Friday, Jul 25, 2008
And their women are good in bed! Plus: "Dawson's Creek" quotes Dave Eggers; "Felicity" gets burned by the dot-com shakeup.
Nov 30, 2000 |
Wednesday, Nov. 29
"Dawson's Creek" (WB, 8 p.m.)
Dear Diary:
Dawson thinks he's so smart.
Tonight he's watching an old black-and-white film noir movie with Gretchen, the older sister of his former best buddy. Dawson is gaping at the final frames of the film while Gretchen probes for his opinion. She really doesn't like it.
"I'd have to say," he counters, "that I thought it was a heartbreaking work of staggering genius."
You see? He was making a reference to a book by Dave Eggers titled "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." That book is, of course, about the horrible deaths of the author's parents, and it has nothing to do with an old black-and-white film noir. The book also happens to be very funny -- funny enough that you know that Eggers would appreciate the absurdity of it being invoked here, by Dawson, a character, and James Van Der Beek, an actor and -- apparently -- a writer, all of whom seem to have absolutely no idea of what they're talking about.
That's kind of how a lot of the cultural references -- even the vocabulary -- gets tossed around on "Dawson's Creek." I know it's never been a great show or anything, but I kind of liked the hourlong WB drama for a little while because it gave high school students a lot more credit than most shows that I'd seen. It was no "My So Called Life" or anything, but it was kind of exciting and different to hear teenagers use words like "mercurial" and phrases like "Strum und Drang" (both of which turn up tonight!).
And when the characters run around screwing up their lives they generally correct each other rather than getting it from the, you know, adults -- when they're even around. Actually, they are smarter than the adults, and way more mature. It seemed like the show wasn't talking down to teenagers, and that there was even some chance that it might have something to say at the same time it entertained with its preposterous plotlines.
I guess my real weakness was that I still remember how smart I was in high school. A shoplifted copy of "Notes From Underground" made me an expert in nihilism. The Cure song "Killing an Arab" made me instantly fluent in both the works of Camus and the finer points of racism and alienation. And following the still ascending career of U2 made me an expert in international politics. (How long must I sing this song? How long?)
"Dawson's Creek" brings all of that back, but unfortunately it never realizes the kind of distance that would allow these characters to mouth off like know-it-alls while letting us know that they're actually full of shit. Tonight Dawson's trying to rekindle his love of movies. He used to be crazy about them, but then he got distracted when his childhood sweetheart, Joey, ran away last summer on a boat with his friend, Pacey. (I hated when that happened to me in high school in suburban Denver, but at least Joey never had sex with Pacey while they were at sea all of that time. My childhood sweetheart was a slut.)
Now Dawson's got this important essay to write about why he wants to go to film school at the University of Southern California, where his idol, Steven Spielberg, learned how to make movies. But he's stuck, talking around that central question. He's having, as he says, "a crisis of faith."
He explains this to a crusty old man who also happens to have directed the film noir "picture" that Dawson was watching at the start of the show. (The guy is an old-timer who quit the movie business and moved to Dawson's town, Capeside, Mass.; Dawson swears that in his day he was "like a combination of Sam Fuller and Cameron Crowe." Another pair of references!)
Get Salon in your mailbox!