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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.
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You are not required to do anything, its a message forum not an interrogation.
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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.
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They have the scene because they have set up an analogous situation. They've put Brooks on his death bed and are dealing with his life before they turn his life support off. Nobody is arguing it isn't important but you are saying it can only be important to support your point of view. Its pivotal episode in the series where Joey decides to lose her virginity to Pacey and not to Dawson. So we have the analogy reflect that. Griffith is mirroring Pacey's fear that he tells us in the episode. Its not that Joey will always love Dawson in some way, as he says that was OK with him, its that he will never match up. We all know Pacey veers from confidence to crippling self doubt. Its no different in his relationships. Joey chooses Pacey again in this episode. Just like Ellie chose Griffith and Griffith may be maddeningly self doubting but she made her choice. Just like Joey, she didn't leave him, they had a family and a happy life together.
Pacey had the same issue with Andie, he asked her point blank 'Why do you like me?' and that was with no Dawson. He's been emotionally neglected, he's led a life where he's only ever felt loved and appreciated by Gretchen and Dawson. Why have the screw up when you can have Dawson Leery? And then Andie cheated on him, further proving that there is always better out there than Pacey Witter.
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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).
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Yes they are analogous. But again, he doesn't give us an opinion on how he thinks things should have turned out. He tells us what happened and that he was sad about it and left Hollywood. Had he known that she had three children and a happy life would he have wished that away? Brooks' tragedy is that he didn't accept it and keep his friends because he ended up an alone unknown.
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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).
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Nobody is saying its about forgetting your first love. Its about accepting the fact that your first love is special but not necessarily the be all and end all.
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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).
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Gwen clearly believes getting married was a mistake. She says she married too soon and then she met this man who made her feel alive for the first time. So she regrets committing to this guy so soon in her life when she hadn't had much experience in relationships. Then she meets this man who makes her feel like she's never felt before and she's meant to ignore it? She left her husband, we see no regret on her part. The man she loved died, she didn't leave him after realising her huge mistake.
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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.
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His hesitation is when he's talking to Dawson and Dawson tells Pacey he should be dating girls. He was attracted to Tamara's maturity. Pacey didn't need this conversation to hit on Joey.
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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.
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These two characters supposedly 'never particularly liked each other' or 'hated each other' or are 'mortal enemies'. As stated in Season 3 'You've got to read between the banter'. Why are they so interested in each other's sexualities in season 1? Joey and Dawson, yes. Dawson and Jen, yes. Joey and Pacey? Pacey and Jen don't have that same type of dialogue at all. Its made a joke in Detention and again in Season 3 (see how Season 3 is picking up on things dropped after 1 again?) that there is absolutely nothing there. In fact, can anyone recall a good Pacey-Jen scene in season 1?
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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.
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A memo leaked telling the WB the ending was Dawson/Joey after Pacey and Andie go off together. It was quite funny in that it read like Pacey went off with Andie and Joey was left with Dawson which is not how the episode would have presented it at all. I think maybe 1 spoiler person got the DJo draft because it never went to the crew or cast. There were spoilers about Pacey being a 'loser', they had interpreted his waiting tables in part 1 to mean he was on staff at the Ice House. That may have been just Part 1 though which was filmed as intended for DJo. Every other spoiler-ite at the time got the PJo ending.
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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).
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How can you say she's not meant to estrange the three? She does it very effectively in 'None of the Above' when she makes Dawson turn on his best friend. Then we can see the PJo anvils that Pacey was going to 'betray' Dawson with Joey. Joey goes to Pacey after the punch up and not to Dawson, Dawson is alone when Eve finds him while Joey looks after Pacey.
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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.
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Pandie was endgame for one draft episode 2.5 years after the actress left before the role was rewritten. Nothing we saw on screen was with the intention of Pandie being endgame.
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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.
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Actually I'm comparing it to Pacey/Andie where he descended into being her carer towards the end. She relied on him so heavily at the end of season 2 and was in a weakened state. You've got those DJo goggle on.
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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).
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Pacey called her a goddess once, its a Cary Grant reference about Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story. The same place he got the name for the boat True Love.
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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.
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Look at the Appetite scene
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Joey: I guess you're right. I expected this from him. How could I possibly think that everything else would change, but we'd somehow remain the same? I mean, promises we made before we even knew how we would turn out, it seems a little crazy.
Pacey: The things we really want always seem like a good idea at the time.
Joey: Pace, I don't think I exactly wanted it. There was this small part of me that was relieved to get a break and was relieved to know that someone else was going to be taking care of him. And now...
Pacey: You just didn't expect to lose your place?
Joey: It sounds horrible.
Pacey: No. It doesn't sound horrible, it just sounds like the truth. I am a firm believer that things happen for a reason. And things have a wonderful habit of working themselves out regardless of how you may plan them to the contrary.
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He's pried out of her a truth that she doesn't like to admit because 'It sounds horrible'. Another scene that is made richer for me with the PJo ending by the way. Where is the implication in that scene that Joey doesn't mean what she says?
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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.
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Joey and Pacey were kissing but they were not yet together. They were on the verge of it when Eddie came back. Point out the moment PJo got back together in Season 6. Timeline
Clean and Sober- They confess they are not over each other
Castaways- He tells her while sober that he still has feeling for her. Joey says she needs time
That was Then- They discuss getting back together but she says she needs more time, she ends the episode leaving a message saying that they need to discuss their future together rather than having her decide herself.
Sex and Violence- They go out to dinner, Joey goes crazy jealous and by the end they are well on their way to being together...then Eddie comes back
Love Bites- Pacey assumes that after Sex and Violence Joey is on board but she goes cold
So even though they can't keep their hands off each other, they are never actually back on.
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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.
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Well Jen doesn't look to have been a part of their lives in a long time. Joey has never met her baby before even though both live in New York. Dawson forgot she even had a baby. Pacey remembers but likely only because he and Jack socialise as the only ones of the group left in Capeside.
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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.
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You really like the goddess comment. Its only mentioned once, its not a recurring motif any more than Jen's duck face is.
