THE DAWSON FILES SEASON 5
Score: 7.4 / 10 
5: Gay Jack Gets Tough
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
Well, yawn... what a tedious Dawson. I think the death of Mr Flash has hit everybody hard, particularly the writers.
We begin with Dunstan heading off to visit Ah Joey for the weekend - Ah Joey is nervous because she wants Dunstan to not think about his dead father. So she hires some movies for them to watch together in the dorm room. She figures that with a bit of luck they need not venture outside and run the risk of bumping into people who might be dead or driving or running at superspeed or anything else that might remind Dunstan of his dead dad.
Stupidly, she has hired The World's Worst Drivers and The Best of the World's Worst Drivers, Part III (Focus on Smallville!) so they instead go to a party full of people that Dunstan instantly hates so they turn around and go home again.
Amazingly, this stupid plot took up about three-quarters of the show! And nothing at all interesting happened, although it does occur to me that Ah Joey's cool writing teacher looks a little like a chubby-faced John Cusack. I sincerely hope this will eventually prove relevant.
In between Ah Joey and Dunstan's tedious hanging-out togetherness, we had a couple of other subplots that were only marginally more interesting.
"Alvin was supposed to be working the late, non-Othello, shift."
Chipmunk Face somehow tricked Paceman into taking her to see Othello, because Alvin was supposed to be working the late, non-Othello, shift. Of course he wasn't. He was having dinner with some bimbo.
Naturally, when Chipmunk Face saw this, she lost the plot, abandoned Othello and threw acorns and poured whipped cream all over Alvin. Then, ha ha ha!, it was revealed that the bimbo in question was his sister. Which I thought was a little gross. It's perfectly understandable to cheat on Chipmunk Face, but an incestuous tryst with your sister is just plain icky.
Elsewhere, Gay Jack was paying no heed to Other Gay Guy, who had popped in from San Francisco for the weekend, preferring instead to spend quality time with his frat house 'brothers', who were playing pool and chugging beer and arm-wrestling.
Eventually, Gay Jack just told Other Gay Guy to 'get over it, dude' and that he no longer went for the sensitive, bespectacled type. He was looking for some beefcake. OGG headed off to the gym but gave it up after a couple of hours trying to work out how to use the stairmaster and flew back to Frisco.
"Chipmunk Face tried to give Gay Jack grief ..."
Chipmunk Face tried to give Gay Jack grief about this. Gay Jack was having none of it, and came up with the best scene of the episode:
"Y'know," he said. "Perhaps I'm just tired of being held back. I want to flex my mighty gay muscles and if that means abandoning the stupid, wretched people who have got me this far along the gay path, then I won't hesitate to do so. I am Gay Jack, hear me roar!"
"I still don't think that's a very nice way to treat OGG," says Chipmunk Face.
"I'm not talking about OGG," says Gay Jack, smirking brilliantly.
"Oh," says Chipmunk Face, and slinks off to meet with Alvin. Who is obviously bonking somebody else, possibly his first cousin.
And that was it. Stupid and boring. Perhaps if they'd edited the Ah Joey-Dunstan subplot down to, oh, say ninety seconds or so and spent more time on Gay Jack belittling Chipmunk Face we might have had something.
As it is, 2 out of 10.
Next week: Chipmunk Face teams up with Alvin's first cousin, his aunt and his sister and they all head off to visit Jerry Springer, to see if he can help them out.
Begone,
This here item has so far scored 7.4 / 10 on the patented Astonishing Tales Funny-o-meter.
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