Dawson's Creek Reviews
Review by D. S., Boston, MA
"Dawson's Creek" is the newest smash hit of the evening television line-up. It occupies the
9:00 p.m. slot on Tuesday evenings on the Warner Brothers television network. This
sensation is attracting a new crowd. It has young, attractive characters who are
experimenting with their sexuality and dealing with the challenges and adventures of high
school. The story is set in rural Massachusetts and deals with simple morals and ethics. The
main character, Dawson, is an over dramatic future filmmaker torn between his best friend
(a sexy girl-next-door-type named Joey), and a new student from New York named
Jennifer. Macy, Dawson's friend, is getting in way over his head when he becomes intimately
involved with his older and seductive teacher, Ms. Jacobs.
"Dawson's Creek" is so popular because it deals with sensitive and relevant issues that
teenagers face every day growing up in the '90s. This is an excellent show. It teaches teens
how to cope with delicate issues such as love, divorce, sex and education.
My prediction is a long, successful career for this cool, new show which receives my
recommendation to teens and parents everywhere.
Adjust your reception, `Dawson's Creek' is just a teen fantasy
By Ken Parish Perkins
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Thanks for all the letters and email about the Dawson's Creek review. I'm always touched when anyone actually admits to
reading this stuff, let alone takes time to suggest how I should deal with my sexual perversion when it comes to teen-age girls.
Counseling? Taken under consideration, Earl. See a priest? I'm a bible-toting Baptist at heart, Mrs. Rosman. The last time I had
sexual fantasies about a 15-year-old, Jere, I was 15. (OK -- 17. Honest.)
Recommending this Tuesday night serial was a no-brainer, not simply a knee-jerk reaction to what passes these days as
dramatic television for young adults. By no means was I, as two of you suggested and at least one of you implied, "endorsing
teen-age pregnancy" and "contributing to the cancerous malignancy of this society."
True, Dawson's Creek is a sweaty little drama that will find its ratings heading south if it refuses to cast a wider plot-line net, so
it can catch something other than raging hormones and overeducated teen-agers speaking in soliloquies.
But you've got to see this series for what it is. Written by Scream franchise screenwriter Kevin Williamson, a fellow who
understands a thing or two about cinematic manipulation, Dawson's Creek is a world that doesn't exist, and you should adjust
your realities accordingly. Gag and bind your teen-agers during this bewitching hour if you must, but there are better ways.
For all its hype, Dawson's Creek has exhibited a sexual frankness that's jolting only because it's such an anomaly. But writing
about teen sex is easy; articulating real life is what's hard.
There are built-in obstacles for a dramatic series about teen-age life that also aims to engage an adult audience, as Dawson's
Creek does.
It needs to be authentic enough to be persuasive and maybe even instructive about the angst and perplexity of the adolescent
psyche. On the other hand, you don't want to be too authentic -- it scares the heck out of parents in denial about what their
teens are really doing.
One of the prime failures at this was My So-Called Life, which during the 1994-95 season told compelling stories from the
vantage point of a 15-year-old character named Angela. She opened the series by looking across the family dinner table and
thinking via voice-over: "Sometimes it feels like we're living in some kind of prison."
What doomed Life wasn't its dreary plot lines, which often felt like slow death, but that Angela's (Claire Danes) voice was
uninterrupted by parents. In many ways, the poignancy of adolescence arises from how teen-agers are unable to articulate their
problems, and how those problems, no matter how small, are often dealt with in life-or-death terms. (The Wonder Years used
this effectively as well, but its aim was far lighter.)
For Life to have succeeded then -- and for any series dealing honestly with teen-agers to gain an audience now -- there must be
an acceptance of their interpretation of the world as a scary, sometimes depressing place.
I remember hearing older folk frown on Angela as something of a suicide case, forgetting that the teen occupying their upstairs
bedroom was probably up there bawling her eyes out over who knows what. Did they really want to know what she thinks?
To sidestep such complications in Dawson's Creek, Williamson creates characters who only look as though they are living real
lives. From the ritzy Boston suburb of large, old homes and incredibly high IQs to the pop-rock music score, life doesn't come
more manufactured than this.
Their preoccupation with everything sexual cleverly masks the characters' ambivalence toward school, parents, friends,
appearance, even identity.
So the next time your teens plop in front of Dawson's Creek, remember that it is merely the ultimate in shallow teen-age fantasy.
Whether you like it or not, that can be quite entertaining.
Ken Parish Perkins is the `Star-Telegram television critic. You can contact him at kpp@star-telegram.com.
Email: brylar@hotmail.com
