Sugz

I think its pretty much a fact when I say that the original premise of Dawsons Creek was about two star crossed lovers who would be kept apart because of circumstance but would eventually find their way back.

However, that didnt happen.

So my question is...why? what went wrong with Dawson and Joey in those 6 seasons that made the writers, even the creator os Dawson's Creek make a U-Turn on the story?

Let me say to start off, I know someone will come in here and say "The writers, they changed in season 2 and didnt have the same vision as K. Williamson and co and they ruined it" but I really, really dont think thats the case because I DO believe that there is proof in all season except for 6 maybe that the writers were headed for DJ in the end. For example, Coda, which was for a time the series finale in the minds of the season 4 writers.

My personal theory is that they handled the suspense of Dawson and Joey incorrectly even from the very beginningand by the end of the series it was obvious that the original premise was not going to work. I know they meant for them to come off as star crossed, a pair destined for each other that had yet to get themselves together but inevitably would. But unfortunately I think the entire thing was handled incorrectly and my point is proven by the fact that in the end even the writers couldnt bring themselves to finish up that DJ story with a happy romantic ending because it got so screwed up, and they recognized that.

For one, I believe that they began DJ on the wrong foot. Immediately shoving Dawson and Joeys history into the past before viewers got to see their bond being forged and sticking Joey right in the middle of a burgeoning crush with an oblivious Dawson was great for getting viewers into the mode of rooting for the couple to get together in season 1, but afterwards when the romance inevitably failed in order to keep Dawson and Joey apart for as long as possible there was nothing else to anchor them. The close season 1 friendship they had was ruined and that bond that they supposedly had that culminated in that friendship was only in the imaginations of the viewers who wanted to believe it. So I think that the first season shouldve been something more along the lines of showing that platonic DJ bond that made them so close, perhaps Joeys mother actually dyng half way through the season so that we really could see Dawson there for her and then in the middle we see Joeys crush starting to develop so that we could see the relationship develop more instead of being thrown headlong into something that was never really there in the first place.

Other than that the rest of te seasons were just a mess. In order to keep the "will they wont they" going and to keep fans constantly knowing that there was always a chance for Dawson and Joey other relationships had to be ruined or cut short by constant anvil-like romantic innuendos. That just frustrates viewers and kills a show. One storylines cant keep interrupting other storyines.

I also think that they created obstacles that were too harsh for Dawson and Joey. They didnt really have petty problems that the audience could root for them to get through. They did BAD, BAD things. Like cheating and lying and blaming each other for jailing and killing their respective fathers. It was too much to the point where the audience wasnt rooting for them to get together they were wondering how these two even had a friendship left, let alone romance. So I think that somewhere in the middle of the series, perhaps season 3 or 4 a genuine freindship had to be forged between Dawson and Joey, something like PJ had in season 5, where there were no romantic undertones, just friendship so that people could get back into the DJ vibe and eventually want them together again. But unfortunately it was too forced down our throats at every turn, in every season to give viewers time to do that.

So where did Dawson and Joey/the writers/whoever go wrong in your eyes?

COOLCAT200

First off Sugz great post.

The writers for some reason did not want to give them a chance at being a couple. I mean these are 2 people that did captivate a lot of people and found there story (2 best friends falling in love) Very compelling I mean I am not mad they did the P/J thing because it created a lot of drama But the writers really messed up in season 5. That was there chance to really have D/J and give them another chance that could have potentially carried on to the end. The writers knew the hardcore D/J fans were still watching but just did want to give them a chance. But what makes it worse is they would always in the later seasons make it look like they were gonna be a couple but then create some bombshell and have it all fall apart and 602 is the best example of it. I truly felt toyed with in the later seasons and I don't understand what would have been so wrong to give them the chance. I just did not see the point unless the show just loved seeing the D/J fans long from them to get back together. But in my eyes season 5 was always be the season were they wasted great potential for DJ. Sugz to be honest though I will never truly understand what the writers were thinking.

Sugz

Well I honestly think what they were thinking, with the exception of episode 602 was that eventually Dawson and Joey would get together in the end, but it had to be the end, to cap off the series, they'd get their happy ending so it didnt matter how many false starts they had. In fact they had to give them false starts so that that payoff in the end would be that much more satisfying! However it turned out they ran it into the ground for too long and by the time season 5 rolled around people just got tired of it and some people even found somethng they liked better in other couples. So the writers were left saying "Gee, this just isnt working anymore. Not as many fans are into it, the actors themselves arent even into it, maybe its time to rethink this Dawson and Joey thing altogether" and I think that 602 wasnt meant to be a false start, it was meant to completely capsize the idea of Dawson and Joey as a romantic couple and open the floor to a new ending.

So like I said before, I think a show can work with the premise of keeping two lovers apart for suspense sake but they messed up with DJ by extending it for too long, giving Dawson and Joey so many super huge obstacles and never actually giving the fans anything to root for.

So the answer as to why they never gave DJ a chance was simple...they didnt need a chance, it was decided from the beginning that in the end they'd have their chance, they'd be together, so for most of the series it was fine to give them those hard times because in the end th epayoff would all be worth it to fans. Unfortunately for them and fans of DJ they messed up on the hard times, they made them a little too hard and in the process ruined any viable happy romantic ending for DJ.

newmom5497

My take on it is basically what Kevin Williamson/Paul Stupin said in their commentary on the Season 1 DVD. Season 1 was sort of its own entity(sp?)..and of course at the time, since they made all 13 episodes before the pilot even aired, they had no idea that the series would be picked up and I don't think they thought beyond the final episode of Season 1. I think if they knew for sure that there would be a Season 2, they probably would not have had Dawson kiss Joey in "Decisions" and probably would have prolonged it well into Season 2.

I also believe what Paul Stupin said in the Season 2 DVD commentary...that if he had it to do all over again, he don't think he would have broken up Dawson and Joey early/mid season 2. I think he said something to the effect that they built up Dawson and Joey so much in Season 1 and spent so much time developing the 2 of them and their "history/bond", that their relationship should not have broken up so early in Season 2(and for such a lame reason). And I agree. Being a D/J fan I felt a bit ripped off that the 2 characters that they spent SO much time building up in Season 1, never really sustained a romantic relationship for very long and broke up in Season 2(and Season 6) for such petty reasons. Honestly...if they had let them have a long, meaningful romance(like Pacey and Joey's in Season 4), I would not have felt as disappointed in the finale that they did not end up together in the end(I could have TOTALLY lived with the Pacey/Joey ending as I really like Pacey's character too). Season 6 would have been the perfect opportunity for that. They could have at least let them have "their shot" beyond 602.

Honestly, I'm glad that they didnt keep the two of them together throughout the series..that would have been boring and I truly enjoyed all of the ups and downs of their relationship....it made them "Dawson and Joey" and showed how their bond withstood so much turmoil. I also enjoyed some of the other relationships the two of them had with other people...Pacey/Joey, Dawson/Jen(Season 5), Dawson/Gretchen.

But as to your original question(sorry I went off on a bit of a tangent).....I really don't know why Dawson and Joey didnt "work" in the end. They had "issues" to work through, as did Pacey and Joey, so I don't know why they couldnt have worked it out. It was obvious(to me) in 601/602 that there were certainly romantic interests/physical attraction still remaining with both of them, so I don't think that was the reason.

No matter how many different reasons I read by other people on this board as to why they think D/J couldnt work(and I am not trying to discredit anyone at all), I have to admit that it still remains a mystery to me to this day why they couldnt sustain a romantic relationship. They seemed so "right" for each other to me and seemed to really love and care about each other throughout the entire 6 seasons.

I guess that was just my long-winded way of saying, I have no clue why they didnt work as a couple. To me, they should have.

Sugz

I can understand this but think about it for a second. Did they really seem right for each other romantically? They seemed right for each other on the friendship level, they always seemed to work on a friendship level! They could always talk to each other, watch movies, hang out, but when the romantic angle entered the picture all hell broke loose. So could it be that maybe people were confusing their chemistry as amazing lifelong friends with the ability to sustain a romance which fizzled every single time they tried it?

notsomuch

I think one area they went wrong, was Dawson and Joey seemed to have lost their friendship somewhere in the middle of all the failed attempts. They never had a period to regain the friendship, and it was that friendship that made them special. I think for them to work as a romantic couple after all that happened in season three and four, they should have spent all of season five rebuilding their friendship without any romance involved, then have a Coda window kiss leading into season 6. But the way things went, they always seemed forced and tacked on.

But another thing that went wrong for Dawson and Joey, was the Pacey and Joey relationship. I think we all agree that PJ was really only supposed to be a bump on the DJ highway, they were put together to shake things up. I don't think TPTB were expecting them to become so popular that a large portion of their audience would not want DJ together as anything more than friends.

What ended up happening, and I'm not even sure it was planned this way, but by ignoring the PJ romantic relationship and having them become friends, who actually supported each other through other relationships during season five, it set them up to discover feelings for each other again. They were written the way Dawson and Joey had always been hyped, as friends who became lovers whose paths would cross again.

I agree with Sugz, that the writers knew when they started writing season six, that the ending wasn't going to be DJ anymore.

COOLCAT200

A lot of fans were still into it. Some were not of course but a lot still were and I still believe they were a lot of D/J fans out there. But I am sorry but 602 was almost a slap in the face to the D/J fans. Season 5 was the perfect chance for D/J and the fans but I don't disagree with you Sugz about making the ending more satisfying but the problem is it didn't happen so looking back it makes it frustrating.

newmom5497

<<<<But another thing that went wrong for Dawson and Joey, was the Pacey and Joey relationship. I think we all agree that PJ was really only supposed to be a bump on the DJ highway, they were put together to shake things up. I don't think TPTB were expecting them to become so popular that a large portion of their audience would not want DJ together as anything more than friends.

This I totally agree with. I think the huge Pacey and Joey fan-base had alot to do with Pacey and Joey ending up together in the end. If the response to Pacey and Joey in Seasons 3/4 had not been so large and st5rong, I think D/J may have ended up together in the end. Of course, if the Pacey/Joey storyline had not been so well-received in Season 3, I have my doubts as to whether or not the show would have stayed on for Seasons 4, 5 & 6. I think a few people involved with the show said that the Pacey/Joey storyline and the huge positive response to it , basically "saved" the show and its falling ratings.

coldwater1010

I agree with this. I remember an interview Greg Berlanti did where he referred to Dawson and Joey as star crossed lovers trying to find their way to each other and I just took that as a euphermism for 'they won't get together during the run of the show, but they will end up together in the shows final episode.' So I think the mindset didn't how do we develop this relationship through the series. It seemed to be more 'how do we come up with ways to keep them apart?' But I think if that's what they were really aiming for then they should have just done that. But I really don't think they knew what they really wanted because they didn't seem to want to keep them together, they didn't seem to want to keep them apart, they didn't seem to want them to develop other relationships and that just left them with an unsatisfying mess with a few bright exceptions.

I also think another problem was the way they chose to write Joey because I think too often her behaviour was open to interpretation or her feelings came off as ambivalent and it wasn't always easy to tell whether she was really in love with this guy or whether she just relied too much on having him around and their complicated relationship had her confusing freindship for love or thinking that they had to become lovers inorder to stay in each others lives. I mean I suppose you could argue that she was girl, scared by how strong her feelings were for him and how much he meant to her and who had to grow up and find out who she was before she could finally be with him, which I guess is what the writers were aiming for, but you could also validly argue that she was a scared, insecure girl,with a crappy home life, who had spent so long pining away for her 'golden boy' because she thought he would somehow make everything better and then she gets him and then discovers that he can't, but she's convinced herself that he's supposed to be the one so she can't quite let go and to compound the problem everyone around her is telling her she's meant to be with him before she's even had a chance to figure out what she really wants.

I'm glad they decided to give Pacey and Joey a chance, but I agree if the plan was for them to be just a bump in the road then they shouldn't have done such a good job building them up and developing their relationship because all they succeeded in doing was giving those people who were losing interest in th dj dynamic or were never interested a viable alternative and then they compounded the problem by having dj going round in circles with each other season after season. So it wasn't like they gave any, but the most die hard fans of this couple a reason to get behind them because when it came down to it there really didn't seem to be anything to get behind because they didn't really have a romantic relationship past s2 and alot of the time they barely seemed to have a friendship to get interested in.

I agree with this. I always thought that if they that determined to have dawson and joey be together in the end then s4 would have been a good opportunity to have them move on from each other without all the romantic innuendo and start to really grow up and that would have given the writers space to start rebuilding their romantic relationship either in s5 or in s6 since that was the last season without all the baggage of their constant go arounds.

~Naleylove22~

Ok i don't think anything went wrong. just as katie said about te finale "It's the way it should be" Dawson and Joey friends. soul mates. I think it ended right with them.

Jerry D

Great topic, Kim. I think the key mistake that was made by the writers concerning Dawson and Joey was getting them together too soon. I'll always believe that Season One was an autobiographical labor of love for Kevin Williamson, and that he never expected the show to be renewed, especially since it was a midseason replacement show, which traditionally never do well, so he put everything he had into those thirteen episodes, because he thought that would be it, so he gave the audience what they wanted: namely to see Dawson “take the blinders off” and see what he had in Joey, and she had an endearingly vulnerable underdog quality about her at the time that made us all root for her to get the boy of her dreams, and most of us were overjoyed when that finally happened.

I think that once Dawson’s Creek proved to be a hit, however, and it was renewed for a second season, Williamson and his team of writers and producers were faced with the dilemma of “What do we do now?” because by having Dawson and Joey unite for a passionate kiss at the end of Breaking Away, they destroyed the “will they or won’t they” sexual tension and suspense between them that was so exhilarating to many of us in Season One. Therefore, they decided to recreate that sexual tension and suspense between them by breaking them up, and by keeping them broken up, but in the process, they largely ruined what was so special about them in the first place, and the result has been that many fans, including myself eventually, got tired of their story and moved on.

We also saw Dawson and Joey change from two inseparable friends who supported one another through thick and thin to people who inflicted an incredible amount of pain on one another, and that took away a lot of the qualities that made Dawson and Joey’s story so appealing to me in the first place.

I also think that the incredible chemistry and popular appeal of Pacey and Joey surprised the writers and the producers of the show, and Pacey and Joey’s popularity eclipsed the popularity of Dawson and Joey, and so I think that factored in as well.

I really do hate what the writers did to Dawson and Joey, because they ruined a beautiful story and they turned what I thought was a really special friendship into something that looked unhealthy and they also made it look like something that they needed to beyond, and I’ll never understand why they felt compelled to do that. When you look back over the seasons that followed Season One, Dawson and Joey spent more time apart and estranged then they did together and happy, even as friends, so somehow, everything that had made them special was lost, to the point where their “soulmate declaration” in the series finale rang completely hollow for me.

I thought that Dawson and Joey’s relationship was handled in such a paradoxical way by the writers: because on the one hand, throughout almost the entire series run, somehow, everything always came back to Dawson and Joey and the possibility of a romance between them, to the point that I felt that their relationships with other people were ruined at least in part by their lingering feelings for one another, but yet the writers also mocked their story and systematically destroyed almost everything that had originally made their story so appealing.

I’d really like to know what made Paul Stupin and Co. never give Dawson and Joey the chance to fulfill the romantic potential that many of us saw in them in Season One, but what’s done is done.

Sugz

I do agree that maybe it wasnt such a great idea to get DJ together in season 1 but at the same time I think there were ways around it, most definitely. It wasnt as if it was out of the writers hands because they didnt know whether the show would be renewed or not. Giving them an adolescent relationship in season 2 having the falling out, having them go through a rough patch and then slowly mending themselve again back to tht friendship everyone loved so much in season 1 wouldve been a great way to go, all while giving them separate relationships that had nothing to do with one another. It would have had viewers wanting it to eventually be Dawson and Joey again and be a natural progression into an adult relationship fixing all the went wrong in the adolescent one. But the fact that they kept faltering and giving DJ these here and there romantic moments, interrupting other couples, having these massive fallouts just strained everything that couldve beenand inronically, they ended up giving Joey and Pacey the relationship that was meant for Dawson and Joey without even knowing it.

~AnastasiaGrey~

I agree with everyone's post, great post everyone.


I am a big fan of dawson and joey as well as pacey and joey. when i first watched " dawson's creek" and seeing the chemistry between dawson and joey, my first reaction to them, like everyone else, was oh this couple have to get together, and of course they do, which i was glad about that. But i also have mixed feelings about how fast they got together in the end. I mean i loved it in all, but i just thought the writers just really took this whole the best friend pining away for her best friend who didnt know she was alive too far. i say this because i believe that it could of been sooner that the writers could of had the dawson and joey pairing, i mean obviously they had alot to work with, at the begining like in the pliot we could of gotten a better understanding of how these two best friends were close, and what circumstances really gave them the friendship that we all loved in season 1. Then the writers could of bulit in something along the lines of something potentially happening between them too, besides having joey pine for her feelings for dawson, who was oblivious till the end of the season, i think alot of things could of been avoided if this actually happen.

Now, after season 1, when they first kiss, i was all into "yay they are a couple, but just like pacey and joey(whom i also love and adore) the writers could of focus on them having the relationship that they both wanted, instead of breaking up over bigger issues, i mean if they were going to go that route, why couldnt they have them fight over petty stuff a normal couple could argue about, school, i mean they had one fight and that was over joey's jounal which was a privacy's issue but it wasnt something that broke them up over, like joey finding herself to be with another guy. I just think little things like that, the writers could of avoided all together, now after that, the writers still didnt want them to be together, they could of have them be in the postion where eveyrthing was excatly the way they both wanted, but it just didnt feel right at the end or something and have them remain friends, instead of this tag along the writers put us through all through the years, it was unnessary and could of been avoided.

jediwands

Oh man, Sugz, just wanted to say that you have blown me away with all of your posts on this thread. WOW, ITA with everything you said..

Great posts.

COOLCAT200

Jerry you hit it on nose I don't and will never understand why they wasted so much potential.