Thanks to Nicole, Witch Baby, and Wing Chun.
Previously on DC: Dawson spots a picture of Jen's mom (slap) Eve's mom (slap) Jen's mom (slap) Eve's mom (slap); The Faithless Hussy returns; Pacey tells Andie that maybe she didn't make a mistake by sleeping with Marc; Jen and Pacey consider becoming "friends with a bullet."
Fade up in a twee little market. Jen "Daffy" Lindley tells Pacey "Easy Like Sunday Morning" Witter not to let her forget the creamed onions. Pacey makes "oh, barf" noises at the thought of creamed onions, and Jen tells him she'll keep "all offending vegetables" out of his sight, but Pacey says, "You know, Jen, when I suggested that we hook up today, this is not exactly what I had in mind." Jen says she knows that, but adds that "Grams's Thanksgiving feast takes precedence over our burgeoning sex life." "Burgeoning"? Pacey whispers that they don't actually have a sex life yet, and Jen wants to know if he thinks that's her fault; Pacey says yes, he does. Jen explains that she's having a hard time taking Pacey seriously in that way, and she "cracks" "up" in the least convincing simulation of laughter I've seen so far this season, on any show. "Foreplay is no laughing matter," Pacey chides her, adding that a man doesn't "do his best work in the face of scorn and derision," and Jen brings her totally-not-uncontrollable fake laughter under control in order to say, "It's just that we're friends, right? And seeing as how we are friends, but now we're friends that --" The word you want here, Jen, is "fuck." "Friends that fuck." If you can't bring yourself to say it, you probably shouldn't contemplate doing it. Just a suggestion. Anyhow, Jen finishes by saying that it might take her some time to get used to the whole fuck-buddies idea. She sidles up to Pacey and asks if maybe they could "find a moment later?" Pacey says he can't; he has to make an appearance at his parents' house for Thanksgiving. He then proceeds to deliver his customary my-family-life-sucks homily, seasoning this one with the observations that "the Witter women" will spend the day cooking, only to have the Sheriff tell them that "the Butterball is too dry," even though he spent the whole day on his ass getting drunk in front of the football game. Jen remarks that, in spite of the dread creamed onions, "ya gotta love Grams for offering an alternative," and suddenly I feel an overwhelming urge to run out and by Nantucket Nectars juice drinks in a wide array of delicious flavors! Why? Why do I feel such an urge? Perhaps because an entire product-placed row of the little bastards is clearly visible over Jen's shoulder during this exchange? Ah, yes. Pacey asks transparently who else is attending Grams's shindig. Jen says, "Don't worry, Pacey. Andie politely declined the invite," and Pacey pretends he doesn't care, and Jen says Andie is making dinner for Clan McPhee. Pacey says that "sounds nice" and comments that Andie needs family. Yeah, in a world where "family" means "Thorazine," maybe. Pacey looks sad, so Jen moves to give him a hug, and when Pacey clumsily says how good Jen smells, Jen starts fake-giggling again, and Pacey gripes, "Oh, come on!" and Jen apologizes for giggling.
Credits. Cat getting shaved with a dull, rusty straight razor.
Lighthouse. Sparkly water. Alterna-twanging. Dawson "How Now Brow Cow" Leery, clad in his usual XXXL long-sleeved t-shirt, meanders through Estrangement Estates and into the kitchen, where he sees Mitch "The Flash" Leery hunched in an armchair in the living room, yelling instructions at a televised football game, and Gale "The Faithless Hussy" Leery taking a pie out of the oven. Gale asks Dawson's opinion on her pumpkin pie, and Dawson takes a look and compliments it, and Gale starts the oyster stuffing; Dawson asks, "So how goes the apartment search?" Gale says, "Oh, it's, it's coming," and asks Dawson if he minds her staying in the guest room. Weird -- where I come from, the parent who pays the bulk of the mortgage on the house doesn't generally defer to the wishes of the dependent child living therein, but perhaps they do things differently in Massachusetts. Anyway, as Mitch loudly celebrates a touchdown, Dawson mutters something about the scene seeming "oddly familiar," and Gale asks rather acidly what Dawson finds familiar, "your father watching football and me in my apron?" Gale's hair has improved about four hundred percent from past seasons, I must say. The Flash barges in to inform Dawson that he's "missing a great game in there," notices the pies, and prepares to taste-test them, but Gail waves a mean-looking knife in his direction and tells him to forget it, because she can't take "half-eaten baked goods" to Grams's. The Flash mock-fumes that it hardly seems fair for Gale to invade their house, fill the kitchen with the scent of pie, and then refuse them access to said pie, and again I have to wonder who exactly owns the house, because as I recall, The Flash didn't have a job of any kind for ages, and now he pulls down a paltry substitute-teacher's salary, and Dawson's on-again-off-again video store job obviously isn't covering the balloon payments, so it seems to me that Gale , the only member of the family with a substantial income, probably owns the house, and maybe the Leery men could stop referring to Estrangement Estates as "their house," since for all intents and purposes it's Gale's house, and she can tell them to sleep in the lawn chairs outside if she wants. And she should. Gale basically tells The Flash to shut up. Dawson remarks that he suddenly feels "like I'm stuck in an episode of The Waltons." The Flash and Gale exchange a look, and Gale suggests that Dawson "go change."
Jen barrels through the front door of The Ryan Home For Wayward Granddaughters And Alternatively Lifestyled Boys with her arms full of groceries. She tells Grams "Jesus Fixed My Size Nines" Ryan that Sam The Deli Guy says hello. Grams sort of rolls her eyes as Jen rambles on about Sam's various unattractive attributes, then tries to interrupt her because she has to tell Jen something. Jen cuts her off, promising to behave herself for Thanksgiving, but Grams didn't mean that, exactly, and she tries again to talk to Jen, but Jen tells her to relax, "it's only a meal." Grams says meaningfully, "It's a meal with a long history." Jen makes a "whatever" face and says she has to go get ready, and Grams follows her, reminding her that Thanksgiving has a history of bringing people with differences together as Jen, not really listening, heads upstairs. Long story short, Grams tries to tell Jen that Jen's mother has come for Thanksgiving, but she can't get a word in edgewise, and Jen comes into her room mid-snark and sees her mother, Helen "Hope" Lindley, holding a collection doll. "Mom," Jen says. "Hello, Jen," Helen says gently.
In the kitchen of Bessie's Bed And Breakfast, Bessie "My Kingdom For A Subplot" Potter, who exhibits every sign of having just taken a massive bong hit, complains that she forgot to put the gizzard bag into the turkey. Joey "It's A Hard-Knock Life" Potter looks vaguely disgusted, before theorizing that, had their mother lived, she would have had her own cooking show by now. Bessie fumbles a potholder (geddit? potholder?) and says she's glad they're doing Thanksgiving at Grams's, and Joey agrees; then Joey says that she keeps expecting their mother to walk through the door and order them out of the kitchen, and Bessie chuckles, and Joey looks pensive.
Gale comes into Dawson's room and starts adjusting the drape of his sweater. Dawson says, "Mom," and she stops. Dawson sits on the bed to tie his shoe, and Gale says that she didn't want to mention it earlier in front of The Flash, but she ran into Helen Lindley earlier that morning. She asks Dawson what he thinks that means; Dawson feigns ignorance, and Gale prompts him, "You think it's not possible, at this very moment, the two of them could be discussing a certain half-sister?" HOLD on, WAAAAAAIT a minute (tm De La Soul) -- how did Gale know about that? When did Dawson tell her? Oh, I see. Dawson did tell her, but if we don't visit the Desktop, we have no way of knowing that, because we foolishly expect the show itself to tell us what we need to know about the show. But seriously, producers -- stop breaking plot points on the freakin' Desktop, will you? Anyhow. Dawson says he doubts that, because Jen still doesn't know she has a half-sister in the first place. Gale can't believe Dawson didn't tell Jen: "I'm impressed; I had no idea that you had such self-control." Dawson, to his credit, replies that he'd like to call it self-control, "but I think it was more gutlessness than anything." I'd lay the blame squarely at the feet of the writers for imbuing Dawson with such an uncharacteristic instinct to mind his own beeswax, but in any case, Gale shrugs, "Well, then it's just a coincidence," and Dawson asks, "What's just a coincidence?" Gale says pointedly, "Well, that one week you discover a skeleton in the Lindley closet, and then the the aforementioned family just happens to get together for the first time in over a year." She leaves Dawson alone to think that one over.
The dock; Jen brooding. In shirtsleeves. On Cape Cod. In November. (Get used to that sentence construction, dear reader, because you'll see it several more times before you finish reading this recap.) Grams approaches and says gently that Jen has spent nearly half an hour out there, and she'll "have to come up sooner or later." Jen asks why Grams didn't tell her about Helen, and Grams says that she didn't know: "She just -- arrived. It seems your father was detained unexpectedly in Europe on business." Jen says wryly that she can believe that, and speculates that her father is drinking a vodka martini and drowning his sorrows as they speak, "as if he actually felt any." "Be generous, Jennifer," Grams reproves her, but Jen snaps, "Why? My mother isn't here 'cause she really wants to see me. She's here 'cause she's got nowhere else to go." Grams points out that Jen doesn't know that for a fact, and Jen admits that no, she doesn't, "and how would I? The only contact that I've had with her in the past year was a phone call." And not a terribly auspicious one at that, if memory serves.
Grams says that she thinks maybe Jen is actually pleased to see her mother; when Jen makes a skeptical noise, Grams says, "Well, maybe 'pleased' isn't exactly the right word, maybe it's more like -- 'prepared.' You are prepared to deal with the past, you're prepared to start facing the problems between you." Jen says softly that she can't even look at her mother, "let alone talk to her," and Grams says, "Well, maybe you can't find the right words because there's too much to say." Jen turns to look at Grams, and Grams goes on, "Jennifer, for the past fourteen months, I've been watching you. I've watched you change. You're more serious now, you're more at peace with yourself, it's -- it's like you've, you've crossed some kind of a threshold." Jen categorizes it as more of a crossroads, "like I could just go either way," and Grams tells her she knows Jen will choose the right way. She squeezes Jen's shoulders, and Jen rests her head against Grams's -- awwww -- and says with her eyes closed, "But in the meantime?" Grams says evenly, "In the meantime, one foot in front of the other, starting in that direction," and she indicates the house. She gets up and begins to pull Jen towards the house, saying that people have started to arrive and that Jen can't stay down there all day, and besides, she bets Helen feels just as nervous as Jen does. Jen says, "You think?" and Grams says that, in some ways, "the two of you are more alike than you know."
Then we cut to a "the touch, the feel of cotton" ad, in which we see, among other things, a smithy hammering metal. On an anvil. Coincidence? I think not.
Pacey rolls up to The Ryan Home on his bike just as Andie "Single White" McPhee and "Hit The Road" Jack McPhee come through the gate. Jack wishes Pacey a happy Thanksgiving. Pacey awkwardly wishes Andie a happy Thanksgiving in turn, and from her position hanging back behind her brother, she says, "You too, Pacey." Jack looks back and forth between them; he has a new haircut, and he looks mighty fetching. Shifty-eyed silence for a moment. Pacey wonders what happened to the spending-the-afternoon-with-dad plan. Jack remarks acerbically that Angry McPhee (tm Kisle) got stuck in Chicago, adding, "Any other dad would find a plane, train, automobile, anything to see his kids, but not Joseph McPhee," and Andie stalks over to the picnic table with her foil-wrapped dish and snarks at Jack, "You know what, Jack, I'm sure he did everything he could to get here." More shifty-eyed silence. Pacey asks what Andie brought. Andie: "Apple pie." Jack adds that she made it herself. Pacey says it looks amazing. Jack and Pacey share some non-witty non-repartee about canned cranberry sauce; Andie looks uncomfortable. Pacey asks her, "So how you been, Andie?" How about asking Jack that question, since nobody's laid eyes on him in about a month?
Anyway, Andie shrugs elaborately and says she's fine, "why do you ask?" Pacey comments that they haven't "touched base" in a while, and he wanted to "check in, see how you're doin'." Andie tees Pacey up high and hits him long, wondering why guys always want "to be the nice, polite friend after the break-up" and reminding him that he made a decision, "so at least have the strength to believe in your convictions." Well, I have the strength to believe in a conviction of my own, i.e., to wit, and viz. that Andie slept with another guy and then manipulated Pacey into sleeping with her after they'd broken up in order to get him back, therefore rendering herself totally undeserving of the wronged-woman position she has since adopted, and she needs to lose the 'tude pronto. To my distinct annoyance, Pacey says that Andie is "absolutely right" and announces his intention to leave. Jack rolls his eyes. Andie protests that, since they came at the last minute, she should leave. Jack rolls his eyes again. More back-and-forth in this vein before Jack gets to his feet, tells them both that neither of them is going anywhere, reminds them that Grams has generously agreed to "play host to this group of misfits," and says that if they can't get forget their history for a couple of hours and enjoy Thanksgiving with their friends, "you should be home eating a TV dinner under a bare bulb, 'kay? So get over yourselves already. God." Heh! Go, Jack. Jack stomps off. Andie smiles weakly. I resolve to marry Jack, gay or not.
Montage of everyone arriving at the Ryans', including a weird shot of Bessie and The Flash chit-chatting. Joey remarks to Dawson, "It's weird to see your parents together -- they seem to be getting along," and Dawson says mildly, "So it would appear." Grams and Jen greet everyone at the door. It seems like the editor could have chopped out the part where Katie Holmes obviously can't walk in heels, but whatever.
Cut to Jen at the door of her room; she's come to drop off coats, and she finds her mother primping in front of the mirror. Jen apologizes for interrupting. Helen makes over-eager "we can share" noises. Jen doesn't take the bait and makes to leave, but Helen stops her and asks her to help her with her zipper. Okay, sidebar. If the writers expect us to buy Helen as a New York socialite, they need to cast someone thirty pounds thinner, dress her in Prada, and dye her hair blonde, because Mel Harris just doesn't get it done. Anyway. Jen zips her mother up. They look at each other in the mirror, and Helen says, "My god, you're getting so beautiful," even though Jen's hair has seldom looked fuglier than it does in this particular shot. Jen looks down, and Helen apologizes and asks if she said something wrong, and Jen says no, but when Helen prods her, Jen talks about how she remembers watching Helen get ready to go out as a little girl: "I just studied your every move." "Like I was the most important person in the world," Helen adds. "Something like that," Jen says, near tears. Helen suddenly remembers that she has something for Jen, something her mother gave her at about Jen's age, and she figures "it's about time to pass them on." She hands Jen a velvet envelope containing a string of pearls.
Jen murmurs, "They're beautiful, Mom. You know I've always thought so." Helen nods. Jen goes on, "But I can't." "Why not?" Helen asks. "Because where would I wear them?" Jen asks. "I mean, at home, maybe, but -- I mean, in New York, maybe, but here? And this is where I live now." Helen urges her to keep them, suggesting that Jen wear them on special occasions, but Jen says grimly that Helen taught her "pearls lose their luster if you don't wear them." Just in case we didn't get it, Jen fixes Helen with a meaningful look and adds, "I guess they're like people in that regard, you should keep them close to your skin." At that moment, the guy from the cotton commercial flys over my building in a chopper and drops off his anvil. Thanks, Cotton-Commercial Guy. "Please," Helen says, but Jen says she has to help Grams in the kitchen. Helen watches her go, with an expression that looked sort of like "bemused," but a lot more like "constipated." Dear Mel Harris: We know that, during your gig as Hope on thirtysomething, you could get away with standing around and looking maternally luminous, but that won't cut the mustard anymore. Get an acting coach. Signed, the world.
In the kitchen, Grams bustles about. Joey and Dawson offer to help, and Grams instructs them to "pray." Dawson asks if they should pray for anything in particular, and Grams hefts a stack of plates and says, "General prayer would be fine." Heh. Grams leaves, and Jen rumbles into the kitchen in third gear, and her hair looks like a bike helmet that got stomped on by the world's largest crinkle-soled Puma Clyde. Dawson asks about Jen's mom, and Joey wonders if they'll get to meet her; Jen, trying without much success to stifle tears, says she'd love for them to meet her, "it's just that we seem to be having a little failure to communicate right now." Jen continues futzing around in various drawers and cupboards as Dawson prods, "Did you know she was coming?" Jen shakes her head, "Big surprise. Guerrilla style. Seems my mom is a graduate of the Ho Chi Minh school of parenting." "Ho Chi Minh"? Despite the fact that Jen has tears running down her face and seems downright unwilling to meet his eye, Dawson sallies forth with yet another nosy inquiry: "Is she here for some reason other than Thanksgiving? Any news on the home front?" Jen turns to glare at Dawson before saying sarcastically, "You mean, is she begging me to return home to the familial fold [block that metaphor!]? I don't think so." Dawson keeps pressing, asking if Jen talked to her mother, whether her mother said anything, and Jen asks what exactly they would have said, and Dawson guesses that maybe Helen said she missed Jen and feels sorry she sent Jen away. Finally, Jen cuts Dawson off, saying that since she was thirteen, "that woman has done nothing but stare at me with a look of mild disregard [sic], like I was some stranger who spilled a cocktail on her carpet." Joey, silent thus far, interrupts to play the My Mother Died card. Again. Joey we don't know our parents blah blah blah they don't know us blah blah blah before we get the chance to ask them things, they're gone blah blah blah orphancakes. Jen whispers, "I'm sorry," and tries to stammer that she didn't think of how Joey must feel, and Joey tells Jen to give Helen a chance, because Helen came to talk to Jen, and Jen owes her that much. Sorry, Joey, but your mother's untimely death doesn't automatically forgive all the other mothers in the world for crappy parenting. Oh, and also, we get it.
Helen gazes out over the marsh. In a gabardine blazer. Outside. On Cape Cod. In November. Dawson approaches and introduces himself; Helen remembers him as "Gail's son," and I believe Jen mentioned having met Dawson several times as a kid in the series premiere, so I think Helen has met the whole Leery family before, but anyway, Helen makes "beautiful day" noises. Dawson mentions, apropos of nothing, that he and Jen used to date and have since become "very good friends" (whatever), and he cares "very deeply" about her (again, whatever). Helen looks at him blankly and says something polite. Dawson informs her that "there's something else" she should know, and he'll just blunder ahead with it and let Helen tell him "if I'm out of line," and Helen says, "I'm listening," so Dawson launches into The Story Of Eve, and Helen doesn't see what it has to do with her, and Dawson says that Eve had a picture of Helen with her. Helen looks down, then asks, "Where is she? Is she still here in town?" Dawson says no, and that Eve left by the time he realized who she was. Helen nods vaguely. "So it's true," Dawson says. By way of answer, Helen asks if Jen knows anything about it, and Dawson says no: "I wrestled with telling her, but I ultimately decided it wasn't my place, which is why I'm really glad you're here." Helen more or less says she doesn't plan to tell Jen; Eve has left town, so Helen doesn't see any reason to rock the boat. Dawson points out that Eve could come back. "Eve?" Helen asks. Dawson says that's the girl's name, "Eve Whitman." Dawson goes on to suggest that Eve might well tell Jen herself if she returns, and that Jen would take hearing it better from her mother than from Eve. Helen tells Dawson to mind his own business. Dawson respectfully submits that he knows what can happen "when families keep these kinds of secrets from each other." Helen looks at him with asperity as he adds, "I just don't want to see Jen get hurt." "Neither do I," Helen whispers, and she leaves him standing alone on the dock.
Oh, for god's sake, Target, enough with the damn Blair Witch parodies.
As Pacey and Jack walk around the house in sociable silence, Andie wanders out onto The Ryan Home's front porch. Joey comes up beside her and says, "It gets easier, you know." "What does?" Andie asks. "Being in the same room with him," Joey says.
Meanwhile, Pacey and Jack set the table, and Pacey asks Jack if Andie ever asks about him. "What do you think?" Jack replies. Pacey says he thinks Andie hates him now. "Ah, only every other day," Jack jokes. Pacey looks up at the porch and stops mid-plate-stack when he sees Andie.
Back on the porch, Joey tells Andie that, "as a veteran of multiple break-ups with the same boy," she can empathize with Andie, and she just wanted to let Andie know that "the dark nights will pass. Eventually, you will find peace." Oh, lord -- who wrote this dialogue, George Lucas? Give the Yoda-of-Capeside routine a rest, Joey. Andie says she wishes she could believe Joey, and she describes her broken heart, and how she has to keep busy or she'll think about hurting Pacey and getting hurt and so on, and she says she doesn't feel comfortable in her own skin sometimes, and I don't like Andie and she had the hurt coming, but the writers actually nailed a description for once.
Back to the picnic table, where Jack says, "Well, it's not a judgment, it's a fact. You broke my sister's heart." Um, okay -- hello. Andie. Slept. WITH SOMEONE ELSE! Andie has no right, no claim, no grounds to act as the injured party -- NONE! Andie must now take what Pacey dishes out, because hey, PAYBACK'S A BITCH! I have played all three points of this sordid little triangle in my life, and I'm not proud of cheating, but I never expected sympathy when the guy found out and dumped my ass. Why? BECAUSE I DESERVED IT! I deserved to get dumped, I deserved to get cut dead by his friends, I deserved to have him get drunk and call me up and yell at me some more, because I cheated on him, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND! I know people make mistakes they wish they could take back, and I know how shitty Andie feels because I've felt that exact way myself, but really, the cheater does NOT set the rules of engagement. ANYHOW. Pacey mutters, "She broke mine." Jack sets glasses on the table and says, "Okay, so -- imagine how much pain she's in." Imagine how little credence anyone who has ever conducted a relationship in real life would give that argument. Done imagining? Okay, let's move on.
In the dining room, Andie oh-so-non-casually mentions that Joey and Pacey have become pretty good friends of late. Joey calls Pacey "a doofus," but says, smiling, that he has his moments. Pop! Fizzle! What's that now? Oh, it's chemistry! Get 'em together! Andie asks shyly if Pacey talks about her. Joey looks uncomfortable: "Not really, Andie." She tries to sugarcoat it a bit, saying that if Pacey "can't come up with a clever quip about something, he goes stoic. The way he feels about you -- he keeps that close to his heart." Andie nods, but she isn't convinced. Joey adds, "It's really precious to him, Andie."
Cut to a swamp in Degobah -- oh, no, cut to the Thanksgiving dinner table (outside. On Cape Cod. In November) and Grams asking everyone to stand up and join hands around table and give thanks one by one. She tells Dawson to start. Dawson gives thanks for the food they've just eaten. Um, don't people usually give thanks before the meal starts?
Anyway, The Flash elbows Pacey and says, "Great cranberries," then rolls his eyes at someone across the table. Shut up, Flash. Dawson also gives thanks for friends and family, "who in the best of all worlds are one and the same." A significant look again passes between Gail and The Flash. Pacey goes , thanking the Ryan women for good food and company, since he has neither of those things to look forward to at his own family's dinner in about forty-five minutes. Andie thanks Grams for her hospitality, and gives thanks for her friends and their help. Jack gives thanks "for the kind of people that take strays into their life -- the kind of person to whom it doesn't matter whether or not you're family, just that you have a home." Grams nods at him. Aw. Joey gives thanks for absent friends and family: "Just because they're not here doesn't mean we love them any less." Bessie, with Alexander "Who's Your Daddy" Potter on her lap, smiles at Joey. Grams prompts Jen, who gives thanks for "second chances; for the opportunity to try and [sic] rebuild bridges that were once thought beyond repair -- and for the promise of many more Thanksgivings to come." A graceful, well-turned, utterly appropriate speech -- from Jen? Well done! Helen, going for "upset" but only getting as far as "I smell something bad," excuses herself abruptly from the table. Grams starts to follow her, but Jen says she'll go.
Jen catches up to her mother and says she didn't mean to upset her, she was "just being honest." Helen says that Jen didn't upset her, then says that maybe she did something right for a change. Jen asks what she means, and Helen says she did the right thing sending Jen to live with Grams. "'Sending' isn't the way I'd put it," Jen says flatly, and Helen acknowledges, "Fair enough, Jen, but I don't think you realize how lucky you are. I've been searching in vain for friends like that my whole life." Jen observes pointedly, "Well, I'm glad it makes you feel better, but as good friends as they are, they're not family." "No, you're right, Jen," Helen says. Jen goes into her overly-self-aware "I Will Survive" shtick, saying she's had "no safety net" for the last year, and Helen says she knows she should have been there for Jen and should have written or called, and Jen half-sobs, "So why didn't you?" Helen, in a tone most people use for discussing the weather, says she doesn't know, but she kept wanting to. Jen asks if she has any idea how much that hurts, and Helen, in the same disengaged tone, says she knows. Jen wants to know what she did "that was so bad," and Helen says Jen didn't do anything so bad, and Jen says, "Then what?" and Helen says, "Let me try and [sic] explain this," and Jen follows her, and we fade out. Dear writers: the verb "to try" takes an infinitive. "To," not "and." Learn it, love it, live it. Signed, English majors around the globe.
Fade in again on Grams, coming out of the house with a coffeepot; pan over to The Flash and Gale at a smaller picnic table, eating pie and laughing together. Dawson asks if he can join them. Gale compliments him on his remarks at the table earlier, and The Flash recommends Gale's pie as "well worth the wait." Dawson bursts out, "All right, guys, that's enough," accuses them of "acting like Rob and Laura Petrie," and says that if he has to endure "one more moment of false sitcommy good cheer," he'll puke. Gale stands up, turns her rings around, and backhands Dawson across the face, snarling -- oh, sorry. Actually, she tells him, "We're just trying to become friends again, Dawson." "Friends, or more than friends?" Dawson demands snippily. The Flash sort of glares at Dawson, and Gale looks cowed as Dawson wonders aloud what it means that Gale has moved into the guest room. The Flash growls, "It's not that simple, Dawson," and Dawson says, "It never is with you two," and he sits with them at the table and continues to act entitled to information about the state of their marriage while at the same time making condescending comments about their "drama," and I can understand why the child of estranged parents might want the occasional status report, but I can also think of about a hundred less obnoxious and confrontational ways to get said status report. Dawson wraps up his me-me-me blithering by demanding that his parents "be honest with" him, and Gale and The Flash shoot each other several uneasy looks. Gale half-nods at The Flash, and Dawson looks back and forth between them and waits for them to honor his demands. Shut up, Dawson.
Jen reviews what Helen has just told her: "Okay, let me see if I understand. Mother finds daughter in compromising position, and instead of sharing her own experiences as a teenager, when she actually got pregnant -- and had a child, mother instead turns into a hypocrite and sends her daughter into exile?" Throughout Jen's speech, Mel Harris adopts a serene "what a lovely poem" mien completely inappropriate to the scene, and at the end of the speech Helen fobs responsibility for the decision off onto Jen's father. Jen makes a snide comment. Helen asks Jen to put herself in Helen's place for just a minute. Jen demands to know why Helen didn't share this with her earlier, because it might have helped Jen and made things easier on her. Helen answers, with all the conviction of a boiled carrot, "It was a shameful secret, a secret I've had to carry for over twenty years." So how old does this make Eve, again? Jen snaps, "So the answer was then to make me feel dirty and ashamed?" "That was never my intention," drones the HAL 2000 -- uh, I mean, "Helen." Jen accuses Helen of wanting to hide "your indiscretion" from Jen's father, and complains that just once she'd like Helen to take her side and believe her instead of siding with her father. Helen says evenly that Jen can think what she wants, "but I was not and am not prepared to wind up alone." Jen quavers, "That's the difference between you and me, Mom, because I would rather be alone than in a pathetic, loveless marriage." Jen starts to stomp away. Helen gets up and says, "Don't go." Jen rounds on her and says, "Mom, you are the most intensely selfish person I've ever known." More selfish than Dawson? That I doubt. Jen sneers, "I mean, look at you -- you can't even cry! Something's taken that away from you, you're numb, and you know what, you're grateful for it." More "you fear ending up alone because you have nothing inside yourself" self-actualized twaddle from Jen, who delivers the "there's nothing there" big finish and walks away sobbing; Helen smoothes her hair and looks about as perturbed as if she'd found a ladder in her stocking. Hey, Mel? time, let the assistant director give you glycerin.
Okay, I giggle every time that Arizona Jean guy gets hit in the goolies with the softball. Every damn time.
Alexander is having a teething moment. Joey offers to leave with Bessie, but Bessie -- bad bangs, cute twin set -- tells her to stay and "be with your friends." No, Bessie, don't go! Don't leave us here with . . . Dawson, who walks over to Joey, and I plug every orifice in my head with a Maalox bottle in preparation for the inevitable use of the word "soulmates." Happily, it never happens; Joey quizzes Dawson on "what's up with" his parents, and he says he just saw "the final chapter in the Mitch-Gail saga." Evidently, the Leerys' divorce is now final. Dawson melodramatizes, "The Leerys of Capeside are officially finished as a family." Joey gently expresses her condolences, and Dawson accepts them. Joey asks what Dawson said when they told him, and Dawson said he "really let them have it this time -- I looked them both in the eye, and I said, 'Congratulations.'" He smiles ruefully; Joey also looks rueful and says, "Good for you, Dawson." Huh? Dawson rambles on a bit about finally having a decision one way or the other and the only homes we have are the ones we make ourselves, pity-partycakes, and Joey sighs, "I know what you mean." Dawson suggests that they "really cut loose tonight," and when Joey raises a brow, he goes on, "Act out our teenage ennui in wanton and destructive ways." First of all, "ennui"? Second of all, "wanton"? And third of all, what would this destructiveness entail, Dawson -- ramming your cranium into the side of a building and watching it collapse in on itself? Joey makes a skeptical face and asks, "What d'you have in mind?" and Dawson replies, "Sex. Drugs, rock 'n' roll," and Joey smiles and rolls her eyes. Dawson says, "Or we could just sit right here and have a mind-blowing three-hour conversation." Yeah, you do that. Outside. On Cape Cod. In November. In your freakin' shirtsleeves. While everyone in the viewing audience searches frantically for a six-gauge needle with which to pierce their eyeballs.
Oh, brother. Jen drags a reluctant Pacey into the gardening shed for angry sex. Pacey doesn't want to. Jen reminds him of their agreement. Pacey says he has to head home. Jen unzips Pacey while reassuring him that she won't giggle anymore. Jen says with irritation that their "arrangement precludes any sort of emotional foreplay," and Pacey says yes, it does, and he removes her hands from his fastenings and points out that it "also precludes the idea of angry sex." Jen stares at him, furious. Pacey asks if she wants to talk about what just happened with her mom. Jen bites off the word "nothing," and Pacey just looks at her; she relents and says, "Okay, long story short -- like mother, like daughter. Seems I'm not the only girl in the Lindley family who can't say no." Doesn't she mean "in the Ryan family"? Pacey makes a comment about Helen's sanctimony, and Jen more or less says "word" and says she plans to file the whole Eve revelation "under 'wish I never knew.'" Pacey doesn't agree, saying that he's just gone through something similar himself, and that "when you come to see your parents as human beings with their own problems, it is, oddly, kind of liberating." Jen closes her eyes and begins to cry as Pacey continues, "And when you realize -- they're way more messed up than you are, it's not worth your time or energy to go on despising them for it." Well put, young Witter. They hug, and Pacey has the grace not to get a "grief-on" (tm Bill Maher).
Sunset. Then darkness. Lieutenant Data -- uh, I mean, "Helen" packs her car and gets ready to leave, but as she's about to get into the car, Jen appears at the front gate and asks, "Leaving so soon?" Helen says dryly, "I think I've wreaked enough havoc for one holiday, don't you?" She opens the driver's side door. A disconsolate ovary wails in the background. Jen tells her mother that she won't "spill your little secret" to her father: "I won't get in the middle. It's your marriage and your life." Helen starts to say something, but Jen cuts her off, telling Helen she doesn't regret the things she said before and she won't take them back. Helen says feebly that she "deserved them -- I deserve everything that happens to me." "What do you mean?" Jen asks. Helen advises her, "Don't marry a cold man, Jen. Don't wake up at forty and realize that one false move and everything you've built your life around could be pulled out from under you." Jen's eyes fill with tears, and she asks, "Why don't you just divorce him?" Helen says she can't, and Jen wants to know why not, and Helen says that, basically, women like her get dropped socially and shunned by their set when their marriages fail, and I can state categorically that, in Manhattan anyway, nobody cares if you get divorced, and in fact a woman who gets a sizable enough chunk of her husband's money will do better in the social round than he will post-break-up, so once again the writers don't know the first thing about anything. Anyway, Helen finishes, "You just disappear," and Jen looks at her, and a light dawns. Jen says, "Ever since you put me on that plane, I always thought that you hated me. But you never did, did you?" Helen shakes her head and says firmly, "No." Jen goes on, "If anyone, you just hated yourself." I don't know where Jen gets that; in the hands of a more capable actress than Mel Harris, we might have derived that conclusion from Helen's dialogue, but I don't think so. Helen looks down; Jen says that the past year would have gone a lot more easily if she'd only realized earlier that Helen didn't hate her. Helen apologizes. Jen says, "I know." Helen says that now she can stop worrying that Jen will turn out like her, "because you're already so much stronger than I ever was." Oh, gag me. Grams appears, and Helen says she guesses she should get going, and Grams slings an arm around Jen and says mildly, "Goodbye, Helen," and Helen says, "Bye, Mom," to Grams, and Jen says, "Bye, Mom," to Helen, and they smile at each other, and Jen says, "Call me sometime," and Helen starts crying and says, "I will," and The Synthesizer Of Emotional Manipulation soars in the background. Helen pulls out of the driveway, and Grams asks, "You all right?" and Jen waits a minute, then says, "Yeah. I'll be fine," and Grams squeezes her arm and goes indoors.
Jen turns toward a campfire and sees part of the gang sitting around it. Pacey pulls up on his bike, nearly running over her, and Jen asks what he's doing there, and Pacey says that he got up to his front door and he "just couldn't do it," and he'd rather spend time with his friends than with his family. Jen says she's glad he's there. Pacey asks, "No hard feelings about this afternoon?" and Jen says no, except for "ones of utter embarrassment," and she in turn apologizes for putting him in that position. Pacey makes a joke about the fact that beautiful women don't throw themselves at him every day. Jen thanks him for "conduct above and beyond," and he says that "it was nothing," and Jen says, "Pacey, you're a sixteen-year-old boy, that must have taken superhuman restraint," and Pacey puts his arm around her and says, "Aw, Jen, you have no idea." Hey, hasn't Pacey turned seventeen yet? He should have, because he had his birthday party way at the beginning of last season, so how come he hasn't had another one? Oh, right. We have no idea what time of year that actually took place, do we? Because the writers treat the time continuum like a big old editing salad? Right, right, silly me.
Moving right along to the campfire, where Jen and Pacey find the McPhees, Dawson, and Joey -- all together now -- sitting around outside. In strappy dresses, bare legs, and skimpy cardigans. On Cape Cod. In November. And yes, I saw their coats, but I've spent many a Thanksgiving on the Cape, and it is as cold as the proverbial witch's teat outside nine years out of ten. Pacey asks if he can sit to Andie, and she says yes. Dawson observes that "it's been awhile" since they've all spent time together, "and I must say, it's nice." Jen agrees, then refers sarcastically to the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special, and Andie remembers that one with enthusiasm, which makes Pacey laugh and put his arm around her as Joey says that maybe "'Life Is A Group Hug' is a little premature," adding, "I'm sure we'll find a way to be estranged again in no time." Dawson says that "in a world where the people that raise you end up letting you down, it's an honor and a privilege to have you guys to turn to." Never mind the fact that, for that comment, we can add another pimp-slap to the long list Dawson's parents owe him, nor the fact that these characters seldom, if ever, interact with one another except one at a time. Everyone in the circle stares at him. The ovary continues to shriek. Joey says snidely that she can't wait for the Oscar speech: "I mean, there's not gonna be a dry eye in the house." Or an empty barf bag either. The gang clinks mugs, and I offer a silent prayer of thanks that I don't have to deal with said gang week.
On the Dawson's Creek, Pacey and Joey's friendship intensifies, as telegraphed by the two of them dancing awkwardly and giving each other meaningful looks, but then Dawson and Joey walk in on Pacey and Jen smooching, and, like the man says, leeeeeet's geeeeet reeeeeeeeady toooooooo RRRRRRRRRUMBLE!