| Jerry D |
04-03-2007 06:18 PM |
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, but I really did love Gretchen, so I deided to post on this topic. :) I was very disappointed that at the end of Season Four, Dawson and Gretchen's wonderful relationship was made a casualty of Dawson's lingering feelings for Joey, and The Powers That Be's desire to resuscitate the love triangle that ended Season Three, although in all honesty, they really didn’t do that, as Dawson and Pacey weren’t fighting for Joey’s love at the end of Season Four like they were at the end of Season Three, and to me, the only person who really got hurt at the end of Season Four was Gretchen. My heart broke for Gretchen in key times in the final episodes of Season Four, like when Dawson mentioned Joey in “Mind Games,” and in “Eastern Standard Time,” and finally, when he mentioned that maybe Lily and Alexander would be climbing through each other’s windows in “Separation Anxiety.”
I was also disappointed that Dawson seemed so philosophical and almost dismissive about his breakup with Gretchen when he talked about her to Andie in “The Graduate,” and Dawson’s made no mention of Gretchen in his summer diaries. As someone who grew to love Dawson and Gretchen’s relationship, I found that to be disheartening, so the question I’d like to ask, despite all the attempts that The Powers That Be have made to dismiss Dawson and Gretchen’s relationship, is what effect do you think Dawson’s relationship with Gretchen had on Dawson?
I see Dawson’s relationship with Gretchen as being a very positive influence in his life, as Gretchen was a wonderfully supportive friend, a loving and affectionate girlfriend, and most importantly, Gretchen, unlike Joey, was there for Dawson just when he needed her the most, as initially, he came to doubt his ambition to be a filmmaker after all the trauma he had endured in his life over the last few years, and later, as he dealt with the death of someone who he had come to regard as a mentor, Mr. Brooks. In both of those times, in the episodes “Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang,” and in “Four Stories,” Gretchen said precisely the right thing to boost Dawson’s flagging spirit, and to help him put his heartbreak and loss in perspective, so I think that Dawson’s relationship with Gretchen had a very beneficial effect on his outlook on life, and it helped him get past the heartbreak he felt at Pacey and Joey’s hands, and the bitterness he felt observing someone whose life eerily resembled his own, and who died virtually alone, with only a “garage full of stuff” to mark his passing. Thanks to Gretchen, though, Dawson didn’t follow Mr. Brooks’ path, though, even though like Mr. Brooks, he “lost the girl,” but thanks to Gretchen, as she told him in “Four Stories,” he “picked himself up, he dusted himself off, and he took a chance,” and I think that Gretchen helped Dawson to grow up, and later, when Joey hurt Dawson yet again by lying to him about sleeping with Pacey, Dawson showed a new found maturity when he reacted to this news, and like he said, Joey underestimated him when she thought he would crumble when he found out that she had shared her first time with Pacey instead of him, and I think a lot of credit for Dawson’s maturity has to go to his relationship with Gretchen, and I’ll always love Gretchen and be grateful to Gretchen for the positive influence that she had on Dawson and his outlook on life. I think that Dawson’s relationship with Gretchen bolstered his self confidence, and it allowed him to take a chance on love again, and it also allowed him to put the pain he had experienced over the last few years in his life at that point in its proper perspective, so he could move forward in his life.
I loved Dawson and Gretchen as friends, and as a romantic couple, and they, and she, will always have a special place in my heart.
|
