On September 17, 2006, the lives of millions of angst-ridden teens changed forever. The WB television network, which paved the sex-crazed and melodramatic way for The CW and “Gossip Girl,” went off the air. Its final show was a re-run of the single episode that, perhaps more than any other in its 11-year history, defined the network: the pilot of “Dawson’s Creek.”
It was in that pilot that Dawson (James Van Der Beek) and Joey (Katie Holmes) first discussed Spielberg movies, their developing genitalia and “mounting sexual theoretics,” all before the first credits rolled to the tune of Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait.” Those opening three and a half minutes, first aired in January of 1998, set the tone for six seasons of hyper-literacy, high school and hormones.
This Wednesday, in honor of an upcoming complete-series DVD box-set, the Paley Center will host “Dawson’s Creek: A Look Back.” Van Der Beek himself will be in attendance, as well as Busy Phillips, who played Audrey Liddell, Meredith Monroe, who played Andie McPhee and Kevin Williamson, the show’s creator and executive producer.
Williamson, also the creator of the “Scream” slasher film franchise and The CW’s “The Vampire Diaries,” set the show physically in the fictional town of Capeside, Mass., and thematically in the tradition of “Beverly Hills, 90210,” which had been broaching adolescent sexual topics since 1990. “Dawson’s Creek” attracted outrage in its own right, though, topping the Parents Television Council’s “Top 10 Worst Family Shows on Network Television” list in 1998 and 1999.
“The show features an almost obsessive focus on pre-marital sexual activity,” the Council announced in 1999. “Most of the characters have sex, which is treated as inconsequential and without moral context. References to topics of pornography and condoms are commonplace, as is dialogue like “˜All he does know is that he goes to sleep every night jerkin’ his gherkin and wakes up every morning humping his mattress.'”
Such an abundance of sexual content, if still relatively novel for a teen drama at the time, is now relatively commonplace, especially with The CW’s lineup of “Gossip Girl,” “Melrose Place,” and “90210.” The dialogue in “Dawson’s Creek” still stands alone, however, endowing its characters with a vocabulary more suitable for graduate students who’ve memorized the thesaurus. Katie Holmes has admitted in interviews that she occasionally consulted a dictionary to make sure she pronounced her lines correctly.
“The dialogue is really smart and sarcastic,” said Wesley Wong, a second-year psychobiology student and fan of the show. “Obviously I don’t think it’s representative of how teenagers in high school speak at all, but I think it’s really funny to listen to it because it appeals to the older generation as well as kids in high school who liked it when it was on TV.”
She added, “You have to be a little bit smarter to understand a lot of the stuff that’s going on, and with shows nowadays, it’s all sex and drama. It’s so unrealistic, it’s not even depicting what it’s like to be a teenager in high school anymore. At least “˜Dawson’s Creek’ tried to do that.”
Holmes is the show’s most famous alumna, thanks to her 2006 marriage to Tom Cruise, but the last few years have seen a re-emergence of several cast members into the spotlight. Joshua Jackson, who personified the developing male libido as Dawson’s best friend Pacey, now stars in Fox’s hit sci-fi series “Fringe.” Michelle Williams, who played the new girl in town Jen Lindley, was made tabloid-famous because of her relationship with Heath Ledger, but she’s also attracted critical praise for her roles in “Brokeback Mountain” and “Wendy & Lucy.” Philipps may be next, having scored recent roles in “Made of Honor” and “He’s Just Not That Into You.”
Van Der Beek proved unable to maintain his popularity after the show ended, though, despite it being his character’s creek. That may be partly because Dawson provided the show with its straight-laced anchor, allowing his co-stars to develop their own eccentricities.
“James Van Der Beek’s character was kind of boring,” Wong said. “His character was very goody- two-shoes, the good-boy character. So he didn’t have a lot of interesting ways to show his acting skills, whereas the other characters all had different quirks. They were really characters, whereas he seemed like the guy next door.”