Date of airing: December 16, 1998 (WB)
Nielsen ratings information: 6.62 million viewers, 4.5/7 in Households
written by: Darin Goldberg, Shelley Meals
directed by: Patrick Norris
This must be the part of the season during which the writers decided to take it slow and not create too many complicated storylines, or things might look weird and become a soap opera, which is something DAWSON’S CREEK did not want to be (or else, it would have been compared to BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 every day for the rest of its life). I can see that the writers’ room tried to stay away from the soap opera genre altogether, simply because there were already shows on primetime set in that genre, and they were not particularly successful with the audience. There was no need for a smalltown drama to go down that path, even though this episode almost looked like it was where the show was about to head. Abby Morgan and her running mate Chris Not-Bryce-From-13 REASONS WHY-But-Very-Close almost turned this episode into something that could have been part of a soap opera, but then there were the realistic aspects of the stories that saved it all. Because the episode needed saving from Abby, who drank from the pool of soap opera cliches and got drunk off of it.
Well, at least you could take Abby’s villainous behavior as a plot device to give Andie’s character arc more depth, as well as have her feel like a true main character of the series, even if Meredith Monroe was still credited as a “special guest star.” You could see that the writers considered Andie a central character in the show (her official credit be damned), otherwise, the scene of her in front of the mirror, talking to Pacey on the phone and slowly taking her medication would have not been this focused on her, written to be as emotional as possible. You were no tallowed to hear Pacey’s voice coming through the phone, that was how much the scene was focused on Andie’s emotional minefield. This episode sort of served as Andie’s origin story, in which it was shown that her family history has defined her in more than one way, and now we all fear that Andie may end up the same as her mother: confused, angry, depressed and sad, and who knows if there will ever be thoughts of suicide in such a premise, because that is where I could see the story heading if it continues like that.
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| Their divorce is going fine. |
This episode had the beginnings of a class president election in this weird high school. I do not even know how the folks there were thinking of Abby as a serious character, let alone class president, judging by her loud and obnoxious mouth. If she is going to get elected, it will have been because of Chris, who happened to be cool and buddy-buddy with the boys and girls in town, and probably knew how to properly manipulate an election – better than Trump looking for 11,780 votes in Georgia.
Still, Abby is in need of some serious help after this episode, if she thinks she can still run for class president after being burned by Pacey with a little help from 1990s technology. The writers needed some serious thoughts about upgrading the character a little bit and making her less the obnoxious asshole she was in this episode (similar to how Jen was transformed from a bitchy type to a caring person in these nine episodes). Who knows, maybe I will like her more if she gets an equal amount of depth as Andie has gotten here, but considering how much of a villain she has become, I doubt that will ever happen. But there has to be a reason for Abby to be this kind of a douche, and I would love to know why or she will forever and always just be a plot device for any of the central characters, only thrown into episodes to overcomplicate their lives, to create jealousy, conflict, and drama. Granted, this is what characters like Abby are there for, but please, give them some depth and meaning in the process.
Dawson trying to find his teenage self for the sake of more realism in his script (so, he just vomited that one on paper in-between episodes?) was an okay story. Not anything I was craving for, but there was an idea to have Dawson remove himself from his Kevin Williamson-self and be an actual 15-year-old boy, thinking a little too long about movies and a little too heavily about naked women, even if it felt kind of unnatural to see Dawson that way. What a shame that Jen was sort of unsuccessful in showing Dawson how to be a teenager, because dumb Dawson could have been hilarious Dawson and Jen could have ditched her previous New York City persona and learned how to be a proper teenager herself.
But hey, the notion of Dawson and Jen just being friends is actually pretty cool. First of all, I am shook to my core that Jen was not at all interested in Dawson any longer and she had to hold him back, after it was her mission during the early stages of the season to get him back for herself. Second of all, how was it possible for Jen to be the mature teenager in this story if it was Dawson who was always on the high ground, and it was Jen who kissed rock bottom quickly during the previous episode? Or have you forgotten already that Jen needed to be “rescued” from a drunken threesome she most likely would have felt bad about?
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| Andie is all alone with her thoughts and medication. |
And finally... At last, Dawson is going through the notion of being the spawn of divorced parents. It was about time. Hopefully, he is going to break apart over this, so that I can find opportunities to connect with this character on an emotional level (as a child of divorced parents myself) and stop seeing the worst in Dawson, after all the crap he pulled throughout the first season. But who knows, maybe his parents could be blamed just a little bit for the potential breakdown in Dawson’s psyche. First, they have hot and steamy sex on the living room table, but the next morning, the divorce papers have been served, as if it was just a normal thing to do after you intercoursed with the person you are separating from.
I am not even sure what the writers intended to do here, but it looks like they wanted to give the viewers the same hopes Dawson felt when he caught his parents having sex: “Yes, they are reconciling, about time!” But nada, the separation has not been reversed, and instead, it’s going full-on towards a divorce now. I can only hope that the divorce proceedings will take up a considerable amount of screentime, because I would love to see that story play out.
