Season 1, Episode 5: Hurricane

The set-up for episode 5 is simple and genius, and also mildly confusing, in that it opens with Joey and Dawson happily watching TV together in Dawson's room, waiting for the weather report as if Dawson had not declared Joey dead to him last episode (it turns out he's still mildly pissed but it's a case of "heeey at least you're not a slut, Jo, I need SOMEONE to hang out with"). A hurricane is fast approaching Capeside, school is cancelled and Dawson's house is the safest place to be, apparently; so Joey, Joey's sister Bessie and Bessie's boyfriend Bodie head to the Leery's for shelter, as do Jen and her grandmother. While Mitch is busy battening down the hatches that adulterous hussy Gail is still being an adulterous hussy...and everybody knows.

EXCEPT IT'S NOT SAFE AT THE LEERY'S! While everyone may be safe from the meteorological hurricane (“Hurricane Chris”), there's a HURRICANE OF EMOTIONS brewing and getting ready to WRECK SOME SHIT.

That hurricane, I'm sure you have already guessed, is Hurricane Dawson, who since last episode has worked on his crazy attack. Check him out, catching his adulterous whore of a mother on the phone to her lover: 

and then...just...oh NO YOU DI'NT DAWSON:

The only person who can outdo him in sheer unadulterated pettiness is Joey, who plays her trump card:

Dawson (and Joey) lurking around every corner making veiled allusions to what THEY KNOW finally push Gail to confess her adulterous affair to Mitch. To which I say:

a) Gail? Could you not have waited like, 2 hours for ALL THOSE RANDOM PEOPLE TO LEAVE YOUR HOUSE? Because seriously? That's freaking AWKWARD.

b) Gail?! What kind of a mother are you that you want to confess your adultery to your husband IN FRONT OF YOUR 15 YEAR OLD SON? It's bad enough he had to guilt you into it; don't make him be part of this conversation, YOU CRAZY BITCH.

As you can probably imagine, IT DOES NOT GO WELL (and Gail's hair, it turns out, reflects her emotional state). We also discover EXACTLY where Dawson gets his flair for the melodramatically emo from: 

Meanwhile, over on (I assume) the other side of town, Pacey is being forced to hang out with his big brother, Deputy Doug Witter, as he makes his rounds checking on properties and helping people prepare for the oncoming storm. 

Whose property should they come across other than Ms Tamara Jacobs? When she claims to hate storms and be super scared of the hurricane, Doug offers the Witter Bros services to help secure the property and to stay and ride out the storm with her. Commence Deputy Doug flirting, which involves bonding over show tunes. 

And Pacey making this face. 

AWKWARD.

Actually, no, the definition of awkward is your cop brother pulling a gun on you and threatening to shoot you unless you tell the teacher he's flirting with, who you're secretly sleeping with, that he's not gay. 

THIS EPISODE IS ACTUALLY FULL OF GOOD STUFF

1. We find out in this episode that “Jen's Grandma” is actually known to other people as “Mrs Ryan”. She also, awesomely, gets to show another side to her character, other than the one-note “Judgemental Old Religious Lady” she has been stuck as thus far. I actually forgot how much I liked Mrs Ryan and how she gradually reveals herself to be a caring, kind, incredibly wise and supportive person to have onside.

 She talks to Dawson in a language he can understand: film. 

Because initially – yeah, sour-puss with an unfortunate way of phrasing things.

2. We get a hint into Pacey's background. It's weird how Pacey is the least fleshed out character so far: he's a seemingly happy go lucky clown who doesn't do well with girls (his own admission, last ep) and who is flunking at school (Ms Jacobs told him when she offered an inappropriate 'study incentive' that she'd been speaking to his other teachers about his grades). But that's all we know. This episode we discover that he has a brother in the police (Deputy Doug! His love of showtunes and Broadway musicals is worth remembering, although he claims he isn't gay) but interestingly, that his father is the Capeside Chief of Police. The way Doug talks about Pacey in front of Ms Jacobs is really sad too: he puts him down constantly, and refuses to believe the good things Ms Jacobs (in her role as teacher, lol) says about him, because “that doesn't sound like Pacey”.

3. Jen and Joey continue to slowly warm up to each other, bonding because Dawson is being a jerk to both of them. They have a really sweet scene, actually, where they are discussing the potential size of Dawson's...err...package, the way girls TOTALLY do; Joey drops the hostility and the fake 'bad girl' routine she has pulled thus far in all her dealings with Jen and is genuinely coy about Dawson and sex; Jen defers to Joey's knowledge of all things Dawson, and appeals to her “girl to girl”. Something about this little scene just struck me as really nicely done.

4. Dawson's dad is dreaming of building a scuba-diving themed restaurant. Called the Kelp, or something. Just remember that. He's tinkering with the model when Gail breaks the news. 

5. WE FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO JEN.

Don't judge me you guys, but I cried during this episode, and it was totally unexpected – because remember? I was never Team Jen, and didn't care ONE BIT about her story. And yeah – her pronouncements up to now about teen sex have tended to be a tad didactic and tonally out of sync with the rest of the episode, but I can overlook it. Because I REALLY DID HATE DAWSON last episode for being SUCH an asshole and judging Jen based on learning one fact that wasn't to his liking.

And now we learn all the facts. Jen approaches Dawson as the hurricane ends, after he has broken his silence by all but calling her a slut to her face. And she tells him the whole truth, so he can judge her all he wants. 

Damn it. I cried so hard. 

This doesn't mean I want him to BE with Jen though. DAMMIT Dawson's Creek is so confusing.

Last episode was where the emotional side of things started ramping up: this episode marks the official point where I am, all snark aside, TOTALLY INVESTED IN THIS SHIT.

Season 1, Episode 4: Discovery

Episode in a nutshell: Dawson reveals the full extent of his crazy inner darkness and UNLEASHES THE BEAST on EVERYONE upon making a discovery. This is because nobody can understand or follow his insane mood-swings, and yet EVERYBODY TRIES REALLY HARD. 

THIS IS MY FAVOURITE EPISODE SO FAR BECAUSE DAWSON IS SUCH A CRAZY BITCH.

I've figured out your trick, ambiguous Dawson's Creek episode titles! The titular discovery of this light on action, but heavy on EMOtion episode could be any of the following:

1. Dawson discovers what Joey has secretly known for a couple of episodes now, but wisely opted not to tell him about based on his tendency to lose his already tenuous grasp on reality when anything deviates from the multicoloured sparkliness of Dawsonland (where everyone eats cupcakes all day long and ride unicorns across rainbows). That is: despite his parents being the most inappropriate of exhibitionists, his mother is having AN AFFAIR.

Extra bonus sub-discovery from Dawson's twisted perspective: JOEY IS WRONG FOR KEEPING THIS VITAL INFORMATION FROM HIM. As Joey SO RIGHTLY points out: if she HAD chosen to tell Dawson and shatter his perfect world, then Joey automatically = WRONG for SHATTERING DAWSON'S PERFECT WORLD. Poor Joey, she can't win, in love with a crazy person. BUT IT DOESN'T DISSUADE HER...

2. Dawson and Joey discover that Dawson accidentally filmed more than he intended up at the ruins, and realise that they are watching Ms Jacobs – one of their TEACHERS – make an O-face with an unidentified partner. The big discovery though, is that the guy with “brown hair and throbbing neck muscles” is PACEY WITTER, who confesses his part in the steamy (omg, not to mention criminal) proceedings to Dawson when he BREAKS INTO DAWSON'S ROOM LOOKING FOR THE TAPE. 

 

Extra bonus sub-discovery from Dawson's twisted perspective: PACEY (who it appears was actually just reaching out to Dawson in his confession, kind of like “Dude I'm way out of my depth I JUST GOT LAID (yay!) but BITCH IS CRAZY HELP ME” is

• an evil betrayer for keeping his blossoming studliness from Dawson. (Yes, that sounds a lot more...slash...than I intended). 
  
  
  
   Don't ask Dawson. Maybe ask Mitch to take a look?
   
• an evil meddler for daring to offer friendly well-meaning advice to Dawson (when Dawson discovers discovery #3)
• a huge threat now, because he's no longer “loser friend” but “friend who got laid by (an admittedly crazy) cougariffic teacher”. Guess Pacey's been having his own little chats with Man-Meat and putting that fatherly advice to practical use. MAKE HER LIPS DANCE PACEY. Oh my god I wish I could unimagine that now.

3. Dawson discovers that Jen...GASP...is not a virgin. And honestly? HAS A MASSIVE EMO ABOUT IT.

I do think this is an inappropriate conversation to be having with your Grandad. Even if he IS in a coma. 

 

Can I just state for the record here that back in the day, I used to hate Jen more than I hated Joey? If there's one FASCINATING pattern emerging early from the rewatch project, it's that as an adult, I can put my “sigh, romantic schoolgirl crush” glasses aside and see past the shallow “Oh I want X and Y characters to end up together” and actually appreciate some of the qualities in Jen and Joey I would have totally ignored or overlooked first time round.

Jen is reluctant to reveal her murky past (it's still murky for us, but at least we learn in this episode that her ''fast'' times in New York include having sex pretty young). But she tells Dawson that she's serious about actually having a relationship with him based on more than banter and shallow flirting – she acknowledges that is fun, but she wants to mean more than that. She reaches out to him when he's hurting at the revelation that his mother is having an affair – offering to listen, to talk it out, seriously with him. And she asks if he wants to know the truth about why she left New York, because she wants to be honest and not hide from him. She's not a virgin.

Dawson pretends like he's cool with it. 

But he's not, and he freaks out, and stops speaking to Jen. He's already stopped speaking to Joey (over her not telling him about his mother's affair) and relations with him and Pacey are slightly strained, now that Pacey is the man, and Dawson is The Virgin.

DAWSON OFFICIALLY ALIENATES ALL HIS FRIENDS IN THIS EPISODE.

The more he moodswings the better. Happy Dawson is boring. CRAZY DEMON-POSSESSED DAWSON? AWESOME.

Back in the day when I hated Jen, I would have been like “blah blah boring who cares?''. But now? I TOTALLY APPRECIATE THE CHARACTER. I appreciate that in Dawson's Creek she is a mature 15 year old who has seen too much of life and her mature approach to things reflects that; I appreciate her outlook: genuinely trying to start afresh, and make her life new and better. You know what? I HATED Dawson when he judged her, shutting her out because she all of a sudden didn't fit the fantasy picture he painted in his mind.

I am confused that now I am all GO JEN. I don't know who to hate anymore.

Please also note: this episode ends with Dawson and Joey discussing the end of their friendship, only they are imagining themselves in an alternate universe where they are getting married but both turn up to the wedding with dates. 

WTF DAWSON'S CREEK? This ending was supposed to be poignant and romantic and all like, achingly hopeful but all I could think was “Someone's on crack in the writer's room”.