One of the first things we learn in the pilot of Dawson’s Creek is that Dawson and Pacey are longtime best friends. But in the dozens of episodes that were subsequently rolled out, we saw very little evidence of that relationship in action.

This episode makes me angry, though not for the reasons you might think.

I will give the third episode of the Eve Era credit: It’s got a nice cold open. Any time this show kicks off in a place that isn’t Dawson’s bedroom (as it did last week and the week before), it just feels wrong and incongruous. So I was relieved when I pressed play and faded into the familiar confines of the Leery house.

Last week’s season premiere was uneven and strange, but it’s possible Dawson’s Creek just had a case of the yips thanks to its new showrunner and some complicated emotional cliffhangers. Maybe the ship would stop capsizing in the second episode now that the cobwebs were shaken off a bit?

No, we are still sinking.

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.