Episode Report Card Sars: D | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT A Weekend In The Country
By Sars | Season 3 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.18.2000
The Flash, Jack, Pacey, and Dawson all crowd around the fireplace, arguing over how to start the fire, but they can't get it started, and Jen mutters to Gail, "We are so gonna freeze." Grams shuts them all up by telling them they'll never get it lit with the hickory on the bottom, and she pushes them aside as she tells them why: "Hickory is a glorious wood, but it's a hard wood -- it'll never burn on its own." She restacks the logs and says, "Soft pine goes on the bottom, oak in the middle, hickory on top," then lights a match, and the fire blazes up right away. I love Grams, but I bet she used newspapers and kindling too. The Flash makes impressed noises, and Jen pipes up that Grams churns her own butter too. Grams reminisces about building a fire after dinner every night in the winter, and how every night Gramps would read to her, and how, no matter which book they read together, Gramps would fall asleep, "chin on chest, book on lap, content." While Grams talks, the rest of the gang settles down in chairs and couches or on the floor for a volume of remembrance from the Anvil Modern Library. "You know you love someone when you can spend the entire night just sitting by the fire, watching them sleep," Grams remarks wistfully. "Sounds like you loved him very much," Gail says, which prompts Grams to utter the following unfortunate metaphor: "Love is the hardest of woods. It takes a long, long time to heat up, but -- when it does --" Joey sits sullenly, arms wrapped around her knees. Jen pipes up that it smells good in the room, and Grams says it smells like forty-six years of her life, and Dawson comments that smell is supposedly the most evocative sense, which leads to a heavy-handed Proust-and-his-madeleine-esque montage of the gang listing their earliest and most favored smells.
Gail remembers vanilla, because The Flash used to soak his hands in it after his shifts at The Franklin Family Fish House to get rid of the smell of cod; Dawson, the smell of film-processing fluid; Jen, mothballs, because she used to hide in a costume closet when she went to Chapin, and it made her feel safe; Jack, something called "kickapoo juice" that he used to drink at summer camp; Pacey, the smell of snow; Andie, new-car smell, from the brand-new rentals her father used to get for family car trips; and of course Joey remembers bacon. Why? Well, you just won't believe this, sports fans -- bacon reminds her of her late mother. No, really. Bessie remembers the smell too, and Joey talks about how their mother made breakfast every Sunday morning when she didn't have to work, and she and her mom would talk about school and boys, and they'd make pancake shapes with little molds, and she says that her mother loved to cook and take care of people and hated "working at that bar every night," and apparently, she always told Joey not to worry, "because eventually, um, she was going to make enough money, and, uh, she was going to open up her very own, um, her very own bed-and-breakfast." Everyone else in the room looks sad, probably because there's now an anvil hogging the couch, as Joey says that her mother obviously didn't get a chance to see that dream happen. Oh, no? She didn't? Will she get to see you graduate? Oh, she won't? Will she get to see you walk down the aisle? No, no, I guess she won't. Because she died. Which we already knew. Because you've mentioned it at least SEVEN THOUSAND TIMES this season, and I can sympathize, up to a point, but really, you have to stop it with that. We get it. "So I thought I would give it a shot," Joey finishes her train of thought. She finally gets around to thanking everyone for coming out to help her and Bessie: "You're the best fake guests a girl could ask for." Then she gets to her feet and stuns everyone by saying that they can all go home now. The fake guests look dismayed, and Joey heads out of the room, only to see Tricky Fricke standing in the doorway and looking as though he's just eaten an insect. Joey apologizes for the "horrendous experience" Fricke must have had that weekend, and says she realizes "it's no five-star B&B, but -- I'm pretty sure my mother would have loved it." She goes upstairs. The gang looks uncomfortable, probably because they've gotten as sick of hearing about Mrs. Potter as I have but don't know how to tell Joey that.