Episode Report Card Sars: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Neverland
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 18 | Aired on 04.04.2000
Capeside High interior. Jen "The Mack" Lindley and Henry "Dog" Parker walk down the hall. Henry asks why Jen is "smiling like that." She demurs, then asks when he'd planned to tell her "that tomorrow's [his] birthday." Henry looks chagrined and asks, "How'd you find out?" like he's turning forty or something. ["No, that would be Andie." -- Wing Chun] Jen says she has her sources, and invites him out for dinner and a movie in honor of the big day, "and then comes your present, which will remain a surprise so don't even try to get it out of me." Okay, I don't like Jen much, and I find her pairing with Henry utterly insipid, but Michelle Williams did a good job with the happy-about-doing-something-nice-for-the-boyfriend's-birthday face. Also, her hair looks fabulous. No, really. A bummed-out Henry says he can't, "not tomorrow, at least" -- he has plans already, and when Jen asks with whom, he says sadly, "You know, it's, it's a family thing; no friends." Jen looks disappointed; Henry apologizes, and Jen says she understands.
Two seconds later, a jockstrap rounds the corner and says, "Heeey, Henry -- see you at your party tomorrow, man," and gives Henry a high-five. Jen mutters furiously, "You're having a birthday party and you didn't invite me?" Henry wants her to let him explain, but Jen can't think of any explanation that would dig him out of the "Grand Canyon-sized hole" he's gotten himself into, "and while you frantically search for a shovel, I'm going to class." She does the eighteen-wheel stomp on out of there as Henry slumps against his locker.
Capeside High cafeteria. Joey stands at the top of the caf, looking for a place to sit. When she sees Dawson "Citizen Forehead" Leery -- or, more to the point, Pacey plunking his tray down beside Dawson -- her face falls. At the table, Dawson hands Pacey a newspaper and tells him to look at it. Pacey reads off it flatly, something about the construction of Capewoods Condominiums, and asks what of it; Dawson sputters, "Pacey, they're gonna bulldoze our woods. Our fort! That's where we did all our pre-adolescent male bonding." Pacey chuckles and refers to their "first furtive glances at Playboy," and to the fact that Dawson watched while Pacey took his first sip of stolen beer. Dawson takes a swig of his product-placed Nantucket Nectar and suggests that they handcuff themselves to the fort. I agree, except that instead of the fort, I think they should handcuff themselves to a large concrete cinderblock and then jump into the ocean, and instead of their both doing it, I think just Dawson should do it.