Episode Report Card Sars: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sex and Death
By Sars | Season 4 | Episode 14 | Aired on 02.06.2001
Ski lodge. Kids play what looks like beer slide and have snowball fights; inside, Pacey observes that "it's just like last summer, minus the water and the hammocks." Joey adds with a sneer, "And the boat?" Pacey allows that that's true, but says that "it does have the two most important ingredients, you and I." Then he suggests putting the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and pretending they're anchored off the coast of…"Greenland? It's freezing in here," Joey bitches, masterfully avoiding Pacey, Pacey's eyes, and the subject while walking around the room and rubbing her arms. As she figures out how to start the automatic fireplace, Pacey suggests junk food and TV, and Joey comments that it sounds like a typical Friday night in Capeside, but Pacey tells her that "this place has way more channels," and flips on the TV to find what the closed captioning calls a "soft-core porn movie" playing. Joey looks dismayed. Pacey flips the TV off and wonders how "they got in that position," but Joey just slumps over to her bag and pretends to rummage around in it while tucking her hair sulkily behind her ears. Pacey, wearily: "Oh, come on -- please tell me we can laugh about this now." Joey stiffens and asks too-brightly, "Laugh about what?" Sex. Joey sighs as Pacey goes on to say that they can't "enshrine" it ("enshrine"?), and they can't run from it: "It's like food and water, and air." Joey asks if they can't just breathe something else. Pacey asks in turn if she knows how "ridiculous" that sounds. Joey whines that "it's just a weekend," and she doesn't want to spend it the way they spent the past week, with "this incredible tension" between them. Pacey says that he feels relaxed, not tense: "I'm on vacation, Jo." Melted-wax face: "Really?" Yes. "So we're in complete agreement here?" Pacey says that he doesn't know what they've agreed on, but he's sure they agree, or something; Joey looks disappointed before confirming in a trying-to-joke-but-really-almost-crying voice that "this weekend does not have to be about sex." He says no, it doesn't. Joey grins with relief. Pacey smiles blandly.
More outside scenes of snowball-fighting fun times before we cut inside to Jack and Jen's room, where we find Jack busting on Jen for her hypochondriacal ways. Jen holds ice to her ankle and listens patiently as Jack announces that he won't let her sprain "affect [their] vacation in any way," and they'll have fun even if he has to carry her around on his shoulders for the next three days. "Well, the fun's gonna start with you taking off my pants," Jen informs him; she wants to take a bath before dinner. Bamp chicka bamp bamp. Jack says he can't do that. Jen snorts, "Why not?" She's a girl, he's a boy, "it's inappropriate." Um, didn't they share a bathroom at the Ryan Home? Doesn't he, you know, like boys That Way? She's not asking you to perform a breast exam, Jackers -- get over it. Jen agrees with me, telling him he'll have to "stop clinging to these macho conventions about what is and is not appropriate." Jack just stares at her all "not this weekend, I don't." Jen snarks that fine, he doesn't have to help, but as she attaches her wooden foot every morning for the rest of her life, she's going to remember this. Ha! She limps towards the bathroom, undoing her pants, and Jack says, literally, "Yeah, well, whatever," and turns around to see her top button undone -- seriously, that's it; it's not revealing at all -- and wigs out all whoa-little-lady-that's-enough, and Jen's like, chill out, Quarterback Princess, and Jack asks if she would want him to get undressed in front of her, and Jen just smiles sweetly, and he grumbles, "Okay, that -- that's withdrawn." Then she clings to the mantelpiece and goes, "Oooh." Hee hee!
Dawson fiddles with a projector. Bamp chicka bamp bamp. No, not really, it's just a projector. But it does look like the hair and make-up department shot a tube of K-Y jelly out of a cannon and onto his head. So maybe one little "bamp." Gretchen comes in with a picnic basket and asks, "Hungry?" Dawson gives her a distracted "yeah," and adds that he's "kind of busy" looking for clips to add to the documentary, but Gretchen says he's got "a lot going on in [his] head right now" (no comment), and cheese and crackers might help. I like the way she thinks. Okay, not really, but cheese does cure all ills. Dawson sits at the table and hopes aloud that she only brought one kind of cracker, because he can't handle any more decisions right now. Gretchen sits down too and listens with a furrowed brow as Dawson says that he doesn't know how he got here, that he should "be on [his] senior trip right now, making decisions like 'glasses or goggles'" and who to room with. Gretchen senseis that "it's never very nice" when adulthood "encroaches on" your life. "Encroaches"? Shut up, Gretchen. More blather about philosophical levels and family members of theirs who have died and the fact that Dawson's never lost a family member he "was close to." Dawson has so little experience with death; how did Mr. Brooks know Dawson "would do what he wanted?" And now, boys and girls, it's time for the weekly heaping o' praise upon Dawson's sizable head -- Gretchen tells him he has better judgment than anyone she knows, "probably better than anybody that Brooks knew. That's why he chose you." Gretchen goes on to say that Mr. Brooks didn't see Dawson's youth and figure that he would "contribute to [Mr. Brooks's] end." Rather, "he saw how old [Dawson's] heart is, and he knew that whatever choice you made? It would be the right one." Oh my god, whatever. Dawson sighs smugly and leans down to kiss her hand. Gretchen strokes (ew chicka ew ew) Dawson's oily pate. I chuck a size nine at the TV.