Dawson: An Introduction

Sarah’s thing right now is Miss Connections. Allison has Born to Be Styled. I got jealous and decided I need more of a common thread here at SFSF. So I’m gonna talk about the 90’s teen drama Dawson’s Creek, of course.

Sarah invited me to watch Creek with her about a week ago. She’d recently discovered it on Netflix and convinced me to view an episode. It’s a guilty pleasure for her. She doesn’t like it the way she likes Kanye West, but she likes it. She knows all the characters are assholes. Today, she told me they were.

Goes like this: Her #1 asshole is Jen, played by Michelle Williams. Dawson, played by James Van Deer Beek is next. Joey and Pacy are tied for third biggest asshole. Joey is played by the beautiful Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson is Pacy. Sarah acknowledges that Pacy (15 yrs at show’s beginning) had an affair with a teacher- but nevertheless, he’s a stand-up guy.

My impression of the show is what I thought it would be. Sucky. Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy; maybe not. I explained to Sarah that I didn’t watch Dawson in high school because I had nothing in common with the assholes in the show.

Before last week, Dawson’s Creek was a show that aired during my high school years. It was targeted at my age demographic, with age being the only real mutual characteristic. I knew it as any non-viewer knows any moderately popular show with a decent run: “Next on Dawson’s Creek, that big-faced, thin-lipped weasel gets caught in a marsh with that out-of-this-world-beauty brunette.” It was set in some eastern waterside town. It was about James Van Deer Beek, the insanely hot brunette, the I-don’t-get-it-why-is-she-on-TV? blonde,  and the square-faced weasel from the Mighty Ducks movies. They used vocab words when they spoke. They were annoying.

During my initial viewing, I told Sarah that I thought the actors didn’t own the lines. It plainly seemed like stories taken from art schooled, 20-something writers laced with high school wet dreams (Pacy’s affair with his English teacher).

I’ve watched the second and the fifth episodes. (The one were Pacy consummated his Mrs. Robinson thing and the one where Dawson goes to the fair on a double date with a girl he doesn’t like in order to make Jen jealous. Jen and a new man comprise the other couple. The double date was Dawson’s idea. He’s a real jack-ass and the show’s named after him.)

I have my own Dawson‘s asshole depth chart.

Biggest asshole is Dawson. In addition to the double date jealousy scheme, he orchestrated a “scene” (with cameras and everything) in order to capture the “perfect moment” with a girl. He was hanging out with a girl he was in to,  and he went in to kiss her.  She quickly realized he was filming the whole thing. To her it wasn’t a movie- she was living in the moment. The cameras were around because they’d just finished working on something else.  Of course it didn’t go over well when she caught on (he was trying to position her and stuff.)

Dawson’s supposed talent is also not believable. If he is in fact a film virtuoso, an artist, he’d walk around campus with a little more of an edge. Not that stupid smirk all the time. He’d probably have a cooler haircut. Even for the 90’s.

Jen’s a close second-biggest asshole. She’s numb or something. I can only assume her acting improves during the show’s duration. She has the emotionalism of a middle-aged parent on pills. You get the impression that she’s on cruise control, passively reacting to the changes in her life. “Oh this new boyfriend thing is interesting and scary, Dawson.” Emotions are merely a concept when lines are delivered by a lifeless actor. Like I said, she can only get better as the show goes on. She has to. She definitely (everyone knows this) gets a whole lot better looking.

Next is Pacy. World’s worst name. Oversized head. Oversized Hawaiian shirts.But he’s got more sense than Dawson.

Eventually “Pacy” pursues Joey and is rejected. He knows that the rejection is largely because she’s soooooo into Dawson. The show’s most realistic moment to this point is when “Pacy” chastises Dawson for being an idiot and not liking Joey back.

Holmes is the least-biggest asshole. Honestly, look at that picture. Denying her beauty is like saying the Statue of David has the build quality of a GI Joe.  It’s just not believable to me that she’s gonna keep Dawson as her limerent object for the show’s duration. (More believable, though, than Dawson’s apathy toward Holmes- a goddess. This is just stupid. I mean, I’m supposed to care about this reject with the world’s most ostentatious haircut as he pines after a boring blonde when Katie Holmes is alone in his bedroom? I’m thinking hard now- long and hard, and I’m trying to recall an instance in High School where there was a girl present in my bedroom, with me; I’m pretty sure that no, I never had a [non-family] girl in my bedroom. In High School. Ever. Even if memory fails me, the spirit is accurate because I never kissed a girl until after High School. That’s a fact. So, yeah, poor fucking Dawson.)

In addition to Katie Holmes’s beauty, she’s the best actor, despite her completely bullshit tomboy persona. She’s got personality and energy. And she’s just a real beauty. She’s “feisty,” which can be annoying I suppose, but feist is more than what the other three offer at this very early point- essentially nothing.