Pacey Witter

Infobox character
colour =
name = Pacey J. Witter


caption = Pacey from the episode "Show Me Love"
first = 1.01: "Pilot"
last = 6.24: "...Must Come To An End"
cause =
nickname = Pace
age =
born = January, 1983
death =
occupation = Restaurant Owner, Stockbroker
title =
family =
spouse = Joey Potter, Audrey Liddell, Andie McPhee
children = None
relatives = Doug Witter (older brother) Gretchen Witter (older sister) John Witter (father) Carrie Witter (older sister)
episode =
portrayer = Joshua Jackson
creator = Kevin Williamson

Pacey J. Witter is a fictional character on the American television series "Dawson's Creek", played by actor Joshua Jackson.

Biography

Pacey Witter is the son of the local chief of police John Witter and is one of several children, including his older policeman brother, Doug Witter, and older sisters Gretchen and Carrie Witter. He is an academic underachiever who uses humor and sarcasm to relate to people, as well as to hide his emotional pain stemming from his very unhappy childhood. Because of Pacey's underachiever status in school and lack of common sense, he is branded by his working-class family as their "great disappointment", or "great embarrassment". Both of his parents frequently call him a loser right in front of him, which has led to his very low self-esteem. His best friend is Dawson Leery and he appears in a few of Dawson's early films. Pacey is a romantic at heart, but he tends to jump straight into the sack when it comes to women. Examples of these are Tamara Jacobs (Season 1), Andie McPhee (Season 2), Audrey Liddell, Melanie Shaye Thompson, Karen Torres, Rina (Season 5), and Sadia (Season 6). A sole exception was during his relationship with Joey Potter, where he waited nine months to consummate their relationship (Season 4).

Season One

In season one, Pacey falls in love with and loses his virginity to his English teacher, Tamara Jacobs (Leann Hunley). Unfortunately for Pacey, Dawson had accidentally filmed Pacey's first time with Ms. Jacobs during a getaway to the ruins with Jen. When Pacey relays the details of his sexual encounter with Ms. Jacobs to Dawson in a school bathroom, the conversation is overheard by another boy smoking pot in the next stall over. Rumors quickly begin to spread about the nature of Pacey's relationship with the 36-year-old teacher. The ensuing scandal eventually forced Ms. Jacobs to break up with Pacey and leave town.

The gang lands themselves in Saturday detention for five hours with the annoying librarian and class trouble maker, Abby Morgan. While Dawson reveals that he's in for breaking Pacey's nose with a basketball, Joey for slugging Grant Bodine, a senior who was sexually harassing her, and Jen for swearing in class, it is not revealed until later that Abby was only in for class tardiness (although she said she was in for having an orgy on the floor of the boy's bathroom) and Pacey finally reveals that he was caught relieving himself by a male teacher.

Forced to do a biology project together Pacey and Joey spend the whole day together. Pacey feels some sort of a romantic interest in Joey. He realized that maybe he could like her, but when he asks Dawson if he can ask Joey out, it forces Dawson to assess his own feelings toward Joey. Pacey asks Joey out and kisses her, but Joey swiftly turns him down, this is the first signs of the love that grows right in front of the viewers. Pacey also comically enters a beauty pageant and performs a skit from Braveheart.

Season Two

In season two, Pacey goes through a radical change when he starts dating Andie McPhee, an academic overachiever who tries to help Pacey reform his study habits. She does and Pacey begins to do well in school, even achieving his first-ever A. But Andie begins to suffer some psychological problems, which are due to the tragic death of her eldest brother Tim, and the effect that it has on her family, and this affects her relationship with Pacey. She suffers a nervous breakdown when she begins to hallucinate that she is seeing her deceased brother, and takes a leave of absence for a stay in a mental health facility.

Pacey misses her terribly and when his father makes a snide comment about Andie being crazy, he hits him. In season 2 we see the strained relationship he has with his father and the effect Andie has on that relationship. Near the end of the season, Andie tells his father over the phone to give Pacey a hug for her, and his father does. This ultimately leads to a touching moment — it seems that they have put their past behind them and, for the first time on screen, Pacey looks for some support from his father and actually gets it.

Along with loving Andie he feels like he must protect her brother Jack. This is highlighted when Jack is forced to read a very personal poem in front of the class which reveals that Jack is possibly gay and it ends up with Pacey spitting in the teacher's face. This shows a defiant side to Pacey and we see the lengths he will go to defend a friend or someone who he feels is being mistreated in any way or form.

Season Three

In season three, Pacey agrees to look out for Joey Potter as a favor to Dawson as he says that he won't be around to look after Joey. He also breaks up with Andie because she cheated on him with another patient while in treatment for her mental illness. He rescues and restores a wrecked boat, busying himself with the project to get over Andie and his growing feelings for Joey. He acts as a mentor figure for a young boy with a similarly rebellious attitude. As the season progresses, the viewer is given more and more hints that Pacey's feelings for Joey are becoming more than friendship. Any doubt is removed in "A Weekend in the Country". Earlier in the episode the scene is set up when Jen's grandmother tells the others that you know you are in love when you can watch the person all night while asleep in front of the fire. At the end of the episode Pacey comes upon Joey asleep in front of the fire and he sits down to watch her. He is however quite conflicted as a result of his feelings for Joey, but eventually acts on them. Although at first she pushes Pacey away, Joey admits she actually does have feelings for Pacey also and a romantic triangle develops involving her, Pacey, and Dawson. Pacey and Dawson's friendship is ruined when Dawson finds out that Pacey and Joey have been going out behind his back. With this, and his parents' second marriage looming on the horizon, Dawson copes as best as he possibly can.

Not long after Dawson learns of their romantic entanglements, Joey ends things with Pacey, and this sparks a competition between him and Dawson to win her heart. At the end of the season, believing that he would lose Joey to Dawson, Pacey decides to leave Capeside and spend the summer sailing. Realizing that his two best friends are in love, and that his chances with her are slim, Dawson reluctantly tells Joey to go and be with Pacey. Pacey and Joey then leave Capeside for the summer on his boat the True Love.

Season Four

In season four, Pacey and Joey continue to date and both are in some way trying to get back their respective friendships with Dawson, Joey proving more successful than Pacey. Pacey's relationship with Dawson was essentially ruined by his pursuit of Joey, and Dawson felt that he could never again trust Pacey. Pacey's older sister Gretchen comes back to Capeside from college and they move in together. Pacey suffers through the whole season, mostly because he thinks that he isn't good enough for Joey. He realizes it is quite possible that they will have very different futures. In the meantime, Dawson, Pacey, and Jack all fall under investigation when Principal Peskin accuses them of being involved in a senior class prank---his sail boat, along with his dog, were found in the school swimming pool, with the words "Class of 2001" painted on the boat's sail. With Mitch Leery serving as Vice Principal, he secretly vouches for Dawson's whereabouts as Peskin's investigation drags on.

Although class trouble-maker and Jen's old friend Drue Valentine is blamed for the prank, it is later revealed that Dawson, Pacey and Jack did indeed pull it off on their own. While his relationship with Dawson is on the mend, Pacey is still having issues with Joey---although she wants to, Joey is afraid to take the next step in their growing relationship. After a lot of talk and realization, Joey and Pacey finally consummate their relationship during the Senior class ski trip after nine months of dating.

However, their relationship eventually goes sour, when Pacey gets arrested for public drunkenness while Joey takes a trip to New York with Jen. Constantly being reminded of his failures, Pacey loses it, and in the most humiliating way, dumps Joey at Senior Prom. After the break-up, a spokesman from Worthington College---Joey's new school---asks to see Pacey about, what he thinks, is an opportunity to attend the prestigious school; however, it is a job offer to become a deck hand on the spokesman's yacht for the summer. Disappointed, Pacey decides to take the job and leaves Capeside before graduation to sail around the Caribbean. However fruitless his high school career might have been, Pacey did manage to graduate, although he did not attend commencement exercises, instead choosing to skip them to take the aforementioned deckhand job early.

Season Five

In season five, we see that Pacey is docked at Boston, on the boat he has been working on for the summer. After his brother Doug sets up a job interview for him, Pacey lands work as a chef in a fancy restaurant, Civilization, in order to stay with his friends in Boston. When Jen discovers that he's in town, Pacey asks her not to tell Joey of his whereabouts, which are later revealed to her.

Pacey has a relationship with one of the waitresses of Civilization, Karen Torres. This turns out to be problematic because she is having an affair with the head chef, Danny, a married man that Pacey admires as his mentor. He also tries to help out Dawson, who is in a bad emotional state, as Mitch Leery passed away in the beginning of the season. He and Audrey Liddell (Joey's roommate) become interested in each other and quickly embark on a fast-paced sexual relationship, apparently with no strings attached... at least at first. But during the gang's spring break trip to Florida, Audrey and Pacey decide to make their relationship a serious one. Pacey's mentor, Danny, leaves Civilization (the restaurant) and a new manager, Alexandra Pearl (Sherilyn Fenn), takes over.

In the process of "re-staffing", Alex fires Audrey, but chooses to keep Pacey around. Alex begins hitting on Pacey and eventually, he gives in. During a Spring Break trip to Florida with Jack and Jen, Pacey and Audrey are in the process of deciding whether or not to become a serious couple. In the meantime, Audrey's high school boyfriend, Chris, an aspiring actor, shows up and Audrey lies about her past with him. Pacey catches the two kissing in the house at which the five friends are staying, and confronts her. Pacey and Audrey eventually decide to go steady. After several months, Audrey decides to break up with Pacey after discovering him making out with his boss, Alex Pearl, at Danny's apartment. Alex so alienated the rest of the restaurant staff that Pacey leads a walk-out "en masse" during a meeting with local investors to protest Alex's management policies. As a result, the restaurant is shut down and both Pacey and Alex are fired. At the end of the season, Pacey goes back to Capeside, and picks up a job as a security guard at the Capeside Yacht Club for the summer, but he quits that to go in pursuit of Audrey. At the airport, after failing to contact her via the customer service phone, Pacey convinces a security officer to allow him to use the intercom to get to Audrey. He eventually convinces her to take him back and the two drive cross-country to Audrey's home in L.A. They spend the entire summer in and out of hotels, and partying with the elite of Hollywood.

Season Six

In season six, Pacey finds financial success as a stockbroker in a small firm in Boston which was set up by Audrey's father. Eventually, Audrey breaks things off with him during a Halloween party, as his new job has a dramatic effect in his lifestyle which clashes with Audrey's. He has a brief attempt at a reconciliation with Joey, that she ended after her boyfriend, Eddie, suddenly reappeared. While working as a stockbroker, Pacey clashes several times with his oily, pig-headed boss, Rich Renaldi (Dana Ashbrook). After informing his employees that they've all passed their exams, Rich takes them, as well as Pacey, for a free one-night stay in New Orleans. When Pacey meets Denise, a beautiful blonde, in the French Quarter, he assumes that there are sparks between them. When the duo retreat to a fancy hotel room to make love, Denise accidentally reveals that she is a call-girl Rich paid her to sleep with Pacey. Enraged, Pacey sets out to get even with his boss.

Embarking on a romance with reporter Sadia (who later reveals that she's engaged), Pacey ends up helping Joey get a job at his place of work during her spring break. After Rich fires Pacey's assistant, he hires Joey to take over and Pacey falls for his former girlfriend yet again. Pacey loses his job after punching his mean and cynical boss in the face after he loses a lot of money in a bio-tech stock that goes bust. He also almost lost his friendship again with Dawson, as Dawson, acting on Pacey's ill-advice, had put all of his money for a new film that he was going to direct, into that stock. After Joey convinces him, Pacey returns to Capeside to look for a new job, and in the meantime gathers what money he can with the help of community members to pay Dawson back at least some of the money he'd lost. In the process, Pacey is reunited with Christy Livingston---the senior girl he had a crush on and followed around in high school; Pacey considers himself lucky when Christy gives him her phone number before leaving.

eries Finale

In 2008, 25-year-old Pacey is now the proprietor of the Ice House...with the help of his older brother, Capeside's new Sheriff Witter and the bank. After telling Joey she's "off the hook" for the way they ended their romantic relationship and his inability to get over her, the two end up together. So Joey and Pacey are the couple who re-ignite their relationship and we see Pacey and Joey in their apartment placing a phone call to Dawson in LA.