Have you exercised your nostalgia muscles this early on a Wednesday? No? Get ready.
This is an interview about the series finale of Dawson’s Creek in a series of creators talking about finales. It's very enjoyable. Kevin Williamson has always been honest about how writing is fun and also hard for him, how he has to get deeply involved in series and then leave them.
He’s also been straight about the fact that he is a writer for whom the process of series television gets very hard and overwhelming. It’s common knowledge that he basically had a nervous breakdown in season 2, when the endless machine of another episode and another and another and another kept rolling in on top of him.
This is what I love to hear people talking about. It’s one thing to write a nuanced, quality story that doesn’t drop any threads. It’s another thing to do that every 7 or 8 days for years on end, never running out of storylines or ways to say what you want to say.
This is why he had to go away in order to come back and make the ending what he needed it to be. What we needed it to be. I can’t believe there was actually debate about Joey with Dawson vs. Pacey because to me, Pacey was the only one who actually let her be who she was, instead of who she was supposed to be in whatever scripted fantasy. Ahem, Dawson.
But I love that these are thoughts and conversations he had to have. I love that he says he didn’t do as well on the first hour as he should have. These are his characters that he created from scratch, and it was his job to put them to bed for the last time, and still he feels he didn’t do a good enough job, that he didn’t all the way do them justice.
I love it. It’s the lure and the bitch of TV writing. It is so much job, but it’s so goddamn hard, and it’s never, ever enough. It doesn’t get easier to do, even when you’re Kevin Williamson. Remember that the next time you’re mad at a show for screwing over your favourites. Remember too that they know, even more than you, what a complete flukey joy it is to have that job.
Also, can you believe Michelle Williams was worried about not doing the reunion special? Michelle Williams! Thought she might have to be doing Dawson’s: The Carlsberg Years! That makes me like her more. Click here to read the interview.
