Cliffnotes: I Remember Everything by Erin Hensley and Julia Callahan

“I remember everything.”

It’s an iconic quote from “Dawson’s Creek.”

It’s also the title of an insightful book by Erin Hensley and Julia Callahan.

These longtime friends and co-hosts of the “Dawson’s Critique” podcast wrote I Remember Everything: Life Lessons from Dawson’s Creek to explore the ways in which the series tackled “sex, mental health, relationships, classism, queerness and much more.” Hensley and Callahan argue “Dawson’s Creek” is “the first show created for millennials,” and examine how it “centered around the titular star — a white man with a lot of privilege — who proved to be anything but our hero.”

Rather, they write, the heroes of the story, actually are:

“The girl with no parents who against all odds is trying to climb up the socioeconomic latter;

The girl who was sexually abused when she was very young, who has absentee parents and is trying to find herself and make a chosen family and survive through her childhood trauma;

The queer kid with a dad who shuns him and his identity;

The girl struggling with her mental illness;

The guy who everyone thinks is a fucking loser — even his family — and who was sexually assaulted by his high school teacher.”

Chapters include “Mental Illness,” “Queer Acceptance,” “Modern Love,” and “Feminism.” There is a deep exploration of Pacey and Joey’s season 3 love story, and how the series both upholds and dismantles the patriarchy. It’s repeatedly stressed, with chapters like “An Incomplete List of Every Time Dawson Mentions His ‘Intentions’” and “Dawson is the Worst,” how the show’s purported protagonist is often a less-than-stellar human being (I’m putting it more politely than they did!).

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Like all great writers, Hensley and Callahan continually use the text — in this case, dialogue from the show — to support their points. Almost every page of the book features quotes taken from episode scripts. This was honestly my favorite aspect. Reading the lines, I heard the characters’ voices in my head, and I loved being taken back to countless memorable scenes and moments.

The authors prompted me to think about “Dawson’s Creek” in ways I hadn’t before. Yes, I’ve already explored the shift from Dawson’s Creek to Joey’s Creek, the show’s role in the evolution of LGBTQ characters in teen dramas, and the series’ lack of racial diversity. But it never really clicked before that Jen and Pacey are both victims of sexual assault (though I’ve written about Pacey and Tamara’s student-teacher affair). Nor did it register before that Andie and Jen were simultaneously going through mental health storylines in season 2, just with Jen’s depression depicted more subtly. And Hensley and Callahan do an excellent job showcasing how the topic of consent and issue of privilege come up over and over again throughout the series.

Amidst its 145 pages, are there things left unexplored? Of course. I was surprised that, despite the close look at Jack and Jen’s friendship, their one-time hookup went unaddressed. Similarly, though Grams’ turn from a “white supremacist Christian lady” to a “more enlightened, social justice oriented Christian” is highlighted, there was no mention of her biracial relationship with Clifton.

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But I Remember Everything is indisputably thought-provoking, smart, and filled with constructive criticism (my favorite kind), whether looking at the show through the lens of 1998 or 2022. I was particularly moved by the afterword written by Callahan, in which she describes watching the show as it originally aired and feeling like she was “living life alongside [the characters], learning lessons from their successes and failures, learning how to comport myself in friendships and relationships.”

While in high school, she watched the series alone (“Most of my friends didn’t watch it — too punk for that”), and it wasn’t until college that she “met people who would discuss this show that I had only ever heard be mocked and written off.” But “these women took it as seriously as I did,” she wrote.

Callahan went on:

“For years after Dawson’s Creek went off the air, we’d talk about it, sharing new thoughts, confirming old judgements, and shifting our ideas about how the show played out as we rewatched each episode. But for just as long, we’ve also heard Dawson’s Creek be used as the butt of the joke of television fairly explicitly made for teen girls. Sure, it doesn’t have the allegorical artistry of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which it aired alongside, but Dawson’s Creek told stories about so many things that rarely get mentioned anymore.”

This hits on exactly why I started the original TeenDramaWhore back in 2008. I was tired of having no one in my life with whom to talk about these shows. I was tired of seeing “Dawson’s Creek” and its ilk be the butt of the joke. I needed to find like-minded people with whom I could dissect these shows endlessly and discuss their impact. The teen dramas still aren’t taken seriously by society at large, but if you get it… you get it.

It’s written in the afterword that I Remember Everything “is for all of you who have found this show, loved this show from the moment Joey asked Dawson when he ‘walks the dog,’ and seen that, despite its flaws, this show really did mean something.” The book is also “for all of you who come back to the show — even if it’s just season three — over and over again, trying to parse out why watching Joey take the reins of her life and get on that boat will never, ever get old.”

It’s also “for the queer kids, the ones who sat in their houses and saw themselves on screen for the first time in the character of Jack.” And it’s “for the poor tomboys who felt like they’d never escape their small town,” and “for the kids whose parents kicked them out and the girls who were sexualized too young,” and “for those of you whose parents emotionally abused you, telling you you weren’t good enough.”

This book is for us.

This book is for you, TeenDramaWhores.