It’s senior year for Dawson, Joey, Pacey, Jen and Jack! After spending the summer together, Joey and Pacey find it difficult to keep their romance going with the realities of school, college applications and their strained relationship with Dawson. Dawson rediscovers his true life’s dream, Jen turns over a new leaf after getting a new boyfriend, and Jack tries to rebuild relationships after revealing he’s gay. Features new music selected by the executive producer. Four discs include all 23 episodes from the fourth season.

THE RELATIONSHIPS

Dawson’s Creek creator Kevin Williamson left the show during the second season and somewhat during the third to pursue other projects, and then various writers came and went. It was obvious watching the series roam off in all sort of directions that there really wasn’t a grasp or idea of what to really do. Of course, the first season was the mack-daddy that started it all, and it’s the suspense of “will she – will he” of Joey and Dawson that kept the series compelling. In a sense, the show is complete and utter teen soap opera that’s over the top, but can anyone argue differently that in general teen life doesn’t follow the same kind of path? 

In Season 2, the show has a strong focus on Joey and Dawson for a bit, but then it just destroyed itself. Soon, they went back together, but then they decided, “let’s call it quits.”

As for Season 3, it was iffy at first, however as it moved along, stories got more enjoyable with Joey/Pacey in the mix, and a bit compelling with Dawson’s over the top tragedy.

Now with Season 4, I recall parts of the marketing for the season, such as the cheap tagline, “Her choice changed everything.” So, Joey picked Pacey this time around, a choice that destroyed the buddy-buddy relationship of Dawson and Pacey. Who in the real world hasn’t been in a situation like this, right? Also, you can’t blame either party, so the exploration of this new event became compelling in each succeeding episode. The Joey/Pacey relationship is by far the best of the whole series because it is was entertaining, romantic, and just fun to watch. The writers built up their relationship quite well as if it was forbidden love, and then they let it evolve by itself throughout the majority of the season

THE STORYLINES

Like the first three seasons, there are key storylines that really worked while others just bombed. I’m going to say this from the start – the fourth was the last strong season Dawson’s Creek had. The fifth and sixth seasons were kind of dry and simply weaker than the first four. I would have been happy with the series ending with this season right here, but I’ll go into more detail about that in a little bit.

The storyline of the love triangle seems to have Joey and Pacey in one direction and Dawson on the other side. Joey is sometimes the monkey in the middle, and Dawson is at times the third wheel, and this type of narrative carries much of the season. Of course, there are other storylines that worked well, perhaps not as intricate as the love triangle plot but equally satisfying. Dawson finds a new love interest as Pacey’s older sister makes an impact. If you listen to the commentary track, the producer proclaims that this was a weak one, but I beg to differ. The story was very strong, and I enjoyed it more than the kind of cliché story with the older/sexy Eve from the third season.

Other strong storylines include: Andie makes an early exit to go find herself in the middle of the season. Pacey works his ass off in school as Dawson finds a former director and mentor in the form of a cranky old man. The evil Drue Valentine and Jennifer interaction, which is a back story into Jen’s New York past, sort of plays off like Abby in the first two seasons. And, of course, the whole senior year aspect of the series comes up quite a bit, so the characters go into this both liberal party mood and an emotional ride toward their last moment together as high school students.

THE EPISODES

“Coming Home” is the first episode of the season, and it’s very strong from beginning to end. Other strong episodes include “The Te of Pacey” and “A Winter’s Tale”. I really like it when Dawson’s Creek decides to sometimes trail off into a different direction than the norm. In other words, each season carries at least two or three episodes that really stand on their own. In this season, they are “Two Gentlemen of Capeside” and “Unusual Suspects”. Their storylines have a sort of “spin-off” approach to them.

If the producers (and I think they should’ve!) would’ve stopped after this season, calling it quits, I would’ve been happy and satisfied, because episodes “The Graduate” and “Coda” have that formula where the show sort of ends on this happy note, and also both episodes contain that perfect “closure” to the characters. But obviously the producers didn’t take that road and, for the good and the bad, two more seasons exist.

Columbia Tristar presents Dawson’s Creek in 1.33:1 full screen format. Like all the prior season sets the studio shoved all 23 episodes on four discs when they should’ve expanded the set to five or six discs for better video quality. Picture quality is fine, it’s nothing special, but some issues persist. One good thing to note is that with this set there are no more “last week on” clips before each episode.

Columbia Tristar presents Dawson’s Creek in English Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround. If you know enough about the show you know this is a series that focuses more on dialogue than anything else, but this presentation makes the songs and sound effects easy to pick up. Even the crappy international theme song that was picked for the DVD is clear.

- Commentary by executive producer Paul Stupin on Coming Home and The Graduate

- Trivia game

The first season DVD includes two extras: "Dawson's Creek: From Day One" retrospective featurette and “Season One Time Capsule.” I figured Season 2 would have something similar, like Season Two Time Capsule, but nothing. Also, it would’ve been nice to have commentaries with some of the cast. I know some of the cast are big names right now, but it would show some class on the studio’s part if they would put some effort (and a budget) into these releases.