In episode 23 of season 3 of "Dawson's Creek," feisty girl-next-door Joey Potter delivered the emotional, on-brand monologue that changed the narrative of this teen show.

Twenty years ago today, the final episode of Dawson's brilliant third season aired." In "True Love," Joey confesses to Pacey that she is finally ready to move on because she is in love with him. After a passionate sprint from Dawson's house to Pacey's boat, she is breathless, but more importantly, she is happy because her mid-air decision to choose between the two men is over. Katie Holmes' every expression and gesture in this scene conveys this, and it is a joy to see Joey free from the anxiety of falling for her ex-lover's best friend. It took a full season for Joey to get to this place and for the show to come back to life in a clean slate. And it was all thanks to the multitude of women who began to make their names known in season three, each of whom contributed to the legacy of teen television's most alluring romance.

The Pacey and Joey arc arguably saved "Dawson's Creek." The show was floundering and needed to be re-stabilized during a transitional period in teen drama; NBC's Freaks and Geeks was quickly axed after only 12 episodes in early 2000, just as Dawson's third season was getting off the ground. However, the same WB series, "Gilmore Girls," premiered that fall to worldwide acclaim. Meanwhile, the "Buffy" gang had just started college, their success was tenuous, and "The O.C." was still a few years away. In its infancy, "Dawson's" was a critically coveted show that captured the zeitgeist of the late 1990s, when the teen genre was on the rise, and added a fresh take on the coming-of-age story. Season two, however, proved to be a rocky affair, with Dawson and Joey repeatedly bouncing back and forth between each other due to confusing plots and melodramas that leaned more toward the ridiculous than the entertaining. In his career memoir, Billion Dollar Kiss: The Kiss That Saved Dawson's Creek (opens in new tab), writer/producer Jeffrey Stepakoff notes that "viewers were fed up with the campy, arbitrary storylines They were fed up with campy, arbitrary storylines," he recalled.

The show's creator, Kevin Williamson, left at the end of the second season, and a new staff team (minus Greg Berlanti, the showrunner after Dawson's second year in charge) was brought in to prepare for the next season. This includes Maggie Friedman (Netflix's upcoming "Firefly"), Bonnie Sikowitz ("Spin City," "Accidental Husband"), Hadley Davis ("Scrubs"), Gina Fattore ("Gilmore Girls," "Californication") ), and a significant addition of female writers and assistants whose talents were integral to the redefinition of the show.

Some of the newcomers were already avid "Dawson's" fans. Anna Frick joined the show the previous year as a production assistant (then called a "secretary," which was an eye-opener) to the scriptwriter, and Liz Tigeler joined the show as a post-production PA-turned-scriptwriter coordinator. Liz Tigeler was a post-production PA-turned-script coordinator. (Both were 23 years old at the time, very early in their careers and ideally suited to offer a unique perspective to any young person.) Together, they were tasked with creating online content for Dawson's that would engage viewers. Dawson's Desktop, an interactive website showcasing the diaries and instant messages of the Dawsons, was a pioneering effort at a time when spoilers were just getting started. The pair also wrote a collection of YA companion stories (opens in new tab) in the vein of R.L. Stine before becoming full-fledged episodic writers. Tigeler worked with Holly Henderson on "Show Me Love" (aka "The Story of Pacey and Dawson Racing a Boat to Impress Joey"), and Frick did a number of episodes from his college days.

The slow-burning romance between Pacey and Joey (coupled with the undeniable chemistry between Joshua Jackson and Holmes) forced regular viewers to tune in each week. It was Berlanti's idea to have the two first kiss (open in new tab) in the coda of "A Cinderella Story," but female staffers like Gina Fatore guided their storyline in a direction that would last for a long time, telling Joey's voice as it was. Writer/producer Fatore told Marie Claire, "Joey was stuck up (this could be my fault), worried, especially about grades (this was definitely my fault, I was Tracy Flick's A student), but intelligent and strong." It was my job to play [Pacey and Joey] a lot, and I tried my best to take the story in a more feminist direction."

Usually new writers are assigned one or two episodes per season, but Fattore explains that Berlanti noticed her "Joey-ness" from the beginning. He eventually gave her an unprecedented seven episodes, recognizing that the intimacy between writer and character would better serve the story they wanted to tell. The episodes included one in which Pacey teaches Joey to tango, one in which Pacey buys Joey a wall to support his artistic pursuits, and one in which their secret romance is uncovered (symbolically and from multiple perspectives). Finally, female screenwriters are credited in 15 of the 23 episodes of Season 3. Fattore recalls, "None of us women who worked there were in charge--the final decision was always the men--but we contributed to the conversation at every turn."

And the influence extended to one of the most fascinating aspects of the Pacey and Joey dynamic: a modern take on the popular screwball movies of the 1940s. The two shared the same commonplace rapid-fire banter that screen goddesses like Katharine Hepburn and Rosalind Russell exchanged with their leading men. In the first episode of Season 3, Pacey tries to comfort a tearful Joey and suggests that they might become friends in the impending new school year. Without missing a beat, she retorts, "I'm upset enough as it is." The writers were so smartly devoted to the project that when the Pacey boat restoration project was described, their name was quoted from the greatest screwball comedy of all time. Greg Berlanti exclaimed, 'What's a good name for a boat? ' [This is really on the nose because I was so into 'The Philadelphia Story,' but I said the name of the boat (in that movie) was 'True Love.' ("The Philadelphia Story" is about a squabbling ex-couple who realize their imperfections and passions for each other. Sounds familiar.)

Dawson's skillful juxtaposition of Pacey and Joey's flaws and strengths to create such three-dimensional characters also made them an attractive couple. She was vivacious, but she could be relentlessly stubborn or irritatingly timid. They complemented each other. The heroine of Screwball had a very tough independent streak, which I sympathized with and saw in Joey Potter. She wasn't afraid to challenge Pacey, and Pacey wasn't intimidated by her," says Fattore.

There were no concrete plans for the couple beyond season three, but prospects for future scenarios abounded. Stepakoff once wrote, "The kiss [between Pacey and Joey], the love triangle it created, and the stories it spawned were the driving force that brought the show to six seasons and international acclaim." And it was the female writers who ran with the torch. It was Maggie Friedman who wrote the Season 4 stronghold-breaking promiscuity breakup episode, and it was Fatua and Flick who navigated the rekindling of Joey and Pacey's relationship in late Season 6.

Without these important female voices in "Dawson's Creek," Pacey and Joey might not have inspired the same reverence in today's culture and might not have been as important to so many of us in our formative years. Perhaps we all have a part to play in Pacey's life. Perhaps we all would have had a Dawson instead of a Pacey.

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