Dawson's Creek

Plot Summary for Dawson’s Creek:
The show is set in a small coastal, Massachusetts town named Capeside, which tells the story of four teenagers as they struggle through adolescence. The show is about 15-year-old Dawson Leery, is a meditative dreamer, and Josephine ‘Joey’ Potter, an intelligent tomboy who is unaware of her own beauty. Dawson and Joey have been friends since childhood and as they enter a confusing time in their lives, high school, where life beings to change. Going from what they knew to having nothing as it might seem to be. The show is based on what happens to these two young teens as they grow older and start to change in more ways then one.

Show Information:
Seasons run/running- 6 seasons (ended in 2003)
Episode length- 60 minutes (1 hour)
Animation/Live- Live
Type- Drama

Situation of Discourse:
Author-
1. Implied: Dawson, Joey and maybe Pacey, for these are the three biggest characters in the show. The show also is following their lives and how they are living them. So I think that the implied author is the main character’s them selves.

2. Assumptions: I can assume that they real authors are trying to play that they implied authors are Dawson, Joey and Pacey, for none of these characters have a strong overall leading voice in the show. Also I can assume that this was intentional to make the different characters connect more to the audience.

3. Names: Nan Hagan, Dana Baratta, Greg Berlanti, Hadley Davis, Gina Fattore, Anna Fricke, Maggie Friedman, Alex Gansa, Liz Garcia, Darin Goldberg, Diego Gutierrez, Holly Henderson, Tom Kapinos, Karin Lewicki, Shelley Meals, Rina Mimoun, Jed Seidel, Jeffrey Stepakoff, Rob Thomas, Liz Tigelaar, Mike White, Kevin Williamson

Audience-
1. Implied: Teens around the same age as those in the show, also including teens/young adults that have gone through similar situations as those in the show. The target audience is more of the high school age, but as the show grows older so does the target audience.

2. Goals/Influence: The influence, that I think, trying to be relayed has to deal with relationships and/or love that is around you, but you don’t see. Also dealing with as you grow older, many things in your life are going to change, and these are with how you look and act but also with whom you like and the friends that you soon want to be more then just friends.

3. Actual: I feel that the actual audience member is a lot like that of the implied audience member. This member would probably react as becoming enlightened on this new idea or development that had accord.

4. Include Self: I don’t really include myself as part of the actual audience, but I am part of the implied. My sister was part of the actual audience for she watched the show and really liked it. I was not drawn to the drama of dating and relationships that took place throughout the show.

Characters:
Dawson Leery- meets and falls for newcomer Jen, who lives next door
Joey Potter- slightly jealous of Dawson’s bonding with Jen, which comes out during a movie outing
Jen Lindley- arrives from New York City, moves into the house next door to Dawson's, there to help her grandmother take care of invalid grandfather
Pacey Witter- falling in love with a new mystery woman that comes to town, Tamara
Tamara Jacobs- turns out to be the new English teacher at Capeside High School

Main/Most Apparent Courtship “Sightings”:
-Dawson’s bonding/liking of Jen
-Joey’s jealousy of Dawson’s new bond with Jen
-Pacey’s love interest with Tamara

My Views on the “Sightings”:
--Dawson’s new bonding/liking of Jen is something that I think has to deal with that in a small town you get used to all of the people you have grown up with. Make this new girl, who happens to now live next door, very appealing. Jen becomes the ‘girl next door’ who the ‘boy next door’ happens to like very much. This makes the attraction between the two stronger, for to see each other they don’t have to travel as far. This is something that I think plays a lot to the whole image of the cute guy next door or the hot girl next door idea. This concept might be true in a lot of cases, but I know when I was younger I always dreamed that a hot/cute guy would move in next door and then he would want to date me. But this is not really the way that it goes, but a lot of times on show’s it will be played up as such.

--Joey’s jealousy of Dawson’s new and growing bond with Jen I think has to deal with that Joey has never really had to share Dawson with any other girl. She has always been the one girl for him, making it hard to let go of him for this new girl. Also, as Joey and Dawson are growing older they are getting more into the dating scene, which makes it hard for Joey to lose the guy that has always been there for her and who she is starting to see as more then just a friend. The best friend that ends up liking you, and of course the guy does not see it. This is something that is shown in a lot of different T.V. shows and movies. I think that having this in the show really plays up the things that I always see in shows. Feeling that this might be something that the writers thought would add to the show to help them connect with the teens watching the show. It is hard to say what they are really trying to get out of this idea. I know for a fact when I was in middle school, I had a few guy friends and I always was wondering if I really liked them more then I was willing to admit, this was mostly based on the fact that in when my sister would watch Dawson’s Creek, I would see the friend dynamics between Dawson and Joey.

--Pasey’s love interest with Tamara. Well this is something that is hard to see in a teen show, or something that the writer will bring out. The idea of a younger man liking an older woman, who happens to be his teacher, is not something that I would think to see in a teen T.V. show. I remember that thinking that there was nothing really wrong with Pasey liking Tamara, but know looking back on this I see how it is not a really good thing. But one thing that I remember later on in the show was Tamara telling Pasey that it was not a good idea for them to see each other again, it was not something that was good for either of them. I think that this relationship added a lot of drama for the show.

I would also like to add:
I think that this show is very heavy in its courtship problems or just ideas of courtship that come out. Making it connect to the many teens that watched this show over the years. I think that even though I did not really watch the show more then sitting down and asking my sister what was going on, I did get a few impressions of what courtship should be like. So I think that even not really being a big part of this show, it effected how I saw many things when I was younger. That was before I got more experience and started to make my own ideas about what courtship should be like. With each person there view on a show is skewed by what they have gone through during their life. Also, the idea of the love triangle that is heavily a part of the shows drama, so considering the show is seen as a drama, a person can tell it plays a large part of the shows story line. The love triangle is something that shows up in many places. In the show, and from what I have seen, it usually consists of one female and two males. Most of the time all three of these people are good friends and it left up to the female who she is going to be with. So in terms of the show, will Joey choose to be with Pacey or Dawson, and this is something that when the show ends is left up to the viewer to decided, for no final answer is given.

Main References:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118300/
http://www.dawsonscreek.com/