Date of airing: November 11, 1998 (WB)
Nielsen ratings information: 6.95 million viewers, 5.0/8 in Households, 2.8/7 with Adults 18-49
written by: Jon Harmon Feldman
directed by: Lou Antonio
This is the second episode of the series that takes a title from a season-one episode and puts a “the” in front of it to distinguish it in a list of episode titles. Just in case you were wondering how lazy some TV writers are when it comes to putting titles on the first page of every script. This is in complete opposition to how I like to start writing scripts, because the title is being thought of much harder than some story choices during the first couple of pages, which is probably why I never found anyone interested in reading my fictional material, or being interested in finishing any of the writing projects that I started.
This episode was all about losing people and couples separating. Now that Dawson knows what it feels like to lose people, maybe there is a way for him to understand what Jen is going through at the moment, which means the two will get back together, now that he turned out to be single by the end of the episode. Would that not be a twist after six episodes of Dawson and Joey dating... After six hours of the writers carefully placing the characters and having each of them sort of date each other a third into the season, it seems weird that the central couple of the series is already history, even if it was to be expected that Dawson and Joey would not be together for long. After all, keeping a pair together does not make for great drama in a primetime teen soap opera, so Dawson and Joey’s days were always numbered. Although one can argue that they will never have a functioning relationship when a rather innocent kiss between Joey and Jack is leading to such high-stakes drama between the soulmates. And now, Dawson can go back to Jen and free her from Abby’s dangerous influence; Jack and Joey can start something romantic together, now that Joey is free to find herself (with another boy); and Pacey and Andie also have started their thing after he realized that dancing with Kristie was kind of disappointing. All this happens while Gale and Mitch split up as well, while possibly lusting for each other secretly on the phone.
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| The parents sit the kid down to talk about divorce: It's every child's nightmare. |
The dance itself was a bit void of highlights and only consisted of troublemaking stories, like Dawson learning of the aforementioned kiss, and Andie witnessing Paceythe dance hater going for a slow dance with the hottest blonde in Capeside High, but the drama surrounding the Homecoming Dance was super solid, and I liked where things were going in general. One can only hope that the couplings the writers have introduced or reintroduced with this episode will stay for a little bit – including a hopefully lasting and meaningful friendship between Jen and Jack, now that they have met each other. Considering what she is going through right now and what he will go through later this season, one might think the two are made for each other in the friends department and could definitely rely on each other, which is why I am glad that the seeds for the friendship were planted in this episode. There can never be anyone else for the two, and besides that, the show needs two characters who simply are friends with one another and not love interests. Jen and Jack were made for that in this episode (possibly because the writers knew already where to go with Jack in this season), Now I hope that with Jack being Jen’s new best friend, the constantly annoying and no-good Abby Morgan will disappear. If she would not be so shallow, her character would be alright and bearable, but all she can think about is getting a muscular and throbbing penis inside of her, treating her universe like a modeling show in which she is the judge and the contestants must sleep with her to score points.
In the meantime, there was a bit of a back and forth between Andie and Pacey, which is why I was happy that the two made out of it alive, kissing and slow-dancing at the end of the episode. It was about time, after all the sparring and the heavy backstory delivered in the previous episode, and I would not mind if Pacey becomes a better character in the process – maybe a good student in school with C grades on a regular, maybe even with better relationships with his family, now that he knows that other families have it worse than him. Just something to make it look like Pacey does not just get romance out of Andie, which will then be broken off after six episodes, but also life lessons on how to be a better human. If she sees all these awesome adjectives in her, which he seemed to have been riding on like a wave, then maybe he can do that as well?
Dawson learning about the Jack/Joey kiss was pretty obvious, considering the entire group was about to hang out and go to the Homecoming dance together. There was something ridiculous about the argument Joey and Jack had on the dance floor, however – arguing about the kiss in a voice volume that could have certainly been picked up by anyone else in the building (including Dawson, who was dancing with Jen mere feet away). Heck, Dawson did not even need to stalk up on Jack and Joey and learn of the kiss that way, he simply just overheard them on the dance floor, giving room and an audience to the inevitable punch that flattened Jack. In fact, stepping out in the hallway for the second part of the Joey/Jack argument seemed like a way to carry out the story for another minute and fill the episode with airtime. Considering this episode already came in short, maybe that was the mission here?
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| A girl stands alone in a hallway. |
And then there was the for-real-this-time separation of Gale and Mitch. It finally happened, and Dawson is finally reacting to it. First, he is losing his parents to separation, and then he is losing Joey to another boy – life must be crappy for Dawson right now, which is why it is such a shame he is only a wannabe director and not a screenwriter, otherwise, he would have started filling pages of pages with an emotional story already, capable of being filmed with the next episode. Plus, the separation storyline reminded me of the divorce of my own parents and how I may have reacted to it if I would have had a series like DAWSON’S CREEK back in the day. This episode aired in 1998, my parents announced their divorce in February of 2000. I do not remember if DAWSON’S CREEK was already airing on German television back then (I discovered it a couple of years later), but the potential of me having had the opportunity to watch this episode before I would have essentially gone through the same trauma and drama that Dawson did? The knowledge gained from this hour may have been valuable, but in the end, I will never know if I would have reacted differently to my parents’ divorce if there had been a TV show out there that I watched that went through a similar drama.
There was only one thing about Gale and Mitch’s separation that I did not like. It is when they had the phone call, which was almost on its way to becoming a booty call, as well as Mitch’s late-night arrival at the house, looking longingly at Gale from the inside of his car. Let the two be separated for a little while, for a few episodes at least, instead of immediately writing them back together in the same episode they split up. I want Dawson to go through all the emotional mess I went through, just to realize a year or two later that you should have never given a damn. I never liked my parents, so why was I this emotionally disturbed about their divorce announcement? This might be something for a therapist one day...
