Welcome to the last season of our Dawson’s rewatch! We have no idea what we’re going to do with our lives when this is over, but before that happens, there is so much to talk about!

For season 6, we’ll be adding to our drinking game rules. Take a shot:

• Every time Professor Hetson negs Joey
• Every time Eddie negs Joey
• Every time Nerdy Spice melts down in Pacey-Joey shipper rage like she’s twelve years old.
• Every mention of Pacey’s facial hair.
• Every time Pacey suddenly becomes a misogynist.
• Every time Dawson and Joey talk about how much they Hurt Each Other.

Season 6, Episode 1 “The Kids Are All Right”

By Nerdy Spice

A newly peppy Joey narrates the start to this season in a bizarre change of tone, accompanied by even more bizarre things like rotating wipe transitions, Pacey and Audrey doing a road trip in front of a bonkers green screen montage of LA, a postcard with Jen’s face on it… oh it’s so weird. Words cannot do justice to this. Peppy Pod Person Joey also informs us that Jen’s parents are getting divorced but she’s fine with it, that Jack broke up with his frat bro already, that she broke the heart of a nice young man, that Pacey and Audrey are having fun, and that she hasn’t talked to Dawson all summer. These two talked a big game about being in love with each other immediately before giving each other a three-month silent treatment. It’s so weird.

Anyway, I guess Joey didn’t go to Paris. I really misinterpreted the ending of last season when I started complaining that Joey is in near-poverty and it was completely unrealistic that she’d go to Paris… on the other hand, maybe that was the ending they intended and the reaction of the fans on The ‘Net, as they say, was strong enough to convince them to switch course?

Anyway, Joey, having rid herself of last season’s Professor Creeper, immediately embarks upon a new storyline in which a different misogynistic English professor constantly insulting her in order to draw her into an increasingly personal relationship where she’s desperate for his approval. In this season’s iteration of this tiresome (and weirdly specific) Dawson’s trope, Joey signs up for an advanced lit class with a “Professor Hetson”, henceforth known as “Professor Headdesk.” She assures him that her “sophomore status is merely a formality,” so I guess her whole imposter syndrome has been cured. Yay? He doesn’t buy it, and tells her to read Last Exit to Brooklyn by the time class starts… later that day. He’s a huge dick to her when she does come to class, and encourages a disaffected young fellow named Eddie (this will be important later) to be a dick too.

In other news, it’s Joey’s birthday and everyone forgets except Dawson, except that actually it’s not her birthday yet and she just gets all po-faced over the fact that no one wishes her a happy birthday when she’s still 19 years and 364 days old. She meets up with all of her friends at a bar that night and outwaits everyone for Dawson to finally show up, where they get misty-eyed over a retconned memory of the first time they held hands. Dawson’s explanation for not calling Joey all summer is that her insistence that everything would magically work itself out between them made him feel happy, and he didn’t want to “ruin it” by actually talking to her. She agrees that this makes sense. I guess this shows that they both recognize that the fantasy of their relationship is way better than the dysfunctional reality.

That night, Joey oh-so-convincingly tells Dawson he should crash with her due to safety concerns, he gives her a snowglobe of Hollywood, and they have The Sex, complete with much slow-motion and soft dissolve transitions.

Also appearing today in Peppy Pod Person form is Jen, who’s achieved a new lease on life and optimism due to her parents’ marriage. Her pep is rather punctured by the appearance of Grams in her Art History class. Whatever, everyone loves a woman who goes to class with her grams!

For his part, Jack has entered a Slutty Phase and appears to spend most mornings sneaking cute boys down the stairs in Grams’s place. When Pacey hears of his (enviable) troubles, he decides they should get a place together. He wants to get a place being sublet by a woman named Emma. She’s British and feisty, and she plays the drums. That’s about all we’re ever going to learn about her. [OMG right?? I always hoped she would become a proper love interest just so her character would serve a purpose. —Janes] Also, Pacey is maybe a little tired of keeping up with Audrey’s manic partying style, but instead of telling her, he enlists Joey to deceive her into giving him some space. Specifically, he begs Joey to refuse to let him crash in their (single) dorm room, because he wants space from Audrey. Personally, I can’t believe that Audrey would ask her roommate to let her ex-boyfriend crash with them in the first place. RUDE!

Also, Audrey and Pacey give Jack Osborne a ride cross-country so that he can act like a wank for thirty seconds in the world’s most inexplicable cameo.

• Jack is dumped “for someone far younger and prettier than himself”? Umm… Jack is 19. Anyone far younger than him is definitely illegal to date.
• Janes always gets mad that Joey is such an It Girl that even the random guy she casually dates between seasons falls madly in love with her. The thing that makes me mad is that she’s so weirdly heartless about it! “Inappropriate display of affection?” Knock it off, Joey. It’s not cute or sassy to make fun of people for having feelings. It’s just mean.
• Speaking of Joey’s It Girl-ness, she gets an amazing job offer right off the bat to be a research assistant for the English department—which, no—and then says, “Um, maybe,” complains that she always does the “practical thing” (because working in English lit is so practical) and takes a job as a bar server, after insisting she would never take a food service job again. What is wrong with her???? —Janes
• When Pacey meets Emma he asks if the drum set is hers and she goes OFF on him, assuming it was a sexist question. I mean… I get why she’d have a chip on her shoulder about this, but it’s kind of just small talk, isn’t it?! Like, men on this show are constantly being “called out” for things that aren’t really sexist, and never being called out for their actual sexism, like when Pacey lies to Audrey about how he’s feeling in the relationship or when he gets super entitled and aggressive about convincing Emma to rent to him; I can only assume it’s because the men running the writing room at this time supported feminism and yet had no understanding of it, while at the same time subconsciously believing women were mostly irrational creatures who might get mad at pretty much anything with no possible way to predict.
• When Joey discovers that Professor Hetson is the person she knocked into outside, she says to herself, out loud, “Fudge.” I think this qualifies for a shot under the “euphemism” rule of the drinking game, but COME ON, JOEY. The most absurd part of this whole thing is that as soon as Jack Osbourne shows up, the show gleefully bleeps out the f-word every time he opens his mouth, so like… Joey really just is a legal adult who still says “fudge” non-ironically for no apparent reason. Although the fact that Professor Headdesk makes fun of her (shot!) is also offensive to me.
• Until looking up this episode on imdb I had no idea Jack Osborne was playing himself in this episode. I thought he was just playing Audrey’s weird neighbor whose name I didn’t catch.
• WTF, also, Jack-Osborne-playing-himself turns out to have been a literal peeper and it’s treated like some kind of comedic interlude. I had TOTALLY forgotten about this part.
• Dawson says he didn’t call Joey because she said everything would work out between them and he “didn’t want to ruin that feeling.” I love when they openly admit that talking to each other would ruin their relationship. —Janes
• Also, I find it highly unbelievable that loyal Audrey would forget, but it puts me in an absolute rage that this show is trying to convince us that Pacey would forget the birthday of his beloved Joayyyy. Like he doesn’t have that date etched in his brain forever?! PUH-LEEZ. Although, it’s completely absurd to claim that Dawson is the only one who remembered her birthday FIVE MINUTES BEFORE IT EVEN STARTS. Hi, give everyone a chance to check their Palm Pilots in the morning before you start pouting! (Shot for me freaking out about a long-dead fan rivalry…)
• Does Dawson hesitate when Joey asks him to stay because of his annoying girlfriend? Sneaky. —Janes
• The slow motion when Dawson and Joey make out is hilarious and somehow makes their impending coitus even less erotic. —Janes
• Pacey claims to be a “card-carrying friend to the gays.” I think his brother would beg to differ. [He actually says “card-carrying friend of the gay,” which is even more hilariously unconvincing. -Janes]
• Jack and Jen’s beautiful pop culture professor mentions the “rise of the WB.” We see what you did there! Self-referential shot!
• When I saw the beautiful professor, all I could think is that he looks like the killer husband in a Lifetime movie. And lo and behold, he has been in at least five of them, including “Stolen from the Womb,” “Accidental Obsession,” and “A Wife’s Suspicion.” —Janes
• When Joey shows up to class, Professor Headdesk asks her if they can “get her anything,” and if the seat’s OK. What a fucking jerk. (Shot!) Then he answers Joey’s phone for her and takes a message from Audrey and publicly announces it to the class in the most humiliating way possible (another shot!).
• Pacey assumes that Joey’s song at the jukebox is “whiny chick rock.” Um, gross? Shot for gratuitous Pacey misogyny. On the bright(ish) side, he adorably bites Joey’s arm when she tells him to “bite me.”

Highlight:

Uh… I guess I laughed when Jen discovered Grams in her classroom and shrieked loud enough to disturb her fellow students. And yes, “I guess I laughed” does describe the most positive reaction I felt towards this episode.

Most cringeworthy moment:

Joey and Dawson finally getting nekkid after five years of tepid sexual tension is about as sexy as you’d expect, which is to say, not at all. The worst part by far, though, is that the song in the background, at least in my downloaded version, is just a woman singing “Fill me up” over and over again. Holy shit. That is GROSS, even for this show.

Drunkenness rating:

Nine, including a shot for the gross “Fill me up” song, and a shot for another Hetson neg towards Joey that’s not worth including.

Season 6, Episode 2 “The Song Remains The Same”

By Janes

We open on the classic TV post-coital shot of Dawson and Joey’s clothes all over the floor, and then a sweet 90s ballad [The same one that was involved in Joey’s fake memory from the night before –Nerdy Spice] plays as D/J wake up a little, hold hands, make out, and generally exhibit the kind of happiness that only comes after great, life-affirming sex. So… you can’t possibly believe this is real, can you? Nope, me neither.

Joey wakes up alone, with a note on her pillow that says, “Went out for breakfast.” Significantly less romantic. He comes back, she awkwardly asks for a robe, and he woos her back with a latte and a rose. When she starts overanalyzing things, he kisses her to make her stop talking, and all is well in D/J land. But not for long—as we learned from Buffy, if a woman wakes up alone after having sex, the man is about to turn into a monster.

They’re a little less unspeakably awkward when Joey visits his film set (although their attempts at coupley cuddling just look wrong). He shows off what a big shot he is for a little bit, then reveals the main attraction: a perfect replica of his childhood home in Capeside. Joey’s huge eyes nearly bug out of her skull as she calls it “incredible”–which is definitely not the first word that pops into my head.

Even Dawson understands that this is a super on-the-nose metaphor for their stunted relationship; when Joey exclaims “This is the real thing!” re: Dawson’s moviemaking career, he says, “As real as something can be that’s entirely an illusion.” Heh. Too true. But in spite of that shining moment of self-awareness, they happily picnic together on Dawson’s fake front porch, and it’s just as weird as it sounds.

This somehow works on Joey, Little Miss Evolution and Change, and by the time they get back to her dorm, they’re all lovey-dovey and talking about “us.” Then, right on schedule, Joey sees that a woman has been calling Dawson, and Dawson admits that she’s “a girl [he’s] been seeing.” Audrey opens the door and says they are “unsuccessfully” trying to throw her a surprise birthday party, and Joey actually has murder in her eyes. Heh.

Sidebar: Dawson is totally in the wrong here, but to be fair, Joey doesn’t totally know that yet. Yes, it’s bad that he didn’t mention it already, but if what’s-her-face was really just a “girl he was seeing,” as opposed to his girlfriend, then it wouldn’t be the biggest deal necessarily. He wouldn’t be cheating on anyone, and Joey was “seeing” someone casually too, until very recently.

But since we find out later that what’s-her-name was, in fact, his girlfriend, we’ll just ignore all that for now. Joey blows a gasket, as well she should, and funnily polls the room about whether Dawson should have informed her that he had a girlfriend before they had sex. Only the women raise their hands, because all of the men on this show are nightmares at this point (more on that later). The friends all make a quick exit while muttering that Dawson and Joey are going to “rip each other apart.”

And they’re right, of course. Our star-crossed lovers immediately start screaming at each other, with Dawson making lame excuses, blames Joey for “wanting perfect timing,” and then makes a passive-aggressive comment about “waiting all these years” to have sex with her. Literally the worst. He basically accuses her of sabotaging them on purpose because she doesn’t know what she wants, and “isn’t likely to know anytime this decade.” He’s the worst right now but, um, ha.

Then it gets sort of amazing. Dawson tries to say that she’s still the same “scared little girl” who sabotaged them back when they were, like, fetuses, and she is not having it. “I’m sorry I don’t have the same dreams I had when I was fifteen years old, and I’m sorry I moved on faster than you did, but you know what? Maybe not everything that happens to you is my fault!” YES! THIS IS PEAK JOEY!!!

I love this fight. In fact, this might be my favorite Dawson and Joey fight of all time. They’re doing the same thing they always do–rehashing old heartbreaks, recriminating each other for not living up to childhood expectations (okay, it’s really just Dawson)–but this time they’re actually portraying that dynamic as unhealthy. The fight is ugly and unromantic, Joey ends up crying in a depressing dorm bathroom, and she coldly tells him that “maybe there’s nothing here worth saving” and that their having sex was “two old friends making a huge mistake.” Ouch. But true.

It all ends with Dawson leaving angry, and then a hilariously dramatic slow-motion montage of Dawson and Joey almost opening the door. It would be kind of sad, if Dawson hadn’t just tricked her into having sex with him and then blamed her for getting upset about it.

In spite of all this, I think at this point, the writers really still thought D/J was endgame, because they do a real number on Pacey this season. He openly disdains and condescends to Audrey (who, granted, is suddenly the worst version of herself and constantly dropping ridiculous rich-girl lines like, “when my dad pulls strings, they stay pulled”), and he idolizes yet another douchebag boss–and not just any douchebag boss, but the douchiest douche that ever douched. This guy’s name is “Rich,” just in case you couldn’t tell that he’s a terrible white guy who loves money. He’s a stockbroker who makes long, toxically masculine speeches, and who really can’t afford to say things like “I don’t take ‘no’ for an answer” with that face.

Then there’s this whole dumb thing where Pacey and Jack really, really want to live with Emma, who doesn’t want to live with men. And how does newly-misogynistic Pacey respond to this perfectly reasonable preference? He basically forces himself back into her apartment by getting Audrey to trick her (shot!), then tries to convince her that she shouldn’t live with two nice lesbians because they “are notorious for committing too soon” and will soon be “throwing their appliances at each other.” (Take another shot for good old-fashioned heterosexism!) THEN, Jack convinces the nice lesbians to leave, and somehow Emma still ends up living with them. Because of course that would happen.

But if there’s anything dumber than this misogynist version of Pacey, it’s CJ. Oh, CJ. He, Emma, and Eddie should form a support group of season six characters who are equal parts pretty and pointless. (Except CJ might be the worst one of all, because where Emma is boring, and Eddie is annoying, CJ is both boring and annoying. Quite a feat.) He’s played by Jensen Ackles, who actually is capable of being charismatic and charming, but you’d never know it from this poor excuse for a love interest, a horribly dull dud with winged, season-5-Dean hair.

Anyway, Jen is her most unpleasant self when CJ enters the picture. She bites his head off for no reason when he hasn’t even tried to talk to her yet, scoffs when he tells her he was a fan of her radio show, assumes he’s trying to convert her to a religion when he hasn’t said anything of the sort (take a shot!), and is generally unpleasant and rude. He, in turn, immediately asks her to join his peer counseling program. Um, WHY??? I know she’s pretty and everything, but come on, CJ. (Jen, hilariously, assumes that he’s saying she needs counseling, so at least one of them understands how this interaction should have gone.)

Then she goes to the peer counseling, and walks out because they’re talking about hugs and self-care. (I mean, what did she think was going to happen?) Then CJ gets all affronted that she’s too cool for school, even though he literally was attracted to her because of her snarky radio show. (Again, what did he think was going to happen??) Everything about this character is infuriating.

• Boy, titling an episode about a relationship that will never ever stop repeating the same dysfunctional patterns “The Song Remains the Same” is surprisingly self-aware. —Nerdy Spice
• Jen chides Grams for wanting to participate in the “grand patriarchal, heterosexist fraud known as monogamy.” Marriage, Jen. You’re thinking of marriage. Take a shot for Jen’s fake feminism!
• Rich says Pacey could always be replaced by “one of the zillion other guys” who would kill to have this job. So… they’re not even going to pretend there are female stockbrokers?
• Pacey says the market is “completely, historically screwed right now”… in 2002.
• Todd is a creep, but I laugh every time he says “Leery’s got a bird” in his Australian accent.
• Oh right, Eddie is in this episode. He’s super hot, he’s a condescending asshole, and he’s the bartender where Joey works. What’s the opposite of a meet-cute?
• I can’t believe I’m saying this, but–is Pacey’s hair even worse than Dawson’s this season? The beard might tip it.
• Why are we going through the motions of Pacey/Emma bantering and Audrey getting jealous if Emma never becomes a real love interest? I DON’T UNDERSTAND.
• I love that Joey’s surprise party is not even close to a surprise, because Joey is so perfect and special that no one would ever believe they forgot her.
• Jen declares herself “just the roadkill on the Dawson and Joey highway.” Heh. —Nerdy Spice
• Dawson smugly declaring that it’s Joey’s fault that she can’t handle him being a cheater is classic gaslighting and incredibly gross. Obviously all his choices are rational, so the fact that she’s upset by them must mean that she has a problem, right? Fact is he had to have known she wouldn’t have had sex with him if he’d been honest with her, so he violated her boundaries as well as violating his relationship. He’s the worst. —Nerdy Spice

Highlight:

Everything Joey says to Dawson in their blowout is on point, but I especially loved this little gem: when Dawson brings up yet again that she “broke his heart” in high school, she says incredulously, “Is the statute of limitations ever going to run out on that one?” HA.

Most cringeworthy moment:

Pacey has a few stinkers this episode, but I think I’ll pick Dawson’s earnest claim that the D/J sex “never would have happened” if he had said anything about his girlfriend. As if that’s a defense, and not an admission that you purposely lied to her to get her into bed (read: rape-by-deception).

Drunkenness level:

Six, including one for a neg-filled Eddie scene that wasn’t worth recapping.

Season 6, Episode 3 “The Importance of Not Being Too Earnest”

By Nerdy Spice

Is this the first embarrassing-accidental-email-to-mass-recipient storyline in pop culture that you remember? This was 2002, you’ll recall; it was a full five years before Michael Scott would do the same thing.

Well, I guess that was a spoiler, but, yeah: Joey writes an email to Dawson trying to tell him that she still cares but retains her righteous indignation. With Audrey’s encouragement she decides to be rilly, rilly, rilly honest about all of her feels about The Sex That They Had. She spends the whole day and night writing this screed, which she rather endearingly titles “The Incident.” And then, due to the fact that she’s squeezing her eyes shut Ariel-style while she sends the email, she sends it to “Campus Wide” instead of “Dawson Leery.” Whoops.

She wakes up to a LOT of response emails, and a sleepy Audrey responds to her panic with “Well, honey, why would you do that?”, followed shortly by an I-told-you-so and “Sucks to be you.” Another shot for Audrey’s amazingness!

Cartoon Villain Professor Hetson bullies Joey extensively in class over her mass email, like no professor would ever do. For some reason everyone else in the class laughs too, which strikes me as extremely unbelievable; these kids are in college, they’re not middle-schoolers, and their frontal lobes are developed enough to have empathy. When he runs into her at the bar, he defends himself by saying that since she “fancies herself” (shot for negging!) a writer, she should be OK with public critique. “And if you’re staying in my class, start proving that it’s worth it.” (Shot for negging!) Um… isn’t that YOUR job, Professor Asshat?

When Eddie, who’s a bartender at the dive, shows up, he and Joey get into a nonsensical fight, again.  But it turns out Eddie’s not an “internet kind of guy,” so he didn’t even know about the email (and adds a somewhat called-for neg that the world doesn’t revolve around Joey; shot!). Later, Joey apologizes for jumping all over him, and he’s chill about it, and they exchange the Surprised Looks of Two People Who Realize They’re Going To Bone. (But, it’s Joey, so … by “Going To Bone,” I mean “Going To Bone In the Distant Future.”)

Joey manages to say what we’re all thinking when she shows up to class and responds to Hetson’s renewed round of verbal abuse (shot!) by telling him, when he accuses her of not doing the reading, “Most of yesterday consisted of eviscerating my personal life and every other lesson is a rant composed of your dated theories so I’m sorry I’m late, Professor Hetson, but the first half of class is usually when you reveal how bitter you are, how moronic you are, and how literature is dead. Were you thinking of moving on to something slightly more stimulating today?” It’s very satisfying, but it would be even more satisfying if it weren’t sort of framed as a result of Hetson heckling her at the bar last night. Meanwhile, Eddie smiles approvingly at Joey, so her well of male approval runneth not dry.

Pacey starts his job as a stockbroker and, because he shows up late, is assigned to sell the stocks that no one else can sell. His jerk boss calls him a “pansy” for having a suit that, to me, is virtually indistinguishable from everyone else’s suit, then advises him to buy into all of the “judgmental, ageist, racist, sexist parts of your brain that you’ve worked so hard to conquer” in order to sell stuff to people. There’s something about a tough prospect named “Topper” that Pacey’s supposed to sell to, and something about Jerk Boss buying a fancy car, and suddenly Pacey becomes a crack stockbroker later that day, basically by negging his clients like he’s Mystery and they’re women ten years younger than himself.

But Jerk Boss takes the credit for closing Topper… and only repays Pacey by giving him a couple quarters to buy lunch in the vending machine. Pacey yells at him, accusing him of not meaning the “tough love” act, and Jerk Boss explains to him that he’s working in a toxic industry where power determines what credit you get, and somehow Pacey decides he wants to keep going. Audrey thinks he should quit due to Rich Girl Privilege, but Pacey wants to get respect from people, and clearly the best way of doing that is to become a giant douche.

Also, in what is probably best described as a Z-plot, Audrey goes to Jen and Jack’s pop culture class, after which Jack peels off to talk to the dreamy professor and awkwardly declare how much he loves his class.

• I used to think this premise was too contrived to be believed, but occasionally it actually happens! –Janes
• If you think that the accidentally-emailing-your-sex-email-to-the-whole-campus thing was ahead of its time, I must also present Audrey’s rather prescient line, “The internet has made it way too easy to express oneself!” Audrey’s so right… and she had no way of knowing the President would ever be able to talk to the internet while sitting on the toilet! She follows this up by asking if Joey and Dawson did it through a hole in the sheet “because that’s very Dawson and Joey to me.” Hee! Shot for Audrey winning this scene.
• It’s a cute touch that Joey has an email address called “The Gang!” made up of multiple addresses.
• It’s kind of quaint that Joey’s classmates use “The Real World” as their go-to example of “broadcasting” your personal life. Now Joey’s email would just be a particularly cringey Vaguebook. –Janes
• We haven’t made fun of the wackadoodle syntax on this show in way too long, but here’s a head-scratcher: “Yeah, well it’s a service we provide to those less educated of our cultures, you and I. We keep them guessing,” Jack says to Emma of the fact that they don’t live up to broad stereotypes of their demographics.
• This is Jen when Audrey shows up to her class:
  
• “Between [Jack] and Grams… how do you nap during class?” a puzzled Audrey asks Jen. Um, duh! Use your friends in the class as Nap Shields who lean forward to block your sleeping face from the professor.
• I’m vaguely bored by Emma, but I do enjoy when she responds to Joey’s dramatics with, “Listen, I’m not going to run for cover every time a dark cloud forms over your head.”
• “Does today’s total evisceration exonerate me, say, through November or does this sort of public ridicule delight you indefinitely?” Joey asks. Wow, there are some major sins against the English language being committed in this episode.
• Jerk Boss lectures Pacey that he’s a man-child because he has a vintage car, or something? It’s so not worth discussing this guy. But there’s also a mention of Pacey’s amusing little beard, so… shot for that!
• Joey (who legally can’t pour drinks) passes her bar order to Eddie like this: “I need two beers and a vodka tonic.” I know this is a dive, but… “two beers”? They only have ONE KIND OF BEER?!
• My partner on Eddie: “Kate Hudson’s brother looks like a hotter Matthew McConaughey!” –Janes
• Ugh, OF COURSE Eddie “isn’t an Internet kind of guy.” OF COURSE. –Janes
• Joey tells “The Gang” that “My intimate aftermath” was discussed in her English class–shot for that amusing euphemism.
• Pacey and Jack are living with Emma, which leads to a scene where Jack once again ends up roughhousing with a woman and evincing way more chemistry than he can swing with male actors!
• Why IS Joey always late to class tho? She doesn’t drink, so she’s not hungover… she’s not dating anyone… isn’t she supposed to be all organized and shit? It makes no sense.
• I feel like the people who played Professor Wilder and Danny Brecher just quit and instead of writing actual new characters, the writers just wrote thinly veiled but even less subtle versions of the creepy professor and creepy boss.
• They’re certainly getting their money’s worth out of the song that Joey claims reminds her of Dawson even though we’ve never heard of it before this season; it comes on in the bar again while Joey and Eddie are making up from their dumb fight, and they bond over the fact that they both hate it now.
• Speaking of Eddie, it makes me vaguely sad how the show is always writing these relationships that start out with forced “conflict” so that they can attempt to recapture the magic of Joey and Pacey’s bickering turning into the most adorable flirtation ever. It doesn’t work unless the characters actually have a good reason to fight, and frankly, the fights Joey and Eddie pick with each other are stupid and make them both seem kind of like assholes.
• Agreed on all counts. But, um–look at that face! –Janes
  
  

Highlight:

Dawson is barely in this episode, which isn’t the highlight but… doesn’t hurt. No, the highlight is that when we finally do see him at the very end, he’s trying to compose an email to Joey. Good luck, Dawson! Keep your eyes open while you hit “Send”!

Most cringeworthy moment:

For once, it was on purpose; who doesn’t cringe at the thought of sending a mass email by accident? I know it’s one of the great dangers of the modern age.

Although, watching Pacey turn into a finance douche is a close second for cringes.

Drunkenness rating:

Nine, almost all for men tearing Joey down, and including one for the fact that The Email almost certainly mentions Dawson and Joey “hurting each other.”

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