A Personal Review Of Dawson’s Creek

Hey everyone,

Okay. So, this show has been around for 20-plus years now, and it has been analyzed and reviewed to death already by many people who are probably more qualified to do it than I am. However, I recently rewatched it and realized a few things I wanted to share here. {Warning: Spoilers ahead! – Just in case!}

Overall, I don’t think this show was all that great. But it had many many great aspects. I know for a fact that it was the first show to introduce the love triangle where the woman gets to choose her man, and that was an important shift in the TV world.

I also know that it was the first show to have a well-developed gay character and the first to have an onscreen kiss between men. Plus, the whole coming-out tangent the character went through probably resonated with gay people worldwide.

But for me personally, I think the characters themselves are what make this show interesting. I generally love doing character analyses of shows, books, and movies that interest me, and this show had a whole host of interesting characters. My absolute favorite character in this show (as for many) was Pacey Witter.

Right from the beginning, Pacey and his storyline interested me more than Dawson and Joey, even though he was kind of underdeveloped as a character in the first season. And as disturbing as his relationship with the teacher was, it told me quite a lot about the ‘boy on the verge of manhood’ that he was. The way he handled the situation when his relationship came out into the open, showed more maturity than would be expected of a 15-year-old; especially a 15-year-old who was considered to be a fool, a screw-up, and a failure.

This maturity was further proved in the way he handled his relationship with Andie. First, when they had that whole purity test thing, he refused to lie about what had happened with Ms. Jacobs, and then there was everything he did for her when her mental illness came into play. What’s more, later when he falls in love with Joey and leaves it to her to choose what she wants (or rather who she wants) without forcing an opinion; that also proves that he is the most emotionally mature of that friend group, except maybe Jen.

Jen is another character that I felt was underutilized and faced many unnecessary trials on the show. I mean she was the example of the ‘free woman’, which at the time would have resonated with ‘slut’. Dawson’s breaking up with her just because she wasn’t a virgin is a prime example of this. Of course, Dawson had some kind of complex around sex. But I’ll come back to that later. From the beginning, Jen is an intuitive and kind person, and I hate that the trio seemed to abandon her after her breakup with Dawson and when her grandfather passed away. But I do love the relationship she develops with Jack and how inseparable they become.

Jack was another character I loved and his storyline of coming out as gay was one of the best parts of the show. The poem, and how Pacey stands up for him were pretty great as well. I mean that scene of Pacey spitting in a teacher’s face was classic. But coming back to Jack, I particularly like his confrontation with his father; when he told him outright that he was gay. That was an extremely powerful scene and Kerr Smith and David Dukes were brilliant in it.

Additionally, the whole story arc of Jack accepting his gayness was pretty good too for a 90s show. There was that whole bit where Jen takes Jack to a ‘gay meeting’, and how he was so uncomfortable at the anger that seemed characteristic of most of the people at the meeting. Jack is a pretty chilled-out person and the meeting seemed to have told him that he had to be angry to be ‘gay’. Overall, Jack’s storyline was one of the most interesting aspects of the show.

Jack’s sister Andie was another rather underutilized character, especially in the later seasons. I really wish she had come back during their college period instead of staying in Italy because I believe that she would have been a much better influence on Pacey than Joey’s new roommate Audrey. I feel like Pacey wouldn’t have gone down the road of a relationship with Audrey if Andie had been there. She would probably have talked him out of the mistake that it was.

I am not particularly fond of Audrey but that is mostly because I sincerely disliked her relationship with Pacey. The writers were trying too hard to bring Dawson back into the game at the beginning of the fifth season. If the show hadn’t been named after Dawson, there really would have been absolutely no role for the guy with the way the story went at the end of the third season.

And that brings me to my analysis of Dawson. Well, I believe that Dawson was a good guy at the beginning of the show, if a little naive. His naivete can be easily forgiven because he was fifteen years old without real exposure to life’s difficulties. And by his own admission, he rejected reality, so he wouldn’t have noticed the very real struggles his two best friends were going through, let alone understand them. And therein lay the problem.

He claimed to be self-aware (and he may have been), but couldn’t really understand the emotions of those around him. Add to that his view that ‘all of life’s mysteries could be solved through Spielberg movies’, and you have someone who almost literally lives in his own world. His behavior throughout the show portrays him as a self-centered, entitled, brat.

My reasons for saying that comes from the episode in season three titled ‘The Longest Day’ in which he finds out about Pacey and Joey’s relationship. His attitude and dialogue in that episode (and quite a few before it) show that he considers Joey his property, and he essentially throws a tantrum when he feels like he’s losing her.

So, basically, Dawson just throws up a lot of red flags for me, starting in season 2, where he reads Joey’s diary and doesn’t apologize (in fact he goes as far as to blame her for leaving it out), then dismisses Joey’s interest in art as trivial (when, to her, it was a connection to her mom), and throws a tantrum in the form of a movie when she breaks up with him and starts going out with Jack.

Then of course, there is the whole Season three fiasco, where he asks Pacey to look after Joey while he is sowing his wild oats with Eve, further proving the idea that he considers her property. There is also his throwing of the above-mentioned tantrum when he finds out that Pacey and Joey have fallen in love. Later, (after manipulating Joey into breaking up with Pacey – though this is just as much on Joey for allowing herself to be manipulated) he enters the Regatta without really knowing the rules, and under false pretenses, and nearly kills Pacey during the race; or at least he nearly destroys Pacey’s boat.

I could go on about reasons I dislike Dawson in the later seasons of the show, but really it comes down to the fact that he is a misogynistic, entitled, jerk. It was alright in the first season; he was a naive child of fifteen. However, what I dislike is that he pretty much refuses to grow up, until possibly the finale of the show.

Sigh!!!

The next and last person I need to talk about is our heroine herself, Joey. She is a character with whom I have a rather love-hate relationship.

I love the spitfire that she was in the first season. Her sarcasm and the (admittedly somewhat cruel) comments she makes to Jen in her jealousy always make me laugh. However, she seems to lose that in the second season when she becomes Dawson’s girl though she was self-aware enough to realise it and break up with him. So that’s okay.

What I dislike is her complete dismissal of Pacey’s feelings when Dawson gives her that ultimatum. Even when she finally goes to Pacey at the end of the season, she had needed some kind of permission from Dawson to do so, which always rubbed me the wrong way.

Later, when the couple returns from Florida, she tries very hard to mend her relationship with Dawson. This in itself does not bother me, but she ignores many of his blatant attempts at manipulation in the process. To her, his feelings and opinions on her relationship with Pacey still seem to matter more than they should. Or so it seemed to me.

Of course, Pacey is also most definitely at fault for their breakup (what with his inability to communicate his needs) but it also seems to me that he was somewhat pushed into it by Joey’s unconscious need for Dawson’s approval. Then again, maybe I am just biased.

Oh well!

Anyway, I think I’ll end my little rant about this show here. Hope you enjoyed reading it, as much as I did writing it. 😛

That’s it for now! Until next time folks!