Dawson's Creek is far more literate and polished than the daytime soaps, with more lavish production values.
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"Dawson's Creek" picked up where "Beverly Hills 90210" left off, but on different networks. Fox scored big with a teen ensemble drama that made household names out of Shannen Doherty, Jason Priestley, Jennie Garth, Luke Perry, and Tori Spelling, but the WB went even further with "Dawson's Creek," giving it the serial treatment and hooking yet another generation of teens.
Maybe it's the difference between Capeside, Mass. and Beverly Hills, Calif., but the Dawson "kids" are basically nicer than the group from 90210—less spoiled and better mannered. By the fifth season, they're all so polite and nice that you wonder if they're all somehow tied to the Brady family tree. Then again, it's refreshing that the show's producers resisted the urge to feature radically different "types" and milk them for all they're worth, preferring instead to depict basically normal and decent people in basic (albeit soapy) relationships. Make that lots of soap.
If you're not in the target audience, some of the plots and spoken lines and all of the brooding teen angst can get a bit laughable, and at some point you begin to think that the producers have a dartboard with all the characters' names on it and just make two throws to see which two characters are going to hook up next. Still, the show has enough dramatic power to interest people outside the teen market, and the production values and acting are all quite good. Even in a season that doesn't have the same sparkle as earlier outings, "Dawson's Creek" can become addictive. There are just a few things you have to take with a grain of salt.
For one thing, there are no frat boys with caps who sit in the back of the classroom leaning against the wall in their tipped-back chairs, and none of the characters says "like" in, like, any of their sentences. They don't really talk like the teenagers all of us know. Examples? Dawson says to his parents, "I'm at a profound crossroads in my life," and to Joey, "I alienated my parents, and now I find myself adrift in a sea of uncertainty." Sure, he's like going to film school and whatever, but, like, how is that real? Then again, audiences would probably flip to the Golf Channel or Food Network if they had to sit through an hour of dialogue that was that real. And then there's the unreal relationship between these kids and the adult world. Except for Dawson's parents, Gayle and Mitch (Mary-Margaret Humes and John Wesley Shipp) and Jen's grandma (Mary Beth Peil), who, by the way, offers Yoda-like advice to everyone in the show who comes to her—and sooner or later, everybody comes to Grams—there are practically no other adults in this series. Even at the big funeral this season, it's all teens.
When the show first debuted in 1998, it introduced four core characters who were sophomores at Capeside High School: Dawson Leery (James Van Der Beek), the brooding wannabe filmmaker whose parents were the kind that invited kids to hang out at their house; Joey Potter (Katie Holmes), his tomboyish best friend; Jen Lindley (Michelle Williams), a girl with a promiscuous past who moves in the neighborhood and begins dating Dawson; and Pacey Witter (Joshua Jackson), who has an affair with his English teacher. A homosexual, Jack McPhee (Kerr Smith), would emerge as another central character. The first season set the tone for years to come, with teen angst, identity crises, and sexual seethe hanging like a low fog over each episode.
Season five was the last for Dawson's dad, Mitch, and the first for Audrey Liddell ("Freaks and Geeks" alum Busy Phillips), who's introduced as Joey's college roommate. Perhaps in a playful nod to "Beverly Hills 90210," she's from Beverly Hills and infuses a little California attitude into the laid-back Bostonian world of the "Dawson's Creek" gang. Season five also introduced new music, so series regulars, brace yourselves.
Here's the rundown on the 23 episodes:
1) "The Bostonians"—The gang leaves Capeside for school and the real world. But USC film school isn't what Dawson thought it would be, and Joey has to deal with an English professor that's taken an unusual interest in her.
2) "The Lost Weekend"—Dawson impulsively flees L.A. for Boston and shows up on Joey's Worthington College doorstep, while Jen decides to give in to Charlie (Chad Michael Murray), a musician she meets at a frat party.
3) "Capeside Revisited"—Dawson is disappointed that his dad is opposed to his dropping out of film school, while Joey learns that her old boyfriend, Pacey, is working in the kitchen of a Boston restaurant.
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