I had posted this quote on a different thread but it fits well on this one as well. It's from the director of both the Mitch Dies episode and the DJ Have Sex episode:
Quote:
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McNeil, who now directs One Tree Hill, notes that while a series like Dawson's Creek may have an original blueprint as to which couples will ultimately be together, destiny often has other ideas. "I believe that Dawson's Creek was [originally] conceived with Dawson and Joey being star-crossed lovers," the director theorizes. "And over the course of the show [it evolved to where] Joey and Pacey were really meant to be together. I thought the series finale handled it beautifully by bringing them all back together. Dawson was allowed to have his own dream and live in his fantasy world as a filmmaker. He got to have Joey in his world, but in the real world, Pacey got Joey. I thought that was great."
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I think it explains the way the show evolved very succinctly,and more accurately than all the sour grapes of Joske's diatribes. A dramatic writer only has control over some elements of his story, especially on serial television. He can write the plot and dialogue but he can't control the actor's talents, the audience response or the synergy between those two things. DC was probably the perfect example where an original premise was scrapped because of this natural process.
I agree that all the peripheral romances on DC were worthless. The only interesting ones were the ones that involved a merger of main characters, as
wbviewer said. It's not lazy writing that caused the others to be so bland. It was more poor casting and the futility of trying to divert the audience from wanting what they wanted.
The Pacey Audrey story might have worked if it hadn't been such a blatant and unsubtle attempt to buy off the PJ fans. Actually if they had done it right, Audrey would have been a wonderful foil for Dawson, as she had the yin yang chemistry with him that she never had with Pacey. They could have started her off with Pacey,
leaving the PJ angst intact as an undercurrent, then used all the complications of that to spin her off with Dawson. It certainly would have kept the audience more involved than the stale DJ leftovers they fed them throughout season 5. And the fun actress playing Audrey could have been put to much better use.