Dawson, Buffy, Pacey and Felicity Throw the Ultimate TV Party
The classic WB promo for "Oh What A Night" is a perfect capsule of the early 2000s.
I’ve had classic WB shows on my mind lately. Pacey from Dawson’s Creek (aka Joshua Jackson) has been in the celebrity gossip news recently, and once again I’ve found myself in the middle of a Gilmore Girls rewatch.
And so obviously, I had to go and revisit this.
Leather pants and fedoras abound, as does so much awkward dancing! What a perfect capsule of early 2000s pop culture, stars and fashion.
This classic promo features dozens of actors from The WB’s Dawson’s Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Felicity and a lot more. Among them a future Oscar winner1, a five-time Oscar nominee2 and even a Real Housewife3. (The Gilmore Girls stars just missed the cut to appear in this, alas.4)
My two favorite moments:
1:07: The promo is even long enough to fit in a subplot that includes a romantic connection between David Boreanaz and Shannen Doherty. I’d actually be curious about a love story between Angel and Prue. He is an immortal vampire with a soul! She is a witch who could astral project! They’d have a Spencer-Tracy dynamic for sure—but you know, with magic and demons.
1:11: One of the most fascinating tidbits I learned from Freaks, Gleeks & Dawson’s Creek, Thea Glassman’s delightful teen TV oral history, is that James Van Der Beek and Joshua Jackson had a huge falling out and barely filmed together in later seasons.
You can see a glimpse of that tension here, when Pacey literally drops in at a table that also seated Dawson, Michelle Williams (who thankfully moved onto much better roles than Jen), Alyssa Milano (the Charmed sister with the lamest power, you know it’s true) and a slightly befuddled Jamie Foxx.
Reading recs:
*Gilmore Girls just celebrated its 23rd anniversary, and a brief glimpse at Google News reveals that the show inspired someone to move to a small town for the Stars Hollow experience…and inspired another person to never have children. So there’s that.
*Teenagers love LinkedIn! I found this surprising, until I read the piece, and now it makes total sense.
*I had the pleasure of speaking with Mimi Montgomery, who has a wonderful Substack called Fully Booked. We chatted about my first two books, and why I am drawn to writing about pop culture and entertainment in my novels. See below!
This week’s fun fact:
You can fall to the center of the Earth in 19 minutes.
(Okay, so that’s something I never thought about before…)
And that’s it! Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful week.
Jamie Foxx, star of The Jamie Foxx Show, who won a Best Actor Oscar for Ray.
Michelle Williams of course played Jen in Dawson’s Creek and has since won an Emmy and earned five Oscar nominations. Side note: Keri Russell, who played Felicity, should have won multiple Emmys for The Americans.
Garcelle Beauvais, who also starred on The Jamie Foxx Show, currently reigns on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Wouldn’t it have been fun and weird to see Rory and Jess shimmying next to Buffy or Sabrina the Teenage Witch?
There were some wild ones in that era.
This promo is ICONIC and should be submitted to the library of congress