Episode Report Card Jessica: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Guerilla Filmmaking (1)
By Jessica | Season 5 | Episode 14 | Aired on 02.05.2002
Frat. 35-Year-Old Eric and Jack are all alone in the house. I think I caught part of this on Skinemax last night. Jack's in the kitchen, fetching a brew. 35-Year-Old Eric's all standing in the doorway, checking him out. "Little early?" he asks. "For love?" Jack responds. Not really; he says, "Only if you're doing it alone." Which is almost as good a line. Jack informs 35-Year-Old Eric that they have "unfinished business." With Madden 2002. Ah, a manly pursuit of a different sort.
Grams's living room, where Charlie's auditioning for Dawson and Pander. Jen's feeding him lines as unemotionally as possible. "You can sleep with blah blah blah, not even you," she recites dryly. Charlie acts his little tushie off, though, and eventually goes in for the kiss (which is, I believe, in the script). Jen does a Talk To The Hand kind of thing and warns him that he'll find himself in "a world of pain" if he goes a millimeter further. Charlie groans and complains that she's not giving him anything to work with. "Acting tip: it's called using your imagination," Jen snarks. Dawson's like, I've seen enough, and sends Charlie to wait in the other room whilst he confabs with Pander. They agree that he's quite good. "I mean, if you're going for the brutally handsome, rippling abs, Tony Scott version of me, he's as good as we're going to get, right?" Pander asks. Hee. Dawson agrees, and mentions that now they just need to rework the ending. Pander gapes. He loves the ending! Dawson doesn't think it makes sense. Apparently, the ending features the guy killing the girl. Because she broke his heart. "Poetic justice," Pander offers. Dawson's like, no. Charlie wanders in and asks if he's got the part or not. Wrap this up, people: I've got figure skating to watch. Anyway, Pander wonders if Charlie can learn his lines in two hours. He can. He's in. Moving right along.
Jack and 35-Year-Old Eric are lolling drunkenly around Jack's room. 35-Year-Old Eric is wondering why anyone would want a girlfriend, of all things, because all she's going to do is "bitch and moan" and force you to watch "Notting Hill, over and over again." Oh, sweet Mary. I have never forced the boy in my life to watch a chick flick multiple times. I do sometimes make them watch football, however. While I feed them beer, and cupcakes. It's true. And yet, I am alone. Perplexing, no? Anyway. "I like Notting Hill," Jack offers. The boys laugh, and then they both lie back on the carpet and stare longingly up at the ceiling. "Dude?" 35-Year-Old Eric begins. "Yeah?" So many seductions in my own past have begun with those very words. "What was it like when you realized you were gay?" Oh, no. Oh, this is so embarrassing. This is so painfully cheesy. I can't believe they're actually going down this road. I think I'm just going to stick my head under my sofa pillows for about twenty minutes. Jack says that it wasn't something he just realized all of a sudden. "Well, what was it like?" 35-Year-Old Eric asks. Jack sighs, and says that so many people spend so much of their lives all "locked up inside themselves. And they never know that they have the key all along." I want to die. Why are they doing this to me? This scene is so silly! It's so goofy! It's so clichéd! It's so 1983 ABC Afterschool Special! Can't Jack just live the normal life of a normal gay college student? How much more entertaining would that be? 35-Year-Old Eric looks thoughtful. We get it: he's gay! He's gay, and he's also gay! Jack continues, saying that he always knew, "on some level," that he was gay. "Just like you always knew you were straight," he adds. 35-Year-Old Eric makes a "not so much" face up at the ceiling. "It's about realizing it was all right [to be gay]," Jack says. "Even though I don't really think that it is," Kerr Smith ad libs. "You're amazing," 35-Year-Old Eric breathes, then rolls over and props himself up on his elbow and makes moon eyes down at Jack. Oh, man. Cue The Music Of Forbidden Gay Love. "You're the kind of guy I want to be," 35-Year-Old Eric says. Jack's eyes get really wide, and for half a second I think they're actually going to kiss. See, I forgot that Kerr Smith doesn't think that teenagers need to see gay people macking. Straight people are okay, though. Don't ask him why. Jack peers up at 35-Year-Old Eric. 35-Year-Old Eric blinks and looks down at the carpet and then over at Jack again. Jack sits up abruptly and asks 35-Year-Old Eric if he wants to watch some more TV. Non-kissing-type TV. But 35-Year-Old Eric has work to do. Awkward. Awkward. Awkward. "Okay, I'll see you," Jack sings dismissively. 35-Year-Old Eric leaves. That scene was real bad.
Casa Creepy. The good professor glances over the top of his product-placed Gateway laptop (which I'm also taking as a shout-out, because I am writing this very recap on a Gateway laptop) and sees Joey pacing in his front yard, talking to herself. He opens the door and looks out at her. "Hey, you selling Girl Scout cookies?" he calls to her. "Have any those with the chocolate and the caramel? I love those." Me too. Man, Creepy and I have more in common than I thought. If only I could find a really hot young thang with whom to have an affair, in a horrifying abuse of my power. Joey grins self-consciously and tells Creepy that she's figured out what she wants to say to him. "I'll alert the media," Creepy says. Joey glares and asks if he could "lose the obnoxious glib for five seconds." Creepy looks chastened and tells her to go ahead. Joey begins by saying that she's sorry he kissed her. "I can't even begin to apologize," Creepy says, sounding actually fairly sorry. But Joey doesn't want an apology. "In a minute, I'm going to shake your hand," Joey says, and they're going to have "a silent understanding," and then she's going to leave and drop his class. "No great loss there," Creepy offers. "You know what? Screw you," Joey snaps, with something approximating actual emotion. "Clever, Joey," Creepy offers dryly, before explaining that she's "going to do great, with or without [his] workshop." Joey half-smiles. "Oh," she says. Apparently, according to Creepy, Joey's "got it." Or, rather, "It." It is "the gift, the touch." He doesn't have it, but blah blah blah. Joey is fast becoming the Donna Martin of this show, what with all the endless praise of previously-never-before-established talents. Next thing you know, she'll be saving fawns from forest fires. Anyway, because Creepy thinks she's all talented and whatnot, Joey decides that she doesn't want to walk away from him anymore. You know what, though? Nice acting job there from Ken Marino. He was almost not disgusting to me. And let me clarify; I don't find the actor unattractive. In fact, I think he sort of looks like Chris Noth, vaguely. But the character is so distasteful. She's eighteen years old, you perv! What is wrong with you?
Audrey and Pacey are running lines; she's wandering the room, he's lying on his back on her bed. Audrey looks over at him and tells him that she's going to start acting now. "Are you warning me, or telling me?" Pacey asks. Audrey just wants him to pay attention this time, so he can give her notes. Pacey nods, and Audrey proceeds to get into character by shaking and hopping. "Bring it! Bring it! Bring it on!" she yells. Pacey, on the bed, looks scared. Audrey snaps into seductive mode, slinking over to the bed, crawling on top of Pacey, and cooing that he's "falling in love with [her]." Pacey gulps. "Um, how can you be so sure?" he reads. Audrey straddles him and leans right into his face. "You can sleep with all the right girls and take all the right drugs, but in the end, you'll still be alone," she breathes. "Doesn't matter what anybody says, Gage, nobody wants to be alone, not even you." They stare at each other for half a second and then start eating each other's faces. Another half second later, Audrey leaps away with a yelp. Pacey wipes his mouth and swiftly covers his crotch with a pillow. I'm not sure how to react to that bit of blocking. The twelve-year-old in me is all, "Heh, boner gags." The old lady in me is all, "My word! I can't believe what they're showing on television nowadays. And at eight o'clock! What is this, UPN? Will no one think of the children?" And the last part of me, which I prefer not to name, is wondering why Pacey is so eager right off the bat. On the other hand, he is eighteen. Audrey squeals that she doesn't want to do this! "Of course not. Me neither," Pacey lies. "It would be