Adolescence, as life phases go, is not especially easy to idealize. Dawson's Creek, though, found a way. The '90s-era soap opera, disguised as a gauzy coming-of-age drama, gave us the fictional Capeside, Massachusetts, a telegenically rustic hamlet populated by telegenically precocious teenagers'chief among them Dawson Leery, a dreamy filmmaker in the making, who spent six TV seasons angsting and aching his way into the hearts of the show's young audience. Dawson was strong and sensitive in equal measure. He was a thoroughly nice guy in a show that refused to treat that status as an insult. He was as thoroughly fantastical as the series that shared his name. But the character worked'and the show worked with him'because, against all odds, he seemed so warm and real. That is mostly because he was played by James Van Der Beek. Van Der Beek died yesterday at the age of 48, after announcing in 2024 that he had been diagnosed with Stage 3 colorectal cancer. The actor leaves behind a large...
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