Erin Hensley - I Remember Everything: Life Lessons from Dawsons Creek

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Copyright 2020 by Erin Hensley and Julia Callahan

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epub isbn : 9781644282021

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Contents

We Dont Wanna Wait

Running from 19992003, Dawsons Creek was the flagship show of The WB and the first show created for millennials.

Dawsons Creek centered around the titular stara white man with a lot of privilegewho proved to be anything but our hero.

Our heroes were:

The girl with no parents who against all odds is trying to climb up the socioeconomic ladder;

The girl who was sexually abused when she was very young, who has absentee parents and is trying to find herself and make a chosen family and survive through her childhood trauma;

The queer kid with a dad who shuns him and his identity;

The girl struggling with her mental illness;

The guy who everyone thinks is a fucking losereven his familyand who was sexually assaulted by his high school teacher.

As we move further away from the original airing of the show, the character of Dawson has not aged well, and with each subsequent rewatch fans fall more and more in love with the sidekickswhat an allegory for the slow dismantling of the patriarchy in our society.

Okay Dawsons Creek fans, we know why youre here

Season Three

an essay by Erin Hensley
(and, lets be honest, with the help of Julia Callahan)

From the start of the series, the show seemed to hammer into us how much we should root for Dawson and Joey because theyre soul mates with an unbreakable bond. Then something happened, fans call it season three. This is when Joey feels alive and, well, pretty much all of us felt it, too. In season three, the writers upended the traditional series-long will they-wont they love stories and asked the viewers to hear them outwhat if Joeys true love was a different boy than her soul mate. What if her other childhood friend, a friend who knew her just as well but actually understood her was the man she was destined to love?

What is true love?

In 1999, when season three started, I didnt know anything about love. I was a junior in a suburban Orange County, California, high school with next to no experience with romantic love, but a deep love for WB shows. Then I felt it. I felt the love and connection I would dream about into my adulthood, when the greatest ship ever built set sailthe ship True Love . The ship that is Pacey and Joey.

In season one, we are given our first glimpse at their connection, when the fans were still rooting for Dawson to finally realize his love for his best friend Joey and I was too naive to realize that Joey had another childhood best friend that might understand, support, and believe in her in a way that Dawson would never be able to. Pacey believed in her and was always rooting for her and her dreamto get out of Capeside.

Joey: Look around you, Pacey. I mean, look at what my life is. I mean, Im a boarder in my sisters house. I share my bedroom with the living room and my social life consists of a part-time job. As far as I can tell, there are only two ways to make my life better. The one that doesnt involve waking up and discovering its all been a dream involves a college scholarship. And when I apply, I better have the grades that dont give them a choice because a scholarship is pretty much my only way out of Capeside. And if I dont get out of here, Pacey, well, it would be a sadder story than I care to imagine. Okay?

Pacey: You dont have to worry, Jo. Youre gonna make it out of here. Youre gonna go to some great school and send me postcards back here, where Ill be tending bar or pumping gas.

Joey: Come on, Pacey. Youll get out, too.

Pacey: Well, yeah, if the circus is hiring. Ill tell you what, though,
I wouldnt bet against that Potter girl.

(Double Date, Season 1, Episode 10)

After spending all of season two watching the endless will they-wont they with Dawson and Joey, I began to fall in love with Pacey. His season-long love story arc with Andie, which ends with her entering a mental health facility (for more on Andies mental health, see page 51), was the kind of relationship my teen dreams were made of (ugh, the car scene [see page 90]). Watching these two love stories unfold side by side in season two, theres no doubt who I was rooting forour underdog, Pacey Witter.

We start season three with Dawson and Joey completely at odds and with Pacey and Andie broken up. After a grueling breakup and a summer apart, Dawson needs space from Joey, so he asks Pacey to look out for her (dont get us started on how problematic this notion is, or do and see pages 114 and 118). As Pacey and Joey sit on Joeys dock, the place where so many iconic scenes take place, Pacey is there for her and knows her and lets her just feel. And for the first time I thought, Wait a minute, whose shoulder should Joey be crying on? Is there a difference between soul mates and true love?

Joey: How would you know what I need?

Pacey: Yeah, you know youre probably right. How could I possibly know how hard it is to let somebody go, right? The pain of knowing that even though the two of you are right for each other, that doesnt necessarily mean that youre right for each other right now. What would I know about that, right? How could I possibly know that sometimes it just makes you want to scream, hit somebody, sit out at the end of a dock and cry?

(Like A Virgin, Season 3, Episode 1)