I had my own Joey. Or my own Dawson, depending on which one you think is the bigger tool. Heh. It was one of those things that started off young, was founded in a real friendship, and occasionally went deeper. And because you're young and you're trying to understand love and emotion, you naturally fall into a sort of romance. Because isn't that just what people do when they like each other? But no matter how far each 'blip' went, it always ended with hurt feelings or disillusionment. We still hung out as friends a lot, even if there was always that undercurrent of 'maybe', or 'what if...?'; but, in the end, as much as we always thought that the problem was that little hint of sexual chemistry, it turned out to be something far less romantic that pushed us apart. In essence, those teenage years are always the turning point, the years where you evolve the most and rapidly become the person you want to be as an adult, and with those mutual changes came differences between us as people. The person I knew, and the person she saw in me, became alien and different and unappealing, and that longing to remain friends despite our shared history sort of dissipated. So we were done.
I can't help but groan a little whenever a TV show jumps into the future, since it so often feels unearned and somewhat unnecessary -- more an attempt to hook new viewers or promote a derivative 'game-changer' that has little effect long-term. But it actually sort of works for this show's series finale. As a show, Dawson's Creek has been almost unbearably suffocating at times, characters so consumed with emotional longing and repeatedly reminiscing about shared histories and romantic false-starts that it all got a little nuts a long time ago. But what All Good Things... does so well is create a necessary bridge in time for the show's ensemble, allowing them all to have grown up and moved on in the five years since we last saw them. As a result, the emotions that would ordinarily feel angsty and irritating feel slightly less frantic -- feelings smoothed out over time instead of being fresh and impulsive. There's a maturity here that carries the episode, and it's one of the more successful uses of a now-standard TV gimmick.
It's funny how much of this episode feels like a TV show, particularly whenever the writers explore Dawson and Pacey's friendship, or lack thereof. One of the key missions here is to get the two of them back on speaking terms, talking about their recent lack of communication and the way their friendship flew off the rails right around the time Pacey shacked up with Joey and how it's never truly recovered. But what really sticks out at you is that the show positions that friendship as something worth saving, or at least worthy of considerable attention. Because isn't it true that most people wind up losing contact with those you knew in high school? Even the people you were closest to? People evolve, circumstances change, communication drifts. And despite the ridiculousness of so much of this show in general, it's the way these kids are so fixated with the past that most easily throws you off.
I guess it's only right to end Dawson's Creek with Dawson acting like a horrendous jackass once again. There seemed to be real attempts over seasons four and five to make him sort of relatable and endearing, but the way he's been removed so heavily from season six probably ensured that nobody on set was particularly invested in making him a good person anymore. I gather that Dawson's absences this year were at James Van Der Beek's own request, but it has this unforeseen consequence wherein you don't care a whole lot about his movie or all the money he's lost. He just comes off like a ghost from the past, somebody who sits in the background assuming things will fall into his lap and becoming aggressive if they don't. Snore.
In its final week, In Treatment once again promotes how different it is to everything else on television. Like last season, anxiety and introspection has been slowly building session by session, presumably about to spill over in this final week. But here is where, traditionally, the show's dedication to naturalism clashes with the narrative's desperation for closure. As a result, you can look at this week of episodes as slightly underwhelming. If you're looking for resolutions and a true ending to the stories of Paul and his various patients, then it's probably not the greatest collection of episodes. But in exposing those small victories, the ones that suddenly grant you the ability to move on to that next phase of life, it's unsurprisingly a home run.
I'm a sucker for a tender moment played over a Mazzy Star track. It's only natural, right? Ice is pretty much built entirely around that wonderful scene towards the tail-end of the episode, Vaughn meeting in a bar with the enchanting Kelly MacDonald and comparing notes on guilt and retribution and how far they've both gone when inspired by other, more dangerous people. Both arrive with a ton of emotional baggage this week, Lauren on Vaughn's mind and his memory unsurprisingly tainted by all those feelings of bloody rage he experienced at the end of last season. MacDonald's Kiera MacLaine is in a similar boat, reduced to clandestine evilness by her shady mad scientist brother.
The Awful Truth represents the 'new' Alias: episodes driven by standalone missions, with some subtle character work as a backdrop to it all. It's disappointing in some ways, but feels somewhat more palatable considering this is the show's fourth season. If Alias premiered with episodes like this one, involving Sydney going undercover inside the home of a wife-killing arms dealer, then it would probably struggle to define itself as anything special or particularly innovative. But what saves the season's initial reliance on this format are the characters we know and love.
"Can't this have a happy ending for everyone?" I guess it was sort of inevitable that everything Amy believed to be true would wind up in the crapper. Whether it's the Abaddonn expose or her new relationship, it's hard for Amy to see the writing on the wall, even when it's blindingly clear that things are about to fall apart. Watching her for two seasons, it's always been noteworthy that the want to do right is usually a heavier, more satisfying feeling than the one that involves actually doing something. Not just because it's hard work, but because it means facing potential ugliness -- discovering that it wasn't like you imagined, or that you weren't looking for the right things in the first place. As Enlightened's second season reaches its conclusion, here we begin to see all the cracks appearing in Amy's foundation.
