Dawson Leery, Future Domestic Violator

So as previously mentioned on this blog, my current employment situation has provided me an abundance of free time. I've fallen into quite a tv routine, with the launching point being the 9am episode of Dawson's Creek on TBS. While watching the high school traumas of Capeside, Massachusetts all over again, I've come to a shocking realization...

Dawson Leery will grow up into a man who beats women.

When I was younger, watching the show the first time around, I remember often comparing myself to Dawson. It was so easy to understand how the beautiful girl could drive him crazy, and eat away at his very soul. Torture that overdone can only be felt by a hormonal pubescent male. I had a female friend that I was sure was the great love of my life, and she just wanted to be friends. The world was against me. I was Dawson Leery...

But then the plot changed... the rebel, the dorky, misunderstood best friend had a shot. Pacey Witter, the reluctant hero. He was everything I was, awkward, well-meaning, fighting to get out of the background. You couldn't help but root for him, as he made his play for the lovely Joey. I found myself abandoning my prior identity and relating to Pacey. As their love triangle evolved and regressed, my loyalties switched, and I began to resent Joey for her inability to let Dawson go.

But that's neither here nor there... the title of this post is the key. While watching these episodes all over again, we've now reached the part of the series where Pacey has declared his feelings for Joey, but her loyalty to Dawson keeps her from giving in (for now, I know she changes her mind later).

Dawson's response to his friend's betrayal is a range of every overblown, melodramatic tool in the 16 year-old boy's arsenal; yelling, guilt trips, devious schemes to embarrass your rival, pouting to yourself, spreading malicious gossip to poison friends... everything but physical violence against those he feels have offended him.

And that's why he'll grow to beat women. He's exhausting every possible emotional recourse, and because he is sooooooo tortured inside about it all, he's using up all the emotional outlet he has before he's really ready to. The human body only has a finite reserve of melodrama for use of the course of its life, and Dawson has finished his off far too early.

At one point in today's episode, Pacey begs Dawson to hit him, just to get it over with, but of course Dawson pussies out. Had he just thrown that one punch, it might all have been saved, but instead, once he becomes a real adult his future of wife-beating is in the cards. All he'll have left to express anger, will be violence.

In 15 years, when James Van Der Beek is a bald, out-of-work actor with a paunch over his jeans, and Dawson's Creek, The Later Years comes on as a tv movie... you watch, it will be Sheriff Pacey Witter arresting him for assault and battery. Just some food for thought...