Vow-Renewal Villa. An ovary broods about waiting for rainy days as Joey pauses on the lawn and looks at the porch. She lets herself in the front door and calls, but nobody's at home. The Leerys have redecorated over the summer, and Joey looks around, discomfited. Fade to Joey walking into Dawson's room, which he's repainted taupe and furnished with matted photos of Jen and Andie and Jack, as well as the dork-ass "Imagine" poster. New curtains, new bedspread, and nary a sign of Joey. Joey stands in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, and looks lonely.

Hey, Salon Selectives cactus-head girl? We already have a Parker Posey, but thanks for coming out today.

Over at the Hancock house, it's a totally different -- and earlier -- time of day from the one we just saw at the Leerys'. Dawson's hair looks like a cross between Gordon Gekko and Kenickie from Grease, slicked back at the top and sides and flopping down over his massive forehead with little frayed tufts sticking out at the back. Dawson tells Jack how he used to have a big crush on Gretchen Witter and how he used to leave her anonymous gifts, which he later realized had turned into "a Witter family joke." Not just in the Witter family, Casanotva. Jack does detail work and politely feigns interest, no doubt trying to determine how he'll know when the writers' strike has actually started (tm Shack). Dawson, trying to sound lighthearted but only achieving "still self-righteously bitter," remarks that, like the rest of his adolescent crushes, the Gretchen thing went nowhere.

Over at the Doug Witter Sibling Shelter, Pacey and Gretchen snip at each other to "get over yourself," and Pacey asks if Gretchen isn't "a college student or something?" "It's called taking time off," Gretchen grits. "Sure it is," Pacey snorts, telling her she can't fool him. She tells him to mind his own business, and he says he'd happily do just that if she hadn't displaced him at Doug's. Doug comes in from the kitchen to break it up and reminds Pacey that he has other living options, whereas Gretchen does not. He smirkingly suggests that Pacey live on his boat. Pacey complains that he just "spent the last hundred days on that thing," so Doug proposes that he stay with their parents, then; Pacey would rather take "a cot on death row." "There's always the zoo," Gretchen snides. "Down, Gretchzilla," he volleys back. Heh. Gretchen asks why he doesn't stay with Joey, and when he asks what she means, she says that he has a girlfriend now, and Joey would probably happily set him up with a bed, or let him "share hers." Pacey says mock-smugly that he doesn't appreciate that comment, or the tone in which Gretchen made it, but Doug says that Gretchen has a point, and if anyplace has extra rooms, "it's a B&B." "I am not gonna impose on that family," Pacey says nobly. Whatever, Pacey. Gretchen snarks that he imposes on his own family, and she and Doug exchange snarky smiles while Pacey says sarcastically that it's good to have her home, except that he doesn't have a home anymore. It pains Gretchen to see Pacey in this predicament, so much that she blithely asks Doug to pass the iced tea immediately after saying so. Like, ha ha. Not. Pacey looks grim.