THE DAWSON FILES SEASON 4
Score: 7.1 / 10 
5: Paceman Plays Mind Games
Starring Dawson Leery (James Van Der Beek) as Kid Flash/Mr Tosser/Dunstan, Joey Potter (Katie Holmes) as Ah Joey, Jen Lindley (Michelle Williams) as Chipmunk Face, Pacey Witter (Joshua Jackson) as The Paceman, Jack McPhee (Kerr Smith) as Gay Jack, Andie McPhee (Meredith Monroe) as Crazy Andy and Grams (Mary Beth Peil) as herself. For more information on these people and more, consult the scorecard
All right. An episode with a message.
It begins with Mrs Flash finding out she's pregnant. She tells Mr Flash and Mr Tosser and reactions are mixed. 'Is it mine?' asks Mr Flash, quite reasonably in my opinion, given Mrs Flash's less than pristine rep.
Elsewhere, Paceman and Ah Joey are swapping spittle... and Paceman is getting tired of getting all worked up in a wooden kind of way and not being able to expunge his frustrations. So he decides to start playing mind games... and puts an end to the pash-fest while Ah Joey is still all hot and a-hungering for him.
So, this gets Ah Joey all frustrated also and she doesn't like it when it's her now, does she? And she starts thinking that maybe it's time she intitiated tomfoolery of a more intimate nature. She asks Chipmunk Face for advice. 'Chipmunk Face,' she says. 'Should I start having sex?'
Does anybody want to guess what Chipmunk Face's response was?
Yes, thank you, Ellie. That's right. Chipmunk Face exhorted her to 'go for it in the largest and most dangerously enthusiastic way until she thinks her most intimate parts will explode'.
Meanwhile, Gay Jack is off training a soccer team with Crazy Andy. Disappointingly for Gay Jack, it is a kid's team (initially, Crazy Andy had led him to believe that he would be training Man U). Gay Jack takes it in his stride, however, and teaches a mute kid how to talk. Or something.
Mr Tosser is meanwhile moping about his mother's pregnancy. Still on his painting kick (see several episodes ago), he's over painting the house of Grams' Crazy Old Drug Addict (who is yet to get a more sensible nickname). And GCODA tells him that all the photographs he's taken are crap. 'Mr Tosser,' he says. 'Your photos are crap.' Thus verifying my claim in the previous sentence.
"PBS ... allows Mr Tosser to take some crap photos of her."
So Mr Tosser goes and tries to do the Deeply Sensitive Soul thing on Paceman's Babe Sister. PBS will have none of it, but allows Mr Tosser to take some crap photos of her. Mr Tosser takes them home and uses Photoshop to put them on a nude body.
Ah Joey has, by this stage, found herself in a birth control clinic where a scary woman tells her that if she has sex she will almost certainly die!! Ah Joey looks embarrassed and flustered and cute. And then the scary woman gives her some spermicide with explicit instructions to use it 'against anybody you suspect of owning sperm'.
These are instructions Mrs Flash wishes she has followed. She tells Mr Flash that she can't bear to bring another little Tosser into the world. Mr Flash enthusiastically agrees and they go home and tell Mr Tosser this. Mrs Flash goes into a big speech about how she's a crap mother and she knows that Dawson hates her and she hates herself and she's a crap mother and she must abort and then starts to cry and runs off. Mr Tosser and Mr Flash look at one another, puzzled. 'Chicks!' says Mr Flash, finally, shaking his head.
Then Mr Tosser reveals to PBS that he knows that she was pregnant and had an abortion also and again plays the Deeply Sensitive card. For a tosser, he's being very cunning about this budding revenge scheme.
Elsewhere, Gay Jack has the horny older sister of the mute soccer player he cured coming onto him. So he pulls out his driver's licence and points to the word 'Gay' on it. The referee blows the whistle, gives Gay Jack a red card and Gay Jack is forced to sit out the rest of the show.
Then after a bit of a squabble with her sister, Ah Joey tells Paceman that, as penance for trying to play mind-games with her, he's not going to enter Castle Ah Joey any time in the near future. 'Coises!' says Paceman.
And Mr Tosser, unable to turn the Deeply Sensitive switch off, tells his mother that she's been a good mother and claims, despite all laws of logic, that even if she was only half as good a mother to the new kid as she was to him, the new kid would still be the luckiest child on Earth. Even if one is foolish enough to accept Mr Tosser's bizarre premise (ie that, despite behaving no better than a common Chipmunk, she has somehow succeeded as a mother), his logic remains fatally flawed. Nobody points this out to him, because it's just far too embarrassing.
And that's about all. The moral is clearly: don't play mind games in order to get sex. Or, if you do, make sure you're brighter than The Paceman.
Next week: Crazy Andy takes drugs and her head explodes!! A powerful lesson in store for everybody.
Begone,
This here item has so far scored 7.1 / 10 on the patented Astonishing Tales Funny-o-meter.
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