Four Stories

Big ups to Wing Chun, who consoled me on the Not! Line, and to everyone on the forums for their continued patience.

Previously on the steaming, malodorous lump of crap masquerading as a television program: Dawson waxed obvious about Mr. Brooks's suspension "between dying and dead," then bid Mr. Brooks farewell by saying "see ya"; Gretchen called the senior ski trip "a rite of passage"; Jen broke into the mini-bar, then got busted doing some "recycling" by Mr. Kasdan; Joey gave it up.

Fade up on the ski lodge, early morning. We pan over the bus to see the Capeside seniors straggling towards it, then down to Jack "Now You See Him, Now You Don't" McPhee and Jen "Ladies And Gentlemen -- Mrs. Elton John!" Lindley. Jen leans on Jack as she limps along the path, and Jack asks if they're "okay" with what happened the night before. Jen says yes, "completely," and then wonders aloud what would have happened if she hadn't put a stop to their "ill-conceived fumblings," if she'd gotten pregnant and had to ditch the rest of senior year to give birth to and raise their "illegitimate love-child." Oh, for the love of Mike -- a The Best Thing reference? Did the writers get locked in a bathroom with seven-month-old copies of airline magazines or something? Jack gets off a decent line about telling "said love-child" that Mommy and Daddy can't have sex "unless Daddy's thinking about Ryan Phillippe." Jen says that she'd "be thinking about him too." So it's all fine between them, and they head for the door of the bus, only to see Mr. Kasdan glowering at them. Jen pulls a hank of hair over her face, but it's too late; Mr. Kasdan wants to know, "Are there any other delinquent acts you care to commit before we embark on our journey home?" Jen faces him and asks point-blank, "So -- what's it gonna be? My punishment?" Mr. K says that he doesn't have punishment in mind, exactly, but something more like chicken soup for her teenage soul. Shut up, Mr. K. Jen starts to protest that "they were only, like, airplane bottles," but Jack yanks her onto the bus before she can dig herself any deeper. Heh. Enter "One" Drue "Thing" Valentine, looking hungover. Mr. K bitches him out for his "tardy arrival," adding that Drue's put them behind schedule: "Just exactly what part of 'we leave at six-thirty a.m. sharp' were you not listening to?" Six-thirty? Where did they go on this ski trip, anyway -- Vail? Why the hell do they have to get up at six-thirty? Drue asks if they can stop at a Starbucks. Mr. K: "Get on the bus, punk!" Drue slumps towards the bus as Mr. K wonders aloud where Joey and Pacey have gotten to: "Probably off somewhere sucking face." "Tell me about it," Drue grumbles. Heh. Mr. K starts to stomp off towards the lodge, but Drue looks up at the windows of the bus and spots the back of a head that looks like Pacey's, macking with a girl; said head belongs to a body in a brown coat. It's hard to tell if Drue knows it's not actually Pacey at this point. Drue points the couple out to Mr. K, and Mr. K looks over to see the side of a girl's face that looks like Joey's. Mr. K rolls his eyes and shoves past Drue and up the steps. Drue smirks; the couple breaks the smooch to reveal -- what else? -- that it isn't Joey and/or Pacey after all. "Disgusting, isn't it," Drue smarms to himself, then makes a "hooo" face and boards the bus without correcting Mr. K as to the identity of the macking couple.

Cut to an aerial shot of about a week's worth of clothes strewn all over the floor, none of which appeared in the final scene from the episode, and pan up the bed to "Saint" Pacey "Of The Neurotic Heart" Witter and Joey "Mope On A Rope" Potter sleeping entwined. Joey wakes first, and she turns sleepily towards Pacey; they smile at each other. Joey's smile starts to fade immediately, though, and while Pacey continues beaming, Joey turns her head back away from him and goes rigid with discomfort. A cat gets caught in the spokes of a bicycle wheel; pan out on Joey frowning as Pacey kisses her shoulder.

New, Andie-free credits, at last. Wow, Katie Holmes looked a lot younger in the first three seasons.

"About Last Night."

As the first title comes up, I realize that I've stumbled unwittingly onto the set of blockbuster game show Who Wants To Pad The Running Time? and boy, I need a lifeline. In the lobby of the ski lodge, Pacey and Joey approach the snack machines. Joey had more of a sit-down breakfast in mind, but Pacey expositions that "bus tickets cost money, woman," and adds that she had him pay for "that call to Gretchen"; the captioning reads, "that impromptu photo session," though, so either they crowded into a novelty photo booth just now, or Joey got her Traci Lords on the night before and insisted that they take pictures of themselves having sex. Ha ha ha! Yeah, right. And then Mr. Peepers flew out of my butt. Anyhow, Pacey says it's "crackers and coffee," and hands Joey a dollar bill. "Lovely," Joey snarks. Awkward pause. Pacey says, "So." A month later, he asks if Joey told Bessie. "Bessie"? I don't think I remember a "Bessie." Ohhh, that Bessie -- didn't she have a boyfriend, too, "Teddy" or someone? Joey, absently: "Tell Bessie what?" Pacey rolls his eyes: "Does the word 'duh' mean anything to you?" Joey looks at him. "About last night," he prompts her. She half-laughs and asks what she's supposed to say, and warns him not to suggest that she say she's "a woman now" or she'll puke on him. Pacey asks, "Well, what about Gretchen?" Joey snorts all "yeah right" and cracks a joke about saying "oh, by the way, your brother deflowered me last night," and she's got a point; you don't discuss that stuff with your boyfriend's sister, especially not when she's dating your obnoxious ex-boyfriend. Joey goes on to say that she's not the kind of person who discusses her boyfriend's "sexual prowess" with his siblings.

As they head over towards the gift shop, Pacey poses a hypothetical: if she were the type of person to discuss that kind of thing, what does she "think she might say"? Joey, mildly befuddled: "About what, about the prowess?" Pacey, a little embarrassed: "Yeah. About the prowess." Joey complains that, just when she thinks he's not a typical guy, there he goes, "dragging [his] knuckles with the rest of the primates," and Pacey tries to play it off by saying that she should never underestimate the desire of the primate to hear good things about "his abilities in the sack." "The sack"? Okay, who set the time machine to 1977? Contrivance? Contrivance, I'm talking to you! I know you hear me, mister! Pacey offers Joey a Pop Tart. Joey gapes. Pacey drags her into the gift shop.

Joey blanches, then parries with, "That's kinda personal, don't you think?" ["Odd, when the correct answer to the question is 'fuck off, virgin.'" -- Wing Chun] "I think it's really personal," Dawson admits, cringing. Joey asks what he'd think if she asked whether he'd slept with Gretchen yet. "The answer'd be no," Dawson says, too quickly, and I imagine he expects that, by copping to a rated-PG sex life himself, he's therefore entitled to full disclosure from Joey -- but he surprises me by blithering that, regardless, it's none of his business, and he apologizes for asking. Okay, he's a giant stinky ass for asking at all, but he gets points for at least sort of acknowledging it. Joey looks down, biting her lip, as Dawson still won't shut up, saying that he's not holding her to anything they might have said in the past (buh?), that he wants her to live her life and "be happy," and that he knows how it is to make a promise and mean it at the time, but then "life gets in the way." And, to his (partial) credit, he seems to mean it. Yeah, it's nosy; yeah, it's inappropriate -- wildly so. But I think that, for once, he's just asking out of simple curiosity and not in order to hold Joey's toes to the fire. Not to get all Dawson-apologist, but really, considering how hideously I expected the scene to play out on Dawson's end, it's gratifying that he proves me wrong. Well, sort of. He's still a jackass, though.

Any. WAY. Joey says that, if someone had told her two years ago that they'd have this conversation, she'd have referred them "to the nearest asylum," but things haven't turned out the way they thought. Then she says that, a couple of years ago, she'd have said she'd sleep with Dawson as her first, she would have answered "unequivocally -- 'Dawson Leery, that's who.'" Dawson looks either hopeful or nervous, it's hard to say which. "It wouldn't have occurred to me" Joey trails off. Dawson keeps giving her that prompting look. "Especially not Pacey," she sighs. Dawson says mildly, "So what are you saying, Jo?" Stricken, Joey looks back and forth between Dawson and the ground about a hundred times. Dawson's face settles in expectation. Joey looks down, makes the decision to sell Pacey out, smiles to herself, and says quietly, "No." Dude, Joey is THE WORST LIAR EVER. Dawson's head jerks back in surprise; clearly, he'd expected from her lead-up to hear that she had had sex with Pacey. Joey says with a big out-of-place grin, "I -- have not slept with Pacey." Oh, for god's sake. She couldn't just decline to answer? Or tell the truth? It's none of Dawson's business anyway -- why would Joey answer in the way most likely to tear Pacey's heart to shreds when it gets back to him, as we all know it will? Dawson has moved on, and it's time for Joey to start treating him that way, and I really, really hope Pacey dumps her when he hears about this, because it's one thing to have a couple of problems entering the sexual atmosphere -- it's a bumpy head trip in a lot of ways, especially for a girl, and that's fine. But no, Joey's still hung up on Dawson after she's SLEPT WITH someone ELSE, and if that's the situation, she's a fucking head case, and there's Pacey can do but try to save himself. I got a bad feeling last week that she slept with Pacey not because she felt ready to have sex, but because she felt she owed him for all of the shit that he's put up with, and while she certainly does owe him for that, she shouldn't have used sex to pay back the debt, especially if she knew -- which she probably did -- that she'd feel all weird around Dawson afterwards. I don't hate Joey, exactly, but she's an emotional sinkhole, and Pacey needs to get out, and do it now.

And FURTHERMORE -- and oh yes, there's more, and a further besides -- could network-television writers just ONCE make a girl feel GOOD about deciding to have sex? Could the writers on this show not constantly give a girl the green-light for intercourse and then punish her for it? They punished Andie with that whole whodunit letter storyline, they punished Gretchen, and now they've decided to punish Joey too. Oh, not sleeping with Dawson? Well, no orgasm for you, and here's a heaping helping of fight-with-your-boyfriend-the--day! Comes with two side orders, guilt and insecurity! Pacey loves her. She's fucked in the head, but she loves him back. They love each other, and that's the best possible world in which a girl can have sex for the first time, and the whole orgasm thing is not only too much information, but it's completely absurd that Pacey wouldn't know whether she'd had one, and wouldn't have given her one. Please. The man slept with a woman twice his age -- he's got the goods. But that's not even the point. The point is that they feel like they have to demonize sex, and it makes me sick. This isn't 1958. I truly hope that the girls who watch this show don't come away from it thinking that sex is this heartbreaking, guilt-ridden, ugly, torturous affair that Changes You Forever, because losing your virginity is a big deal, but I lost my virginity to a pig-dog that I didn't even love, and do you know how I felt the day? Relieved. Excited. I felt like things would start happening, and I could get ready for them, finally, because I could finally understand what they meant, and then I got rid of the pig-dog and fell in love for the first time, and when you've had sex, love can mean something so much bigger and deeper (ew, not like that). But do they show us that? No. No, they don't. Do they show us a girl having a very real reaction to growing up a bit? No. No, of course not. No, in Televisionland, good girls don't, and if they do, they get to pay for it. I apologize if y'all feel I got too personal in this paragraph. I know it's just a television show. But I can't just sit here and not say anything, because it's infuriating, and the writers get it wrong every goddamn time, and I feel like opening my window like in Network and screaming, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" God, I loathe this show.

So Dawson stutters out a laughing "oh" before admitting, "I'm sorry -- that was a sigh of relief you just heard." Oh, Dawson. You had me, kind of, and then you lost me. You don't SAY these things OUT LOUD, buddy! You just DON'T! Jesus! Quit while you're behind already! AND SHUT UP! Joey looks like she might cry, but tries to cover it with a smile. Dawson starts to babble something, but Joey fixes him with a look and says, "Ahwell, goodnight." "Goodnight, Jo," Dawson says, nearly panting with relief that he's not the only virgin in Capeside -- or so he thinks. Long shot of Joey slowly walking away. Dawson watches her for a moment, then walks off in the opposite direction. Zoom out from the Rialto; the shot goes to black-and-white. Yuck. I need a shower.