Oh, God. Season two. Wish me luck.
We begin where we left off-- Joey and Dawson are kissing in his bedroom. They pull away with dazed looks on their faces, unsure what's supposed to happen next, as the camera stays uncomfortably close to their faces. "So..." "So..." "Now what?" "I don't know," etc. Wide-eyed, she moves to sit on his bed, and starts to say something but stops. "You were going to say we shouldn't have done that, that's what you're thinking, right?" Dawson says, sitting beside her. She says no, but apparently that's on HIS mind. He denies it, and she suggests they sleep on it-- not together! Separately. This is super awkward. She tries to escape, and he pulls her back to kiss some more.
Credits! Damn, I was wrong about the theme song change. It must be all the seasons after season two that have the Jann Arden song instead of Paula Cole's epic ballad.
After their makeout session, Dawson and Joey must've gone their separate ways, because they wake up the next morning alone in their own beds, grinning. Also at the Leery residence, Mitch wakes up beside Gail. She starts kissing him, and he makes excuses. Shower, meeting, etc. Re-jected!
Bessie is suspicious of Joey's good mood, and after a minor amount of teasing, she gets the truth out of her. We cut between the pair of them giggling over the gossip and Dawson and Pacey GETTING THEIR HAIR WASHED together at the local salon, doing the same. "Did she touch your thingamajig?" Pacey asks. Gross, Pacey. I don't want to think about Dawson's thingamajig. Dawson says no, it was sweet and romantic. He's such a lady. Bessie asks Joey about France, and she pouts. Pacey tells Dawson he thought their romantic tension would have been drawn out for at least a few more years, and says he's inspired by Dawson's proactiveness. "I can be Pacey Witter, badass stud and man about town. I can score with high quality chicks!" Yes you can, Pacey. Call me. He sets his sights on Christy Livingston, a senior cheerleader who's getting her hair done across the salon, and then makes the egregious error in judgement of asking to have his tips frosted. Dawson, being the worst friend alive, lets him do this.
Which is why the next thing we see is Pacey, almost as blonde as he was in Urban Legends, getting in the front seat of Doug's police cruiser. Stolen, I presume? He spies Christy up the street, and peels out to chase after her, only to slam his car right into another car-- one that belongs, we'll find out, to Andie McPhee. Oh good, I was wondering when this show was going to get a little more neurotic. She thinks that the 16-year-old with the frosted tips and the polo shirt is a cop, so hands over her license and registration. He takes the opportunity to lecture her-- "You could run over a cat! A child! A nun!" That's right; priorities, Pacey. No cat killers on Officer Witter's watch. Andie, for her part, looks terrified. He lets her off with a warning-- THIS time.
At Capeside High, Dawson and Joey awkwardly gaze at each other by the lockers. "I think I may have made the biggest mistake of my life," she begins, clearly holding in a smile. "France." She apparently told the faculty that she wasn't going to accept their nomination, and she and Dawson burst into huge grins. IDIOT. I can't abide this, Potter. You're dead to me again. Anyway, she asks Dawson what he thinks, and he spouts of a string of adjectives-- he's excited, ecstatic, psyched, and aroused. That's right, aroused. Well, this has taken a turn for the disgusting. She asks if he thinks they're making a mistake, and he says they'll be fine. They should go on a date, he says. Oh lord.
Their canoodling is interrupted by an abruptly short-haired Jen Lindley, who tells them about Gramps' death the previous night. What she doesn't tell them is when she found time to hack off all her hair, but whatever. She says Grams is taking it better than she is, and that she's going to go home for the day.
In another hallway, Pacey and his hair tell a group of unidentified guys about the Andie story, only to have her appear. "I have been having major anxiety attacks to the point of medication since you pulled your stupid stunt," she says. When are you not having anxiety attacks, McPhee? As they're talking, the hot girl from earlier, Christy walks by and says hello to Andie. Pacey wants to know how she knows Christy, and makes it clear that he's hot for her. Andie, out of the goodness of her heart, and probably still a little freaked that one of the other Officer Witters might get her in trouble for their little car accident, agrees to make some introductions.
Jen makes it home to find Grams boxing up Gramps' old clothes. She's in remarkably high spirits, but then, I guess she's had some time to make peace with the possibility of Gramps' death. Jen's all, "WTF, Grams?" and Grams is all, "Bitch, please. I know what I'm doing."
Next door, Mitch walks out on the porch as Gail runs up to the house with the messiest hair I've ever seen on a human. "I know what you must be thinking," she says, before launching into an explanation as to why she's late-- meetings running long, traffic, etc. Mitch acts all cool and calm, but leaves for an "appointment that's arisen suddenly," and she's clearly disappointed. Oh, Leerys. I like you better once you work your shit out.
At school, Frosted Flakes Pacey lurks by a tree as Andie talks to Christy on the quad. "Go for it Pacey. She's all ready for you. I got her primed," Andie says, and he does. He nervously asks her on a date, and she agrees.
Mitch's mystery appointment turns out to be with a divorce lawyer. Oh, snap!
Jen sits on a porch swing, looking sad. Dawson, wearing a sweatervest over a white t-shirt and khakis, approaches with a casserole from Gail. He's going to the Rialto, he tells Jen, with Joey. They're acting a little uncomfortable, but not nearly as uncomfortable as I feel like they ought to, given that she was trying to kiss him in his bed 24 hours ago. She asks him about the status of "Dawson and Jen," and he says he thinks she could use a friend. She agrees, and hugs him, but then he pulls away, saying he has to go to his date.
Bessie finds Joey sitting at the end of their dock, thinking about her first date with Dawson. "It just seems weird. Dawson and I on a date? Doesn't that seem weird to you?" Yes, Joey! Too weird. Don't do it. Joey laments that she and Dawson haven't kissed since that first night, and Bessie says no sweat, the second kiss is harder, anyhow, because you have time to think about it beforehand. Valid point, Bess. You're wiser than you look, with that terrible haircut. Which, by the way, looks much like Jen's terrible haircut. I would assume that it was just the style in 1998 or '99 or whenever this was, but I distinctly remember thinking short-haired Jen looked fug even back then. Yes, 8th graders are catty, are you shocked?
Back inside, Joey tries her hair in nineteen different styles, applies lipstick nervously, the works. Meanwhile Dawson speeds over on a speedboat. Why didn't they have a speedboat last season? Poor Joey had to do all that rowing. Anyway, he gets out of the boat at her house and picks some weeds to give her. They look like they're going to kiss, and then don't, so she's probably all freaked out. "I'm really glad we've already bypassed the end-of-the-evening will-she-kiss-me drama," he remarks. Then she says something about porn stars, but it makes me feel uncomfortable so I'm ignoring it. He says he wants to hold her hand, so they do that.
At the Rialto, they almost kiss again, before the movie starts. But then they don't. Oh, just do it already. Midway through the movie, an usher leads somebody to the row where they're sitting-- it's Jen! Dawson told her not to just sit at home and mope, and she took it to heart. "I figured afterwards, we could go over to the Icehouse and grab some food. Unless... I'm not welcome..." she says. Of course you're welcome, Jen! She does the fake, "Sorry, I interrupted, I'll go," but Dawson follows her out. Okay, I generally hate season two Jen because she's evil, but her grandpa did JUST die. It probably shouldn't even be a question that they hang out with her for a bit. Joey looks displeased, though.
"The whole time we were dating, were you really wishing you were with Joey instead?" Jen awkwardly asks Dawson in the theater lobby. She seems a little unstable at the moment. "I guess it serves me right I lost you," she says. He says he wants to be her friend. She doesn't like that one bit. "Just do me one favor. All I ask is that you don't jump Joey right away." Calm down, Jen. Ugh, I don't know, I'm torn between her right to grieve and be sad and stuff and the fact that she's gearing up to be a total bitch for a good long time. Anyway, when Dawson heads back into the theater, Joey's gone, with only her precious weed left on her seat. Not, like, pot weed. The weed Dawson picked for her. Keep up.
Outside in the town square, Pacey's been waiting for Christy for quite awhile. Finally she shows, only to tell him it's her five-week anniversary with her boyfriend. "I just had to stop by and tell you how brave I think you are," she says. Andie told her about his "condition," you see. "She told me about your heart stripe." A heart stripe, it seems, could strangle his heart at any given moment and he'd die. She understands his desire to keep it a secret, of course, because she suffers from asthma, and would hate to be treated different because of it. Oh, Andie got you good, Pacey. Though, the hot girl DID talk to you more than she ever did before, so plus sign?
Back at the Rialto, Jen sits alone in the theater. Grams, who'd seen the movie too, finds her there. "What are you going to do now, go get some action now that you're a single woman?" Jen asks her. Bitch. "I'm 16-years-old! Look what I've become!" WTH. This shit is annoying. I guess it was the haircut that unleashed Evil!Jen. Once Jen stops saying mean shit to Grams, she tells Jen about her first date with Gramps-- it was at the Rialto, it seems. "I didn't come here tonight to watch the movie; I came to be with him." Jen apologizes for her bitchery. That's right, Lindley. Get ready to do a lot of apologizing.
Pacey wanders the grocery store, probably hoping to get his heart stripe prescription filled, when Andie comes in to do a little shopping. Their banter is pretty cute. "If you thought for even one second that Christy Livingston was going to dump her beautiful All-State football boyfriend for you, a sophomore with heart stripe, you're massively deluded," she snarks. I did like Andie back in season two, I remember that now. She even tells him his hair looks hideous! She picks out some dye for him to correct the problem-- thanks, McPhee. Our eyes appreciate it.
Casa Leery. Gail accuses Mitch of being a liar-- which, technically he is, though she was first. She found out he was meeting with a divorce lawyer, it would seem. "I'm not sure I can stay married to a woman I love and hate in equal measure," he tells her. She tells him he can give her another chance, or make their marriage a statistic, and he remains unsure.
In town, Dawson finds Joey sitting on a bench. He has to look for her an awful lot. He tries to excuse his behavior with Jen, but she tells him it's okay. "Do you want to know why I didn't go to France, Dawson?" she asks. Yes! Enlighten us! "It just seemed like the easy way out, you know? The easiest escape from my life." That's a stupid reason. If you're 30 with a family that's falling apart and bucketloads of credit card debt, then sure, it would be running away, but you're 16 with no real ties. And you'd be coming back! Sorry, I'm pretty irritated at Joey right now. Remember, she's dead to me again. "What you and I have may never be simple," Dawson tells her, taking her hands, "but that doesn't mean we're not going to be scorching." Ew. They sit on a nearby swingset and get that second kiss. Then there's some thinly-veiled subtext about changing things that already work so they can be better, blah blah blah. I'm already tired of this relationship. Is it season three yet?
