Dawson's Creek: seasons 3 and 4
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Overview of seasons 3 and 4 of Dawson's Creek.
[edit] Season 3: 1999-2000
(For episode details, see Dawson's Creek Season 3)
The third season opened with Dawson returning from spending the summer with his mother in Philadelphia and on the bus was enchanted by the sort of woman the phrase cherchez la femme was created for. The temptress, named Eve, would astonish Dawson with her interest in him, as Eve was a pornographic fantasy come to life: she had no past, no friends, no family, nothing but an interest in bedding Dawson, which, however, never came to pass. Eve exited Capeside mysteriously (never to be seen or heard of again), and she would be later revealed as Jen's half-sister, born when Jen's mother was her age.
Meeting Dawson again, Joey made the amazing claim that it was Dawson who broke up the relationship and by implication, Joey realized she still had feelings for Dawson and, when it seemed Dawson was being seduced by the temptations Eve had put before him, she awkwardly offered herself to him. He spurned her advances, but then sent Pacey to comfort her and watch over her. As the season progressed, Joey and Pacey became friends, growing closer and closer.
Andie remained in a mental hospital in Providence all summer, while her and Jack's father moved his struggling furniture business to Capeside to live close to his children. Andie and Jack's mother apparently remained in another mental facility in Providence and would remain there for the remainder of her life, also never to be seen or heard of again. After returning to Capeside, Andie revealed to Pacey that she had slept with another patient. Pacey, who had stood by Andie in the previous season as her mental state deteriorated, was deeply unsettled by this development and quickly ended their relationship. Capeside High got a new principal, the no-nonsense Mr. Howard Green (Obba Babatunde), who replaced a succession of rarely seen administrators. He brought along his teenage daughter Nikki (Bianca Lawson) who, like Dawson, was a filmmaker.
When Jen faced off against the egotistical and tyrannical head cheerleader, to her horror, she found herself not only a cheerleader but as the head cheerleader's replacement. Even worse, she found herself the object of the affections of a shy, moony-eyed, freshman football player, Henry Parker (Michael Pitt). They cautiously began dating, and the heart-broken Jen found out that she was in love. But at Junior Prom, Henry told Jen that he will be leaving her for football camp for the summer. This causes Jen to put up her guard and turn him away. However, in one daring move, (after a confession from Grams about a soldier she once fell in love with before Jen's grandfather and her bold moves to say goodbye before he went overseas and died) she finds him before he leaves, and tells him she will wait for him, as she kisses him in front of all of his football mates. Andie, Jen, Jack, and Grams get into the car when Jen tells Jack it's his turn. (Jack had asked his friend, Ethan, to the prom, thus causing a big controversy in Capeside's fragile and narrow-minded students. Dawson, in an attempt to keep Joey as his prom date, created the idea of the "anti-prom" which was held in Gale and Mitch's restaurant, Leery's Fresh Fish. Jack had frozen up and pushed Ethan away, sending him back to his boarding school.) Grams then drove Jen, Andie, and Jack to Ethan's boarding school, where Jack kisses Ethan and tells him he's no longer scared. At this point, however, Brad, the guy sitting with Ethan, stands up and excuses himself. Ethan reveals Brad to be Ethan's ex-boyfriend who has rekindled the relationship with him, crushing Jack, yet forcing him to accept himself a little more than he had before.
Meanwhile, Mitch expanded his duties at school to include coaching the hapless football team, the Minutemen. Gale, fired from her new job in Philadelphia, returned to Capeside and reconciled with Mitch. They opened a restaurant, Leery's Fresh Fish, and remarried in the season finale. Bessie and Joey (with Pacey's help) turned their home into a bed and breakfast, fulfilling the dream of their late mother. Meanwhile, Jack became the star wide receiver of the football team and started dating Ethan (Adam Kaufman), which brought to a head simmering conflicts with his father. However, these tentative forays into dating wrought greater understanding and reconciliation between the two McPhee men.
Pacey continued trying to do good such as helping Andie (as the school assistant director) by participating in the school production of Barefoot in the Park, and becoming a mentor for a nine-year-old boy, named Buzz Thompson (Jonathan Lipnicki), whom Pacey saw as a young version of himself—a neglected boy who uses sarcasm to get attention.
As Dawson explored distractions of his own and grappled with his film aspirations, Pacey and Joey slowly began to fall in love. Pacey kept his growing romantic feelings for Joey at bay for some time, staying supportive as a caring friend by continuing to assist with the B&B, and rallying the students when Joey went up against the school board for the firing of Principal Green who had expelled the school bully Matt Caulfield (Michael Hagerty) who had defaced her school mural on a wall that she was permitted to paint on. Though Joey briefly dated a college boy, named A.J. Moller (Robin Dunne), her growing attraction and feelings for Pacey could not be denied. A spontaneous roadside kiss led to Pacey and Joey acknowledging their feelings for each other. However, they kept their relationship under wraps, trying to figure out how to break the news to Dawson. When Jen accidentally slipped the news about Pacey and Joey, Dawson felt angry and betrayed. His friendship with Pacey was fractured, although he remained on good terms with Joey.
In the season finale, with the reluctant support of Dawson, Joey chose Pacey and sailed into the sunset for a summer on his restored boat, the True Love.
[edit] Season 4: 2000-2001
(For episode details, see Dawson's Creek Season 4)
The fourth season, the gang's senior year at Capeside High, opened with Joey and Pacey returning from a summer-long cruise down the Eastern Seaboard on Pacey's boat, the True Love. Pacey's hitherto unseen sister Gretchen (Sasha Alexander) returned to town after getting pregnant and subsequently having a miscarriage, in which she decided to take a break from her college studies. She moved into a beachfront house, got a job at Leery's, and gradually started dating Dawson (after much debate as to whether or not she would allow herself to). Pacey moved in with Gretchen at her rented house, unable to stand living anymore with his neglectful parents, or his brother Doug. Gretchen was Pacey's only ally in his family, and the only one who had never called him a loser or failure. Pre-Joey Potter, Dawson had had a crush on Gretchen while growing up.
Joey took a job as a waitress at the Capeside Yacht Club under the snobbish manager Mrs. Valentine, who, along with her unpleasant, spoiled son Drue, became the villains of the season. Happy in her relationship with Pacey, Joey still harbored feelings of guilt at the way things went down the preceding spring. Dawson refused to speak to Pacey, believing he had betrayed him. He did, however, forgive Joey's part in the incident. Dawson developed a relationship with Gretchen and begin to fashion tentative, though fragile relations with his former best friend. Drue Valentine, an unwholesome sociopath, was revealed to have known Jen while growing up in New York, and did not hesitate to make her notice him, as well as cause trouble for everyone. At one point, Pacey, Dawson, and Jack got even with the perfidious Drue by framing him for their senior prank—they put the principal's sailboat in the school's indoor pool. Although Drue would pop up now and then until the end of the season to be of an annoyance, he never again attempted to verbally or physically take on Dawson and his friends.
Although Drue remained the villain for the remainder of the season, his wholesome side was less seen. In one episode, he deliberately locked himself and Joey into a storage closet at the Yacht Club just to avoid going to New York to visit his estranged father. In another episode, Mrs. Valentine incredibly blackmailed Joey with termination-of-employment if she and Pacey didn't agree to accompany Drue and his girlfriend, Anna Evans, on a double date just so Joey and Pacey could keep an eye on Drue to make sure he behaved himself. Joey, however, ended up keeping the flirting Anna away from Pacey. In another episode with Drue and Anna, they both sneaked onto a school ski trip to Vermont by impersonating another couple since Drue had been banned from the trip (he was under school probation for the prank he was framed for), and Anna did not go to school at Capeside. Drue somewhat got back at Pacey and Joey by having them left behind at the ski lodge by tricking the chaperone into thinking Pacey and Joey were on the school bus.
The hesitant reconciliation of Dawson and Pacey began after Dawson and Joey rescued Pacey and Jen from a storm at sea. To do so, Dawson stole and damaged a boat belonging to crotchety old Mr. Brooks (Harve Presnell), a long-term resident of Capeside. Dawson did chores for Mr. Brooks to work off his debt and discovered that Mr. Brooks had been a film noir director in Hollywood in the 1950s. Eventually the old man warmed to Dawson and they collaborated on a documentary about his life in which Dawson saw Mr. Brooks as an older version of himself; a man from Capeside who moved to Hollywood wanting to be a director, and then lost the love of his life to his best friend. As a result, Mr. Brooks never got over it and became a bitter, misanthropic, recluse who severed all ties to his friends and family, which Dawson was determined not to let that happen to him. When Mr. Brooks died of pancreatic cancer, he left money for Dawson to 'do something great.' Dawson gave the money to Joey for her to go to Worthington University in Boston, after the early success of the Potter Bed & Breakfast caused her to receive an inadequate financial aid offer.
Andie, had a nearly fatal incident with ecstasy at a rave (sneaking the pills from Jen, who had received them as a gift from Drue). After Andie recovered, she went to stay with her aunt in Italy. She already had enough credits to graduate, so she could afford to take half the school year off. She had plans to attend Harvard University in the fall, but decided to defer entry as she was happy in Italy, and at that moment couldn't imagine being happier anywhere else. She returned for the graduation episode near the end of the season, and remained in Italy for at least the following year (Jack spent the fifth season's Christmas episode in Europe with his Dad and Andie).
Gale found herself pregnant in her 40's, and had a daughter, Lillian, named after Joey's mother.
Jack began dating Tobey (David Monahan), whom he met at a gay activism meeting. Jack initially found Tobey far too brash and open with his sexuality, but they eventually warmed to each other. They would kiss at the prom, in the first romantic kiss between two men in a prime-time drama.
On the senior ski trip, nine months into their relationship, Joey and Pacey consummated their relationship in a scene several critics and fans lauded as "beautiful" and "tender". (Entertainment Weekly said Joey "finally got her lift-ticket punched".) But teenage self-doubt, an uncertain future, and the continuing looming presence of Dawson strained the bond between Pacey and Joey, culminating in a scene at the prom in which Pacey broke up with Joey in a very public, humiliating manner. But they still harbored deep feelings for each other and reconciled briefly for a better, though bittersweet ending of their teenage romance. Knowing that Joey would be going to a university while Pacey would barely graduate caused the two to realize their different futures, which disallowed a reconciliation to truly happen. As his friends graduated, Pacey was seen at the airport, flying off to a job on a yacht in the Caribbean, his future uncertain.
Gretchen also broke up with Dawson at the prom after realizing that he had his whole life ahead of him and she didn't want to tie him down, as well as seeing the specter of Joey still lingering in his mind. As a result, Gretchen left town, presumably to go back to college and leaving behind only a good-bye letter for Dawson.
As for Jen, she remained at the mercy of Drue. Finding out that Henry had broken up with her while away at camp, she finds herself once again lonely and lost. But this emptiness brought her closer to Jack. The two drank together during the ski trip, and begin to raise their relationship, but Jen's maturity causes her to call it off. After getting drunk on the school ski trip, Jen was forced by the school to see a psychologist, named Tom Frost, for her inner teen issues to look for the reason for her self-destructive attitude. Jen eventually uncovered a long-repressed memory about finding her father cheating on her mother with a teenage girl back in New York six years earlier which triggered Jen's downward spiral. During the prom episode, Jen got drunk over her issues and nearly fell off the boat which the prom was being held on. But she was saved from suffering the same fate that befell Abby Morgan (in season 2) by the mostly unlikely of people: Drue Valentine. Drue even persuaded Jen to help him pull off a school prank for old times sake by setting off the school sprinklers during the graduation ceremony.
The season finale saw Joey, Jen and Jack seeing off Dawson as he left for the summer session of USC Film School. The night before he left Capeside, Dawson shared a kiss with Joey in front of his bedroom window that echoed the one at the end of the first season. This one was more ambiguous, as Joey was nursing a broken heart over Pacey and Dawson was feeling anxiety over being so far away from home soon. Was this a reconnection? Or goodbye?
[edit] See also
| Dawson's Creek |
|---|
| Characters |
| Dawson Leery | Jen Lindley | Joey Potter | Pacey Witter |
| Locations |
| Capeside | Capeside High | Worthington University |
| Other |
| Young Americans | List of Dawson's Creek episodes |
