Seaclock wrote:
>
> "Rob Jensen" <ShutUpRob@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
> news:2j1mmjFsj3f6U1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>>> I thought that the Dawson-Gretchen storyline in s4 made up for the
>>> mistakes the writers made with Pacey and Joey that season.
>
>
> Was Gretchen or an older sister ever mentioned at any time during the
> previous seasons?
Yes. They'd mentioned vaguely that Pacey had multiple older sisters,
with the only specific 'til Gretchen's debut being that one had moved
back home with her kids in tow (and who obviously wasn't Gretchen), but
there was more than enough wiggle room in Pacey's family life to keep
Gretchen from being an out-and-out retcon.
>It was, in a way, too cliché to bring in this new
> sister just when another irritation between Pacey and Dawson was needed.
> Having said that, though, I actually didn't mind the Dawson-Gretchen
> storyline, certainly no more than any of the other storylines. (When
> you say "mistakes the writers made with Pacey and Joey that season" do
> you mean the P-J storyline was a mistake or it was just mishandled?
Just the way it was handled, especially toward the Prom and graduation.
Even though I relate to Pacey's inferiority complex (my Dad was
*exactly* like his in verbal abusiveness), I don't buy that Pacey would
blame Joey for having a better life than he did and break up with her
over it. Dude, if I were Pacey and taking someone like Joey to my Prom,
not even having an asshole father repeatedly cut me down would make me
forget that someone like Joey went for *me,* thus disproving everything
said asshole father ever said about me. OTOH, I liked that they had
Pacey learn from that boneheaded mistake in s5. Which made Pacey's
Boiler Room regression in s6 all the more infuriating.
>>> I thought Mitch's death in s5
>>> played rather well in retrospect and helped to fuel the rest of
Dawson's
>>> arc quite nicely.
>
>
> I too thought the death story was well-done. Not sure it was smart to
> hook him up with Jen afterward though the dinner episode was priceless,
> thanks in no small part to Audrey.
>
>>> I've read that part of
>>> the problem was that the s6 renewal was unexpected and certain unnamed
>>> cast members didn't even want to do it. And it shows.
>
>
> Unnamed? I've read that JVDB wanted his part pared down and maybe
> that's why the show seemed to revolve so much around Joey and that guy
> whose name escapes me.
I was being polite. =) I know that the Beek wasn't the only cast
member who was nonplussed by the s6 renewal. In particular, JJ seemed
to be phoning in any scene that didn't involve the Beek, KH or Pacey's
family.
That guy: Eddie "Pacey with the serial numbers filed off" Doling. I
thought her story with him worked fine -- until they brought him back
after his disappearance. After Joey & Dawson boinked, it seemed like
they never knew how to end *any* storylines for the rest of the season.
OK. We get it, Joey's saving yet another Pacey. Time to move on.
Every character was left floundering until the movie story at the end.
>>> I liked the finale, but wish
>>> Williamson would have written either Audrey or Gretchen or both into
it
>>> rather than stick with just the characters he'd created -- especially
>>> since Stupin had been telegraphing since at least as early as the s4
>>> finale that they were going to jump 5 years ahead in the timeline at
>>> some point.
>
>
> Hmmm, I've never been sure about this "five years later" thing. It felt
> rushed, the conclusion was unsatisfying -- I think no matter which way
> you wanted it to go -- and I'm not really sure why it was necessary to
> skip ahead five years. When you consider that there were still two more
> years of college to go when the regular series ended, was it realistic
> to think they would all have such settled lives only three years after
> graduation? Yes, I know this is TV-land where things don't have to be
> sensible but... It felt a little like an episode of "Thirtysomething."
I suspect that part of the problem is that s6 *was* meant as exposition
for hypothetical seasons 7 and 8 and we never did get to see where they
were really intending to take Audrey, Pacey, Jack and Jen. The
resolutions to their storylines before the finale were all hasty, almost
afterthoughts after the writers had burned their mental wad on retaining
the throughlines of Dawson and Joey's separate storylines. Thus, in s6
Pacey works best as a supporting character in Joey's story and it's
best, IMO, to think of a Phantom Edit of s6 in which Jack, Jen and
Audrey's storylines never happened.
I think the skipping ahead five years was always intended to be a
distancing exercise, to answer the characters' own questions about
whether or not they'd ever get enough distance from their psychoanalytic
precociousness long enought to *live* their lives rather than
deconstruct their lives before it happens to them. While I thought that
the finale in and of itself was well-written and performed, I also don't
think it works in relation to the truncated College Years arc for the
same reason -- not enough distance from the turbulent High School Years.
However, if you ignore everything that happened between Dawson & Joey
boinking and the finale and take those four episodes as an extended
finale to s5, I think s5's relation to the first four seasons becomes
apparent -- we finally get to watch them put all that self-referential
theorizing to the test and see that they *do* start to live their lives.
If we treat the rest of s6 (aside from the opening two-parter) as
apocryphal, then, IMO, the finale gets enough distance from the High
School Years that it works.
> And Sharpe Fan wrote:
>
>> I hate the Dawson Leery character
>
>
> What is it exactly that people hate about him? Too moody? Too
> self-centered? I've never thought him particularly worse than any of
> the others except that he seemed almost entirely humorless except for
> the birthday episode when he and Andie sang.
I thought that Dawson was far too *passive* a character to ever be the
hero and moral authority that the writers tried to make him out to be
and as a result, I thought he was virtually wasted as a character after
s1 until they pulled the brilliant move of making him the *villain* at
the end of season 3. Making him the King Arthur to Joey's Guin and
Pacey's Lancelot multiplied the impact of the deconstructive nature of
the story by not just making it mythic, but by aggressively embracing
the fact that they were deconstructing such a classic myth throughout
the course of the rest of s3 and s4, Dawson became a more active,
engaging character. I don't think that the show would have reached even
s5 if Dawson hadn't made Joey take that boat trip with Pacey at the end
of s3.
>I found Pacey more
> consistently unlikeable except when he was with Andie who seemed to
> really make him shine. He was intelligent and noble whereas with Joey,
> the woman who was supposed to make him a better man, he turned into an
> academic flunky and and a surly, discontented boyfriend.
Well, the Pacey-Andie story of s2 was such a well-constructed,
self-contained novel, I find it hard sometimes not to think of
everything that happened to Pacey afterward as something of a let-down,
even though I thought the beginning of P-J's relationship was just as
amazing as the end of Pacey & Andie's story in s2. Had they left the
Pacey-Joey story alone after s5 and skipped to the finale, I think the
P-J arc would read better.
>> As for the finale, I was a P/J shipper, but TPTB laid no basis for Joey
>> getting together with Pacey (or Dawson). I am happy with the result,
but
>> felt I was cheated out of seeing how it happened.
>
>
> I've talked about this before but the whole idea of there having to be a
> "Dawson or Pacey?" question to be resolved was so unrealistic. After
> all this time when their lives would have changed enormously, what on
> earth would Joey be doing running back to either of her high school
> boyfriends? They all would have moved on to other people and the most
> realistic thing would have been a few days in Capeside when they would
> have caught up, reminisced, maybe talked about what might have been, but
> still they would have gone back to other things. BUT, that's not what
> the series was about and so I found the P-J ending unsatisfying. KW
> originally wrote a D-J finale but felt sorry for Pacey who was left
> alone (Meredith Monroe was not available for the necessary time it would
> have taken to re-establish Andie in Pacey's life) so he rewrote it. As
> I said above, the finale seemed rushed to me.
IIRC, wouldn't the fans have (metaphorically) killed KW if Joey *hadn't*
ended up with Pacey?
Look at it this way: Phantom Edit Dawson's movie story from s6 into s5
(evicting much of the Dawson-Oliver arc, especially since Oliver was so
frickin' annoying) and cap it with the top of s6, Joey and Dawson
sleeping together *and* it ending badly. That leaves the D-J question
hanging for five years. Add the "Career Opportunities" rip-off from s6
("Castaways") and that *might* just be enough to rekindle P-J and the
D-J-P conundrum. Although I admit that it's pretty hard to justify the
rekindly of P-J, much less Pacey's inappropriate goatee, with any sort
of a set-up other than perhaps to suggest that it would happen 'Five
Years Later' . . . most logically as an episode-long prologue to "All
Good Things." Of course, such massive restructuring would necessitate
changing or editing out dialogue here and there across many of the
surving s5 episodes that would otherwise contradict the new scenario,
but that's why it's called editing.
-- Rob
--
LORELAI: In the movie, only boy hobbits travel to Mount
Doom, but that's only because the girls went to do something
even more dangerous.
GIRL: What?
LORELAI: Have you ever heard of a Brazilian Bikini Wax?
|
