I pity the fool that watches 'Dawson'

Ladies, here's a piece of advice: If a guy tells you he watches "Dawson's Creek," it doesn't mean he's sweet or sensitive, he's just trying to get laid. This according to a male on my floor who watches the show and wishes to remain nameless. \nHe's right. Can you think of another reason why a guy would watch a show in which Katie Holmes refuses to get naked? \n"Dawson's Creek" kicked off a new season Wednesday night with an episode more sickeningly sweet and pseudo-intellectual than an Edith Wharton novel. \nBefore I take issue with the show, I have to admit that teen dramas never appealed to me. I didn't enjoy high school much, and it always insults me how the experience is romanticized and cheapened on television.\nNow that I'm off my soap box, I can begin. The season opener begins when two star-crossed lovers, Joey (Katie Holmes) and Pacey (Joshua Jackson), return from a three-month sail to Key West. Joey is naive enough to think nobody will ask if they had sex during their romantic romp. Of course, everyone does, but Joey and Pacey keep mum. \nLet me stop here for a minute. Do these two characters remotely resemble anyone you knew in high school? Sure, this isn't reality, but come on, this is a ludicrous, squeaky-clean fantasy. It's just as absurd as male fans' seedy fantasies about Joey losing her asexual wholesomeness and embracing Faustian restlessness to experience all sensations good and bad by joining a cult of women who express affection and intimacy with their fists.\nOne of my chief beefs with the show is the rated-G way it portrays love. I'm no expert on love, but I appreciate it when a show forces us to look at it in a new way. Take "The Sopranos:" When his son's chemistry teacher's car is stolen, Tony has "Big Pussy" and crew find the thieves, force them to get the license plate off the stripped automobile, steal a similar car, repaint it and swap the license plates. All so his son can get better grades.\nNow that's love.\nWhen "Dawson's Creek" tries to illustrate love, it makes you feel like you're on your first date, i.e., nauseous. By the end of the episode, we discover that Joey and Pacey did not have sex while sailing in the tropics. For fun, they climbed into their separate hammocks and took turns reading Hemingway's "The Old Man And The Sea" out loud.\nDo the show's writers think this is real life for adolescents and teenagers? I'll tell you what it's like growing up: You're Andy Dufresne from "The Shawshank Redemption." You gotta crawl through a river of human excrement that's five times the length of a football field, and you don't come out clean on the other side!\nI realized it's time to shake things up on "Dawson's Creek," so I went to a true inspiration and TV legend, Mr. T, who signed autographs at Blockbuster Video, 1255 S. College Mall Road., last Thursday. I asked Mr. T how teen dramas could be more like his work, such as "The A-Team," a show I enjoyed.\n"I sure was a little crazy, you know like a little funny what not so we didn\'t, we didn't have no romantic angle," Mr. T said. "So 'Dawson's Creek' is sorta about I guess teenagers falling in love or something like that, you know. 'The A-Team,' we didn't have no love. I didn't love Murdock, you know, he was crazy. You know Hannibal always smoking cigars, you know. The only thing we loved, we loved it when a plan came together."\n"Dawson's Creek" could learn from Mr. T. While the show will ruthlessly rip off "The Perfect Storm" this season for no other purpose than increasing its Nielsen ratings, Mr. T tries to do two things: Entertain and get a message across.\n"That's why you won't see me in no pimp roles and other stuff and you won't see me selling out for money or something like that," he adds. "I don't do that because my mother told me, 'Son, there are some things that money can't buy.'"\nSo listen up, "Dawson's Creek" producers, starting right now I want to see Dawson and pals get convicted for a crime they didn't commit and go underground as "The Dawson Team"