Episode Report Card Wing Chun: D | 2 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT None Of The Above
By Wing Chun | Season 3 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.12.1999
Andie gives Pacey a box full of items he'd given her. He picks out a t-shirt and a baseball cap, and then finds a plush Dumbo toy and tells her it's the first thing he ever gave to her. She tells him that everything he's ever given her is in the box, and that she doesn't want it anymore. He asks whether she doesn't think this is a little harsh. She says she won't have a long, drawn-out breakup, since she's not the crazy girl she was last year, and that she has a plan, and other such control-freak blather. He says he knows what the plan is: "Harvard, Harvard, uber alles." She says she had wanted him to be a part of her plan, but that if he can't, he gets nothing. He roots through the box some more and finds a gold-framed (very cute) picture of the two of them and asks, "Not even memories?" Firmly, she replies, "Especially not those." Hey, is Pacey's "Frankie Says Relax" t-shirt in there?
Football. Jack and Henry do some kind of training...circuit...whatever. Henry tells Jack he needs a mantra. Jack asks Henry why he's helping Jack. Henry tells him that there are two reasons. First, he wants to win football games, and the only way to do that is by means of Jack's "magic hands." I swear he said that. Then he says, "You're gay, right?" which I thought was going to be the opening to Henry's telling Jack that he was also gay, just like on Party of Five when Sarah's boyfriend thought Bailey was gay and came on to him. ["Either that, or he's modeling himself on Teck." -- Sars] But instead, Henry tells Jack that he's in love with Jen, and what that has to do with Jack's being gay, I have no idea. Jack laughs long and loud, and tells Henry that Jen would never date a freshman.
A drunken Pacey rings a bell on the dock. Joey asks him what's wrong. While stumbling drunkenly along the dock, he holds the box in front of him and tells Joey its provenance. Of course, in his drunkenness (did I mention he's drunk? He is), he wipes out and send the box into the water. Joey makes an "ouch" face, and leans over him solicitously. He says he doesn't want to go home "like this," and asks her to call his dad and tell him where Pacey is. Pacey notices that the picture he'd been looking at before is still teetering on the edge of the dock, but when he clumsily reaches for it, he accidentally pushes it into the water. He looks dismayed. On the soundtrack, someone whines, "As long as I don't think about her / I can still breathe."
At school, Eve is telling Dawson that he's like a St. Bernard: "Loyal and faithful to the last." Dawson says that he'll prove her wrong as soon as he opens his locker, because he believes in happy endings. Eve says that "happy ending" is "a contradiction in terms." Dawson accuses her of "enjoying this." She says she isn't, and that her taste in fairy tales runs more toward the brothers Grimm. He asks how she can be "so relentlessly cynical." She asks how he can be "so profoundly naïve." In an effort to break the stalemate, Dawson opens his locker. Lockercam reveals that the test is not within. Eve coos, "All is not lost, my sweet prince." Dawson says, "You know what, Eve? Just leave me the hell alone." Uh. Okay. She tells him she can help him get the test back by telling him who took it. She asks who he thinks it is. After a moment, he says he doesn't know. She quickly answers, "Yes, you do. Whoever you were just thinking of." Wow, she's a regular Miss Marple. Dawson scoffs at the notion that it could be so easy. She says that whoever Dawson thinks took it, the obvious choice, is probably right. Dawson says that if he's learned anything from the PSAT prep books, it's that the most obvious answer is usually wrong. She tells him that this is not a standardized test, but the real world, "where the first person to stab you in the back is your best friend."
Pacey lolls against a pole, waking when he hears Dawson's white-sock-and-brown-boot-clad footfall, and says, "Well, if it isn't Inspector Get-a-Clue-seau." Ha! Dawson's hair now reminds me of the early years of Steve Sanders. Dawson observes that Pacey is drunk, and asks why he would drink the night before the PSAT. Pacey says, "I don't need to study. I got the test, right?" Dawson does his best to use the big-boy voice, and says, "If you have it, give it back." Pacey laughs and says he wishes he did have it, but that he doesn't. Dawson flares his nostrils and says, "Pacey, we've been friends for sixteen years. I'm not stupid." I don't see what the one has to do with the other, but okay. Pacey sarcastically says, "'Friends'? 'Friends,' huh?" He staggers to his feet to say, "You know, that word, 'friends,' it's an interesting word. It implies that you would actually believe your friend when he's telling you something." Dawson says, "When you tell me the truth." Pacey says, "You want to know what I find so very amusing about this situation? I mean, what I think is really, really rich about all this? It's that you yourself were capable of stealing this test. You thought about it -- you didn't throw it away. You didn't give it back to Eve. You brought the test to us!" Even when he's drunk, he's so right. Dawson and his spindly bird legs protest, "No, I wanted to consult the people I trusted to determine what the best thing was to do." Pfft. Pull the other one, hair pie. Dawson goes on, "I never that thought anyone would be so weak or self-motivated as to actually swipe it." Pacey takes umbrage: "'Weak and self-motivated'? Now which one of those two colourful adjectives would I be?" Lake Superior sniffs, "You are who you are, Pacey." Pacey grins, "Yes, I am, Dawson. And so are you. You, Dawson Leery, are a self-righteous son of a bitch who cares more about his rose-coloured defunct 1950s belief system than the people who fail to live up to it." Dawson spits, "Interesting choice of words, coming from a smug, cold-hearted son of a bitch who just dumped his girlfriend after she begged and pleaded for an ounce of sympathy." Pacey growls, "At least I didn't send her father to prison." Dawson says, "No, you just made her go crazy." Pacey slugs Dawson in the eye; Dawson comes back with a punch that we're to believe drops Pacey to the ground -- only because he is drunk, say I. I'd also like to add -- Dawson, people who live in smug houses shouldn't throw cereal, and as for criticizing Pacey for his treatment of women, let's not even bring up the one you summarily sent packing from your bedroom as if she were covered in weeping sores. Oh, hey -- there she is, come out to look after the fallen Pacey. Pacey says it's all his own fault. Joey tells Dawson, "This has got to stop." Dawson does his best "Who am I? WHAT HAVE I BECOME?" Eh, I always knew you had it in you, Grape-Nuts.
Joey brings Pacey a cold can of pop. Actually, maybe she should tell it. Joey: "Here, I brought you a Pepsi." Can: "Product placement!" Pacey: "No thanks, I'm not thirsty, and I must have a concussion to refuse a cool, refreshing Pepsi-Cola." Actually, he stopped at "thirsty." She tells him it's for his lip, because she doesn't have an ice-pack. Pacey says he can't believe Dawson thought Pacey had stolen the test. Joey says, "So what, Pacey?" That's the spirit. Holding the can gingerly to his lip, so as to allow "Pepsi" to show through his fingers, Pacey says he thought if he'd earned anyone's respect, it was Dawson's: "I mean, if the guy who knows you better than anyone else on earth thinks you're a loser, then maybe --" "Maybe you are one?" Joey finishes. She reminds him that she's thought Pacey was a loser for years, but he's never believed her. Pacey chuckles, and tells her to tell her friend Dawson that Pacey is innocent, since Dawson will believe her. Joey tells him that Dawson is Pacey's friend too, and that Pacey knows as well as she does that Dawson is off sulking somewhere about the gravity of what's just happened. Pacey tells her that it would be good for Dawson to "stew in his own pride for a while." Amen to that. Joey remarks that they're all guilty of that. Pacey says he'd never accuse Dawson of cheating. Joey replies that Dawson would never take the first swing at Pacey. Pacey says Dawson started it. Joey says she's not getting into it. Pacey opens his thirst-quenching Pepsi and asks Joey what she thinks happened to the test. She says she doesn't know, and doesn't want to know.