JJH85

Creek of the Week ‏@talkindawson · 7h7 hours ago
2 ex best friends. 2 boats. 1 Joey Potter. This week, THE REGATTA IS ON. #DawsonsCreek Ep 70 - Show Me Love | Creek of the Week: A Dawson's Creek Podcast …

jarlath1

No. I believe that a DJo ending was planned all along but that doesn't mean they didn't build up a credible PJo relationship and that not everything about them was about Dawson. You tie every argument, every moment to Dawson.

No one, as far as I know, is disputing that Joey/Pacey have a ‘credible’ relationship (all too credible, in terms of the constant arguing, bitterness, blaming, etc.). There are even moments, at the start of their relationship, where they are sweet and endearing. No one – and certainly not me – disputes this (unless they are genuinely blind and completely prejudiced against this couple). I’ve never said that everything between them is about Dawson – indeed, I have repeated ad nauseum, that their second break up had nothing to do with him at all – it is all Joey realising that it’s not going to work with Pacey (I must have used the quote ‘even without Dawson’ twenty times at this stage!). What I point out is that their break up was always on the cards and that Dawson/Joey was the way it was meant to end, therefore other relationships they have need to be seen in the context of that overall ending and the view that Dawson/Joey are soulmates. It doesn’t mean that Joey/Pacey had no legitimacy, or didn’t actually love each other or care about each other, any more than it suggests that Dawson and Jen didn’t love each other. However, neither alternative couple (and there were quite a few viewers holding out for a Dawson/Jen ending!) loved each other as much as, or had the connection that Dawson/Joey had. This fact does not ‘delegitimise’ other relationships!

I’m going to reverse the claim you make here. You tend to ignore the (as I say, often clunking) references to the soulmate theme in other relationships in the show and try to make them somehow legitimate Joey/Pacey (Aunt Gwen, Brooks, AJ) when (and especially given the cultural references being made in these relationships) they are obviously contributions to the Dawson/Joey soulmate theme. For example, AJ first pulls Joey up because of her claim that Little Women is her favourite book. Little Women is famous for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that it was one of the first texts to generate considerable ‘shipping’ (because Alcott published it in 2 parts, and left the resolution of Jo’s love life until part 2, fuelling demands that she be paired with her best friend, the blonde boy-next-door Laurie). The debate about Alcott’s failure to do this was revived when a new adaptation of Little Women was released in 1994, a few years before DC first aired, and starred Christian Bale and Winona Ryder as the never-to-be-married Jo and Laurie, again generating fan disgust. It then turns out that AJ has his own ‘best friend’ who has just returned from Paris (reference back to the Joey of the end of Season 1). The signposting of Dawson/Joey here is so strong that it would take real determination to ignore it, not only in the shadow of the Little Women references, but in the revival of the soulmate theme.

We know there is evidence in Season 1 that they would get together. Objectively. Kevin Williamson told us so. It was seeing their chemistry in season 1 that made him want to pursue PJo later on. At the ATX festival last year he doesn't dispute it when Julie Plec says you can see it coming in the Pilot. Season 1 was where they decided to do PJo. Double Date was the moment it happened that they would go all in. As stated in Detention, there is meant to be sexual tension between the 4 of them. The kiss in Double Date is not out of nowhere, he's been grabbing her ass and trading sexy banter with Joey for the past 9 episodes. And on top of that in Season 3 they go further and say that Pacey has been chasing Joey around for years. Joshua Jackson of course adlibbed that bit in the finale. 'I have always, always loved you' because he was not happy about the PJo amnesia.

KW’s post-finale claims about Pacey/Joey are neither ‘objective’ nor definitive (he spends a lot of time explaining away rather than explaining). Moreover, there is a big difference between Pacey/Joey ‘getting it together’ (I think in another place he called it letting them ‘have their shot’) and the notion that somehow, even when he didn’t realise it, KW always really wanted a P/J ending and built it into the series from the start, even without knowing it (which is effectively what you are claiming, and what the people who constantly lob questions like the above at KW at every single convention where the series is mentioned). Essentially, what many P/J shippers want to be told is that: it was always meant to be, even though none of those involved in the production until the very last episode (you say 45 minutes, I say 15 minutes) knew it. I don’t need to revisit the claim that there was sexual tension between Joey/Pacey in season 1: if ‘grabbing’ a girl’s ass is a manifestation of ‘sexual tension’, then we have come to a pretty pass and there is sexual tension between every horny guy and the girl that happens to be around him. The sexual tension in this season is between Joey/Dawson (a kiss so hot it would ‘set the Atlantic ocean on fire’), and between Pacey and Tamara. I’m not going to comment on their supposed ‘sexy banter’ in this season either – P/J shippers may see it, and good luck to them. I don’t see it and I’ve looked quite hard. This is just something the two shippers will always disagree on, but it is certainly not an objective fact about Season 1. JJ’s ad libbed line in the finale, ‘I have always, always loved you’ remains nonsense – does he mean he loved Joey when he was totally, head over heels in love with Andie? Really? It has always been one of those lines that made absolutely no sense whatsoever – it was as if JJ suffered from amnesia at that point!

I think you are confused with the timeline here. Eve-Dawson-Joey was never going to be a major thing. See the end of Season 3 episode 1 on the dock. PJo is moving forward full steam ahead from that moment. That was Berlanti's central take on where he was going. His time on the show as main story writer is summed up by the rise and fall of PJo.

No, I’m crystal clear on the timeline. I am talking about the planning of this season and the way in which the P/J storyline was invented to solve a number of problems at the planning stage. Then the filming started. Even Berlanti knew where the show was supposed to end, even if he resented it.

I also think you are mistaken here. Pacey and Andie were for all purposes broken up in Season 2. She was going to do a Henry. Its the very fact that because she was popular she was brought back. 3 months to be 'cured' of mental instability her mother is institutionalised for? She was there to be an interim love interest for Pacey, like Jack was to be an interim love interest for Joey. Only with Jack his sexuality made for more of a story. They tried to make stories for Andie, it didn't work. Once she was not a problem for PJo there was no plot left and she went.

Hard to comment on this one! Doing a Henry was Season 4, and his disappearance was partly due to that particular actor’s feeling he was slumming it by being in DC. In relation to Andie’s cure …We are talking about a TV program, and not reality! 3 months is unrealistic, but (as I have argued repeatedly) this is a show that explicitly prefers certain kinds of fantasy (which is associates with Capra and Speilberg) to gritty reality. She was not an interim relationship for Pacey in KW’s view – which is the very reason why, in his first draft of the finale he also had an implied Pacey/Andie ending (a lot of us still say that had Meredith Monroe been available for a week rather than a couple of days, P/J ending would probably not have happened. If we are to take KW at his word, one of the things he was upset about was the way Andie was treated after he left (and so was JJ – given that he wore an ‘I Love Andie’ badge at the 100th episode party). She was very much meant to be an integral part of that show as far as KW was concerned, and initially endgame for Pacey, also as far as KW was concerned.

PJo happened entirely because of their chemistry. You often find it in shows that you can't cast chemistry. It springs up where you least expect it. So while there was meant to be a frisson between them with their back and forth it was explosive. You can't separate acting and writing as two separate things, they both combine to make the show. As much as you can write 'a kiss for the ages' if the actors can't sell it its not there. You can put as much mood music behind it as you want. What ended up happening is that PJo was in some ways accidental. Even when they got them together as planned, it was just too good. They are going to end PJo in Show me Love, its too good so keep it going. They are going to end PJo in True Love, its too good, the aftermath and potential is too great so keep it going. They are going to end PJo early in season 4, it provides great outlets for the characters, keep going. They could have probably found reasons to keep it going for even longer, like I said, Pacey and Joey living together was never shown. That banter would have been comedic gold like when Ben and Felicity moved in together for an episode.

I’ve nothing really to say about this in general – it confirms the point I was making more or less. There is a lot of subjectivity here, though: saying that ‘its too good so keep it going…’ Well, yes, P/J shippers seem to have found it so good (although, even at the time many of them were complaining on the forums: why do they always have to fight? Why do they always have to fight about Dawson? Where are the happy times?). The rest of us, after the first couple of episodes of season 4, found it rather less than good. Some of us, by the middle of that season, found it rather tough going and tedious watching them go at each other in a non-sexual and married-couple-who-are-now-sick-to-the-back-teeth-of-one-another kind of way profoundly boring. Personally, I could see the break-up coming from so early on in the season, that I actually became more interested in Jen/Henry (one of the creakiest plots in the series) than Pacey/Joey and this even though Pacey was then, and remains, my favourite character in the show. Their banter is very much a subjective issue.

But I don't believe the characters are necessarily lying or purposely not saying what they really feel unless we are guided to. When Joey says to Pacey that they have to deal with the people they used to love and that her future is with him, we are given no indication its a lie. When she says her future is with Pacey in Self Reliance there is no indication its a lie and the previous instance she said it supports it. Using the examples you give:

Joey has no problem with Pacey hooking up with Audrey- No one disputes that in the context of the show (the summer diaries on the website did. They had Joey write that she had to appear OK with it but that she doesn't like it and she doesn't like the idea of Pacey having an experience like their summer away with Audrey. Why not put that in the show?) We are saying that its weird and not emotionally real.
Joey 'Doesn't Feel It'- We dispute that because its contradictory to her words and actions in the previous 4 episodes. Also the fact that when she goes back to Eddie she isn't exactly delighted when her face falls as they hug. The writers also set up Joey's fear in 'That Was Then', 'Love Bites', 'Catch-22' and 'Joey Potter and the Capeside Redemption'. We are given reason to doubt she actually feels that way. That was then used to form the basis of Joey's 'Off the Hook' reply and the 'I've always known' speech.
'Pure Magic'- I don't dispute this. Magic isn't real. It doesn't really dispel my vision of Joey. Reality hit her hard at the end of Season 4 with the harsh reality that she can't live happily ever after at that time. She wants to hold on to 'magic', 'fairy dust', 'childhood' longer.
'I feel like I'm nothing'- Remember earlier in the episode Pacey says he is angry at Joey but doesn't know why? His Promicide rant is clarified in their talk after and in 'Seperation Anxiety'. He doesn't just blow up and leave it at that, there is an afterword. Which of course ends with 'If I were lucky enough to own a boat and I would ask the woman I love to come sailing with me, would she?' 'You wouldn't have to ask Pace'. PJo, not done. Which makes Season 5 even weirder but like I said, they worked very, very hard to get people back on the DJo train.

Again, this confirms my point: everyone tends to believe characters when they say things that confirm what that particular viewer believes to be the point of the series, and find myriad excuses for other things which don’t. I agree that we are ‘guided’ by other aspects of the series, but we disagree on what that guidance is directing us towards. The guidance for me is the grand arc. I wouldn’t never claim that characters are always purposefully ‘lying’ when they say things that are not the full truth. Sometimes what they are saying is just wishful thinking (like ‘I’m over you’, etc – when other characters point out, ‘no, you are not really over her/him’, and the viewer nods – it’s not that the character is necessarily lying, but that they don’t want to face the truth). At other times characters may be engaging in willful self-deception, which is not the same as wishful thinking (like, I would say, Joey saying she doesn’t care that Dawson/Gretchen have hooked up, which Pacey points out to her is not true).

You don’t dispute that Joey claims not to care about Pacey going out with Audrey, but then try to provide a host of reasons why you don’t accept it! It’s not ‘emotionally true’? I’m not sure what that means here – it seems emotionally true to me that when someone tells you that you have ruined their life and then goies on to humiliate you in front of your peers, and you then realise that you are still in love with your ex, you might genuinely mean it!

‘I don’t feel it’ – you don’t believe it and explain it away. Fair enough. None of the evidence you present makes any sense to me, but then as I’ve explained I think P/J and D/J shippers were actually watching two different programmes at times. I think she means it. I think that at this stage she has given P/J a second go and it hasn’t worked and knows it and wants to get back to someone else. I agree that Joey is afraid, but you know what I think she is afraid of (and the masses of evidence for that fear interspersed through all seasons). ‘I’ve always known’ she claims in the final 15 minutes (giving a speech cobbled together from one originally written to be said to Dawson, together with some last minute additions to make it seem relevant to Pacey). Did she know way back in Season 1, when she was crazy about Dawson? Really? I line it up with Pacey’s equally bizarre: ‘I have always loved you’. Neither of them make any sense. If KW had time he could have come up with better lines than this that would be believeable in their treatment of the entire series (or even just the two he wrote). He didn’t though, and we are left with senseless statements that are easily contradicted. Did Pacey really ‘love’ Joey in Season 1. Even if we grant your argument that he was genuinely into her, was he ‘in love’ with her? Was Joey then, in some back alley of her mind really in love with Pacey all through Season 1, and always aware that she would, in a contest with Dawson, choose him? This kind of argument just doesn’t work. We could explain it away as hyperbole and rhetoric, but if so, it is very hollow rhetoric.

Rather than the hastily thrown together final 15 minutes making everything else ‘richer’, it actually tries to undermine the entire arc of the series and render the first 2 seasons completely null and void. That it does so by also sacrificing the future happiness of Pacey is one of the reasons why I have always found P/J-shipping itself so problematic.

JJH85

I think that is a misrepresentation of 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.

Pacey will never forget his first love with Andie, but he also knows he doesn't want to be with her. It by no means diminishes what they had together, just that it was not going to last. That is the same with Dawson and Joey, what they had was great, but it didn't mean they were meant to be together forever.

AsgardianJane

But there never was a 'second break up'. See that they are discussing getting back together. As of Sex and Violence it seems pretty much agreed. They can't keep their hands off each other, Joey's going nuts with jealousy and they want to sleep together. The next day she stops it. What is the difference is a day? Are we meant to ignore all the stuff that happened the day before?

I think your contextualisation is probably the biggest issue. Just because Joey and Dawson were heading towards one another doesn't mean Dawson is always going to be shown the be the best option. And it also doesn't mean Joey doesn't honestly see a life with Pacey in Season 4. You assume that because the writers didn't want that to pan out they want to paint the option as false or undesirable. That isn't necessarily true.

Neither Aunt Gwen or Brooks refer to soulmates though. Maybe you've got a quote there. Both are about women who have left someone for another man. In Gwen's case we only hear it from her perspective. She supports DJo but she didn't stay with her Dawson. She left her safe relationship, she says she married too young and she lived with Richard the artist. Which one is her soulmate? 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?

I see your comparison but again you are putting the word soulmate in there and inferring that is what any of them are. Morgan is someone AJ has known his whole life. 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.

No one is saying that. I've kept saying he intended DJo. 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I state that auxillary text disputes it but you may not feel that should influence the show so I bracketed it. Its interesting info though. Then I made a judgement that it is weird and not emotionally truthful, that is not disputing what was said. Just saying what was said was not realistic. This is a guy a few months previously she said she saw her life with, they parted on good terms with him calling her the woman he loves and her saying that he wouldn't need to ask if he wanted her to leave on a boat again, despite a blow out argument. So no, I don't find allowing your ex boyfriend who you were in love with and lost your virginity to, to sleep with your roommate in your bedroom to be emotionally realistic.

Again, there was no second go. 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.

I always took Joey's 'I've always known' in the context of Dawson's TV show. The triangle that wasn't a triangle. It fits with what she says in The Longest Day. 'I need him', ' What I feel about him is completely different to what I feel about you and our friendship'. It seemed from around that time she always knew it would be Pacey. But I also don't think that means she spent 5 and the first half of 6 waiting for Pacey. As she says in Castaways, he left her and she had to deal with it and keep it together. Castaways has a 10 minute argument about Season 5 where nothing is resolved. She's always known he was it for her from Season 3.

On Pacey's side is more vague. I think we see multiple stages of Pacey's attraction to Jo. We hear about the little boy who teases the little girl (pulling the pig tails!), we see him realise how beautiful she is in season 1, we see him realise the depths of his feelings for her in season 3, in season 4 he's talking about the rest of their lives together 'I could do this, the biting banter, the back and forth, I could do this my whole life with you as my partner in irreverence', in season 6 he knows she's the girl he wants to marry.

That long lingering look on Pacey in that shot. He's the one that has given up hope of getting Jo back.

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.

slbcwrites

I am intimidated to jump into this big discussion, but I will just start by answering the OP - I'm a Pacey and Joey fan. I had stopped watching DC sometime in Season 2, but when I heard that there might be something brewing between Pacey and Joey, my interest was piqued and I started watching again to see how it would all play out.

What got me invested in them was being able to see the evolution of their relationship, which played out in an organic way. We weren't told as an audience from episode 1 that they were meant to be - I usually find it hard to become invested in a couple that I know I'm being told is "the couple." I am often more attracted to couples that happen unexpectedly or more naturally. So, we got to see P/J go from mutual dislike to hesitant friends to good friends to being in love. I was able to understand the dynamic of their relationship and become more invested than I was able to with Dawson and Joey, because when we meet D/J they have already been best friends for years and Joey is already in love with Dawson. I didn't get to see that progression happen, so it was harder to invest in it for me.

P/J together, I always enjoyed their biting banter and witty give-and-take, then when they began to genuinely like each other, the tender and caring moments mixed in with their banter made them more intriguing. They were two very strong personalities who were different in many ways and so similar in others. I think they loved each other very much and tried to make it work, but because they were still immature and had so many questions about the future looming, mixed in with the complication of Dawson that got their relationship off to a bad start immediately, it was doomed to fail when they were teenagers. I could believe that in the series finale, they had both grown up, were secure in themselves and their careers, and were at peace with the finality of the end of D/J's romantic relationship.

I honestly was a P/J fan who thought they were over forever after Season 4. I was expecting the show to continue on with the Dawson-Joey trajectory until the show ended, and to me that was whatever. Even though I personally had never bought into or got invested in their relationship, and I don't believe in "soulmates" (maybe another reason I never got into it), that was predictable. Then they re-explored Pacey and Joey in Season 6, and I was reminded why I had loved them so much. P/J wasn't the intended endgame, but because of the foundation they had, the love they were shown to have had, and the fact that Dawson and Joey had never been able to sustain a romantic relationship for any considerable amount of time, I thought it was perfectly acceptable and believable that D/J would realize they were meant to be soulmate-friends only, that Joey would try things again with Pacey and that the three would all be grown up enough to all be friends and support each other in the end.

I don't know what JJ's intention was if he ad-libbed his line, or what the writing originally intended, but I always assumed they both meant "always" as being since they first fell in love. There may have been some hormonal, teenage attraction underneath all the bickering in season 1, and Pacey realized that in the Double Date episode, but they weren't in love then. Joey didn't know then that she should be with Pacey. They hadn't yet opened up to each other like they did in Season 3. So I didn't take the "always" lines literally to actually mean their whole lives, just as hyperbole to indicate a long, long time.

I don't think Pacey was going to be unhappy. While he left his restaurant in Capeside, I always envisioned him getting into the food industry in New York and maybe even opening his own restaurant there one day. He could have his girl and still explore his career. I think he would be pretty happy with that.

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.

AsgardianJane

You are not required to do anything, its a message forum not an interrogation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Look at the Appetite scene

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?

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.

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.


You really like the goddess comment. Its only mentioned once, its not a recurring motif any more than Jen's duck face is.

hshapir2

This thread is awesome

I love this

so true AsgardianJane. I remember these scenes in season 5. I always felt like Joey was trying to prove something to Pacey when she said she was a hundred percent ready o move on. I am glad you mentioned the Karen thing. Her face when hugging Eddie speaks volumes


agree. She's talking about what she was suppose to want shifted. She's talking about Dawson to Pacey. In the finale, she said since the triangle, she knew who she was suppose to be with, meaning Pacey

jarlath1

You are not required to do anything, its a message forum not an interrogation.

My point here was directed at D/J shippers who seem to have deserted this board. Perhaps we are boring them.

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.

No one said that Brooks’ death wasn’t important for other reasons. The Griffith scene, though, was put there to flag things about the main couple. Even KW once complained that too much time on the show was spent making everything be some kind of commentary on the D/J relationship, and my point is that this often annoying focus didn’t end when he left. I’m not going in to a blow by blow discussion of the Griffith scene again. There’s no point – there appears to be nothing that will convince P/J fans that the disastrous end to their relationship in Season 4 was flagged up repeatedly, warned against by numerous other characters (who must all be wrong), and on the rocks from about a third of the way into that season (a season in which the plan was always to have them break up and move towards a D/J conclusion). People can draw their own conclusions about that scene and what on earth it was doing and how it contributed to the progression of the season.

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.

I don’t disagree with this – it has no impact on the issues we are discussing.

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.

My comment was reversing the comment of JJH85.

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.

I’m also leaving Gwen – a self-declared D/J supporter. When even those in the series who want D/J together are being read as somehow examples for why P/J is the better couple, there isn’t much to say in response.

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.

Pacey needs a push so that he can move on from Tamara, and his best friend provides some perspective. He isn’t in love with Andie yet. By the time he ‘makes his move’ on Joey (which took a long long time) in Season 3, he is already in love with her. Moreover, he could hardly have the same conversation with Dawson as he had before he and Andie became an item and, as we have so clearly shown, without Dawson he really has no one else to turn to for good advice.

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?

As I’ve said before, it’s only P/J fans who read anything significant into these moments. Her reaction when he tried to kiss her suggests she didn’t see anything much in their banter either. That is not just a ‘not at this moment, Pacey, I have other things on my mind, but of course, I am really into you’ reaction. It’s more a ‘WTF? You are completely misreading this situation, and we both know I’m in love with Dawson’ reaction. For two characters who you claim are not sexual (because Dawson is stuck in a sexless Neverland), it is D/J who never dancing around the subject. Far from being stuck in an asexual phase, Dawson has grown up in a house where happiness and a healthy sex life go together – so much so he is embarrassed by it. Sex is very much a natural part of his world and his understanding of love as he has seen it everyday in his house, usually stumbling on his parents acting it out for him.

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.

No, it wasn’t a memo (or not just a memo). It was whole chunks of the script with a great deal of the dialogue. And it didn’t end with Joey left alone with Dawson as Pacey went with Andie. It ended with Joey and Dawson together, and Pacey arranging to meet Andie for dinner. The leaked script caused havoc on the forums at the time as P/J fans went ballistic.

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.
As she should have – it is another time when Pacey is, once again, the nicer of the two male leads. Plus, Joey is seriously pissed at Dawson for appearing to have another Jen. Why on earth would she go to him? Pacey and Dawson had plenty of fights before and after, and always made up in a couple of hours. Their fights – until Joey – were never really all that serious.

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.

But…KW didn’t even bother to watch most of the final two seasons, barely mentioned poor Audrey in the finale, and tried very hard to get Andie back. Of course, it has always been understood that there is a serious tonal disparity between the finale and Season 6, and even the 5 year into the future device couldn’t hide the character amnesia. And, yes, things we saw on screen were indeed still pointing to a Pandie endgame (their two scenes in the hospital, restored in the DVD release, tell their own story).

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.

This is a board about D/J or P/J – so, we both have our own goggles on as that is the premise of the board. I’ve never heard anyone claim that Pacey/Andie were not a partnership of equals. Her mental health required her to get treatment by the end of the season, but up to the last couple of episodes they were very much equals (‘you spar better with me than anyone’). Your comment suggests that when people are going through a difficult time in their mental health and they need to lean on their partners for a while, they cease to be ‘equal’. Which I don’t buy.

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.

I know it is a Cary Grant quote about Katherine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story. That’s what makes it even more tragic. Grant uses it as part of an explanation why his marriage to Hepburn has broken down and they had to get a divorce - he couldn't stay married to a woman who thought she was a goddess. Tracy saw herself as a kind of goddess and wanted to be treated as a goddess, and a marriage can't be maintained with someone like that. By the end Tracy says something like, ‘I’m not a goddess, I’m a human’. And then they get married again. DC reverses this. Horrifically, it is Pacey who sees Joey as a goddess, in the finale no less, after all this time… This is not a good omen. He hadn’t learned the lesson of The Philadelphia Story. He uses the term goddess once, but it typifies his ‘awed’ reaction to her in the entire finale ('my God, that woman's amazing'), and for too many scenes in Season 3, start of Season 4, and the brief nonsense in Season 6. He worships her, until towards the end of Season 4, he suddenly doesn’t, and reacts appallingly. In another forum, one poster referred back to the reaction of Sars of Television Without Pity to Pacey's awe struck reactions to Joey in the finale: '“My God, that woman's amazing,” Pacey muses. All right…seriously? What's so amazing about her? She's not particularly smart, she's not particularly funny -- she's not particularly anything, except pretty, and Pacey and Dawson's respective obsessions with her say more about them than about any defining traits Joey might have. ' I pretty much agree with this comment - expect that I would point out that when Pacey says that Joey is 'amazing' Dawson looks strangely at him as if he thinks Pacey has lost his mind. That is because, D/J shippers would argue, Dawson doesn't have a rose-tinted view of Joey, because, unlike Pacey, he actually does she her as she is: not a 'goddess', not 'amazing', but someone with flaws and problems that is still worth loving. Because he 'hears her' - while Pacey sees her in a distorted light as a flawless creature.

I should also point out that he named the boat True Love when he was making it for…Andie. I’ve always thought it a bit crass that he didn’t change the name after they broke up.


You are really hooked on the Appetite scene, and really believe Joey is not jealous of Jen. Nothing will convince you otherwise. It’s fine. To me that dialogue always sounded as if Pacey was trying his best to get Joey to say that she wasn’t jealous of Dawson/Jen, like he really needed to hear it, and, as she often did she told him what he needed to hear (just as she told him that, were Dawson to ask her if she had slept with Pacey, she would say, absolutely, yes, I did. Joey telling the truth to Pacey as always).

I am all too aware of the timeline of the Season 6 Joey/Pacey episodes. The whole season was difficult to watch, and was so bad that some of it burned itself on my memory, the 5 with the Pacey/Joey revival being the most vivid because of the amount of disbelief suspension I and others endured. I think we should leave this issue here. You think Joey didn’t give it a try (because she was too afraid), I think that Joey gave it a go and saw how much of a bad idea it was and went off with a secondary character. I think what I do because that is what Joey actually said, and that is the actual plot, and the writers planned on a D/J implied conclusion to the season. You think as you do because Pacey insists that something else is going on, and you think Joey looked sad when embracing Eddie. Nowhere we can really go with this particular discussion.

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.

We know all this – we also know that they all supposedly regretted the way they had allowed themselves to drift so far apart and the whole two episodes were drenched in KW’s nostalgic glow. Are you really suggesting that they weren’t miserable for the second part of that finale as Jen drifted towards death and then did die? It is a bad time for anyone to make crucial decisions that might affect the rest of their lives.

You really like the goddess comment. Its only mentioned once, its not a recurring motif any more than Jen's duck face is.

You see, I don’t like the goddess comment, because I like Pacey, and don’t think it is healthy for him to be in a relationship with someone he thinks of as a goddess, particularly when A Philadelphia Story is the parallel text here. It might be only mentioned once, but it resonates with his attitude to her more generally.

Forwood4Bamon

wow. so many good points, but I keep repeating myself. Yes DJ had problems, but what about PJ? They fought constantly too every freaking episode never resolving anything. No other couple fights like them in circles. No other couple. As I've said, I did like early PJ but season 4 wow. That's a different story. I don't see how she makes him better. I really dont. That is not what I viewed. how many fights about the same things? 1 million?

also there was a lot of lying and jealousy in the PJ relationship. They always looked so unhappy.

dcfriends

Very interesting discussion!

My feelings on DJo and PJo are sometimes a little all over the place.

My favorite character is Joey and I try to appreciate all of her relationships.

Sometimes the negativity about Dawson and DJo gets to me. I don't really feel that Pacey is "better" than Dawson, as a lot of PJers seem to feel.

I really like this comment!

I think Pacey was a little too obsessed with Joey's looks. He seemed to talk about her looks quite a lot.

Forwood4Bamon

I love your icon Dcfriends. and yes I agree.

jarlath1

I think Pacey was a little too obsessed with Joey's looks. He seemed to talk about her looks quite a lot.[/QUOTE]

I agree, though I think he tended to project a version of what he wanted her to be, or what he thought she was, onto her and that this was the cause of his strange sense of what kind of a person she was. The show was built on the idea that Dawson and Joey are people who know and understand each other intimately as best friends and soulmates, and are unsure of what to do when physical attraction spills over into this relationship. Their knowledge of each other, their understanding of each other never diminishes even when they are not together. She says at some point to Dawson, 'Thank you...for knowling me better than anyone.' He doesn't just know 'about' her, as some P/J shippers appear to think: he knows her, and she knows him. Joey doesn't say: 'thanks for knowing a huge amount of information about me and my family.' She thanks him for knowing her...and indeed for 'putting up with her' (because she realises that she isn't perfect and certainly isn't a goddess - she can be difficult and has plenty of faults (like everyone). The crucial (and perhaps the most endearing) thing about D/J over P/J, is that Dawson and Joey get each other in a way that no one else, no matter how well-intentioned, or genuine, do. I return to the comments of the fortune teller in season 2 (as this is a show that appears to genuinely believe in things like destiny and soulmates): their destinies are intertwined: 'she surrounds you'. I also tend to return to something else she said to Dawson as applicable to the very end of the show: 'that which has been lost can be found again'.

Forwood4Bamon

I agree, though I think he tended to project a version of what he wanted her to be, or what he thought she was, onto her and that this was the cause of his strange sense of what kind of a person she was. The show was built on the idea that Dawson and Joey are people who know and understand each other intimately as best friends and soulmates, and are unsure of what to do when physical attraction spills over into this relationship. Their knowledge of each other, their understanding of each other never diminishes even when they are not together. She says at some point to Dawson, 'Thank you...for knowling me better than anyone.' He doesn't just know 'about' her, as some P/J shippers appear to think: he knows her, and she knows him. Joey doesn't say: 'thanks for knowing a huge amount of information about me and my family.' She thanks him for knowing her...and indeed for 'putting up with her' (because she realises that she isn't perfect and certainly isn't a goddess - she can be difficult and has plenty of faults (like everyone). The crucial (and perhaps the most endearing) thing about D/J over P/J, is that Dawson and Joey get each other in a way that no one else, no matter how well-intentioned, or genuine, do. I return to the comments of the fortune teller in season 2 (as this is a show that appears to genuinely believe in things like destiny and soulmates): their destinies are intertwined: 'she surrounds you'. I also tend to return to something else she said to Dawson as applicable to the very end of the show: 'that which has been lost can be found again'.[/QUOTE]

I agree with you about DJ. They will always be there for each other no matter what. I am not sure when Joey was there for Pacey. Yes PJ had some good moments, but the whole show shows me she will always love Dawson, she is always jealous of who hes with.

jarlath1

[QUOTE=pandiexjeyton;85598652

I agree with you about DJ. They will always be there for each other no matter what. I am not sure when Joey was there for Pacey. Yes PJ had some good moments, but the whole show shows me she will always love Dawson, she is always jealous of who hes with.[/QUOTE]


Thanks for this pandiexjeyton. I think the reason why you felt that the show demonstrates that Joey will always love Dawson is because: that is what the show was always about (until the final fifteen minutes). The writers, producers, etc. all confirm that the idea, all through all 6 seasons, was to show the journey of Dawson and Joey, and to end with them together. Even writers who joined in Season 4 and who were (and are) committed Pacey/Joey shippers, have confirmed this. Then KW changed his mind (for some very problematic reasons). The consistent thread all the way through the six seasons is Dawson/Joey's relationship. That relationship is the 'heart' of the show.