Spoilers, in case you haven’t watched it yet. Come back later.

I predicted this one. All you have to do is go back to the very first scene of the first episode of DAWSON’S CREEK — now available on DVD — and you can see the only direction the finale could have gone. Dawson and Joey said they’d be friends forever and nothing would get in the way of that. Thus, Joey ends up with Pacey. …and nobody watching the show is happy.

Didn’t we just invest five and a half seasons of television viewing to the notion that these two star-crossed lovers were meant for each other? Wasn’t the Pacey thing just an invention of some later writing stuff desperately in search of new material? Wasn’t that just the start of every character sleeping with each other?

Ah, well. Even with that said, I have to say that I did enjoy the final episodes. I watched the final three regular episodes plus the final two-part ending show all this afternoon. It worked for me in a way the show hasn’t worked for me in a long time. It’s probably because the characters were all together again in Capeside. The show only had the spark when all of its main characters were together on the same stage. When Dawson was in California and Pacey in Boston and Joey at one school with Jack and Jenn in another one, it didn’t feel like the same show, anyway. The show never survived the inevitable post-high school breakup.

The final did a couple of things right. Jenn’s death bed might have been a bit over the top, but it did what it had to do. It gave Kevin Williamson the chance to come back and write the ultimately politically correct ending with Jenn’s baby being raised by two daddies. The opening gag with Jack kissing Doug was hilarious, though.

The inner Creek Geek in me, though, really wanted to see Dawson tell Jenn that Eve was her sister. Instead, they did away with the whole Eve thing in a simple throwaway line of dialogue that took that whole plot about as seriously as it deserved to be taken. And how many of us are left who even remember that trivial fact about Eve?

I thought, like many others, that we’d see Andie McFee (Meredith Monroe) in the final episode. I’m very surprised she didn’t show up.

I liked the movie poster with A.I. Brooks’ directorial credit showing up in Dawson’s room. That was a very nice touch.

All in all, I think the show went out on a high note. But I’m more than happy to be done with it. With it goes about the last remaining link to my college years, really. It feels odd. My five year reunion is coming up in a couple of weeks. One of the last vestiges of college life was the Dawson’s Creek regularity. I’m not sure there’s anything else left.

Dawson’s Creek is a show that’s been horribly misunderstood by far too many for far too long. Those who simply dismiss it with a sneer because “the characters don’t talk like teenagers” miss the point completely. They mistake a strength of the show for its weakness, and sneer at it with contempt. It wasn’t always high art and there were times when the entertainment level was off. However, I think it was a smart show for its time and one deserving of a heck of a lot of respect than its gotten. It will live on in syndication and cable for a long time. And that’s all any show can ask for, I think.