The Dawson's Creek Episode Guide: Psychic Friends
I am depressed. That’s not a wild confession or revelation or anything; I’ve been depressed for long stretches of my adult life. When I’ve been in therapy, I usually trace its original manifestation back to my sophomore year in college, which was a tumultuous and disconcerting time in my life. But in watching this week’s episode of Dawson’s Creek, I so instantly identified with Dawson’s particular version of teenage ennui that I’m starting to wonder if perhaps my anxiety and hopelessness first began to creep in while I was still in high school. I know I have been rough on Dawson during this re-watch and have also wondered how I ever related to him the first time around, but his loneliness, ennui, and general malaise in this episode were all directly talking to me across the decades.
“Psychic Friends” is a really lightweight episode of Dawson’s Creek. The plots barely exist, and they all center around an ill-defined fair going on in Capeside. The primary story revolves around Joey, her wish to be kissed “before the millennium” and a mysterious photographer who picks her up. Elsewhere, Andie visits a psychic and broods for most of the hour. Pacey plays with a dog puppet. Jen gives Grams a trashy makeover. They all feel like leftover plots from discarded scripts, and nothing really happens and nobody really changes. It’s not a terrifically interesting iteration of this show.
Luckily for us, Dawson is devastated. Still smarting from Joey’s (totally reasonable!) rejection and still feeling the same melancholy that drove him to drink in “Be Careful What You Wish For,” Dawson haunts the margins around his friends while he openly mopes. Everybody notices, including Jack (who notes to Joey how “moody” he’s been lately) and Mitch (who is now Dawson’s substitute English teacher and who notices Dawson hasn’t been sleeping well lately). He feels adrift and alone and alienated from his friends, and more importantly he clearly can’t see a way to steer out of this particular rut. The one thing giving him a modicum of hope is the presence of his new film teacher Miss Kennedy, played by a newly arrived Madchen Amick. Not only does she vibe with Dawson in class about his theories about the darkness of Frank Capra and cotton to his “romantic spirit,” but she’s also been contracted to write a screenplay for a major studio. Dawson sees hope in Kennedy’s story: She’s also from a small town like him, and here she is making proper Hollywood movies.
And perhaps most importantly, she wants to watch Dawson’s new film. Mitch has been talking his son up in the teacher’s lounge, and Kennedy is genuinely curious about Creek Daze. The show doesn’t really unpack this, but I immediately recognized what was going on here: Dawson, fresh off another rejection from the woman he considers to be his soul mate, now has another woman (with similar features!) interested in him (or at least in his work, the thing that he has decided will completely define him moving forward). He is as elated as he can be at the prospect of sharing his work with someone whose opinion might actually carry some weight outside of the confines of Capeside, and he very readily shows her the movie and encourages her to be honest. When the time came to actually screen Creek Daze, I almost had to get up and leave the room so as not to bear witness to Dawson’s inevitable rejection. What little we see of Creek Daze seems bad (though if I remember correctly, Sea Creature From the Deep wasn’t a masterpiece either, and it won a film festival), but that’s almost beside the point. I wanted to go back in time and tell Dawson that he’d be better off living in that moment before Kennedy watches the movie, and that he should let the potential of that experience be enough for him. Instead, Kennedy gives it to him straight: His film is completely uninspired, his dialogue is shoddy and his story is non-existent. “It’s a preposterous soap opera about a bunch of teenagers who talk too much,” Kennedy tells him, echoing a series of criticisms often lobbed at Dawson’s Creek itself. She tells Dawson that based on this effort, he’s just not cut out for Hollywood.
Like a proper depressed person, Dawson doesn’t react right away. His latest disappointment barely penetrates his overall numbness. But we know that the last hopeful thing in his life—the idea that he could become an accomplished filmmaker—has been stomped on, and now in his mind he has nothing. I love the way the end of the episode plays out following that revelation: Sad Dawson goes back to lurking around the fair, spotting all of his friends with more productive and interesting lives as a downer of a folk tune swells on the soundtrack (the original music cue was Natalie Merchant’s “Life Is Sweet,” another wonderfully bittersweet track from Merchant’s excellent 1998 album Ophelia). He mumbles about dying friendless and in obscurity and attracts the attention of the fortune teller from the fair, who draws a Tarot card and tells him a soulmate walks his path with him (“She sees into your soul, she feels your pain”) and that anything that has been lost can be found again. (In a strange horror movie moment, she mysteriously disappears after that revelation.) Dawson goes home, destroys the tiny version of Capeside Pacey built for Creek Daze and tries to call Joey. What he doesn’t know is that she is outside his house and ready to go to him, though he turns his lights out before Joey can make a move on the ladder. (Dejected, Joey rows home, only to find her formerly incarcerated father waiting for her on the front porch, which is as wild a cliffhanger as this show ever dropped.) For all his teenage histrionics, Dawson has suddenly become the most authentic member of this cast as he sinks deeper into depression. It’s hard to get that state of mind right on film, largely because there are so many different ways to be depressed. But Dawson’s general detachment is recognizable and real. Maybe I’m just projecting my current state of mind onto my past self, but I think 17-year-old Kyle probably felt seen. Thirty-nine-year-old Kyle certainly does.
Also:
-This episode aired on my 17th birthday.
-Seriously, nothing happens in this episode, which I’m sort of OK with. Most of the action comes during Joey’s story: She meets a photographer named Colin who initially seems really into her and wants to take her picture, but they more they hang out the more it is revealed that he’s actually trying to get a date with Jack instead. She gets into a mild argument with Jack about setting the two of them up, and in the end she has a nice chat with Colin about his soulmate-type relationship that just ended. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t been in such a hurry to move forward,” he tells Joey. “There comes a point where it’s impossible to go back.” That’s good writing by scripters Kevin Williamson and Dana Baratta.
-Another thing that makes Dawson melancholy: He spots Miss Kennedy accepting a ride from his dad.
-The Pacey/Andie story in this episode is pointless, but it does have one wild moment. For some reason, she really wants him to do some sort of safety presentation for the kids at the fair involving the aforementioned dog puppet. He’s reticent, but she tells him that if he does it they can do something that she whispers in his ear. Did she propose anal? It’s probably anal.
-The cold open of this episode is exceptionally odd: Dawson shows Joey Creek Daze, and she’s enamored of it. But it turns out Dawson is dreaming, and not only is Joey still with Jack in Dawson’s subconscious but Jack has also directed his movie and gotten a meeting with Steven Spielberg. Most shows should not do dream sequences; this is one of those shows.
-Joey pokes fun at Jack for not recognizing that Colin was gay, and I think that was the first time I ever heard the term “gaydar.”
-During Joey’s photoshoot montage, the replacement song is a total drag but the original song used in the broadcast version was a quiet little banger called “I Could Be The One” from Donna Lewis’ second album Blue Planet (this was the album after “I Love You Always Forever”). Donna Lewis ruled.
-Speaking of music, the final Dawson/Joey moments of the episode were originally scored by Lisa Loeb’s “How,” a wonderful bit of heartbreak from her 1997 album Firecracker, which for my money is her best record.
-While I was in the midst of putting this recap together, Netflix dropped the bomb that their versions of Dawson’s Creek would once again feature Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait” as the theme song. I had been watching the series on Hulu, but it looks like I’m going to have to shift allegiances because I miss “I Don’t Want to Wait” too much (though the news did make me feel a little sad for Jann Arden; there weren’t a whole lot of “Run Like Mad” defenders on Twitter last week).