Finale Thoughts
So
I finally finished Dawson’s Creek as a series yesterday. I thought I would feel satisfied with the finale because all I really wanted was my Jacey endgame. Trust me, I am eternally grateful they didn’t go the easy route by putting her with Dawson. I’m just greedy and wish we could have seen more of their reunion. Here’s how I would have personally written the finale:
⁃ I would cut out the long winded intro and reunion and fill all those gaps with exposition through dialogue rather than going through the trouble of showing Joey with her boyfriend, or Pacey with that random married woman who was only there to facilitate that Jacey kiss (again, very grateful). I just feel like we didn’t need to waste screen time on Pacey getting beat up to get there lol. I would also probably get to the wedding scene a lot faster and maybe spend more time in that setting so the rest of the episode had more space to see scenes that lead to the ending in a way that makes more sense.
⁃ Not connected to Jacey, I would absolutely not have Jen die on screen. I would have let her last scene be a conversation between her and Grams and then left it there for the audience to infer that she will die sometime in the near future. It felt so disconnected, I was crying and suddenly I was like that’s it? She’s gone? No funeral, no idea of how the gang deals with that grief, and then boom end of the series. Also, if Jen’s death was going to be done at the same time as the Joey Pacey Dawson triangle, then I feel like it makes her death seem like the less important event out of the two.
⁃ And that leads me to the love triangle. Dawson’s Creek stopped being about a love triangle in season 3. I forgot Dawson was ever even on the table. The final scene’s reveal on who Joey finally picked just cheapens a reunion I’ve been waiting for since the Jacey breakup in season 4. I guess I can appreciate the gag, but it seemed it was done more for the gag itself rather than the story.
⁃ And finally, the Jacey reunion. My babies deserved so much more. They went through so much, especially Pacey. The scene in the kitchen when they get interrupted annoyed me so deeply. I think if you’re going to add a scene where something important gets interrupted, there HAS to be a follow up scene. I would have put it right after Joey and Dawson declare that they are platonic soulmates (which I can get behind). Joey would meet Pacey at the dock maybe to circle back to season three. She would finish telling him what we knew, which is that she only ran from him because she knew he was it for her. I just feel like as a character Pacey deserved more than anyone to hear once and for all that it was him she wanted, especially after that disaster with him and Eddie at the end of season 6. I wanted that for them.
Either way, I’m still soooo insanely happy with my endgame and I know in my heart that scene happened somewhere offscreen in typical Jacey fashion. I hope to see Joshua Jackson confess his love to Katie Holmes on my screen once again in “Happy Hours” <3