One thing I’m realizing during this particular re-watch of Dawson’s Creek is that this show really struggled to balance out its multiple plots within episodes. Generally speaking, most hours of Creek have two concurrent plots, often dividing the core characters into pairs for one reason or another. One of those stories always centers around Dawson while the other generally revolves around Joey (unless their story is the same, in which case Pacey tends to get elevated to that other position). Even when everybody is in the same place at the same time (like in “The All-Nighter”), there are still dividing lines and factions and divergent stories. Sometimes all of those plots will be satisfying, and sometimes one will totally eclipse the other.

When Dawson’s Creek first premiered in January 1998, countless articles were written about the somewhat elevated language of the show’s teen protagonists. They were obsessed with self-analysis and casually tossed around dimestore SAT words that certainly felt out of place among their TV brethren, though not necessarily in actual high schools. That angle was used as criticism and praise in equal measure, but what it really drives home is creator Kevin Williamson’s general love of language.

Of course he loves words—he is, after all, a writer by trade. But we’ve all seen enough bad movies and middling television to know that not everybody who works with language actually has an affection for it.

I know I’ve been hard on Dawson Leery, but throughout the first 19 episodes of the show bearing his name he has proven himself to be a petty and manipulative narcissist. Those qualities have been on particularly powerful display in the past few episodes as his relationship with Joey has slowly disintegrated, ending in their break-up in “The Dance.” In real life, I would never wish a break-up on anyone, but in the case of Dawson, getting dumped was the best thing that ever happened to him.

My wife and I have been obsessing over Moonlighting, the hit dramedy from the ‘80s that launched the career of Bruce Willis. With a redesigned office and some deconstruction of Cybil Shepherd’s hair, Moonlighting would absolutely fit into the modern television landscape and would still be mildly ahead of its time today even though it went off the air in 1989.

Dawson’s Creek was sometimes referred to (often in derisive terms) as a “teen soap,” and “Full Moon Rising” is certainly an episode that could be submitted as evidence of its soapiness. It features the continued presence of Tamara Jacobs (I had completely forgotten how long she sticks around in her second visit), as well as a deeply twisted escalation of the open marriage plot between Mitch and Gail and the sexual assault of poor Jen Lindley. It’s all pretty soapy.

I have lost track of the actual number of times I have made my way through Dawson’s Creek, though I estimate this current run is at least the sixth time I’ve made my way through the series in sequence. There are plenty of my favorite episodes I have revisited as one-offs, including the hour that is coming up next in sequence. (Actually, the next dozen or so episodes make up what is probably my favorite run of television in history.) And while I love Dawson’s Creek as a grand monolithic experience, it remains a serialized television show, and with the number of episodes they produced over the course of six seasons, there are bound to be some duds. We have already discussed several of them, and there are plenty more to come. Some of those fail for character reasons. Some of them simply have narratives I hate. But in the case of “Tamara’s Return,” my esteem for it remains diminished specifically because I can never remember anything about it.

It’s not that “Tamara’s Return” is a terrible episode of television.

Serialized storytelling has become so normalized on TV that audiences expect even the most casual shows to have some sort of larger narrative arc that stretches across a season (or multiple seasons). That was not necessarily the case when Dawson’s Creek’s second season surfaced in the fall of 1998, though looking back the WB was way ahead of its time in that regard. One of its biggest hits, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was already diving deep into teasing out long-term stories, and the just-premiered Felicity (which initially aired after Buffy) took a soapier path to extended narratives. Though it didn’t seem like Dawson’s was following that thread at the time, the show definitely dipped its toe in serialization—particularly in its first season, but certainly in a few mini-arcs in season two as well.

That all being said, “Alternative Lifestyles” feels like a standalone episode—the kind of “Monster of the Week” entries that The X-Files would slip in between entries in its larger mythos.

It’s appropriate that I write this only a few days after my own birthday—an annual event with which I have a deeply complicated relationship—on the occasion of Pacey’s case of “the Molly Ringwalds.” (Joey deduces that he is referencing Sixteen Candles, not Pretty in Pink or The Breakfast Club.)