The Dawson's Creek Episode Guide: Ch...Ch...Ch...Changes
Let’s talk about professional wrestling for a minute.
Back in 2018, New Japan Pro Wrestling staged their annual Wrestle Kingdom event, their biggest of the year. It’s essentially their version of WrestleMania. Their champion, Kazuchika Okada, was in the midst of a record-breaking reign that saw him full-on dominating the promotion in a way that hadn’t been seen since maybe Hulk Hogan ran a train on the WWF as champion back in the 1980s. In fact, the only performer hotter than Okada at that time was a dude named Tetsuya Naito, his opponent in the main event of Wrestle Kingdom. Naito was riding an incredible wave of popularity, leading the much-beloved faction Los Ingobernables de Japon and stringing together a series of victories that included a successful run through the grueling round robin tournament used to decide the championship challenger at Wrestle Kingdom. Naito had been champion before, but he was primed for a game-changing run at the top as the number one guy in the company. All logical storytelling tropes pointed to Naito beating Okada and hoisting the heavyweight championship aloft at the end of the show, but despite putting on a classic match, it was Okada who walked away the victor.
The decision was confounding in the moment. Why would you put so much behind Naito, a character who was only becoming more beloved by the day, only to have him lose in the end? It’s a deeply unsatisfying conclusion to an otherwise well-told tale. Of course, it only felt that way at the time. The deeper into 2018 we went, the more everyone realized that the story around Okada and his championship reign was a much bigger one. The win over Naito wasn’t the end of a narrative but rather the midpoint of one. He would go on to break the record for most successful championship defenses (with a win in a match over the previous record holder no less), and when he did finally drop the belt later on in the year, it was to ascendant Canadian star Kenny Omega, who finally defeated Okada after literal years of valiant attempts. The larger scope of the story was ultimately successful and deeply satisfying, but every time I go back and watch Okada and Naito (and I do pretty often; it’s one of my favorite matches) I think they should have just given the belt to Naito. In that moment, it would have been incredibly meaningful, even if it derailed a greater story being told.
What I’m trying to say is I think Dawson and Joey should have had sex here.
Let me back up: Though there’s plenty of narrative in the penultimate episode of Dawson’s Creek’s second season, the only real important moment is when Dawson discovers Joey’s dad getting involved in some sort of drug deal in the back of the Icehouse, which would mean that the freshly out-of-jail Mike Potter was drifting back into a life of crime. Cursed with this new knowledge, Dawson will ultimately have to decide whether to tell Joey even as their relationship is the best it’s been and Joey’s life overall is as rosy as we’ve seen.
Spoiler alert for next week’s finale, but Dawson blows everything up when he tells Joey the truth, thus ultimately ending their romantic ties mostly for good. Meanwhile, I’m cursed with the awareness that Joey’s third season arc ultimately has to end in the arms of Pacey, to whom she’ll eventually lose her virginity. The long arc of this show puts the two of them together, and that is ultimately the correct decision. So it’s important for her first sexual encounter to be with Pacey. I get that. But there’s a big part of me that thinks the climax (har har) of this episode, with Dawson and Joey closer than ever and Joey kind of horny for the carpenter version of Dawson, should have been the two of them having sex. Then, after a brief moment of bliss, everything could have fallen apart again in Shakespearean fashion. The stakes would have been that much higher, and the drama that much more intense. Much like the result of the Okada/Naito match, I know it would have been a mistake in the grand scheme, but I still want what I want.
Dawson and Joey don’t bone down, but things are going well between them: She’s riding high on the idea that her family is together (despite the fact that her sister Bessie has been in the TV Bermuda Triangle for weeks now) while he’s having revelations about how much his world has shifted in the past year. Even his weird freakout about how much Joey has lapped him in the change department is muted, and they talk it out like normal people with reasonable resolve. And, as mentioned, Dawson is helping Mr. Potter add some sort of lounge onto the Icehouse, and though he’s a terrible workman his willingness to work with his hands definitely does something to Joey. Plus, he builds her a white picket fence, which is sweet in its own bugnuts kind of way. The episode should have ended with the two of them finally boning down, but instead it ends with Dawson editing his own testimonial for a school assignment while Joey sleeps peacefully on Dawson’s bed in a sea of textbooks.
On the other side of town, our other couple is falling apart. Mr. McPhee is back in town after Jack called him to update him on Andie’s condition, and he has a simple solution: he’s taking them both back to Providence with him so she can get more intense regular care (just like her mother) and he doesn’t have to miss any business meetings or whatever. (We still don’t know what Mr. McPhee does, but he apparently cannot telecommute.) The siblings are initially united in their rejection of this plan, and Pacey also makes a case, but Mr. McPhee is immutable and Andie just sort of gives into the idea that he’s right. (It almost feels like there’s a scene missing between when Andie is initially upset and when she decides that she does need the kind of care her father is pitching.) Neither Pacey nor Jack want to go along with this plan, but she convinces both of them and she and Pacey have a relatively low-key goodbye (I remembered it as being way more melodramatic than it actually is; the whole Andie exit arc feels a little underplayed, if I’m being honest). Meanwhile Jack decides he’s going to hang back and remain in Capeside, largely because his father still rejects Jack’s sexuality (and it’s implied that Mr. McPhee wants to send him to some sort of de-gaying program). It’s mildly absurd that Jack would just stick around in a house all by himself a state away from the rest of his family, but he won’t be doing it alone: Jen, who earlier attempted to pitch her way back to New York with her parents, briefly considered just hitting the road to nowhere before Jack intercepted her and invited her to live with him (and beginning the blossoming of the Jack/Jen friendship that is one of my favorite bonds on the show; their friendship is one of the few consistent bright spots in the otherwise dreary college years episodes). Jack and Jen have found a bit of solace in one another while their lives have fallen apart while poor Pacey remains alone again, waiting to drop. All the pieces are in place for a relatively explosive second season finale as well as the reality-rearranging opening episodes of season three.
But seriously, Dawson and Joey should have had sex.
Also:
-This episode aired on May 19, 1999. That week saw the release of the Backstreet Boys massive second album Millennium, which sold 1.134 million copies in its first seven days in stores (then a record, it was later bested by NSYNC’s No Strings Attached a year later). Meanwhile, the number one movie in the country was The Mummy, and I’m also fairly certain I went to a prom this week? I seem to remember getting into a conversation about The Mummy with somebody while picking up a tuxedo. (Research reveals the prom was a few weeks later on June 4.)
-As always, the music on the show has been shifted to nondescript garbage, and it’s a particular shame this week because it means they jettisoned a pair of songs by Heather Nova, a great turn-of-the-century singer/songwriter who got some shine during the Lilith Fair era and had a minor hit with “London Rain (Nothing Heals Me Like You Do)” from her second album Siren (which also appears in this episode). Nova’s song “Paper Cup” (also from Siren) actually appeared twice in this episode and was the song playing when Pacey and Andie said goodbye. In a review of Siren, Entertainment Weekly said “While Nova’s song craft can be breathtaking, her wide-eyed-sex-doll persona makes it tough to take her seriously,” which is a little rude!
-In the cold open, Dawson and Joey watch Casablanca, which I’ve always thought was overrated. It’s perfectly well made, but I think Humphrey Bogart is significantly better in The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep (and I find both those movies far more re-watchable). Dawson even mentions why Casablanca doesn’t work that well: At the end of the movie, Bogart is the same guy he was in the beginning! He has no arc, which drags the whole thing down.
-In a scene that feels tonally goofy and also like it might be a case of native advertising, Jen opens a scene carrying a big sandwich and offers a bite to Jack with the line “Bite of my Subway for your troubles?” It doesn’t mean anything, but I used to eat a ton of Subway sandwiches and I don’t think I’ve eaten there in 20 years.
-There’s a scene in the Capeside High School computer lab that features a poster for MindSpring, which was an early retail-level Internet service provider who I guess were in competition with AOL and Earthlink at the time (Mindspring actually merged with Earthlink in 2000). They obviously no longer exist but their founder is an anti-vax dipshit with a SubStack so fuck him forever.
-When Pacey and Andie go out on their date before she leaves town, he is wearing what looks like a terrycloth button-down, a genre of shirt I was obsessed with in this era. J. Crew still sells them!
-Next time, we wrap up the second season. I look forward to getting deep into the weeds on season three, which was when my viewership became somewhat spottier. Eve is coming, for better or for worse!