How do you do.
For this review and commentary, I will be going into one of my favorite shows: Dawson's Creek. More than just saying how I feel of the show but also look into the things of the show most might not catch upon viewing.
Background information on the show is that it was an idea pitched by two men: Paul Stupin and Kevin Williamson back in the Nineties. Paul Stupin was vice-president of the Tri-Star Pictures in the Eighties where he got to oversee the productions of Steel Magnolias and Short Circuit. He was eventually lured away by Fox Network where he worked with Aaron Spelling on Beverly Hills, 90210. Finally he went to Columbia TriStar Television and began overseeing projects. In 1995, he saw a script to the horror film Scream and contacted its writer, Kevin Williamson.
The reason Stupin called up Williamson was because he felt that the man was a good enough writer for a project he had in mind. It was idea of a teen show that had the drama of James At 15, My So-Called Life, and even a touch of Little House on the Prairie. When they agreed on how it would be done, they went around the film companies and everyone said "no." Finally they came upon WB (known for their commercials that had people say "you're watchin' the dubba dubba dubba dubba WB."). I grew up seeing that channel since it shared with Fox Kids where my favorite shows were on. During the period of time that Stupin and Williamson were pitching the idea, WB was deciding to make an appeal to the teen market and that had led to the television series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 7th Heaven. Even with the competition, they still went away and thus Dawson's Creek came into existence. It would run for six seasons and 128 episodes.
We that in mind, let us go through the six seasons.
Season One (A season in an over-analyzed and hormone driven portion of New England with a Southern feel)
If there was one way to sum up Dawson's Creek in a few sentences it would be: "Idealistic young boy who is into movies, cynic girl from the other side of the creek, and another boy full of wit and humor, all growing up in a secluded New England town. One day have a new girl comes to town and makes their trio a quartet of teens with the verbal vocabulary of post graduate individuals. Their interactions and raging hormones override these wits and verbal sayings and leads to drama filled with teen angst, complete with psychiatric babbling and some pop song singing in the background." It is also consider a "show that defined a generation" as it aired around the time Millennials came of age.
The show opens with "Pilot" where we find Dawson Leery and Joey Potter watching E.T. in Dawson's bedroom. Joey voices what the audience is thinking, that is might not be appropriate for them to do this any more as they are teenagers now. Dawson disregards the arguments and eventually wrestles her out of leaving. Then they sleep together (no, they didn't have sex). Dawson's thing with movies is shown again the next day as he films his version of The Creature From the Black Lagoon. His best friend, Pacey Witter, plays the creature, while Joey plays the creature's victim. The filming is interrupted by the arrival of Jen Lindley from New York. The boys greet her while Joey is visibly disapproval of her.
Within the pilot, we find out a few things of the three. Dawson is a film buff, considers becoming a film director like Steven Spielberg (he even has posters of his movies all over his bedroom), and he is looking for drama to make a movie off of. Joey is the younger of two daughters of Michael Potter, who is currently in jail for drug trafficking, and Lillie Potter, who died before the show starts, living with her older sister, Bessie, who is living with her black boyfriend, named Bodie, and they are expecting a child. A tomboy, she sees the world in a realistic format in opposite of Dawson, rows her way down the creek to visit him (climbing up the ladder to do so), while shunning the feminine activities. Pacey Witter is the side kick to Dawson, often providing wit and humor, as though to live up to his surname. He also doesn't like being told he is nothing, as noted from his look of frustration in one scene. Given that they make up the protagonists of the series, it's funny how in Season One Katie Holmes, who plays Joey, is neither second nor third to be shown in the credits. Instead, the credits show in this order, James Van Der Beek as Dawson, Michelle Williams as Jen, Joshua Jackson as Pacey, and Katie Holmes as Joey.
It would have been just three, like in Boy Meets World, had it not been for the arrival of Jen. Jen has come from New York to see her grandfather, who has had a stroke and in a coma, while her religious grandmother is a nurse and keeps vigil over him. However, it turns out, she was driven out of New York because of her ways and her grandmother has become her legal guardian. Evelyn Ryan, Jen's grandma, is played by Mary Beth Peil and often called "Grams." Grams, to me, has been something of a modern day Marilla Cuthbert from Anne of Green Gables, an old woman that the town talks about who adopts a wounded bird and attempts to teach her how to be good. Of course, where Anne Shirley was eleven when she entered the Cuthbert house, Jen was fifteen. Where Anne is willing to adapt to Marilla's ways, Jen resists at every turn. For example, she turns down a good breakfast, insisting on coffee, and then scoffs at her grandmother praying. It turns out, somewhere in New York, Jen lost her faith. This leads to the clashes the two have during the season where Grams would try to get Jen excited in God and Jen would refuse in her own way.
The pilot to Dawson's Creek has the four getting into plots: Dawson becoming interested in Jen, yet can't seem to make a move despite Pacey and Joey telling him to; Joey feeling threatened by Jen's arrival and trying to hold back a secret crush she has for Dawson; Jen becoming adjusted to Capeside; Pacey becoming infatuated with Tamara Jacobs, who turns out to be his English teacher. Jen's goes back with little drama while Joey's results in a blow up after being so snarky. As to the boys, Pacey gets punched in the face and then rejected when trying to kiss Tamara, while Dawson finds himself cornered by Joey into admitting he does have hormones. As the review will show, the show's appearance changes a few times and it makes the pilot seem out of place. "Pilot" and the few episodes that follow, "Dance" ,"Kiss", and "Discovery", have plenty of those. Pacey's stalking of Tamara is creepy. Of course, it's common for teenage boys to have crushes on teachers, but the way Pacey does it would have gotten him a restraining order or cause her to leave. Instead, in a few episodes, Tamara reciprocates and they consummate their relationship by episode three. This would set up an unrealistic fantasy scenario to teenage boys (or girls) when it comes to crushes on teachers, especially as Pacey is now in a power relationship with Tamara, and that is not the sort of relationship anyone should be in. Dawson is just as stalkerish with Jen, often admiring her from afar, only becoming passionate when another guy comes onto her, while ignoring the fact that Joey is into him. Joey is very snarky and sarcastic at times, though Dawson is enough to warrant it on a few occasions. I find it odd that she is not the leading lady in this season and yet she is pretty enough to be one while going around in shorts as though she were Daisy Duke. Grams appears more reclusive in these episodes and highly judgmental (often portrayed as the standard old woman who ruins everyone's fun by calling it sinful), though it can be reasoned that she was stressed out and upset over her husband in his condition. A few other oddities show up, also. The pilot has the mascot of Capeside High School change from Wildcats to Minutemen a few times before the latter is decided as the mascot. The characters start high school in sophomore instead of freshman year, also. Also, the dialogue being heavily worded, often with words with multiple syllables, and mentions of sex, genitalia, plus "walk the dog" being meant masturbate. There is also the character named Nellie Oleson who is set up as an antagonist but disappears after three episodes and is never seen, heard, or mentioned again. My only guess with the last was they discovered her name could not be used because of copyrights to the Little House on the Prairie producers and erased the character before they got too far.
One other thing out of place in the pilot is made known in the production notes. Before they got John Wesley Shipp to play Mitch Leery, Dawson's father, they had a different actor. Eventually, they recasted the role and it required re-shoots. However, there was a different actor in Bodie also and yet they did not recast the role until a few episodes in. As a result, we see Obi Nbefo appear in "Kiss". It gives us a different looking Bodie who we don't get much time to know and given the one that takes us years to know. It does imply this kind of typing statement: "white girl is knocked up by a black guy and then trades him for another black guy and claims him as the father of her child." At least both are cooks.
These sort of things make the early episodes out of place but it doesn't denote the nostalgia for them. Meanwhile, a fifth plot appears at the end of "Pilot." Dawson figures that his mom might be sleeping with her co-anchor and Joey scoffs at the idea. Yet, when she rolls away after finding out who he "walk(s) the dog" to, she sees Gail Leery leave the car of Bob and kiss him, confirming Dawson's suspicions. There's an alternative ending which has both Dawson and Joey seeing it. As the commentary explains, they edited it out so that Joey knows while Dawson does not, which goes along with the continuity of the series. However, one wonders how things would have gone if Dawson had known. Instead, he doesn't know of it until "Discovery". Prior to this, he is told by Joey that he has the perfect family: a loving father and mother and he is their only child. We had not yet known of the Witters, Lindley's is said to be back in New York, while Joey's is a dead mother, incarcerated dad, and a sister living in sin. Based on that, it proves the Leery's are in the best shape and Dawson should be lucky. Yet, the revelation of Gail's infidelity shatters that. Dawson is shocked that his perfect family picture is gone but it takes until the next episode, "Hurricane" before Mitch learns and Gail confesses to the why. After this revelation, the drama is put on hold while we see Alexander being born in "Baby" and we get "Detention", the latter is an homage to The Breakfast Club. On the last, the homage is further exemplified when Dawson says "this is so Breakfast Club" and then lists the fate of the stars, to which Pacey contradicts him. If anyone doesn't know it, Joshua Jackson was in those "Ducks Movies", as Charlie Conneway. If you had seen them yet, you'd scarcely recognize Jackson in them until the third movie.
After "Detention", we are given "Boyfriend where Jen's ex-boyfriend, Billy, comes to town. Dawson, and the audience, sees that his arrival makes Jen confused and under pressure, and Dawson feels threatened by the ex. He has the dilemma faced by most boyfriends: he could be nice and let Jen handle it herself or he could butch up and tell the jerk to take a hike. Either way, he'll lose Jen. Which is what he does at the end of the episode as she decides she needs to be away from guys for a while. The following episode, "Road Trip", has Billy returning and he starts a road trip with Pacey and Dawson, both of who skip school. While they are away, Joey deals with a sex jock who claims they did it and she gets back at him by claiming to be pregnant. For a while, the jock's reputation is ruined as he is labeled a dead beat dad, until it's known that he can't reproduce. Then we get "Double Date" and "Scare" where Dawson tries to get Jen back. By the way, "Scare" makes homage to Williamson's Scream. This while Jen is paired up with a football player named Cliff.
While the plot following Jen and Dawson's breakup is in the majority of the later episodes, there is also the matter of Dawson, Pacey, and Joey. Dawson and Joey share their first kiss on a dare in "Detention". Later, in "Boyfriend", Joey gets drunk and a boy nearly takes advantage of her until Pacey rescues her, though Dawson gets the credit. Pacey's GPA suffers in biology and Joey is commissioned to help him and they go wading out into the waters for snails. This leads to a moment where Pacey sees Joey naked, while claiming to power up the truck, and he asks Dawson to be her boyfriend. Dawson approves of it, at first, but then goes back on it, but not before Pacey kisses Joey. This leads up to "Beauty Contest" where we see Joey enter. The episode is a case of gender role bending as Pacey gets into a pageant consisting of girls while tomboyish Joey does the same. Both, of course, meet competition from a bitchy rich girl. Yet, to be realistic, the episode has neither of the three win. However, it is surreal to see Joey sing "On My Own" from Les Mis with Dawson watching. It somehow matches the set up as Joey is the modern Eponine pining for Dawson's Marius. The similarities stop there. Joey reminds Dawson, when he flatters her at the end, that it's all a dress and mascara while Dawson doesn't even give Jen a second look. Completing the ensemble is Pacey doing a speech a la Braveheart with blue make up and Scottish accent. The season then wraps up with "Decisions" where we finally see Michael Potter. Joey and Dawson travel to a jail to see him and we have Joey pour out her anger while Dawson sees a saddened man regretting. Joey is later brought to him by Pacey and the two talk more. Meanwhile, Gramps awakens from his coma only to die. We see a grief stricken Jen go to Dawson and spends the night with him. Of course, Joey thinks they did it and runs off, leaving Dawson go through ten minutes of running about the town looking for her. Jen, seeing that she lost to Joey, meets with Grams in a church. It's a special moment, even the music is turned off. Joey and Dawson reunite in his room, go through some verbiage, which includes Joey getting a trip to Paris, France. The cliffhanger is rather Joey will stay or she will go. Of course, the thing is decided as she and Dawson share a kiss.
Season One of Dawson's Creek is something. At thirteen episodes, it's the shortest of the six, which explains why it sometimes feels rushed. Since so many things get contradicted in the show, there are things that seem out of place in the First Season, something common in most shows. Also, the story telling in the season features a standard plot formula: each episode starts with Dawson and Joey in Dawson's bedroom, watching a movie, comment on the theme of the movie where Dawson takes the simplistic and idealistic view while Joey has the realistic and cynical view, the credits come, we see the teens go through the plot of the episode, experience a few angst and drama, and then the two return in the bedroom and talk about the previous events. This standard is evident in all thirteen episodes, with a few variants: Jen is in the room in one episode and sometimes we see Joey being out. While each episode has its own conflict the use of the plot formula makes the episodes seem pretty much the same. There are also a few continuity goofs in the season. Besides the lack of mention of Nellie after "Kiss", we see the anguish of Dawson going over the break up with Jen for three episodes and each time he tries again without any gained experience (not even a mention of the last try). There are times I think "Double Date" and "Scare" were in reverse order, or both episodes took place between "Boyfriend" and "Road Trip" in actuality, as Pacey doesn't mention his parents being mad at the skipping school thing until "Beauty Contest." Besides the goofs mentioned, the season doesn't seem to show much change in the time. We don't see any traces of winter, or even autumn, until "Decisions", which acts as a continuity hick-up as it goes back to late summer in Season Two.
Besides the mistakes, I do find the acting somewhat natural. James Van Der Beek has the teenage insecurities narrowed down and Michelle Williams has the wounded bird appeal on. However, Williams doesn't seem to have the right reactions until later in the season and before then it's just laughing or grinning when dealing with Grams' religion or Dawson's flirtation. Joshua Jackson is great as Pacey, even making him a different character from Charlie. Katie Holmes' Joey has the snarky personality but the constant pointing off to the side while talking to Dawson and her talking down to him is off putting. I also tend to think that Bessie was delighting in making Joey miserable as she doesn't look serious in one scene while Grams comes off as a stiff.
I have not seen a feminist review mention of it, but there is a contrasting portrayal of women and men in the show at this point. It is a known fact that Kevin Williamson was a homosexual at the time but that is no excuse for reusing a heterosexist depiction of women. Teenage girls in this instance are either embodiments of the Madonna / Whore complex (more on that later), objects of conquest, or shallow bitches to be challenged, ignored, and discarded. Same with adult women, in form of Tamara Jacobs and Gail Leery, who are portrayed as either sex objects for the wet dreams of teenage boys or selfish people who have everything in life but are throwing it all away in a tryst. Only Grams is not sexualized, as she is old. This actually is more respectful than the way her younger counterparts get. If one could list out the stages in Women's Lib in Season One with its female characters, one could list Grams as the First Wave feminist, Tamara and Gail as Second Wave, and Bessie as the Third, in all three cases being career women with little or no help from the men in their lives. With this scale, we see Grams as someone who is satisfied at being able to vote and to have a job, abite one that conforms to gender roles (nurse), and she gave it up to be married to a man. However, the fact the man in her life is indisposed, she has to retake her role as a worker and tend to him. She does this on her own with only her faith for support, and she rears a rebellious teenage granddaughter, which is why I consider Evelyn Ryan a strong woman. Strong enough that the younger women seem weak in comparison. Tamara and Gail are the same type of woman, a product of the Sixties, where she can be a house wife and have a career at once, and yet is not completely satisfied. Gail is seen as a housewife experiencing a mid-life crisis while Tamara is younger but having her own type of unsatisfactory (we now call it quarter-life crisis). They differ, of course, with the fact that Gail has everything but longs for something beyond the perfect suburban picture (a common critique in the show) while Tamara is a career woman who is unmarried and yet has just gotten past age thirty. Thus, both see their clocks ticking as they are in an increasingly ageist society. So, they go into pre-marital, and extra-marital, affairs with guys (you'll notice Gail is concerned about Bob's safety yet not her family's). Of course, they know what they are doing and wind up paying for it -- Tamara with her job and Gail with her perfect life in the Leery family. Then, almost on par with Lifetime, the two women then rely on men to help them out (Tamara is bailed out by Pacey and Gail is forgiven by Mitch). That leaves Bessie as the unrepentant sinner in the Third Wave who believes she can do anything she wants, a right that women are denied by some boogeyman called the Patriarchal society. She never marries Bodie at any point and chides Grams for stating the obvious. Then she dumps the care of Alexander on the new aunt, Joey, while running Potter Ice House. With the way the Potters are, you'd think Bessie would have kept her legs closed, but she's in that "don't judge me" tone and refusing to take responsibility for her actions (previous generations of women were willing to take responsibility of their actions because that is the price for being treated as an equal). Bessie also goes to lengths to get Joey to be on her side in forms of sending her to visit her imprisoned dad and only allowing Joey a break at the Ice House just to be a teenager. She never asks anyone for help, not even Bodie, and doesn't even thank him for assisting her when he does (otherwise he spends many episodes as a no-show). As a result, she is the least sympathetic of the groups.
The last above seems to sum up the portrayal of mothers: either dead like Joey's mom, irresponsible women like Gail, insensitive and embodied women like Bessie, or sheep to their husbands like the yet to be seen Jen's Mom and Pacey's. Portrayal of fathers is not made any better. Fathers in the show are either naive dreamers who are oblivious to their wife's adultery and then go berserk when they find out like Mitch, men who play favorites with older siblings while making younger ones feel bad about themselves like Pacey's dad, unseen tyrants who can't stand their daughter's budding sexuality like Jen's father, absent fathers like Bodie, or worse, a convicted felon like Mike Potter. We don't see Pacey's dad or Jen's, so Mike, Mitch, and Bodie are the men to stand in as fathers, but I'll save the dysfunctional dad part for the future.
While Jen is brand new, the friendship of Joey, Dawson, and Pacey, is depicted in Season One as like the id, ego, and superego of Freud's psychotic whole. Pacey embodies the id as he goes by impulse and Dawson is the ego, going in back and forth on debating on acting on impulse and then jumping at it with messy result; leaving Joey in the comfortable super-ego zone. Friendship between them is shown as a theme in Season One. Joey and Dawson are shown to be close friends though we are told that Dawson is best friends with Pacey, and Pacey and Joey can hardly stand each other. But, as Joey points out, the raging hormones in them could change the dynamics.
The theme of love and lust is carried through in Season One. Dawson treats Joey as one of the guys in the early episodes while fawning over Jen, something that Joey doesn't like. When Jen arrives, Joey feels her territory threatened simply because Dawson goes to her. This suggests that Joey does have feelings for him. Dawson, meanwhile, wants to prove that pure and chaste love exists as he pursues Jen. This while Jen is told by Grams that Dawson only wants one thing from her; and it's not her virginity as it's already lost. During the season, Dawson and Jen do nothing more than hug and kiss. Meanwhile, Joey and Pacey are telling Dawson of the fast girls of New York and how some guy might nail her. When Dawson learns of her past, he almost ignores her, thus reversing what he had previously stood for (that he was into love more than sex). Joey then confides to Jen in "Hurricane" that Dawson is living in a fantasy from all the movie watching. Once they break up, Dawson does the moves to reconcile yet Jen doesn't fall for it until Joey shines in the pageant. Ultimately, Dawson learns he has feelings for Joey and it leads to the kiss at the end.
The show was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, which does detract from the whole New England setting. It does, however, give Dawson's Creek a kind of Southern feel, without the Confederate flag. Each episode has many songs playing in the background, all from the eighties and nineties, yet the title song "I Don't Wanna Wait" is what starts off the show. The song fits the show perfectly as it matches the themes of wanting a solution to the conflict right away. Having gotten the whole series on DVD, I do find the nostalgia for the 1990s in this season, however I do find the sharpness in the footage to be an eye sore.
Due to the length of this review and commentary, other themes in the show will be covered in the next part where we get into Season Two.
If there was one way to sum up Dawson's Creek in a few sentences it would be: "Idealistic young boy who is into movies, cynic girl from the other side of the creek, and another boy full of wit and humor, all growing up in a secluded New England town. One day have a new girl comes to town and makes their trio a quartet of teens with the verbal vocabulary of post graduate individuals. Their interactions and raging hormones override these wits and verbal sayings and leads to drama filled with teen angst, complete with psychiatric babbling and some pop song singing in the background." It is also consider a "show that defined a generation" as it aired around the time Millennials came of age.
The show opens with "Pilot" where we find Dawson Leery and Joey Potter watching E.T. in Dawson's bedroom. Joey voices what the audience is thinking, that is might not be appropriate for them to do this any more as they are teenagers now. Dawson disregards the arguments and eventually wrestles her out of leaving. Then they sleep together (no, they didn't have sex). Dawson's thing with movies is shown again the next day as he films his version of The Creature From the Black Lagoon. His best friend, Pacey Witter, plays the creature, while Joey plays the creature's victim. The filming is interrupted by the arrival of Jen Lindley from New York. The boys greet her while Joey is visibly disapproval of her.
Within the pilot, we find out a few things of the three. Dawson is a film buff, considers becoming a film director like Steven Spielberg (he even has posters of his movies all over his bedroom), and he is looking for drama to make a movie off of. Joey is the younger of two daughters of Michael Potter, who is currently in jail for drug trafficking, and Lillie Potter, who died before the show starts, living with her older sister, Bessie, who is living with her black boyfriend, named Bodie, and they are expecting a child. A tomboy, she sees the world in a realistic format in opposite of Dawson, rows her way down the creek to visit him (climbing up the ladder to do so), while shunning the feminine activities. Pacey Witter is the side kick to Dawson, often providing wit and humor, as though to live up to his surname. He also doesn't like being told he is nothing, as noted from his look of frustration in one scene. Given that they make up the protagonists of the series, it's funny how in Season One Katie Holmes, who plays Joey, is neither second nor third to be shown in the credits. Instead, the credits show in this order, James Van Der Beek as Dawson, Michelle Williams as Jen, Joshua Jackson as Pacey, and Katie Holmes as Joey.
It would have been just three, like in Boy Meets World, had it not been for the arrival of Jen. Jen has come from New York to see her grandfather, who has had a stroke and in a coma, while her religious grandmother is a nurse and keeps vigil over him. However, it turns out, she was driven out of New York because of her ways and her grandmother has become her legal guardian. Evelyn Ryan, Jen's grandma, is played by Mary Beth Peil and often called "Grams." Grams, to me, has been something of a modern day Marilla Cuthbert from Anne of Green Gables, an old woman that the town talks about who adopts a wounded bird and attempts to teach her how to be good. Of course, where Anne Shirley was eleven when she entered the Cuthbert house, Jen was fifteen. Where Anne is willing to adapt to Marilla's ways, Jen resists at every turn. For example, she turns down a good breakfast, insisting on coffee, and then scoffs at her grandmother praying. It turns out, somewhere in New York, Jen lost her faith. This leads to the clashes the two have during the season where Grams would try to get Jen excited in God and Jen would refuse in her own way.
The pilot to Dawson's Creek has the four getting into plots: Dawson becoming interested in Jen, yet can't seem to make a move despite Pacey and Joey telling him to; Joey feeling threatened by Jen's arrival and trying to hold back a secret crush she has for Dawson; Jen becoming adjusted to Capeside; Pacey becoming infatuated with Tamara Jacobs, who turns out to be his English teacher. Jen's goes back with little drama while Joey's results in a blow up after being so snarky. As to the boys, Pacey gets punched in the face and then rejected when trying to kiss Tamara, while Dawson finds himself cornered by Joey into admitting he does have hormones. As the review will show, the show's appearance changes a few times and it makes the pilot seem out of place. "Pilot" and the few episodes that follow, "Dance" ,"Kiss", and "Discovery", have plenty of those. Pacey's stalking of Tamara is creepy. Of course, it's common for teenage boys to have crushes on teachers, but the way Pacey does it would have gotten him a restraining order or cause her to leave. Instead, in a few episodes, Tamara reciprocates and they consummate their relationship by episode three. This would set up an unrealistic fantasy scenario to teenage boys (or girls) when it comes to crushes on teachers, especially as Pacey is now in a power relationship with Tamara, and that is not the sort of relationship anyone should be in. Dawson is just as stalkerish with Jen, often admiring her from afar, only becoming passionate when another guy comes onto her, while ignoring the fact that Joey is into him. Joey is very snarky and sarcastic at times, though Dawson is enough to warrant it on a few occasions. I find it odd that she is not the leading lady in this season and yet she is pretty enough to be one while going around in shorts as though she were Daisy Duke. Grams appears more reclusive in these episodes and highly judgmental (often portrayed as the standard old woman who ruins everyone's fun by calling it sinful), though it can be reasoned that she was stressed out and upset over her husband in his condition. A few other oddities show up, also. The pilot has the mascot of Capeside High School change from Wildcats to Minutemen a few times before the latter is decided as the mascot. The characters start high school in sophomore instead of freshman year, also. Also, the dialogue being heavily worded, often with words with multiple syllables, and mentions of sex, genitalia, plus "walk the dog" being meant masturbate. There is also the character named Nellie Oleson who is set up as an antagonist but disappears after three episodes and is never seen, heard, or mentioned again. My only guess with the last was they discovered her name could not be used because of copyrights to the Little House on the Prairie producers and erased the character before they got too far.
One other thing out of place in the pilot is made known in the production notes. Before they got John Wesley Shipp to play Mitch Leery, Dawson's father, they had a different actor. Eventually, they recasted the role and it required re-shoots. However, there was a different actor in Bodie also and yet they did not recast the role until a few episodes in. As a result, we see Obi Nbefo appear in "Kiss". It gives us a different looking Bodie who we don't get much time to know and given the one that takes us years to know. It does imply this kind of typing statement: "white girl is knocked up by a black guy and then trades him for another black guy and claims him as the father of her child." At least both are cooks.
These sort of things make the early episodes out of place but it doesn't denote the nostalgia for them. Meanwhile, a fifth plot appears at the end of "Pilot." Dawson figures that his mom might be sleeping with her co-anchor and Joey scoffs at the idea. Yet, when she rolls away after finding out who he "walk(s) the dog" to, she sees Gail Leery leave the car of Bob and kiss him, confirming Dawson's suspicions. There's an alternative ending which has both Dawson and Joey seeing it. As the commentary explains, they edited it out so that Joey knows while Dawson does not, which goes along with the continuity of the series. However, one wonders how things would have gone if Dawson had known. Instead, he doesn't know of it until "Discovery". Prior to this, he is told by Joey that he has the perfect family: a loving father and mother and he is their only child. We had not yet known of the Witters, Lindley's is said to be back in New York, while Joey's is a dead mother, incarcerated dad, and a sister living in sin. Based on that, it proves the Leery's are in the best shape and Dawson should be lucky. Yet, the revelation of Gail's infidelity shatters that. Dawson is shocked that his perfect family picture is gone but it takes until the next episode, "Hurricane" before Mitch learns and Gail confesses to the why. After this revelation, the drama is put on hold while we see Alexander being born in "Baby" and we get "Detention", the latter is an homage to The Breakfast Club. On the last, the homage is further exemplified when Dawson says "this is so Breakfast Club" and then lists the fate of the stars, to which Pacey contradicts him. If anyone doesn't know it, Joshua Jackson was in those "Ducks Movies", as Charlie Conneway. If you had seen them yet, you'd scarcely recognize Jackson in them until the third movie.
After "Detention", we are given "Boyfriend where Jen's ex-boyfriend, Billy, comes to town. Dawson, and the audience, sees that his arrival makes Jen confused and under pressure, and Dawson feels threatened by the ex. He has the dilemma faced by most boyfriends: he could be nice and let Jen handle it herself or he could butch up and tell the jerk to take a hike. Either way, he'll lose Jen. Which is what he does at the end of the episode as she decides she needs to be away from guys for a while. The following episode, "Road Trip", has Billy returning and he starts a road trip with Pacey and Dawson, both of who skip school. While they are away, Joey deals with a sex jock who claims they did it and she gets back at him by claiming to be pregnant. For a while, the jock's reputation is ruined as he is labeled a dead beat dad, until it's known that he can't reproduce. Then we get "Double Date" and "Scare" where Dawson tries to get Jen back. By the way, "Scare" makes homage to Williamson's Scream. This while Jen is paired up with a football player named Cliff.
While the plot following Jen and Dawson's breakup is in the majority of the later episodes, there is also the matter of Dawson, Pacey, and Joey. Dawson and Joey share their first kiss on a dare in "Detention". Later, in "Boyfriend", Joey gets drunk and a boy nearly takes advantage of her until Pacey rescues her, though Dawson gets the credit. Pacey's GPA suffers in biology and Joey is commissioned to help him and they go wading out into the waters for snails. This leads to a moment where Pacey sees Joey naked, while claiming to power up the truck, and he asks Dawson to be her boyfriend. Dawson approves of it, at first, but then goes back on it, but not before Pacey kisses Joey. This leads up to "Beauty Contest" where we see Joey enter. The episode is a case of gender role bending as Pacey gets into a pageant consisting of girls while tomboyish Joey does the same. Both, of course, meet competition from a bitchy rich girl. Yet, to be realistic, the episode has neither of the three win. However, it is surreal to see Joey sing "On My Own" from Les Mis with Dawson watching. It somehow matches the set up as Joey is the modern Eponine pining for Dawson's Marius. The similarities stop there. Joey reminds Dawson, when he flatters her at the end, that it's all a dress and mascara while Dawson doesn't even give Jen a second look. Completing the ensemble is Pacey doing a speech a la Braveheart with blue make up and Scottish accent. The season then wraps up with "Decisions" where we finally see Michael Potter. Joey and Dawson travel to a jail to see him and we have Joey pour out her anger while Dawson sees a saddened man regretting. Joey is later brought to him by Pacey and the two talk more. Meanwhile, Gramps awakens from his coma only to die. We see a grief stricken Jen go to Dawson and spends the night with him. Of course, Joey thinks they did it and runs off, leaving Dawson go through ten minutes of running about the town looking for her. Jen, seeing that she lost to Joey, meets with Grams in a church. It's a special moment, even the music is turned off. Joey and Dawson reunite in his room, go through some verbiage, which includes Joey getting a trip to Paris, France. The cliffhanger is rather Joey will stay or she will go. Of course, the thing is decided as she and Dawson share a kiss.
Season One of Dawson's Creek is something. At thirteen episodes, it's the shortest of the six, which explains why it sometimes feels rushed. Since so many things get contradicted in the show, there are things that seem out of place in the First Season, something common in most shows. Also, the story telling in the season features a standard plot formula: each episode starts with Dawson and Joey in Dawson's bedroom, watching a movie, comment on the theme of the movie where Dawson takes the simplistic and idealistic view while Joey has the realistic and cynical view, the credits come, we see the teens go through the plot of the episode, experience a few angst and drama, and then the two return in the bedroom and talk about the previous events. This standard is evident in all thirteen episodes, with a few variants: Jen is in the room in one episode and sometimes we see Joey being out. While each episode has its own conflict the use of the plot formula makes the episodes seem pretty much the same. There are also a few continuity goofs in the season. Besides the lack of mention of Nellie after "Kiss", we see the anguish of Dawson going over the break up with Jen for three episodes and each time he tries again without any gained experience (not even a mention of the last try). There are times I think "Double Date" and "Scare" were in reverse order, or both episodes took place between "Boyfriend" and "Road Trip" in actuality, as Pacey doesn't mention his parents being mad at the skipping school thing until "Beauty Contest." Besides the goofs mentioned, the season doesn't seem to show much change in the time. We don't see any traces of winter, or even autumn, until "Decisions", which acts as a continuity hick-up as it goes back to late summer in Season Two.
Besides the mistakes, I do find the acting somewhat natural. James Van Der Beek has the teenage insecurities narrowed down and Michelle Williams has the wounded bird appeal on. However, Williams doesn't seem to have the right reactions until later in the season and before then it's just laughing or grinning when dealing with Grams' religion or Dawson's flirtation. Joshua Jackson is great as Pacey, even making him a different character from Charlie. Katie Holmes' Joey has the snarky personality but the constant pointing off to the side while talking to Dawson and her talking down to him is off putting. I also tend to think that Bessie was delighting in making Joey miserable as she doesn't look serious in one scene while Grams comes off as a stiff.
I have not seen a feminist review mention of it, but there is a contrasting portrayal of women and men in the show at this point. It is a known fact that Kevin Williamson was a homosexual at the time but that is no excuse for reusing a heterosexist depiction of women. Teenage girls in this instance are either embodiments of the Madonna / Whore complex (more on that later), objects of conquest, or shallow bitches to be challenged, ignored, and discarded. Same with adult women, in form of Tamara Jacobs and Gail Leery, who are portrayed as either sex objects for the wet dreams of teenage boys or selfish people who have everything in life but are throwing it all away in a tryst. Only Grams is not sexualized, as she is old. This actually is more respectful than the way her younger counterparts get. If one could list out the stages in Women's Lib in Season One with its female characters, one could list Grams as the First Wave feminist, Tamara and Gail as Second Wave, and Bessie as the Third, in all three cases being career women with little or no help from the men in their lives. With this scale, we see Grams as someone who is satisfied at being able to vote and to have a job, abite one that conforms to gender roles (nurse), and she gave it up to be married to a man. However, the fact the man in her life is indisposed, she has to retake her role as a worker and tend to him. She does this on her own with only her faith for support, and she rears a rebellious teenage granddaughter, which is why I consider Evelyn Ryan a strong woman. Strong enough that the younger women seem weak in comparison. Tamara and Gail are the same type of woman, a product of the Sixties, where she can be a house wife and have a career at once, and yet is not completely satisfied. Gail is seen as a housewife experiencing a mid-life crisis while Tamara is younger but having her own type of unsatisfactory (we now call it quarter-life crisis). They differ, of course, with the fact that Gail has everything but longs for something beyond the perfect suburban picture (a common critique in the show) while Tamara is a career woman who is unmarried and yet has just gotten past age thirty. Thus, both see their clocks ticking as they are in an increasingly ageist society. So, they go into pre-marital, and extra-marital, affairs with guys (you'll notice Gail is concerned about Bob's safety yet not her family's). Of course, they know what they are doing and wind up paying for it -- Tamara with her job and Gail with her perfect life in the Leery family. Then, almost on par with Lifetime, the two women then rely on men to help them out (Tamara is bailed out by Pacey and Gail is forgiven by Mitch). That leaves Bessie as the unrepentant sinner in the Third Wave who believes she can do anything she wants, a right that women are denied by some boogeyman called the Patriarchal society. She never marries Bodie at any point and chides Grams for stating the obvious. Then she dumps the care of Alexander on the new aunt, Joey, while running Potter Ice House. With the way the Potters are, you'd think Bessie would have kept her legs closed, but she's in that "don't judge me" tone and refusing to take responsibility for her actions (previous generations of women were willing to take responsibility of their actions because that is the price for being treated as an equal). Bessie also goes to lengths to get Joey to be on her side in forms of sending her to visit her imprisoned dad and only allowing Joey a break at the Ice House just to be a teenager. She never asks anyone for help, not even Bodie, and doesn't even thank him for assisting her when he does (otherwise he spends many episodes as a no-show). As a result, she is the least sympathetic of the groups.
The last above seems to sum up the portrayal of mothers: either dead like Joey's mom, irresponsible women like Gail, insensitive and embodied women like Bessie, or sheep to their husbands like the yet to be seen Jen's Mom and Pacey's. Portrayal of fathers is not made any better. Fathers in the show are either naive dreamers who are oblivious to their wife's adultery and then go berserk when they find out like Mitch, men who play favorites with older siblings while making younger ones feel bad about themselves like Pacey's dad, unseen tyrants who can't stand their daughter's budding sexuality like Jen's father, absent fathers like Bodie, or worse, a convicted felon like Mike Potter. We don't see Pacey's dad or Jen's, so Mike, Mitch, and Bodie are the men to stand in as fathers, but I'll save the dysfunctional dad part for the future.
While Jen is brand new, the friendship of Joey, Dawson, and Pacey, is depicted in Season One as like the id, ego, and superego of Freud's psychotic whole. Pacey embodies the id as he goes by impulse and Dawson is the ego, going in back and forth on debating on acting on impulse and then jumping at it with messy result; leaving Joey in the comfortable super-ego zone. Friendship between them is shown as a theme in Season One. Joey and Dawson are shown to be close friends though we are told that Dawson is best friends with Pacey, and Pacey and Joey can hardly stand each other. But, as Joey points out, the raging hormones in them could change the dynamics.
The theme of love and lust is carried through in Season One. Dawson treats Joey as one of the guys in the early episodes while fawning over Jen, something that Joey doesn't like. When Jen arrives, Joey feels her territory threatened simply because Dawson goes to her. This suggests that Joey does have feelings for him. Dawson, meanwhile, wants to prove that pure and chaste love exists as he pursues Jen. This while Jen is told by Grams that Dawson only wants one thing from her; and it's not her virginity as it's already lost. During the season, Dawson and Jen do nothing more than hug and kiss. Meanwhile, Joey and Pacey are telling Dawson of the fast girls of New York and how some guy might nail her. When Dawson learns of her past, he almost ignores her, thus reversing what he had previously stood for (that he was into love more than sex). Joey then confides to Jen in "Hurricane" that Dawson is living in a fantasy from all the movie watching. Once they break up, Dawson does the moves to reconcile yet Jen doesn't fall for it until Joey shines in the pageant. Ultimately, Dawson learns he has feelings for Joey and it leads to the kiss at the end.
The show was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, which does detract from the whole New England setting. It does, however, give Dawson's Creek a kind of Southern feel, without the Confederate flag. Each episode has many songs playing in the background, all from the eighties and nineties, yet the title song "I Don't Wanna Wait" is what starts off the show. The song fits the show perfectly as it matches the themes of wanting a solution to the conflict right away. Having gotten the whole series on DVD, I do find the nostalgia for the 1990s in this season, however I do find the sharpness in the footage to be an eye sore.
Due to the length of this review and commentary, other themes in the show will be covered in the next part where we get into Season Two.
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