Grams's. Jen takes Dawson up to his attic room. "So this is where you take your conquests to die?" he asks. We can only hope. Some banter about being afraid of the dark, and how it's not proper to "have relations" with him while Grams is home, blah blah, please wrap this up, you two. At one point, Dawson picks her up and tosses her onto his bed. Jen sits on him. "So, want to talk about what happened tonight?" she asks him. "Nah," Dawson sighs. "Okay. Guess you can't change reality," Jen says. Dawson calls the evening "cathartic," and Jen drapes herself over his legs and sighs that she's had it with catharsis. "Can we just be boring? I want to be very, very, very boring," she says sleepily. ["Dawson's your boyfriend, hon. Ask and ye shall receive." -- Sars] Dawson hates to disappoint her, but he thinks they have years of drama ahead of them. For my mental health, I hope not. Jen sighs that she thinks his room "has possibilities." What kind, Dawson wonders. "The kind we can talk about tomorrow," Jen murmurs. They smile contentedly and lie on each other.