Date of airing: May 19, 1998 (WB)
Nielsen ratings information: 7.89 million viewers, 5.6/9 in Households
Meta jokes on how to bring television shows into a summer hiatus via cliffhangers; dramatic stories; a story with Pacey that felt more like a filler than anything meaningful for his character arc, probably because the writers didn’t know what to do with the character this late in the season when the endgame was set from the beginning... It was quite an eventful and successful season finale, thanks to the level of emotional manipulation in Joey’s story, as well as the dramatic and tragic events in Jen’s life, showcasing that you can live two different lives with two different options on how to lose a (grand)parent, and realize they are both terrible and will make you cry.
As Dawson stated seconds before the inevitable endgame kiss, Steven Spielberg did indeed outgrow his Peter Pan phase, which is exactly what Joey told Dawson in the series premiere (creating a circle). And having the episode and season – and potentially series, if it had not been a huge success on the WB and needed to be canceled after the first season – end with a kiss makes it all look like the main adventure of the series was to get Dawson and Joey from childhood friends to lovers, while remaining teenagers and doing all the things teenagers would normally do, or whatever Kevin Williamson thought teenagers were doing in the 1990s. In the end, this season of television was a story about how Dawson and Joey realized their love and affection and feelings for each other, without having it happen to the characters at the same time. For Joey, it happened in the very beginning, maybe even before the series began. For Dawson, it happened just now, because his eyes needed to be ripped open to clearly see what was happening. Between then and now, a lot of stuff happened. One of their best friends lost his virginity to his English teacher, and a big-city girl moved into the neighborhood and created moments of boys breaking their necks to woo her. Also, separation of parents, the birth of a baby boy, the arrival of an ex who looked like he was in his thirties and about to star in a biker gang drama on NBC, as well as the production of a movie by high schoolers who thought they knew better.
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| Jen is one stop short of praying for her grandfather's life. |
I was surprised that Joey’s story about her father, and her questions for him, grabbed me emotionally. A character who was just introduced immediately forces me to push a tear out of my eye socket? I can’t believe it actually happened, even if it did in a somewhat absurd way, like the prison guard at the gate allowing Joey to talk to her father one more time after being bribed by Pacey (I’m sure if prison management finds out about that, the guard gets fired faster than he can put those $20 in his wallet). There was an interesting complexity to Joey and her father’s relationship, almost making me hope that this wasn’t the end of their story and Joey will continue living an emotionally stunted life as a teenager who had to see her mother die and her father go off to spend time in prison. For a moment I could connect with Joey, as I also never had a proper relationship with my parents, albeit not in the way she had. Capeside may be a small town with seemingly happy people living in it, but behind the curtains, the drama and darkness reign and is universal.
But here was a father/daughter story that ended with acceptance of love and appreciation for each other’s existence in their lives (even if Joey had it a lot harder to say the L-word to her incarcerated father), something that I never had in my childhood. Here was a story, in which a father proclaimed he truly loved his child, no matter his circumstances, no matter the mistakes he did. All it did to me was wake me up to remember all the love I could have received during my childhood, and how I was all alone, by myself, doing my thing, without recognition from anyone in my family. Of course, I jerked away a tear during that story.
But that scene at the fence was also a bit problematic story-wise when Joey and her father’s conversation became all about Joey and Dawson. When Mr. Potter and Dawson talked, it was all about Dawson realizing he is in love with Joey. When Joey and her father talked, it was mostly about how Dawson is in love with Joey. Every story crossed straight into Dawson and Joey’s potential of a romance, and I rolled my eyes a minimum number of two times during these scenes, because of how obvious and perverted the effort has become to get Dawson and Joey together by the end of the episode. Apparently, it was not possible to make this story just about Joey and her father.
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| Two worlds, one love, and a Sarah McLachlan song. |
Jen’s story was also well done. It did feel a bit separated from the other events of this episode, but I like seeing Jen go through her emotional phases as well (what is it with me and my like for seeing emotional drama starring women?), even if I had a bit of an issue with the writers steering Jen towards religion and praying in church, despite the fact that it has been a narrative point that was always present when it came to conversations between Jen and her Grams. In a way, it would even be realistic for Jen to find God after these experiences, especially while living in a small town, but that doesn’t mean I have to like that development. Searching for God while grieving the loss of a parental figure is not the only way to grieve, begging the question of how many of the writers were religious and whether there may have been a small conversation about turning Jen’s story and the death of her grandfather towards this plot. It did help that Jen joined her Grams though – at least there was one parent/child narrative in this series that found something of an end on a lighter note.
