Episode Report Card Wing Chun: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Escape From Witch Island
By Wing Chun | Season 3 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.16.1999
Dawson's Creek is brought to us by the Sega Dreamcast -- one of the many things I would rather be doing while this episode airs.
In a muted faux-video shot, Principal Green says, "In the year 1692, thirteen young women -- well, teenage girls, really -- were banished to a small island off the New England coast because they were suspected of practising witchcraft. One night, a year later, a fire raged out of control, killing them all." Cut to The Flash, who says, "Hands down, the best high school make-out place ever." Cut to Bride of Flash, who says, "I think that's where your father and I made love for the first time." The camera pans down to her feet while Dawson's voice says, "God, Mom!" Heh.
As the Fearsome Foursome stroll down the street wearing what must be someone's idea of appropriate late-fall hiking gear, Jen "Love 'Em and...SQUEEEE! OINK! OINK!" Lindley is saying, "I gotta say, Blair Witch didn't do it for me. I wasn't remotely scared, that girl was irritating beyond measure, and I had to run to the snack bar in dire need of Dramamine." Jen, if I thought you were a moron before, you've now proved it beyond a doubt. Also, Heather Donahue called. She said: "First of all, one and a half words: Hallowe'en: H20. Second, 'irritating beyond measure'? Pigs who live in annoying pens shouldn't throw slop." Sheepishly, Joey -- who is wearing a floppy knit toque and hence is, I suppose, meant to be our Heather -- says, "I was scared." Pacey "Check Me: I Don't Think With my Crotch Anymore" Witter says that's hardly surprising, because Joey is "quite the skittish kitten." She playfully hip-checks him. Aw. Someone hook these two up, pronto.
Dawson: "Blah blah blah groundbreaking blah blah Hollywood laid to waste blah blah camcordercakes." Pacey says that his father makes scarier home movies, and knowing what we do about the Witter clan, I can believe it. As they walk into school, Jen says that she thinks there is no such thing as a witch: "I say 'witch' was just a buzzword [sic] for a girl who happens to follow her completely healthy, totally natural urges, and explore her sexuality -- but, see, you can't do that in swinging 1690 without getting the good townsfolk all up-in-arms. So what do these Puritanical, impotent [only she pronounces it im-PO-tent instead of IM-pa-tint -- and of all the people on this show, and especially given the subject on which she's declaiming, I'd think Jen should know how to pronounce "impotent"] creeps do instead of reaching for the Viagra? They brand these girls as witches. They send them off to some god-forsaken island to die a horrible, solitary death." "Viagra"? Yeah, Jen should really not be excused from having to write her History paper, since clearly what she knows about history could fill a thimble with room to spare. And also, Jen? They were "puritanical" because THEY WERE PURITANS; that was kind of their prerogative. I will admit that, despite all the shit Jen's talking, her hair looks better than it ever has on this show; it looks shiny and healthy and it's all soft and sort of curly around her ears and the nape of her neck. Anyway, throughout this speech, Joey watches Dawson for any reaction, and when there is none, pipes up: "Well, lucky for you, Jen, we live in a world where you can follow your natural urges without fear of persecution." Jen good-naturedly says, "You're right. I would have been so burned at the stake by now." Jen: If only. Dawson, seemingly leery of getting into this whole subject area, suggests that they set up for some interviews and asks Joey to help him. She says, "Sure," in this really weird, breathy tone, like she's grateful he even asked her. And that is just sad. Dawson asks Pacey and Jen to "line up some interviewees," and leaves with Joey as Pacey calls after them to "have fun." To Jen, who by now has stuck a lollipop in her mouth, he says, "Now, doesn't that just warm your heart -- Kevin and Winnie taking those first tentative steps back to the Wonder Years." Oh, all right: Heh (tm Sars). Jen says, "Actually, it just makes me really glad that you and I had the forethought never to hook up." Pacey says, "Amen, Sister Christian." Jen asks Pacey why he thinks they never did hook up, and Pacey says that "the smart-ass sidekick...never gets the girl." He goes on to say that the real reason is that he and Jen "don't need anything from each other." When she expresses confusion, he explains: "You see, you...as the girl whose wanton ways had her banished to the boonies, you needed the affection of the unblemished small-town pureheart to validate you in your oh-so-vulnerable time. Right? Me [sic] -- the perennial black sheep of the Witter brood -- I guess I just needed the love and affection of a woman whose drive and devotion would so shame me to the core that it would force me to get in touch with -- I don't know, shall we call it my inner achiever? But you and me -- we're different. We're on a level playing field." Appreciatively, Jen says, "And I thought Dawson was good at deconstruction."
Okay. Once and for all, "analysis" and "deconstruction" are. Not. THE SAME THING. "Deconstruction" is a practice of literary theory that is complex and elusive enough to require three pages in my Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory to define. For example: "A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of a text's critical difference from itself." "The deconstruction of a text does not proceed by random doubt or arbitrary subversion, but by the careful teasing out of warring forces of signification within the text itself." "A deconstructive reading reveals that there is nothing except the text." Does any of that sound like anything that Pacey just did? Or anything that Dawson has ever done? NO. Let us, then, add "deconstruction" to "persnickety" and the rest of the occupants of The Pantheon of Words Used Incorrectly on Dawson's Creek.