The passing of James Van Der Beek at the age of 48 came as a shock to many.
Despite his years-long battle with colorectal cancer, and his public fundraising efforts to cover treatment costs, Van Der Beek’s status as a Gen-X/millennial icon made many of his generation feel like he’d go on forever. He leaves behind his wife Kimberly Brook and their six children, as well as a legion of fans for whom Dawson Leery was an era-defining hero of teen angst.
“Dawson’s Creek” ran for six seasons and became one of the flagship shows that bolstered the WB’s standing in the network TV battles. Writer Williamson pitched the show “as ‘Some Kind of Wonderful,’ meets ‘Pump Up the Volume,’ meets ‘James at 15,’ meets ‘My So-Called Life,’ meets ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ ” But it was also meant to be a show for modern teens with thoroughly ’90s aspirations and style. It was a classic coming-of-age story with hefty themes of class struggle, addiction, teen pregnancy, assault, and mental health. And at its heart was Dawson himself, an aspiring filmmaker with an adoration of Spielberg movies who struggled with his blossoming attraction to his best friend Joey (played by Katie Holmes.)
Based partly on the showrunner’s life, Dawson was meant to be an everyman who stood in contrast to the muscled football bros and surly bad boys that were typical of teen shows such as “Beverly Hills, 90210.” As played by Van Der Beek, Dawson felt warm and relatable, and more familiarly real as a teen boy than most of his TV counterparts. A lot more of us identified as Dawsons over Brandon or Brenda Walshes, even if we didn’t always want to admit that because, yes, Dawson could be annoying. He was a teenage boy who loved movies, after all. He was the show’s moral center, even if he could be dim and entitled, especially around women (the Dawson-Joey-Pacey love triangle shall define an era of TV fandom squabbles.)
Van Der Beek isn’t just TV history: He’s internet history too. It was through snarky but loving recaps of “Dawson’s Creek” that the website Television Without Pity was born, and with it a new generation of TV criticism that blended humor, geeky insight and an askew Gen-X gaze that shaped the next two decades of the medium. Dawson’s highly emotive and oft-parodied crying face became a gif for the ages, the go-to reaction for anyone having an ugly sob or in need of a sarcastic “cry more” response to online drama. Van Der Beek would later poke fun at himself by recreating the scene for a Funny or Die skit, and offering social media users everywhere more variety in their snark. Not every actor of his era of pre-broadband fame knew how to embrace the joke, but Van Der Beek was savvy.
Indeed, it was this willingness to laugh at his own image that gave Van der Beek his other great TV role: playing himself in the still-underseen but highly entertaining sitcom “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23.” The fake James of the show, about a nice girl who moves to New York and finds herself living with a hard-partying freeloading nightmare, was the embodiment of the image Van Der Beek had spent years trying to shade. “James” was a washed-up has-been with grand delusions of his own talent and a Norma Desmond-esque belief that he’s never been more famous. It could have seemed desperate or try-hard but Van Der Beek was so committed to the bit that it worked, bringing a crackpot fervor to this flop-sweaty mirror-world version of himself who was still loveable despite his flailing efforts to cling to his celebrity. He’d bring a similarly weird edge to the inexplicable but also bizarrely appealing “What Would Diplo Do?”, a short-lived comedy on Viceland where Van Der Beek starred as the DJ Diplo in a wonderfully unhinged performance that felt like fake James’s annoying musician cousin.
While Van Der Beek worked consistently in film and TV outside of “Dawson’s Creek,” starring in “The Rules of Attraction” and guesting on shows like “How I Met Your Mother”, Van Der Beek was open about his struggles getting away from the character who defined his early years. It’s easy to see why the world couldn’t get over Dawson. Van Der Beek made him seem so lived-in and thoroughly American, the epitome of his generation, that moving on was tough. He had to weather the character’s changes and the public’s responses to that, and he did it with good humor even as the “Dawson’s so irritating” discourse flooded the internet and his life.
But he proved himself well beyond the realms of the WB, and in proper adulthood, he had a welcome and innate sense of self over his image as the former teen heartthrob who embraced the sheer ridiculousness of that concept. Dawson was earnest to a fault, whereas Van Der Beek was happy to roll with the punches and get the best jokes in first.
His last posthumous role will be in “Elle”, the upcoming TV prequel to “Legally Blonde,” where he plays the dean of Elle Woods’ high school. Perhaps it’s fitting that the teen idol of his era got to be part of this passing of the torch. Dawson was always going to live on, with or without the memes, but at least Van Der Beek got the last laugh too.
