By FRANCES GRANT
There are people who watch Dawson's Creek for the charming seaside scenery. Two of them were on the couch at my place for the season opener on Sunday.
The return of the teen soap opera confirmed what the pair of us had long suspected: the show has been misnamed. Dawson's Creek really should be called "Joey's Creek" or "Anybody-but-Dawson's Creek."
"He's a petulant, self-indulgent nobody," was the immediate opinion of the fellow appreciator of the Wilmington, North Carolina landscape. "He's so, 'Oh, I want Joey to be someone special in my life and I want complete control over what she does and thinks."'
No, the donkey-faced Dawson Leery, who began pushing the lower limits of likeability from the moment he pompously rejected an amorous Joey's advances last season, hasn't improved over the "summer break."
Despite frolicking determinedly with attractive Creek girls Andy and Jen, and developing a new hobby (black and white photography) to be ponderous about, Dawson is - and we know the magnitude of what we're implying here - as resolutely tedious as his parents.
The return of Joey and Pacey from their three-month ocean sojourn in Pacey's restored yacht is an example of one of the many incredulities in which the show specialises. Not only were the pair of high school students allowed to spend three months sailing the high seas, they seem to have survived without problems and without sleeping together.
Who is sleeping with whom is the real business of this show. In an attempt to distract from this, perhaps, the scriptwriters go all out to increase its teen audience's word power.
"Currently I'm deciding between asinine, immature child and arrogant, infantile boyfriend" is Joey's description of Pacey at a particularly vexing moment.
A mystery of the show's return is why Joey is concerned about placating the frightful Dawson.
She has brought him a present back from her oceangoing adventure.
"Hopefully, it's a dead fish," says my couch companion. No such luck. It was a brick from Ernest Hemingway's house in the Florida Keys.
When it isn't being terribly pretentious, Dawson's Creek enjoys reflecting the adolescent self-absorption of its characters by being ironically self-referential.
"Just what would we be missing from the land of poorly scripted melodramas?" Pacey and Joey ask themselves when considering whether just to sail right on by their home town.
Good question. Still, my fellow Dawson's Creek watcher and I somehow might just find it within ourselves to renew our commitment to the teen melodrama.
Apart from the joy of dissing the gormless Dawson and predicting a dreary future for one so lugubrious so young, there are other highlights, such as the scenic Jack, and Jen's grandmother's car. "Do you think Gramps will get out the Mercury Grand Marquis tonight?" my mate wonders longingly.
Meanwhile another epic teenage love triangle is back on the box tonight with the return of Felicity on TV4. Who?
The first season of this teen drama (think Dawson's Creek, the College Years) screened on TV3 yonks ago and ended with a cliffhanger that would have fans agog to see resolved if they could possibly remember it. The network has finally found a space for this appealingly moody show (think NYU Blue) on sister channel TV4.
Here's a reminder of the crucial question: did the pensive Felicity go on holiday with Ben or Noel? Answers tonight but be prepared to be toyed with.
* Dawson's Creek, TV2, Sunday 6.30 pm
* Felicity, TV4, tonight 7.30
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