Dawson's Creek
The WB teen drama where impossibly articulate teenagers agonized over love and life in the seaside town of Capeside — and where the Dawson-versus-Pacey fight for Joey became one of the defining "who will she choose" debates of the era. Set to Paula Cole's "I Don't Want to Wait."
Dawson's Creek premiered on The WB in January 1998, created by Kevin Williamson — fresh off writing Scream. Its calling card was teenagers who talked like graduate students, dissecting their own feelings in hyper-literate monologues, and its frank treatment of teen sexuality made it an instant lightning rod: the Parents Television Council branded it "the crudest of the network shows aimed at kids," which only fueled the hype. Set in fictional Capeside, Massachusetts (and filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina), it turned its four young leads into overnight teen idols.
The show ran six seasons, and its central engine was the love triangle: earnest, film-obsessed Dawson (James Van Der Beek) and cocky, charming Pacey (Joshua Jackson) both in love with Joey Potter (Katie Holmes), with Jen (Michelle Williams) rounding out the core four. "Dawson or Pacey?" was a genuine cultural argument. Paula Cole's "I Don't Want to Wait" — chosen as the theme after Alanis Morissette declined to license "Hand in My Pocket" — became inseparable from the show.
Its biggest cultural shockwave, the teen-idol phenomenon and the 1998 controversy, is a distinctly late-'90s memory even though the series ran to a 2003 finale. It launched Holmes and Williams (a future five-time Oscar nominee), and gave the internet the eternal "crying Dawson" meme — the archetypal WB teen drama.
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