The Dawson's Creek Episode Guide: Like a Virgin
I’m not entirely sure when everyone became hyper-aware of the term “showrunner,” but it was well after Dawson’s Creek shuffled off the airwaves. In the late ‘90s, TV was not yet considered an auteur’s medium. People knew that shows had groups of writers all working to one goal, but the idea of a singular voice dictating the direction of a whole series wasn’t an accepted concept. (The exception was when that voice was one of the show’s stars: Though they didn’t operate as showrunners, there was never any doubt that Jerry Seinfeld and Tim Allen were in charge of Seinfeld and Home Improvement, and I remember even then reading that audiences had started to check out on M*A*S*H* once Alan Alda was given the steering wheel in the later seasons.) To those of us watching Dawson’s Creek’s third season premiere in the fall of 1999, we didn’t have any idea that creator Kevin Williamson had ceded the reigns to an outside hire named Alex Gansa, and that many of the writers who had defined the show’s early run (particularly Mike White and Dana Baratta) had exited as well. All we knew was that something was off.
It isn’t just that the third season kicks off with the introduction of a weird new character (we’ll get to her in a second) and seems to have replaced most of the rest of the people we’ve come to love with pod versions of themselves. Those are big problems, but there’s also an extremely strange tone that derails the first part of this season in a major way. The editing is choppier. Both the score and the songs selected for the soundtrack seem wackier. There’s a general broadness and a slapsticky feeling to the whole endeavor that betrays the honest emotional intimacy of the previous 35 episodes. As we’ve seen in these recaps, Dawson’s Creek was always an imperfect show. But whatever they were trying to do in the opening stanza of the third season was not the solution to whatever problems the show had. Everybody agreed—fans complained in AOL chat rooms and the cast held a mini revolt against the direction of the show that led to Gansa’s ouster after only a few months on the job. The third season gets way better and contains some of the show’s most iconic episodes, but the next few weeks are going to be tricky.
She’s not the biggest problem, but the manifestation of all the issues with the third season premiere lies with Eve, an impossibly lean blonde played by Brittany Daniel. We first meet her on a bus headed to Capeside, where she flirts Dawson (who is returning home after spending most of the summer in Philadelphia with his mother). They riff on Risky Business, which Dawson was watching on his portable DVD player (an incredible extravagance for a teenager circa ‘99—those things retailed for a thousand bucks when they first rolled out). She doesn’t reveal her name or anything about herself really, but she’s a woman giving him attention and thus Dawson is instantly smitten. Just as unpredictably as she appeared, she vanishes, and I think it was a missed opportunity to make Eve a character that only Dawson could see (Fight Club hit theaters a few weeks after this episode aired, and there’s a fun alternate head cannon wherein Eve is Dawson’s Tyler Durden).
Dawson is left to contemplate the new school year and catch up with his friends, with whom he had virtually no contact over the past few months. Joey is working at the marina while the Ice House insurance check clears and can get rebuilt, while Jen and Jack have been operating like a married couple at Grams’ house. Andie remains AWOL even though Meredith Monroe and Kerr Smith were both added to the opening credits, and Pacey just kind of exists. He hears the whole Eve saga from Dawson but is more intrigued by his notion that Dawson and Joey will soon be getting back together. “I just need to learn how to exist,” says Dawson, brushing off the idea that he and his soulmate would be reuniting.
(We’re only a few minutes into the episode, but already so much of this strains credibility. Dawson didn’t talk to Joey at all? And he doesn’t care about getting back together with her even though the last season ended with him super-sad on her lawn? Get out of here.)
A lot of stuff happens. Joey and Dawson make eye contact during the morning assembly and Dawson instantly falls back in love with her but can’t bring himself to talk to her. (Joey later lies to Bessie about their reconciliation.) Pacey and Dawson end up ducking out to hit up a strip club, where they get served by the mysterious Eve (and Dawson procures her phone number but not her name). For reasons that never get made all that clear, she is desperate to bang Dawson, and while he frets over the idea of losing his virginity to a hot stranger, Pacey is back in his first season “You gotta hump everything that moves!” mode and encourages Dawson to take Eve out on his dad’s boat (Mitch is out of town at a conference; he became Capeside High’s football coach off camera).
Dawson ends up taking Eve out on the boat. He’s trying to do some due diligence about her, interrogating her name and her age and a lot of pertinent info you’d like to have about a woman who suddenly showed up desperate to have sex with you. But Eve would rather blow Dawson while he steers, which naturally leads to a collision on the dock and a hole in his dad’s prized possession. He freaks out and yells at Eve, so she bolts, but Pacey concocts a Risky Business-esque plan to raise the $3000 it’s going to take to repair the vessel. Eve circles back with some donations from her stripper friends because she feels guilty about the crash, but they end up throwing a house party at Dawson’s house featuring a bunch of the girls.
This party sequence is bananas. Dudes are flocking in their Old Navy chinos to Dawson’s house, paying twenty bucks a head to gyrate alongside the strippers and not see any skin because it’s primetime network television. Dawson gets uptight and retires to his room where Joey is waiting for him wearing an extremely 1999 cargo skirt. In a fit of pure insanity, she apologizes to Dawson for shunning him after he talked her into snitching on her dad (even if she felt guilty, she still has the right to be upset!) and then apologizes to him for not calling all summer (that’s a two-way street, Joey!). She asks about Eve, and Dawson gives her the rundown: he just met her, he doesn’t know anything about her, he doesn’t know what’s going on but it’s definitely not a relationship.
And then Joey has a psychotic break, embraces Dawson and takes off her shirt and tells him “I can be sexual, Dawson.” Dawson pushes her away because she’s obviously gone off her meds, and they fight over what their relationship is. “So you love me, but you don’t want me?” Joey yells as she climbs out the window crying. Honestly, it would be so much better if this whole episode was just the Dawson and Joey dynamic coming back around again, but unfortunately you still have a house full of strippers downstairs. Dawson leaves and finds Eve wearing an insane maxi skirt and tank top combination (no thong has ever been more visible), and she wants him to go with her on her boss’ boat. Dawson is more concerned with his house and the fact that his former girlfriend just threw herself at him and he sent her back out the window. Eve gets frustrated with this virgin loser and speeds off while Dawson explains the whole thing to Pacey and asks him to “watch out” for Joey for a while. (What this even means is a total mystery; Dawson can’t keep tabs on her himself?)
Pacey ends up going to find Joey crying outside her house. He offers her some words of encouragement and sagely notes that it’s probably a good idea she and Dawson stay apart for a while. He also notes that the two of them have more in common than she realizes because he’s still smarting over the loss of Andie. “You know it’s a new year, and who knows? You and I might even become friends,” he tells her. Joey rolls her eyes and cries, but how ironic that these two are going to run away on a boat together in just a few months. It’s the one little crumb that makes this episode even mildly worthwhile, but everything is just so off. I’ve seen worse season premieres, but not lately.
Also:
-This episode aired September 29, 1999. That same week I went to the record store and bought Method Man and Redman’s super fun collaborative album Blackout! as well as Guster’s Lost and Gone Forever (“Either Way” is still a song that makes me melt). I did not pick up the new album from Dawson’s Creek theme song artist Paula Cole, which was called Amen and bricked about as hard as a high profile follow-up could have in that era.
-By the way, Mitch returns at the end of the episode and finds the party in progress and we never get any follow up (and even next week’s episode only makes the vaguest of references to it)
-I didn’t talk much about Jen this episode, because her story line is so stupid: Through deeply dumb machinations involving the new school principal and a mean girl named Belinda, Jen ends up becoming the new head cheerleader. It’s another go-nowhere waste of Michelle Williams though it does lead to a fairly charming narrative wherein she gets pursued by a freshman football star played by a downright cherubic Michael Pitt.
-This is the point in the streaming episodes where almost none of the music survives from the original broadcasts, but since I got ahold of the original broadcast versions I can tell you that in addition to the opening sequence scored to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll,” this episode also has two songs from Garbage’s all-time excellent second record Version 2.0 (“Sleep Together” and “Push It”)
-Speaking of music, one of the better gags during the otherswise deadly cheerleading audition montage is a girl doing a terrible parody of “I Don’t Wanna Wait”
-I will defend Katie Holmes’ abilities as an actress until I have no breath left, but even she can’t save “I can be sexual, Dawson,” one of the cringiest moments in the history of the show (though I have to note that, as a total creep, I never found her more attractive than when she was shirtless in a cargo skirt)
-There’s also another runner with a lunkhead that Joey works with (or for?) at the marina that I don’t think ever goes anywhere.
-This episode also introduces Principal Greene, played by Broadway’s Obba Babatundé. He plays a weirdly important role this season as perhaps the most involved a principal has been in one friend group since Mr. Belding.
-Next week there’s more Eve! Oh no!