I never watched Dawson’s Creek, so my familiarity with Dawson, Joey, Pacey and the gang comes mostly through cultural osmosis, and now, wikipedia:
Aimed at a teenage audience, the semi-autobiographical show is based on the small-town childhood of its creator Kevin Williamson (who also wrote the slasher film Scream). The lead character, Dawson Leery, mirrors Williamson’s interests and background. Filmed inWilmington and Durham, North Carolina, Southport, North Carolina, the show was set in a small fictional seaside town called Capeside, Massachusetts. It focused on four friends who were in the early part of their sophomore and first year of high school when the series began. The program, part of a new craze for teen-themed movies and television shows in America in the late 1990s, catapulted its leads to stardom and became a defining show for The WB.
Even so, I cannot resist the charms of the inimitable James Van Der Memes. Check them out now and don’t be one of these:
apatheticallydecomposing 
I literally laughed out loud at the cabbage patch. At work. In a meeting.