Why the ending matters

Can I just say I'm so mad at Dawson and Joey...  ** there may be spoilers in here for the .03% of you who've never watched the entirety of Dawson's Creek and still somehow care about not reading spoilers from a show that's been over for like 6 years.... .03% is too large a number, isn't it?**

I know, how sad am I? I'm talking about a couple of TV show characters like they are actual people. The writers do such a good job of making me care about these two kids, but then the forever "will they, won't they" tension just drives me up a wall. And both of them act like such complete morons. If you say you are in love with a girl and she says she is in love with you, you call her. You talk to her, you don't start dating other people. If you are so in love with a boy that you are willing to buy a plane ticket to Paris just to catch him before he leaves the airport in the most grand of all movie-style gestures and you are willing to put it all on the line by saying that you love him and then he says that he loves you back, you don't just not call him all summer long. Then if he royally screws up (as you know he is going to, because you've known him since he was three and when has he ever not screwed things up except for the time that you screwed things up?) You don't throw the baby out with the bath water. You remember that time you screwed everything up, and you give the guy a break/second chance/400th chance cause if you really believe you two are soul mates then maybe you should believe him when he says that he knows he screwed up and he's trying to fix it.

 Maybe I should have stopped the first time they kissed. Maybe I should have stopped when Joey said, "It's just lipstick, Dawson." Maybe in these tv relationships it's better just to call things off  as soon as you get the ending you want, because sooner or later (and on Dawson's Creek it's always sooner) your ending is going to get ruined. I mean who keeps watching something that just works out and keeps working out? There's no story in happily ever after. That's why complete lifetimes can be summed up in three words.

Happily ever after.

Sometimes I think maybe I *would* watch a show where people are happily married/in relationships and were just exceedingly funny. I mean I like my own life/friends and that's pretty well how it works with them.

Anyway, none of that dissection really matters, and it doesn't really matter that I'm 6 years too late to the party or that if I really thought this through I'd realize that very few people reading this have been able to stick with me through this whole diatribe. Cause you know what?  I'm ticked off at two tv show characters. Still. Both of them. Dawson is a stupid jerk and Joey is a moody drama queen.

I watched an anime movie once with Nathan that we both mocked mercilessly, in part because the theme song was John Denver's, "Country Road." and in part because the translation from Japanese to English was really bad and once the girl walking down the road started yelling, "stupidjerk,stupidjerk,stupidjerk" and neither of us was sure what the "stupid jerk" had done to be labeled as such. So whenever anyone would make us mad from then on, the other person would say, "stupidjerk,stupidjerk,stupidjerk" and it would make the person who was mad smile. And I realized that, no one would get what I was referring to when I called Dawson (who was in fact a stupid jerk) a stupid jerk. And it kinda broke my heart a little bit.

I saw a gray Jeep Cherokee in my parking lot yesterday evening, and my heart seized in my chest for just a second. For just one short short moment in time I thought he was home. And I was *so* happy to see that Jeep.... and then I was so mad at that Jeep. That brief moment of hope can be so devastating.

But you see this is why I need Dawson and Joey to just freaking get it right for once... Cause if I end this, the last season of Dawson's Creek, with Dawson and Joey not finally getting it right, I'm going to be so upset. If they end up just saying goodbye in some terrible cheesy montage of all the Dawson and Joey moments and then the viewer is left believing that they just send each other Christmas cards and courtesy phone calls upon engagement and first children. If Dawson and Joey, who have their lives scripted can't get a little piece of happily ever after. If after everything they've gone through they don't get the happiness that we all know they can only find in each other and have to settle for... not-quite-Joey and not-quite-Dawson. Well then, what chance to the rest of us poor slobs have? I want to believe in happily ever after. I want to believe that after all the twists and turns and ups and downs and loop-de-loops happily ever after still exists... and that mine is out there, waiting for me down the road a short piece. But if Dawson and Joey can't make it work... how the heck can I? I mean, honestly my life has been just as drama filled, if not more than Dawson's or Joey's... so if they can't pull it out and turn it around... just doesn't make me feel so good about my chances... after all, I don't have 40 million fans telling the writers that they have to make it work out in the end.

It's just that happily ever afters keep me going. They are the fuel of that keep me out of angsty morose-land. They give me hope, which, not gonna lie, I still need- in spades.

Do you remember the "Everything I need to know" poster phase? There were "everything I need to know about life I learned from..." posters everywhere and the things they learned from ranged from kindergarten (maybe the first poster?) to Star Trek, to "my girlfriends."

I feel like that's what this post is shaping up to be.



Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned from Dawson's Creek.



Good gravy, how sad would that be if it were true. No wonder the aliens want to destroy us, and only Hoolan can see our potential.

Seriously, if you've never read the "My Teacher is an Alien" series by Bruce Coville, you need to. Go to your local library. Now. Before we stop being friends.