Dawson's Creek

[adiafaith]

I actually understand that feeling of betrayal Dawson felt and I am in NO WAY defending Dawson here but, I mean, put yourself in his shoes. You have two people who have been your best friends for practically your whole life. And one of them you fell in love with and had a relationship with, albeit a short relationship. That person breaks up with you and goes off to "find" himself and when he finally comes back to you like a year later, the timing isn't right. The feelings may still be there for the person but the timing is just off. So you turn him down and ask your other friend to look after him 'cause you care about the person. And then they go off and fall in love and start a relationship and you end up finding out, not from them, but through someone else. That's gotta sting - even if Dawson wasn't in a relationship with Joey anymore it's still gotta hurt to know that her and Pacey had kinda hooked up behind his back and weren't just upfront about it. And I'm thinking that Dawson probably felt like Pacey should've known that he still had feelings for Joey and for Joey, of all the guys for her to fall for, his best friend being the one had to feel like a little knife in his back. So him getting angry about that wasn't my issue - where I wanted to kill Dawson was when he gave that freakin' ultimatum. When he basically forced Joey to chose between him and Pacey, that's where Dawson was totally in the wrong, to me.

She could've went to Dawson and said "look I want us to be friends, it means the world to me, but Pacey is MY boyfriend and MY choice and YOU need to respect that. And if you can't, we cannot be friends, coz if you can't respect my desisions, you can't respect me, and I don't want a friend who can't respect me!"

You see, this is why I started getting angry with Joey. She wants to be friends with Dawson, fine (I thought she was a retard for it, but whatever). But she's in a relationship with Pacey and she needed to respect that fact. If Dawson was going to forgive her yet still crap all over Pacey then that's not respect her and their friendship. Plus that's continuing to put her in the middle of this animosity between them. It really bothered me that she was running after Dawson to mend a friendship with him when he was still being so horrible to a man she claimed to love.

[meimei42]

I can see your point, I still think we went over the top. How dare he put Joey through what he put her though. I mean she loved him and he pushed her away and wasn't ready for her and just excepted her to wait there for him? I can understand feeling betrayed--hurt at the most, but his reaction was over the top and uncalled for.

I'm just angry because he just expected her to wait. WTF is that?

And yeah, Joey wanting Dawson's frienship back I got. I mean after three months of being able to calm down about the whole thing, I could see where she would want to try and bridge the gap, but it was at the expense of Pacey's feelings and really when he was a dick to her still it should have ended there. She could be sorry, but I don't think it was the biggest betryal ever to have existed. Joey and Dawson weren't together. Had they been, then I think the situation would have been a little different.

[adiafaith]

Oh hell yea Dawson went over the top. I expected him to get angry and to yell and maybe cry (omg, his crying face, roflmao!!!!) - sorry, lost my focus. I expected him to do all those things, but for him to say and do such evil things - the comment he made where he implied Pacey would just be expecting sex from her enraged me and forcing Joey to choose - but also saying that if she chose Pacey, they would no longer have a friendship and he wouldn't be there for her anymore - was totally f****d up. And nearly killing Pacey on the boat, I mean, come on. Dawson was a first class a-hole. He had that whole "you don't know what you have until it's gone" thing happening because once he saw Joey moving forward, he totally lost it. He always did that - he'd want her when he couldn't have her. But his reaction in terms of Joey and Pacey was just to the extreme. He acted like he didn't even want Joey to be friends with Pacey ('cause he totally lost it at the Anti-Prom over a dance, but it wasn't just a dance now was it ) which is f****d up since Pacey was there for Joey when Dawson wasn't and had been friends with her since they were kids too.

[meimei42]

Dawson reeped what he sowed. He was very much not into Joey anytime she was available. He wanted her in season 5 too and she wanted him back. Then his dad died and he sort of blamed it on her (which was soooo stupid) and then just totally pushed her away. I can understand being upset about something, but even as he was recovering he didn't want her around him...UNTIL she had a boy. And then he's like OOOOOOh I'm gonna make a grand gesture of love and skip an agent meeting to go see her! Dude. Don't. Joey and his proclamation of love could have waited one freaking day. Whatever.

But he wussed out in the end and those two just go back and forth. He screwed it up again in season six by not dumping his gf before he slept with someone else.

[adiafaith]

The not dumping his girlfriend thing was so foul. Like after that I was like, "Joey, if you pine after Dawson even one more time when he freakin' cheated on his girl to screw you, I will punch you in your face."

I don't understand why those two were always so off with their timing. And why were they always having Dawson make some grand gestures of "love", like dropping out of college or missing important movie meetings or racing boats only to have Joey be either not interested or with some other guy. It just made Dawson look like more of an a**. And it just further showed how wrong they were for each other.

[Nanika]

I don't understand the "soul-mate" thing.....they had like nothing in common! Not a damn thing! The only thing they had was history, and it was due to the fact that they grew up together. A soul mate isn't the person who spends the most time with you, but the person you understand, and are alike with in the best possible level. Like Pacey was. Ok he was less ambitious then Joey, but that aside they were more alike then anyone on that show. Both loud, strong minded, both from "weird" families..I dunno, it was just a perfect coupling. the most perfect one in the history of TV.

[Calena]

The only explanation I can think of is that all this "soul-matey" stuff took place before the series time frame and the audience is expected to buy the soulmate connection on blind faith.
Joey mentions a few times how Dawson was there for her when her mum died. She actually feels guilty for going on that ski trip when Mr.Book had just died in the first place, and even more so because she slept with Pacey. That is also the only reason I can think of why she didn't tell Dawson a) that it's non of his business or b) yes she slept with Pacey, they have been together for 9 months after all.

[meimei42]

How Joey could not see that lying to her best friend would end up worse in the end is beyond me. I think once you learn that hard lesson it sticks with you. When I was in high school I was going over to a friends house to play board games because she'd invited this guy I liked. Well my best friend is so pretty and she's just a natural flirt and so I didn't want to tell her because I was worried she'd want to hang too and I had these horrible insecurities that, while she wouldn't do it on purpose, she would hurt my chances of getting this guys attention. So after school my friend came up to me and asked me about the outting right in front of her and like an idiot I LIED about it and then was almost immediately caught in a lie and the thing of it was, she didn't care about not being invited, she got that, she cared that I lied to her and it broke her heart. That was like 5 years ago and that was probably the worst moment of our friendship. Lying right to her face about something.

Anyway, I've had childhood friends, people who I thought were going to be in my life forever but that doesn't make us soul mates or mean we need to be together and get married. Just because someone knows you when you're ten doesn't mean when you're twenty you'll have anything in common romatically.

Wow--this has been all about me. Lame.

[Calena]

Wow--this has been all about me. Lame.

No, it isn't. Isn't one point of watching these shows that you can relate and analyze them in the light of your own life?

Well, I don't like Dawson anymore than you girls do, but I just watched the ep where Dawson gave Brooks' money to Joey so she could go to college and that was a really nice thing to do.

[adiafaith]

I thought the whole Brook's money thing was so contrived. Like Dawson had pretty much been an a** to Joey prior to that and hadn't really redeemed himself, at least in my eyes, since he was still being a jerk to Pacey. At that point, Joey and Dawson were so far from having anything in common and there was no chemistry and connection between them - like he acted funny about helping her out with the peer recommendation thing. Yet all of a sudden he gets this money and Joey can't afford school (and meanwhile the writers have Pacey kinda acting weird) so to make Dawson look good again they have him give Joey money. But I just wasn't buying it. It was too forced - like he'll give her thousands of dollars so that she can go to school but he didn't want to write a recommendation for her so that she could get into the same college. Yeah right.

I didn't think Joey and Dawson were soulmates either and it kinda bugged me that they tried to drill that swill into our heads for 6 freakin' seasons. Soulmates have a bond. They are connected to each other emotionally, mentally, spiritually. They can feel each other's pain and they share things in common. They totally understand each other. Dawson was the one causing Joey's pain through most of the series. He was totally too self-absorbed to connect to someone else. Half the time he had no idea what Joey was really feeling - he only knew certain things (like her favor face or when she was nervous) because he'd grown up spending so much time around her. I don't believe in the whole soulmates thing but if I did, I'd definitely agree that the people that seemed like soulmates were Pacey and Joey. Actually, in the show, they were the ones that seemed like the perfect representation of best friends too. No matter how badly they hurt each other, somehow their love and concern for each other always shined through - well....moreso on Pacey's side.