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
In the woods -- which look pretty bright to me -- Jen is continuing her dissertation on how witches are just girls who picked the wrong era in which to be horny. She opines that Mary Waldeck was no witch, but just had "a bad case of the warm and fuzzies." Joey says that it's "too heart-breaking for words." Dawson says that he disagrees, and that to him it just proves that love can thrive even in the most difficult circumstances. Joey says, "Yeah, and look what happened to her." Dawson reminds her that no one knows what happened to Mary. Joey says that it's safe to assume Mary died "a very sad and lonely death, separated from the one boy she ever really loved." Dawson insists that if two people are really in love, they'll find a way to be together. For once, I have to agree with Dawson -- the distance between Capeside and the Island looks small enough for someone to swim it pretty easily. Joey says that they were young, and separated for a long time, and that maybe William forgot about Mary. Dawson says that if he did, it proves that they were never meant to be together. Joey disgustedly asks, "Could you be any more naïve?" He asks, "Could you be any more cynical?" In unison, Jen and I ask, "Could you be any more irritating?" and Jen points out the church they've just reached. Pacey asks if they think there's a men's room in there, because he "went a little heavy on the witch's brew." Pacey, you're a guy. It's the woods. Find a tree.
Andie. School. Detention slips. Whatever. ["And why is it approaching nightfall when they're walking around, but Andie is in school? Did they get a school day off to make this idiotic not-umentary?" -- Sars]
The gang enters the church camera-first. Dawson reads a sign explaining that the townspeople built the church in the hope that it might help the girls find God, and that they even sent a minister over every Sunday, but that the girls would tease him so mercilessly that he eventually stopped coming. ["The plaque says all that?" -- Sars] Appreciatively, Jen says, "I could hang with those girls." Jen, if it meant that you'd be in the cemetery at the end of it, I would fully support your minister-teasing. But it doesn't. So shut up. During this exchange, Joey walks up to the altar. Jen pensively says, "I wonder if Pacey loves me yet," and wanders out. Joey reads a sign on the pulpit and says, "They were murdered...It says here that a group of men from the mainland treated the island like their own personal brothel," only she says "main land" instead of "MAIN-lind" and "brothel" like "BRA-thel" with a "th" like in "brother" instead of like "broth." That those errors -- as well as the earlier "impotent" -- were not corrected tells me that the director of this episode is either an idiot, or someone whose first language is not English, or both. Anyway, Joey says that when the townspeople found out, a group of them came over, rounded the girls up into the church, and set it on fire. Dawson says, "That must have been when William ran off with Mary." Joey asks how Dawson knows that William didn't "light the torch." Dawson says, as if Joey is stupid, "Uh...maybe because he loved her?" Joey asks how Dawson knows that William was "such [sic] the enlightened male," and that if the whole town was in an uproar, William might have found it easier to "just go with the flow." Dawson says, "That's not the story I'm interested in telling." What? To tell ANY story you would need to do more than spend a few hours on the island and interview people you already know about whether they ever made out there. You are not Errol Morris! You are not even Dick Morris! You are just a Dick HEAD -- AND A BIG ONE! Joey tells him that "a good documentarian" looks at the story from every possible angle, and not just from "his cloying and annoying worldview." (This is why Michael Moore is a funny and talented filmmaker, but not what you would call "a good documentarian.) Dawson looks like he's trying to formulate a comeback, but before he can answer, Jen comes back in and asks whether Pacey has come back yet. Joey says he hasn't, and Dawson says that they should leave soon, because it's getting dark (despite the fact that it's totally light out). Jen says that she'll find Pacey, and tells Dawson and Joey to go back to the dock and make sure Boat Guy doesn't leave without them.
As they walk out of the woods, Dawson asks why his "optimism" has Joey "so irked." Joey says that she's irked by something else. He asks what is irking her, and she asks, "What's going on with us?" Exasperated, Dawson huffs, "This is not the time or the place to run through an exhaustive dissertation on the state of our relationship." (To those who defend the use of "big words" on the show: That right there was an instance where the same thing could have easily been communicated more effectively by using the kind of language actual people actually use. To wit: "This is neither the time nor the place to go over that again." Or, "Shut up! I can't take hearing this conversation one more god-damn time!" Wait -- the latter is exactly what I said.) Joey says something about their standing by while their relationship crumbles, and then discussing it sometime when it's more convenient. Dawson asks why they can't just be friends and leave it at that. Joey mutters, "Friends," and Dawson says that if they take away everything else that they are, they're still friends. Joey says that he can't just will a friendship into existence. Dawson says that he gives up, and that for the first time in his life he has no idea what she's talking about. She tells him that he has no idea what's going on in her life right now -- how she lost her job, how she did on her PSATs, how she and her sister are making their living -- and that she doesn't know anything about his life either. Dawson says that he's sorry he's been distant, but that he thought that's what they needed. She says that the last year of her life has been a "wide-awake nightmare of conflicting emotions," but that no matter how bad it got, her relationship with him was the only thing that kept her going and made her feel that she was part of something special. So, she says, she's not whining about being friends or not, but because for the first time in her life she's not feeling that connection, and it scares her. Dawson looks down, but before he can formulate an answer (again), they hear the sound of an outboard motor and run down the dock. Boat Guy tells them to get in, but Joey says they can't leave because they got separated from their friends. Boat Guy says, "Stupid, stupid, stupid," and then says some other stuff but I can't hear it because I'm too busy yelling, "Testify, Boat Guy! Amen!" Dawson says they'll be there any minute, but Boat Guy won't stay, and tells them that they can either get in the boat now, or he can come back in the morning and "see who's still alive." Go, Boat Guy! Go, Boat Guy! Go! Dawson says that they can't leave without their friends, so Boat Guy books. Or rather, boats, I guess. As he pulls away from the dock, he yells, "Whatever you do, don't go in the woods!"