Outside, there's a long, violin-soaked shot of Dawson brooding in the yard. Grams approaches him tentatively and apologizes, saying she knows it's not easy for him. Dawson shocks the nation by apologizing himself, saying that that doesn't give him "the right to be rude." Wow. Nice manners, and for once I mean that. Grams philosophizes about how everyone deals with death in his own way and "there is no right or wrong." Dawson asks why she wants to "subject" herself to coming to the Brookshaven that day, calling it "completely morbid." Grams puts her hands in the pockets of her sweater-jacket and tells him that they've lost a dear friend, the pain won't just go away, it will disappear eventually but not right away, there's nothing they can do about it, fishcakes. Dawson raises his gargantuan eyebrows in acknowledgement. Grams adds that closure is important. Dawson doesn't think the lack of closure is what's bothering him. "What is it, then?" "I don't know." Grams suggests that Dawson "spend some time with him -- with his space, with his things -- find a way to say goodbye," and maybe that will help. An agonizingly long slo-mo shot of Dawson kicking the dirt in the yard, then slo-moing inside; a weird filler shot of the pier at sunset, despite the fact that, in the scene we've just watched, it's an overcast day.

Whatever. Dawson goes back into the garage. In a box, Gretchen unearths a play that Mr. Brooks wrote at age seventeen. The Woody-Allen-credits-esque tootling of a forties jazz clarinet starts up, and Dawson and Gretchen clown around, acting it out. I won't bore you with the details, but Gretchen gets a couple of good moments -- first she does us all a favor and jams an old fedora on Dawson's head, thus hiding his hair, which looks in this episode like a microwaved hedgehog; then, a bit later, she kisses Dawson and then makes the following meta-statement: "Sorry. It was in the script." Ha! ["I have to say that the snappy 1940s-style dialogue worked for Gretchen. She has a real '40s look about her." -- Wing Chun] Then Dawson starts bitching about how Brooks "gave up," and after an awkward silence, during which Dawson paces around pinching the bridge of his nose all Wiley Wiggins, he bursts out that only five people came to the funeral, and out of those five, three of them barely knew Mr. Brooks, and if he hadn't crashed Mr. Brooks's boat, nobody would have showed up at all. If it's really only the next day, why couldn't Andy Griffith have come? Maybe he and Bodie sat in the back and Dawson just didn't see him or something. Anyway, Dawson calls that "pathetic," and Gretchen doesn't think Mr. Brooks "needs [Dawson's] pity." Word -- I don't think Mr. Brooks cares how many people came to his funeral. Because HE'S DEAD. Gretchen adds that Mr. Brooks saw his dreams come true, which is more than most people can say. Dawson, apparently angry with Mr. Brooks for not drawing a bigger crowd, bitches that "this is what [Mr. Brooks] has to show for it" -- just a collection of stuff. Well, yes, Dawson. Again, Mr. Brooks IS DEAD. That's all ANYONE "has to show for it" when they die. Gretchen observes that Dawson's "starting to sound like" Mr. Brooks, and Dawson jumps on that, saying that that's what he's afraid of, that Mr. Brooks just decided it's easier not to care, and by the time he changed his mind, "it was too late," and what's to prevent any of them from ending up like that. Dawson. Dude. He. Is. DEAD. It doesn't MATTER anymore. We all die alone, because THAT'S HOW DEATH WORKS. Go read some of Jim Morrison's bloody awful poetry on the subject, and also, SHUT UP.