you’ve got the option to buy thefull set of five covers here.
What you have to remember about the late 90s is that TV characters were suddenly horny.Veryhorny.
One kids hot for teacher.
Credit: The WB (2)
One moms hot for co-anchor.
Food isnt just good, its orgasmic.
Im having a climax issue, Dawson tells Jen.
Hes talking about his script, teehee.
But he performs that action in the morning, usually, with Katie Couric.
Nostalgia forDawsons Creektakes many forms.
It barely matters for how we rememberDawsons Creekbut reveals everything about the era that produced the show.
Dawson and Pacey are walking into Dawsons living room.
This Freudian primal scene seems like an eerily regular event in the Leery household.
Dawson has a very sitcom-kid look on his face,gee whiz, Mom, quit embarrassing me.
I thought you hadworktoday, chastises Dawsons dad, in a Ward Cleaver tone of voice.
His shirt is still unbuttoned.
Hes still sitting on the wicker ottoman, a piece of living-room furniture.
Imagine Dawson finding that wicker ottoman, decades later, in a basement or a storage bin.
Imagine the memories that would come rushing back to him.
What isupwith the sex?
Dawson asks his dad later in the episode.
Its all anyone thinks about anymore!
Sex, sex, sex!
What is the big deal?
The kids are sweet, tame, the fairy children of summertime in a postcard reality.
Everyones got a boat.
Every backyard has a private dock.
At one point, Dawson sees Jen sitting onherdock.
The sky is red as the memory of lipstick; the creek is serenity blue.
The fantasy of Capeside is nonspecific, though.
Its a small town, but the adults we meet have jobs suggesting creativity, entrepreneurship.
Dawson chastises his dad for this whole aquatics-themed restaurant idea.
Dawson and Pacey work at a video store, signaling residual Tarantinophilia four years post-PulpFiction.
One of my favorite scenes is at Joeys house.
It is the urbanites daydream of the simpler life: Witness Etsy before Etsy.
There is some darkness along the margins of the teens life.
And Joeys parents are gone, mom dead and dad imprisoned.
But look how theyre staged at Dawsons house.
Jens poking her head out his bedroom window; Joeys climbing towards the other window.
With Dawson offscreen inside, its aliteralromantic triangle, filmed by director Steve Miner like aSaturday Evening Postcover.
Its an old-fashioned vision: Ah, summer!
Adulthood and modernity beckons, in unexpected ways.
Dawson himself is suspicious, thinks theres an affair happening under his roof.
Do you think my Moms sleeping with her co-anchor?
The retro sweetness of the pilot makes moments like this feel even more perverse.
I assume Williamson must have been cackling over all this stuff.
Or maybe it slipped in intuitively.
His protagonists movie tastes, famously, are lessPsychothanE.T.
This Spielberg fixation seemed eccentric in 1998.
Its now the most obviously millennial thing about any of the main characters.
(Or hell grow up to complain about how theGodzillareboot stole all the best bits fromJurassic Park.)
Williamson was a cultural polymath out of the Tarantino-Miramax school, so his references always meant something.
That line is funny when you imagine Dawson watchingMunich.
What Dawsons saying, basically, is: Spielberg movies dont have sex scenes, because sex isnt important.
ButDawsons Creeks point, here in episode one, is that Dawson has no clue what hes talking about.
Joey tells Dawson: Stop living in movies.
Even Spielberg outgrew his Peter Pan syndrome!
about something Ive never seen in a Spielberg movie.
Its innocent and controversy-baiting, all at once.
But the fantasy cant last.
So the pilot is a prophecy of what lies ahead: Sex, lies and videotape.
