Dawson's Creek

The first season covers a love triangle between Dawson, Joey, and Jen, which some critics compared to the love triangle between Archie Comics characters Archie, Betty, and Veronica.[5] Some episodes featured homages to movies such as The Breakfast Club or referenced Kevin Williamson's work on Scream. Jen's reasons for moving to Capeside are revealed. Pacey aims to lose his virginity and tries to seduce a new teacher at Capeside High School. Dawson must cope with the news his mother Gail is carrying on an affair.

The second season takes place during the characters' second half of their sophomore year. Twin siblings Andie and Jack McPhee move to Capeside and enroll at the high school. The type-A achiever Andie becomes romantically involved with Pacey and helps him to become more motivated. In return, Pacey becomes a rock for Andie as it is revealed she struggles with mental illness. Joey finds herself drawn to Jack, who initially reciprocates her feelings, but comes to realize he is gay, which puts him at odds with homophobic classmates and an intolerant father. Jen befriends "bad girl" Abby Morgan and goes down a path of self-destruction. Dawson must deal with the divorce of his parents, Mitch and Gail.

The third season saw the beginning of their junior year and a blossoming romance between Joey and Pacey. When Dawson discovers his two friends have become a couple behind his back, he is dejected and angry. Dawson and Pacey become rivals for Joey's affection. Joey tries to repair her friendship with Dawson, but at the end of the season, Dawson realizes he doesn't want to hold Joey back, so he urges her to go and join Pacey, who is sailing down the coast for the summer. Jen is pursued by freshman football player Henry Parker and initially finds him immature but grows to return his feelings. Jack tries to find his first gay experience, while also juggling football, and trying to find a new place to live after his dad sells the only home he knows.

The fourth season takes place during the characters' senior year of high school and deals with Joey and Pacey's ups and downs as a couple. Their relationship is tested by differing post-high school plans, Joey's friendship with Dawson, and Pacey's insecurity. Jen learns that Henry wants to break up with her. Andie almost dies in an accident at a rave when she takes ecstasy that was in Jen's possession. The incident fractures Jen's friendship with Jack. Dawson starts to date Gretchen, Pacey's older sister who has moved back to Capeside.

The fifth season follows most of the characters leaving Capeside to begin new lives in big cities. In LA, Dawson attends USC Film School but starts to have second thoughts about his path. In Boston, Joey, Jack and Jen navigate their freshman year of college. Pacey finds himself adrift after working on a yacht all summer but enters the restaurant business. Jack joins a fraternity and embraces life as an openly gay college student, but it puts his relationship with Toby on thin ice. Joey struggles to adjust to life as a college student and falls in love with her English professor. Jen finds herself drawn into a whirlwind relationship.

In the sixth and final season, Dawson moves to Boston and begins to work on a low-budget film project that echoes his life in Capeside. Jen must deal with her parents' impending divorce, while Jack faces sexual harassment from a professor. Pacey works as a chef at a Boston restaurant, but embarks on a new career which comes as a surprise to everyone. The two-part finale, which is set in the year 2008, finds everyone is reunited in Capeside for a special wedding, but the happy reunion is cut short after the group learns that one of their own has been harboring a heartbreaking secret. In the midst of the tragedy, old scores are settled, new relationships blossom, and new ventures are chosen for a better future.

Following the selling of his spec script for Wes Craven-directed Scream (1996), film assistant Kevin Williamson was taking several meetings with film and television producers before the slasher film began production.[6] In what would be his first television meeting, Williamson met executive Paul Stupin; when asked if he had ideas for a television production, Williamson came up with the idea of a teen series based on his youth growing up near a North Carolina creek as an aspiring filmmaker who admired director Steven Spielberg.[6] Stupin liked his idea and asked him to come back the next day and pitch it to Columbia TriStar Television studios, prompting Williamson to write a 20-page outline for Dawson's Creek that night.[6] Williamson pitched the show "as Some Kind of Wonderful, meets Pump Up the Volume, meets James at 15, meets My So-Called Life, meets Little House on the Prairie",[7] also taking inspiration from teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210 as he "wanted it to speak to the teenage audience of the day".[6]

When Columbia requested him to relocate the show to Boston, Massachusetts, he settled with fictional Capeside, and pitched it to Fox.[6] However, commissioned amid the struggling of Party of Five, Fox wondered if they needed another teen drama, and while they were supportive of Williamson's scripts, they eventually passed on it.[6] Left unused, Columbia TriStar sent his scripts to newly founded The WB network who was looking for fresh ideas for their programme after launching supernatural drama series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.[6] Williamson went for a meeting with then-chief programmer Garth Ancier and entertainment president Susanne Daniels who loved his script and picked it up for the network's new Tuesday night lineup.[6] Procter & Gamble Productions joined in as an original co-producer of the series, but sold its interest in the show three months before the premiere when printed stories surfaced about the racy dialogue and risqué plot lines.[8]

Dawson's Creek would become responsible for launching the acting careers of its young lead stars James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams, Katie Holmes, and Joshua Jackson, who had varying levels of acting experience prior to being cast in the show.[6] Known for his appearance in The Mighty Ducks series, playing a young and aspiring hockey player, Jackson was initially considered for the main role of Dawson Leery.[6] However, while Williamson "fell in love" with Jackson, citing his ability to read any role during the auditions, he felt that Jackson's good looks would not fit the underdog, nerd, and video geek character he envisioned for the show's titular character.[6] After The WB expressed their wish to look for a different actor, Williamson decided on casting him in the role of Dawson's best friend Pacey Witter instead.[6] After watching a video of James Van Der Beek that his casting director had sent in, the casting crew invited him to audition in Los Angeles.[6] A regular off-Broadway performer, Van Der Beek impressed Williamson with his "cerebral and internal" quality, citing "that nervousness that made it seem like he was pre-thinking and over-thinking and over-compensating constantly like he was insecure. And we said, "There's Dawson"."[6] Actors Charlie Hunnam, Adrian Grenier, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Scott Speedman also auditioned for the role of Dawson, while Adam Brody read for Pacey.[9]

With the role of Dawson's best female friend Joey Potter, casting directors were looking for a tomboy character. Williamson and his team were initially close to casting actress Selma Blair in the role who had auditioned "very tough, [but] with a lot of heart,"[6] when an audition tape of Katie Holmes came in, in which she had filmed herself in her basement, with her mother reading Dawson's lines.[10] Williamson thought she had exactly the right look for Joey, citing that "she had those eyes, those eyes just stained with loneliness."[11] He asked her to come to California, but a conflict with her school play schedule prevented her from doing so.[10] Upon her arrival in Los Angeles two weeks later, she was able to secure the role.[12][13] Williams, who had acted in Lassie, Species, and in guest spots on TV sitcoms,[14] impressed Williamson when she auditioned with a heartfelt scene in which her character Jen Lindley goes in and sees her grandfather lying in the bed, transforming herself "into this broken child who just needed to be fixed".[6] Katherine Heigl also was one of the actresses who auditioned for the role of Jen after Steve Miner, who directed the show's pilot and Heigl's 1994 film My Father the Hero, brought in the young star.[15]

The entire first season, thirteen episodes, was filmed before the first episode even aired.[16] After the end of the second season, Williamson left to focus on Wasteland, a new show for ABC,[17] but later returned to write the two-hour series finale.[18] After Williamson's departure, Alex Gansa was selected as the new showrunner, but a production shutdown in addition to actors' unhappiness with the story lines at the start of season three led to Gansa being replaced by Greg Berlanti, who had been on the writing staff before Williamson's departure.[19] Members of the series' writing staff—including Gina Fattore (Gilmore Girls), Jenny Bicks (Sex and the City), Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries), Tom Kapinos (Californication), and Dana Baratta (Jessica Jones)—would go on to create or write for other notable TV shows.[19][20]

During its first four seasons, Dawson's Creek was primarily filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, at EUE/Screen Gems studios and on location around Wilmington, with Southport and Wrightsville Beach also standing in for the fictional town of Capeside, a port city located in mid-Cape Cod.[21] The Wilmington area benefited greatly from the show. While a number of films, commercials and music videos had been shot at the studios, Dawson's Creek was the first to occupy numerous soundstages for many years. Other shows as One Tree Hill later occupied some of these same soundstages for several years and used some of the same locations in Wilmington.[22] In addition to business brought into the community by the project, it attracted attention to the city as a filming location and boosted tourism.[23] The visitors' bureau distributed a special guide to filming locations used in the show.[22]

For the Leery, Lindley, and Potter homes private residences located along the shores of Hewletts Creek, a stream in New Hanover County, were used.[24] Some of the scenes shown during the opening credits and miscellaneous scenery shots throughout the early episodes were filmed in Martha's Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts, as well as Masonboro.[22] Interiors for the Potter family's Icehouse restaurant were filmed at The Icehouse bar in downtown Wilmington, while exteriors were filmed at the Dockside Restaurant in Wrightsville Beach.[25] Nearby constructions at the real Icehouse later forced producers to eliminate the bar from the storyline by burning it down.[22] Other prominent exterior shots include Alderman Hall on the University of North Carolina Wilmington campus, serving for Capeside High School.[21]

Due to the architectural uniformity of the campus, it was difficult for the university to double as another campus in the show when the characters reached college in the fifth and sixth season. Therefore, scenes at the fictional Worthington University in Boston were filmed at Duke University and around Franklin Street at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[21] Other filming locations in later seasons include Durham and Raleigh.[26] The Hell's Kitchen bar featured in the show was a natural food store at 118 Princess Street in Wilmington which was purchased by producers, dressed as a seedy college bar and used for production during the show's last season. When production completed, the building was purchased by a local restaurateur, along with much of the set and decorations and was then converted into a real restaurant and bar that retains the same name.[25][22]

The show was broadcast in over 50 countries.[35] It was especially popular in Australia, where it rated #1 in its time slot on Network Ten for several episodes and highly at other times from seasons one to four.[36] Reruns of the show are often seen in Australia on 9Go![37] The show aired in the UK initially on Channel 4 but later moved to Channel 5 for its last two seasons.[38] In 2007, Channel 5's sister channel 5Star began airing reruns on weekdays. From April 2011, it aired on Sony Channel on the Sky digital platform.[39] In November 2017, the full series returned to Channel 4's streaming service All 4.[40] And a Broadcast on Yle in Finland. In May 2023, ITV2 started airing every Dawson's Creek episode on every weekday afternoons.

Dawson's Creek aired on TBS from 2003 to 2008, and later aired on Noggin's late-night programming block The N from 2006 to 2007, and then later moved to the 24-hour version of The N where it aired until December 31, 2008. And aired on Pop from 2012 to 2018, and aired on ABC Family for a short time in 2015.

Dawson's Creek generated a large amount of publicity before its debut, with several television critics and consumer watchdog groups expressing concerns about its anticipated "racy" plots and dialogue. The controversy drove Procter & Gamble Productions, initially a co-producer of the series, away from the project.[8] Syndicated columnist John Leo said the show should be called "While Parents Cringe", and went on to write, "The first episode contains a good deal of chatter about breasts, genitalia, masturbation, and penis size. Then the title and credits come on and the story begins."[41]

The Parents Television Council proclaimed the show as the single worst program of the 1997–98 and 1998–99 seasons by being "the crudest of the network shows aimed at kids", complaining about "an almost obsessive focus on pre-marital sexual activity", references to pornography and condoms, and the show's acceptance of homosexuality.[42][43] Former UPN President Lucie Salhany criticized WB for airing Dawson's Creek which features "adolescent characters in adult situations" in an early time slot while the network is supposed to be 'the family network.'"[44][45] However, on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, the National Organization for Women offered an endorsement, deeming it one of the least sexually exploitative shows on the air.[46]

Much of the criticism cited the show's early decision to feature a storyline about a romantic relationship between a high school student and a teacher.[47][48][49]

Early reviews of the series were mixed to positive. During the season premiere, much was written about the show's perceived racy content and the teens' "unhealthy obsession with sex."[50] Negative reviews lambasted the show for its lack of realism, particularly its verbose dialogue spoken by the teen characters which People said strained credibility.[51][52] The Observer called the show "simply misguided and misconceived (hyper-articulate, self-conscious teenagers go through puberty in a Macy's catalogue)."[53] Tom Shales of The Washington Post commented that creator Kevin Williamson was "the most overrated wunderkind in Hollywood" and "what he's brilliant at is pandering."[54]

Other reviews noted the show tread familiar ground, with the LA Weekly writing, "[The show] comes alive in fits and starts, then folds back into a less original or less plausible or less coherent version of some part of something you've seen before, if you've seen The Wonder Years, My So-Called Life, Degrassi High, Party of Five, Dangerous Minds, or Beverly Hills, 90210. Or even one of those very special episodes of Blossom."[5]

On the other hand, multiple critics lauded the show's hyper-articulate, self-aware dialogue, saying it is what sets it apart from past teen shows.[55][56] Caryn James of The New York Times wrote the "sophisticated awareness...characteristic of Mr. Williamson's writing" is the show's standout.[57] Bruce Fretts of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "That's Kevin Williamson's genius — just as Scream did with slasher flicks, Creek simultaneously works as a teen soap (you can't help but get caught up in the Dawson-Jen-Joey triangle) and comments ironically on the genre (witness the digs at the overly earnest 90210 and Party of Five). The trouble is, some people aren't getting the joke."[50] Jeff Simon of The Buffalo News opined, "This is the way wildly bright 15-year-old kids dearly want to talk, which puts Dawson's Creek into a higher class of realism entirely."[58] Williamson admitted he wrote the dialogue as such with the aim of showing "how teenagers would like to be seen, as opposed to being talked down to."[27]

In response to concerns about the show's sexual dialogue, some critics wrote "it's safe to assume teens have said, heard, or done far worse."[59] The Baltimore Sun wrote the show is "not so much about sex as it is about growing up in a sex-obsessed culture. It's a subtle difference, but one that could make this newest prime-time soap a cut above the rest."[60] The Sacramento Bee noted the show does not appear to glorify teacher-student romances as "Pacey's great adventure is not seen by the others as a triumph, and in the end, both he and the teacher pay for [their liaison]."[61]

John Carman of the San Francisco Chronicle found Dawson's Creek scenically "downright luxuriant" and liked that it "doesn't have the rushed feel of so many teen shows. The edginess is in the situations, not the pacing."[62] Variety wrote that it was "an addictive drama with considerable heart", and that "it's a drama conceited enough to believe that it created the concept of teenagers who care and jaded enough to...[suggest] more than a post-pubescent pipe dream."[63] The Atlanta Journal-Constitution acknowledged the sexual dialogue but said "Williamson conjures a strangely compelling blend of jadedness and innocence."[64] The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote the show "is a real charmer, capturing not only the awkwardness and agonies of growing up but also the pure joy of possibilities ahead",[65] and The Seattle Times declared it the best show of the 1997–1998 season and said it "belongs in that too-small pantheon of My So-Called Life, James at 15 and to a lesser extent, Party of Five and Doogie Howser, M.D."[66]

Praise for the cast was widespread. LA Weekly called the leads "luminous" and "talented",[5] while Variety wrote, "As Dawson, Van Der Beek is an exquisitely talented heartthrob, and Holmes, as Joey, is a confident young performer who delivers her lines with slyness and conviction. Williams (Jen) and Jackson (Pacey), meanwhile, more than hold their own, with Jackson looking to be a budding star in his own right."[63]

Dawson's Creek was nominated for fourteen awards, including ALMA Awards, Casting Society of America Awards, Golden Satellite Awards, TV Guide Awards, and YoungStar Awards. In 2000, the show was awarded a SHINE Award for consistently addressing sexual health issues on TV.[67] By the end of its run, the show, its crew, and its young cast had been nominated for numerous awards, winning six of them. Joshua Jackson won the Teen Choice Award for Choice Actor three times, and the show won the Teen Choice Award for Choice Drama twice. The series also won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding TV Drama Series.[68]

While never a huge ratings success in the context of major networks like NBC, ABC, and CBS, Dawson's Creek did very well with the younger demographic it targeted and became a defining show for the WB Network. It became the highest-rated show among female teens at that time[32][48] and helped ad revenue for the WB "soar from $100 million in 1996 to well over half a billion dollars in 1999."[75][35] The pilot episode was watched by 6.8 million viewers and had a 4.8 rating which made it the network's highest ranked show within two months.[35] The first season's highest ranked episode was the finale, which was fifty-ninth, while the second highest rated was the second episode (probably scoring so well partially because the other major networks carried President Clinton's State of the Union address in the midst of the Lewinsky scandal rather than their regular programming).[76] The series finale itself was watched by 7.3 million U.S. viewers, which was its largest audience ever.[77]

The show served as inspiration for the production of the Argentine soap Verano del '98, which received criticism for being a thinly veiled copy of Dawson's Creek.[81] The 2007 youth drama series Kavak Yelleri is also a Turkish remake of the show.

Curating popular music and breaking artists from the independent and alternative rock genres, Dawson's Creek became impactful on shaping the television music culture of teen and other drama series in the late 1990s and early 2000s.[31] Instrumentation of the episodes was generally overseen by executive Paul Stupin, music supervisor John McCullough, and co-producer Drew Matich who helped artists rise to fame and made pivotal creative decisions.[31] The trio approached music in "a way to convey the emotion, to convey the story," looking for songs to underplay whole sequences where viewers could also enjoy the music under dialogue.[31] Thus, Stupin would often end up spending hours in the editing room with the editor going over candidates for songs that McCullough sent over. In some cases, they would look at, against picture, ten or 15 songs against each scene.[31] Next to McCullough, recommendations for inclusion came "from everywhere", with writers, editors, co-producers and Sony Music executives playing pivotal roles.[31]

Paula Cole's "I Don't Want to Wait" served as the show's theme song.

Originally, Canadian recording artist Alanis Morissette's song "Hand in My Pocket" from her third studio album Jagged Little Pill (1995) served as the theme song in the unaired pilot episode of the television show. However, Morissette decided not to have it used as the theme after Dawson's Creek was picked up, prompting Stupin and McCullough to approach different artists for original material to use.[31] In the meantime, The WB had licensed American singer-songwriter Paula Cole's song "I Don't Want to Wait" from her second album This Fire (1996) and suggested them to use it instead.[31] An eleventh hour decision, it was incorporated late into the promotion of the series but became a hit on the US Billboard charts upon the show's debut in January 1998.[82] The first season's score was provided by Adam Fields, including the "End Credits Theme", which was used on all six seasons.[83]

Because Sony Music failed to secure the rights for home video and online streaming services when the show was produced and did not wish to pay for them later, most of the songs that aired in the original broadcasts were replaced in the DVD editions and upon the video-on-demand debut of the show.[83] Starting with the third season, "I Don't Want to Wait" was also dropped from the opening sequence of the DVD releases due to budget reasons and was replaced by "Run Like Mad" from Canadian folk artist Jann Arden, a regular music contributor to the series.[83] The 32-second recording was one of the original intros that Stupin commissioned after he had failed to acquire rights to Morissette's song and which international broadcasts had previously used as the theme song for the first season before switching to Cole's song for the remainder of the run.[83] In 2021, Cole recorded a new version of "I Don't Want to Wait" to avoid licensing issues with the original master, and Netflix used this new master as the theme song.[84]

During its original run, Dawson's Creek spawned two volumes of soundtrack albums. The album Songs from Dawson's Creek was released after the broadcasting of the series' first season in April 1999, and became a major success worldwide.[85] It reached the top of the Australian Albums Chart and also peaked within the top in Austria, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. During it first sixth months of release, the album sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide and was certified triple platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) and gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).[86] In Australia, it became the fifth highest selling album of 1999.[87] Songs from Dawson's Creek – Volume 2 was released in October 2000 to coincide with the debut of the series' fourth season. Less successful, it reached the top twenty of Austrian and Swiss Albums Charts, while peaking at number 50 on the US Billboard 200.[86]

Simon & Schuster published a series of fifteen mass-market paperback novelizations of the series.[22][88] Before joining the series' staff as episode writers, Liz Tigelaar and Anna Fricke wrote a young adult suspense-themed series as a companion to the show.[20][89]

• Hodge, Amber R.J.P. (2012). The Rise and Fall of the WB: Dawson's Creek, Intertextuality, and Legitimation (MA thesis). College of William & Mary. doi:10.21220/s2-00v5-f567.