Dawson reminds Gretchen in turn that the girl fell in love with the guy even though she'd given up on love, and then he couldn't kill her because he loved her too, and Symbolism yells all echoey off the bathroom tile, "Everything okay out there?" and I yell back, "Yep, don't get up, I GET IT," and Gretchen sniffs that "Tarantino does this stuff a lot better, and in color." Do the writers draw these pop-culture references out of a hat or what? Tarantino doesn't "do this stuff" at all, much less "better" than A.I. Brooks. Scorsese is the reference they want here, but I suppose it's too much to ask the writers to yank their thumbs out of their butts for five fucking minutes and think a reference through, when they probably think Raging Bull is a fucking Playstation game. Jesus.

ANYway. Dawson says smugly that Gretchen's Tarantino reference "completely prov[es] his point even more [sic]" -- huh? -- because "A.I. Brooks was way ahead of his time." Gretchen says all buck-up-little-camper that she likes Dawson "like this," all worked up about the film, and Dawson rolls his eyes and wonders aloud why Brooks quit making movies, and Gretchen says she could ask Dawson the same thing. She rambles on about how, when she left for college, Dawson had moviemaking on the brain, and now "film is like this unfinished project you've sort of stuffed in your closet." She goes on to say in her best Behind The Music-announcer voice, "Which begs the question [AGH!], whatever happened to the talented young filmmaker Dawson Leery? Why did he stop, and where is he now?" During the requisite tertiary-character ego massage, Dawson looks pensive; then he laughs with that off-putting oh-you-have-to-say-that-but-I-still-know-it's-true face he wears whenever he hears praise of himself.

Oh, God. I've only gotten up to the credits? Sigh. Credits. Cat in dunk tank.

And while the commercials roll, let me take a moment to refer you all to A Dictionary Of Modern American Usage, written in fine acerbic style by Bryan A. Garner. It makes a great Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/Winter Solstice gift for the grammarian in your life. Here's what Garner has to say on "begging the question":

Begging the question does not mean "evading the issue" or "inviting the obvious questions," as some mistakenly believe. The proper meaning of begging the question is "basing a conclusion on an assumption that is as much in need of proof or demonstration as the conclusion itself." The formal name for this logical fallacy is petitio principii. Following [is a] classic example…"Reasonable people are those who think and reason intelligently." (This statement begs the question, "What does it mean to think and reason intelligently?") [Boldface and italics Garner's; you can find the entry on pp. 77-78.]