Recaps, commentary, highlights of your pop culture favourites and mine! Email me: timmybopper@yahoo.com

 
April 3/03 - A Dawson's Geek

I never liked Paula Cole. Her voice was all gruff and howl-like, as if she was attempting to yodel but couldn’t quite clear the phlegm from her throat to successfully do so. And “Where have all the cowboys gone?” I have no idea what that song was about. Does anyone even care where all the cowboys have gone? But my disdain for Paula Cole was slightly amended in grade ten with the premiere of Dawson’s Creek. (Cole of course, sang the theme song for the show and so for thirty seconds every week, I was somewhat partial to her). The ‘Creek episodes of course, would commence with the requisite opening scene in which the main narrative and mood would be set, followed by a few clever lines of playful banter and then the hook – a contentious question raised or a clandestine rumor unearthed. The cameras would pan around to show the suddenly tepid and timorous faces of the characters and just as one of them would open their mouth as if to endeavor a response… “Da da da duh da…” Paula Cole’s “I don’t want to wait” would break the disconcerting tension and the action would fade (if only for a few minutes) into the comforting tune of the opening credits.

Dawson’s Creek was sorta like Paula Cole. In the same way that Cole’s voice is unrefined and rough around the edges, DC presented a curiously atypical and unique slice of teenage life. Initially controversial (remember Joey and Dawson sleeping in the same bed? Pacey’s affair with his teacher?) and then remarkably akin in its portrayal of teen-angst, the show was like a fantastical mirror that reflected an extraordinary group of friends and somehow made them part of ordinary life. With its wordy dialogue and often contentious subject matter, Dawson’s Creek seemingly fenced itself in, as if only discernable viewers could enter into Dawson, Pacey, Jen and Joey’s world. But yet it managed to retain a refreshing innocence and youthful charm that allowed us all to feel like we too, were growing up in Capeside. With the show ending its six-year run at the end of this month, I thought it’d be nice to revisit the show many of us spent our high school years with and recap “10 lessons I learned from Dawson’s Creek…”

1. Shortening a girl’s name to make it sound masculine will make the girl immediately more attractive.
2. Any guy who dates this girl will either end up gay or find himself suddenly emotionally volatile.
3. You can consistently flunk your courses and almost fail out of high school, but still converse like you memorized the dictionary.
4. Smart girls who pop pills are shipped off to France and never heard from again.
5. Slutty girls are shipped off to live with their grandmother and made to wear ugly clothes and bad hairstyles.
6. Houses in Capeside do not have stairs. You must climb a tall ladder to reach the second floor.
7. Chantal Kreviazuk songs precede all moments of longing, confusion and/or heartbreak.
8. It is okay to sleep in the same bed as your best friend of the opposite sex, but deciding whether or not you “like” each other is a drawn-out process that can take many, many months to figure out. After you think you’ve decided what you want, you will change your mind and spend even more months rethinking the whole situation.
9. Drinking is bad! You will have regrettable sex, ruin a concert, crash someone’s birthday party, or fall off a seaside dock and die.
10. “A population of memories. Some wonderful and endearing. Some less so. But taken together, those memories helped make us who we are -- and who we will be. Whether you’re here with each other now or merely in each other’s thoughts... remember one another on the road ahead. And I hope, no matter where your travels lead you in this life... you take Capeside with you.” – Episode 422

Well said Joey Potter… Thanks for the memories. Good bye Dawson’s Creek. Good riddance Paula Cole.

posted by Tim at 4:03 PM