jarlath1

It seems I now am required to reply to three posters. I’m not sure I am prepared to do this on a regular basis but here are my feelings on some of the points raised.

Both JJH85 and AsgardianJane return to the scene with Mr. Brooks’s friend, and insist I am misreading it. For JJH85 indeed, I misrepresent the ‘facts. There is no mention that Brook's first love ever regretted her decision to be with his friend and his friend stated that they had a good life. It's like someone mentioned in an earlier post about not forgetting your first love and nothing to do with wanting to be with them.’ For AsgardianJane: ‘Brooks' relationship we see from the perspective of the two men. Griffith talks about the part of your soul you give to your First Love but again, who is to say your First Love is your true love? Griffith's character has Pacey's downbeat perspective but that is what it is, a perspective. Who knows what Brookes would have said to him, or his deceased wife?’

Well, the issue here is really: why do we think the writers put this scene in at all, and signalled its importance by having the character played by Andy Griffith (and the significance of that particular casting choice – one which would probably have taken a while to negotiate)? If what JJH85 and AsgardianJane suggest is true, it has no great significance and Griffith speaks with no great authority about the triangle in which he was involved. This is straining credibility. This scene takes place in a season where the three main characters (Pacey, Dawson and Joey) are in a parallel situation to those of Brooks, Griffith and Ellie, the woman they both loved. The latter are essentially an older version of the former. Griffith – Pacey’s rep (even, as AsgardianJane points out, possessing Pacey’s downbeat perspective) – arrives to inform Dawson (and the viewers) that looking back on the whole affair, he thinks that his wife made a mistake, that she was never really fulfilled, that Brooks was her soulmate, and that in some kind of afterlife she will be with Brooks, which was how it should have been. This is certainly a ‘perspective’, but it is a fairly significant one given that this ‘Pacey’ is looking back at the end of the whole thing trying to figure out the rights and wrongs of what went down. It is essentially a future ‘Pacey’ confessing to Dawson that the whole triangle had been a mistake. Yes, Griffith’s says that he and Ellie had a ‘good life’, but he qualifies that judgement: ‘All the years I had with Ellie - 3 children, a home, a good life. Still, all that time, he had that part of her soul you give your first love. When he goes, he'll be with her. I suppose that's the way it should have always been. ‘ That’s the way it should always have been. The parallels between the two triangles was drummed into us the whole season – at one stage Brooks says to Dawson: ‘1956, Louis B. Mayer calls me into his office. He's got this brilliant idea. Wants to cast my best friend and my girlfriend in my next picture. Turn Away, My Sweet. Well, I got to agree with him. It's great casting. Till we started shooting and I am a madman. Crazed beyond belief. I don't even notice what's happening right in front of my eyes. My best friend falling in love with my girlfriend. By the time I realize it, it's too late. She's gone, and I still have half a picture to direct. Do you have any idea what that's like?’ (The idea that we don’t get Brooks’ perspective is untrue – his feelings about what happened are quite clear – and also that he is an older Dawson). Crucially, this scene takes place in an episode where Joey and Pacey sleep together for the first time, which might have appeared to the viewers as if the Pacey/Joey thing is signed sealed and delivered. But, no, Griffith says, telling Dawson to look to the movies for answers and to have faith in what they tell him even when their answers oppose common sense (or ‘reality’ ) (‘Faith is believing in something when common sense tells you not to... Miracle on 34th Street. Arthur always believed that the best answers for life's questions could be found in the movies. Crazy idea, huh?’ – the implication being obvious…no, to this series, the answers are indeed in the movies, as long as you are watching the right ones). It also takes place in a season where the arc is the movement of Joey away from Pacey and back towards Dawson (confirming Griffith’s advice to Dawson to have faith). It’s true that we don’t get Ellie’s perspective directly (she’s dead after all), but given the parallels we do hear it indirectly through Joey at the very end of the season with her point that while there had indeed been magic with Pacey (that’s the term she uses about her relationship with Pacey) at the start, it was gone. The scene very interestingly also echoes one of Joey’s lines from the first episode of the season where she says when herself and Pacey come back from their trip: ‘It's like 'A Wonderful Life' in reverse. Everyone seems better off without us’ – reference to Capra as a kind of model against which the events of the series should be measured (echoing also something Grams’ says somewhere about her own taste in film: ‘I used to be a big fan of motion pictures. Frank Capra, It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Pocketful of Miracles. Simple desires fulfilled, aspirations realized.’ – as bad as the writers often were, they did manage to link a lot of things up together).

In other words, this is a very significant scene – and it has nothing to do with not forgetting your first love and everything to do with not just wanting to be with them, but actually being with them. If we carry the implications of this scene forward, it suggests that even were Joey to ultimately choose Pacey (which the writers don’t even have on the cards at this stage), when she dies Dawson will be with her which ‘I suppose is the way it should always have been’. Not much comfort for those of us who wanted to see a Dawson/Joey conclusion in the here and now rather than the hereafter, but I suppose all the talk of transcendent love links herself and Dawson on the higher plane (and leaves poor Pacey in an eternity alone).

That is my final word on that scene – we have been circling it for what seems like an eternity to me. I don't see any possibility of our ever agreeing about what it means.

I've dealt with AJ before. To move to Gwen. Again, Gwen says she left her Dawson, and then encourages Dawson and Joey to get together. If this is not clear evidence that she now regrets leaving her own Dawson, I don’t know what it is. She wants them to get together because she now sees in retrospect the mistakes she made in leaving her own version of Dawson. It’s fairly straightforward. I’m not sure why anyone would want the term ‘soulmate’ used any more than it was by this series. I would say: we get it, soulmates, blah blah blah, we can see the parallels, you don’t need to hammer it home any more than you are already. Obviously, some viewers who never liked the whole Dawson/Joey soulmates forever discourse anyway can look the other way when plain as paint parallels are being drawn (parallels which spell no good for the future of Pacey/Joey).

I like your comparison to Little Women but it does little more that provide a story where readers didn't get the ending they expected. As I said, I didn't read part 2. I don't recall from the film that we are meant to feel badly about Jo. She is happy in the end. Again, which is her soulmate. The man she chooses or the boy she grew up with. The book doesn't put that label on it.

Alcott is not a writer who would use a term like soulmate, thankfully (which is to say she is a better writer than any that worked on DC). Little Women is a basic text in the whole shipper phenomenon, and as I said, is famous because a writer purposefully upset her readers because she refused to marry her heroine (Jo) to the boy-next-door-type. Alcott was actually a bit like Berlanti (a small bit): she wanted her Jo to remain unmarried and independent at the end of the novel. Her publisher insisted that she marry her off to someone, so she chose someone who would irritate the fans as much as she could. KW is a kind of pop culture filter, and running through his various enterprises are references to parallel texts with which he maintains a dialogue. He is clearly someone very influenced by John Hughes, and the first season also sets Joey up as a version of Eponine from Les Mis. The arc he sets up is one where the heroine finally gets the ‘right’ person. I don’t think this is a controversial point – it’s more or less accepted in any of the scholarly work done on the series. The last fifteen minutes have him change his mind (almost exactly mirroring John Hughes who reshot the end of Pretty in Pink and had Molly Ringwald end up with the hot guy rather than the best friend, after either losing his nerve or fearing the class implications of the original ending, depending on who you read. Famously, Hughes himself ‘corrected’ the end of Pretty in Pink in Some Kind of Wonderful – whose ‘platonic’ kiss between the main protagonists is echoed in the ‘platonic’ kiss between Joey and Dawson in the library in ‘Detention’).


I'm saying that there is evidence in season one that PJo would get together and we can't dispute that because we know Kevin decided PJo would get together after seeing the dailies for Double Date. Note, they had already written and built the way for Pacey to realistically make a move on Joey before that.

No one, as far as I know, disputes that KW claimed (a long time after Season 1 was well and truly finished) that he always intended to give Pacey/Joey their ‘shot’ after ‘Double Date’. Even if I completely accepted this claim by KW, and didn’t wonder whether it is part of his explaining away some of the finale’s very bizzare lines, it would not mean: KW committed himself to building a genuine alternative possibility for Joey in a relationship with Pacey. Regarding Pacey ‘realistically’ making a move on Joey requiring any build up…???? First, I don’t accept the use of the word ‘realistically’ in relation to this series at all (it isn’t trying to be realistic – it has teenagers who talk like postmodern adults; it idolises Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, and emulates the nostalgic glow of their movies; it believes in things like soulmates and transcendent love; it even seems to think the Andy Griffith show should be revived). Secondly, Joey is a very attractive girl. There is no need to build up anyone making a move on her. Any heterosexual male wouldn’t need much of a build up to try his luck (as plenty of them did in the course of the series).

Well he put the moves on Joey before he ever met Andie and he was hesitant to get involved with Andie but there was never any concern about getting together with Joey. In terms to the show itself we are left to wonder. As for the season 1 sexual tension, half the dialogue between Pacey and Joey is about sex and relationships. And this is picked back up again in Season 3, compare
'Its funny how you turn all that sexual repression into humour'
'You know, did you ever stop to think about how much hormonally-charged energy you waste on these quick quips and the biting banter? Your life would be considerably more productive if you would just take some more, uh... Oh! What is that? Some more...Action. If you took more action.'
Its the same line repackaged. They are purposely picking back up on that after Season 2 to carry on what was begun earlier

Andie wasn’t around in Season 1, so it would be difficult to put any moves on her when she didn’t exist. He put the moves on Tamara. Pacey’s hesitation in making the move (a term I can’t believe I am even using) on Andie were – as he stated himself – because he couldn’t believe that ‘a woman like her’ could see anything in a ‘loser’ like him. His hesitation had nothing to do with burgeoning desires or love for Joey. In fact, Tamara’s reappearance probably slowed down Pacey/Andie because of his lingering feelings for her. I don’t think there is much to wonder at here. In terms of the content of the dialogue between Pacey and Joey in season 1 being about sex – they are all gabbing about sex constantly. Doesn’t Joey point out to Dawson at some stage in that season that all the two of them (Dawson and Joey) ever do is talk talk talk about sex? Critics were complaining at the time that the lot of them never shut up about sex. So, the dialogue between all of them was stuffed full of sex (the opening scene in Episode one, for a starters, was about the growth of sexual tension between the two main characters). Pacey thinks every thing banter related = this means you must want to have sex and are just repressing it. I’m not sure why, or why you think the series agreed with his assessment. I didn’t see it. Abbie poured her entire life into banter – on Pacey’s account she must have been extremely sexually repressed.

Again, Kevin Williamson has always said the last episode (of the two halves) was written to point to PJo. Just like he said Part 1 was always leading to DJo. He wrote it. I'm going to take his word on that.

My memory of the writing of those two final episodes is different. The script was leaked and the one with the Dawson/Joey ending had most of the dialogue that was eventually used in Part 2 (including the ‘I’ve always known’ stuff from Joey) already there, before KW changed his mind. I’m taking the evidence of the leaked script with D/J-ending and large chunks of the dialogue that ended up in Finale Part 2, over KW’s claims.

It just made it seem like you thought PJo only happened because Eve failed when Eve was only ever a catalyst for estrangement between Joey, Dawson and Pacey.

No, I put ‘planning’ in my original point. But Eve was not meant as a catalyst for estrangement between these three (especially given that she is a reprise of Season 1 triangle, and is even – terribly – Jen’s half sister as if to overemphasise that she is the new blonde ‘threat’ to Dawson/Joey).

The reason Kevin was going to put him together with Andie in the finale was because they felt he had to have someone. Who else were they going to use? Audrey? Pandie was very popular and would be the obvious runner up for Pacey but Kevin never liked putting Andie in that context. There is also no evidence that after Joey, Kevin would have gone back to Andie rather than introduce a new girl.
This does not contradict my point. Pandie was endgame. That couldn’t work because he couldn’t get MM for long enough, and would have seemed forced and Andie would then have seemed like she was second best.
Regarding what KW would have done in Seasons 3, 4, 5, 6 had he been there – we know virtually nothing, other than that he would have given Joey/Pacey a ‘shot’, and that he didn’t like what had been done to Andie (so, I presume, he wouldn’t have tried to destroy her character). Other than that, we know nada. We know that his original draft of the finale had Pandie. And then he couldn’t get MM for long enough. That tells its own story.

Like I said, fan groups rarely all share the exact same opinions. I'm sure there are DJo fans you don't agree with. There is no doubt that PJo continuously gave them stories to use just by being together. Not just for Joey and Pacey in a serious relationship of equals but the characters around them like Dawson and Gretchen. Rating were steady, critics loved PJo, most of the fans loved PJo and the network loved PJo.
I’m not sure what we are disagreeing with here. I’m sure there are many D/J fans that I would disagree with too. Many of them appear to hate Pacey in the same way that a huge number of P/J fans absolutely hate Dawson. Since I really like Pacey, I think such D/J fans are wrong. Regarding the ratings…I think there was a fairly significant drop in ratings between Season 2 and 3, but I can’t be sure. I’m not hugely concerned. My main concern is the coherence of the series. I’ll pass over the claim that ‘Pacey and Joey were in a relationship of ‘equals’ as if Dawson and Joey were not. I’ve always thought of Pacey as superior to both Dawson and Joey, and only in a relationship of equals when he was with Andie. It isn’t that I think Dawson and Joey don’t have good qualities – obviously, as D/J fan, I do. However, I thought both of them looked down on Pacey to a certain extent, whereas he bizarrely thought that the sun shone from both of their posteriors (in terms of Pacey seeing Joey as ‘real’, for example, it is Pacey who says ‘that woman is a goddess’!!! She really isn’t Pacey, she is fairly flawed, interesting, attractive, reasonably intelligent woman. What do you do with a goddess…can you live happily with someone you think is a goddess…? People worship goddesses. You don’t shack up with someone you think is a goddess – because in a relationship with a goddess you are always the inferior party, unless anyone is claiming that Pacey thought of himself as a god? This is the tragedy- in a relationship with his goddess Joey, he will always feel unequal. You can’t be in an equal relationship to someone you think of as analogous to a deity).

As you see here what I'm trying to say. When a character isn't be being truthful the writing will tell you. You mention other characters saying 'No you're not'. Look at the example I gave a few posts back about Appetite for Destruction where Joey says she is relieved someone else is looking after Dawson rather than being jealous and Pacey says its the truth. We must take that as the truth, that is why the writer structured that in that way.
No, no, no. I agree with your sentence that ‘the writing will tell you’ when a character is being rather chary with the truth, but the example you provide is a terrible one (and whatever the case saying ‘we must take’ it as the way you read it ‘because the writer structured it that way’ is question begging). It suggests that for some reason which you don’t really explain, Pacey has some kind of monopoly on truth telling and truth recognition. Joey is not jealous of Jen/Dawson in Season 5????????? This remains a novel idea to me since even at the time of first airing, P/J fans were really irritated by the fact that she simultaneously didn’t seem to show any jealousy over Pacey/Audrey but did over Dawson/Jen.

Regarding the Season 6 second go between Joey/Pacey you continue to insist ‘there was no second go’ (and hence no second breakup). ‘That 5 episodes spans 1 week where they discuss getting back together. It seems she is on board and then a day later goes cold. They never got back together in season 6, just like Joey and Dawson didn't get back together in Season 5.’ Now, Joey and Dawson definitely didn’t get back together in Season 5; they didn’t go on dates, they didn’t make out, they didn’t do anything specifically boyfriend/girlfriend, though they were headed there when Mitch up and died (by ice cream cone). Pacey/Joey in season 6 on the other did those things. And it wasn’t working. That pained look you see when Joey embraces Eddie…you think is a look of, what, regret? I’ve always seen it as a look of guilt. Pacey’s a good guy, and she has just broken his heart. She messed around with him as a distraction from the loss of Eddie, and it wasn’t something she should have done especially when he starts insisting that they really belong together. She feels guilty – and she is right to feel guilty. You say there was no second go; I say, yes, there it was, and that was how bad it was – so bad that it didn’t even feel like a second go to some P/J fans.

I don't know why we must assume Pacey is unhappy when we left all three of them the happiest they had been in years.

This is not an assumption – It is an argument with evidence (disputable evidence, but there is a case – I certainly can be wrong, but I don’t assume). The notion that, after the death of one of their closest friends, the three of them are ‘the happiest they had been in years’, is a stretch for me. The reasons why I think Pacey will be miserable soon I have stated a number of times. One additional one is that he will wake up one morning and realise that Joey is not a goddess. Goodness knows what will happen then – he might actually get some self confidence back. There are two fantasies in operation in Dawson’s Creek: the Capra-esque fantasy of soulmates coming together, soulmates whose destinies are forever intertwined; and then there is the fantasy of a good guy who thinks he is a knight on shining armour come to rescue a goddess of some kind. The series believes in the first kind of fantasy (magic) right until the last 15 minutes, and then expects us to accept the second. Whether one is more realistic than another is not a question I am particularly interested in – my interest is in which one is coherently endorsed by the series as a whole. Good luck to the goddess.