Episode 5

(Episode Title: Winning Isn’t Everything)

“The One,” written by Luke Ehret and Margot Paige, performed by Idol (on their album, Idol, 1999)

Played twice in episode 5, first when Jake learns by e-mail that her mother will visit Rawley during the upcoming parents’ weekend, and again while Hamilton ferries Jake across the lake in a motorboat to help her prevent her mother from learning that she’s enrolled at Rawley as a boy, not as a girl.

"The One" is one of three songs by Idol (along with "Opened Eyes" and "So Little") played in the soundtrack of YA. A 3.9 MB MP3 file of this song is accessible from the bottom of this page.

You think because I'm honest I'd be fragile

That I would falter after what I've heard

This heart of mine was wrought of stone and steel

Reality is not a dirty word

You believe that all your friends adore you

That in their toxic minds you have a home

The truth is, though I'd never bow before you,

Without me you know you'd be alone

Why do you just shove me aside?

When I would be the one to hold you

I would be the one to mold you

I would be the one who'd let you feel

When I would be the one to teach you

I would be the one to reach you

I would be the one who'd make you real

I cannot be blind to your addiction

I witness the decay indignantly

I have enough to blame on inhibition

To once again renege in apathy

Why won't you just let me inside?

When I would be the one to hold you

I would be the one to mold you

I would be the one who'd let you feel

When I would be the one to teach you

I would be the one to reach you

I would be the one who'd make you real ...

When I would be the one to hold you

I would be the one to mold you

I would be the one who'd let you feel

When I would be the one to reach you

I would be the one to teach you

I would be the one who'd make you real...

Comment: The lyrics of this song articulate a demand, underscored by the insistent tempo of its music, to be allowed to love and save someone engaging in self-destructive behavior – the singer is a self-conscious emotional savior. Its use in two of the first Jake-Hamilton scenes after the cotillion is deftly apt. Its use, like the soundtrack’s previous use of “Pink Moon,” “Tender,” and “Which Will,” calls attention to the high stakes in the Jake-Hamilton storyline: Hamilton is trying to save a deeply troubled girl from despair of love and a resulting pattern of self-destructive behavior. To do that, he’s willing to pretend to be gay, to risk expulsion, his relationship with his father, and his father’s job, and to suffer the pain of separation when Jake leaves Rawley, as she must in order to “be herself,” to be a girl again. Although much of this is not explicit, none of it can plausibly be assumed to escape the attention of the Dean’s son.

“Five Good Reasons,” by Jeff Klein aka Jeffrey Lawrence Klein (on his EP, Put Your Weight On It, Pinnacle Music, 1998)

Played during the scene in which Will visits his mother’s beauty salon and she give him a haircut and they discuss his father.

This is one of two songs by Jeff Klein in the soundtrack of Young Americans, the other being “Trace,” played in the final scene of episode 6.

INSERT THREE IMAGES?

Welcome to the house that lives inside of me.

We've got more dust inside these rooms than there is room to breathe.

Patience left before I had patience left to leave.

Pictures tell a thousand lies of memories.

Refrain:

I've got five good reasons why I never sleep at home

And I got four more people telling me that I am wrong

And I've got three more wishes, god I wish that I was gone

And I've got two more fears

And I fear that I am one.

Father time, it seems he's dying inside of here,

All of the love has been overthrown by fear.

You know I try to keep myself as open as I can,

But you seem to slam me out whenever I let you in.

[Refrain]

I always thought that age would bring some clarity,

You know, but every day is surrounded by self-pity,

And I don't understand how someone as close to you as me

Could be the pit of all your hate and all your greed.

[Refrain, twice]

Welcome to the house that lives inside of me.

We've got more dust inside these rooms than there is room to breathe.

Comment: This song is used to underscore that Will can’t go home again, because he can’t live with his father.

However, Will plainly is not going to Rawley just because he and his father cannot live with each other. He’s going to Rawley because he desperately wants to be there, as he tells Scout in episode one and repeats many times and in many ways throughout Young Americans. So why is there so much angst, in episodes 1, 2 and 5, about “Will can’t go home again”?

The answer lies in a literal interpretation of what Will’s mother tells Will later in episode 5, after the regatta: “You're everything [your dad] has never felt as good as.” Will says he "doesn't want to be that person." Will's mom says: "You can't help it."

Will is literally the potential that his father will never realize. Conversely, his father is his complacent adult self that Will “goes to Rawley” to outgrow, in effect to kill, because he literally can’t live with it. That's why, as Will's mom tells him after the regatta, his father is afraid, not that Will will fail, but that Will will succeed. Either the complacency or the exigent moral earnestness must die, because Will and his dad are, in Will's dream of Rawley, two incompatible aspects of himself outside that dream.

Will Krudsi, as his pun-like name implies, is a guy overcoming his cruddiness by willpower. The very first line out of Will’s mouth in his first television appearance, in episode 3/19 of Dawson’s Creek, is that kids used to call him “Will Cruddy.” The first thing Will ever says tells us that his name means something.

Will goes to Rawley to kill his own cruddiness, personified in his dream by his father. Desperately wanting to be at Rawley and being unable to live at home aren’t two different motives for his going to Rawley – they’re the same motive. Going to Rawley is Will's path back home – a home he’ll be able to live in because his “father,” the part of himself that he goes to Rawley to kill, won’t be there.

When it is understood that Will and his dad are the same person, the lyrics of this song’s refrain – “I've got five good reasons why I never sleep at home … And I fear that I am one” – describe Will’s predicament so well that it's almost "creepy." This song seems to be used in Young Americans to nudge us toward that understanding.

“This Year’s Love,” by David Gray (1999)

Played during the mirror scene in which Jake first dresses as a girl, and the following scene in which Bella warns Scout that his father may not want to meet her.

The first of three songs by David Gray (along with “Sail Away” and “Please Forgive Me”) played during episode 5 of Young Americans. All three are from Gray’s 1999 album, White Ladder.

This year's love had better last

Heaven knows it's high time

And I've been waiting on my own too long

But when you hold me like you do

It feels so right

I start to forget

How my heart gets torn

When that hurt gets thrown

Feeling like you can't go on

Turning circles when time again

It cuts like a knife, oh yeah

If you love me got to know for sure

Cause it takes something more this time

Than sweet sweet lies

Before I open up my arms and fall

Losing all control every dream inside my soul

And when you kiss me on that midnight street

Sweep me off my feet, singing ain't life so sweet

This years love had better last

Cause who's to worry if our hearts get torn

When that hurt gets thrown

Don't you know this life goes on

And won't you kiss me on that midnight street

Sweep me off my feet singing ain't this life so sweet

This year's love had better last

Comment: The lyrics of this song serve – as those of “Pink Moon,” “Tender,” “Which Will,” and “Idol” do earlier in Young Americans – to emphasize the seriousness and high stakes of the Jake-Hamilton storyline.

Moreover, this song plays during the drama’s most forceful albeit subtly allusive visual symbolization of that same message. In that seen we see, for the first time, the only poster on the wall of Jake’s dorm room. (There is another in the Twelfth-Night-allusive “I am the man” scene of episode 1, but that scene was shot for the unaired pilot in Georgia in 1999, and shows a different room.) That poster is for Primal Scream’s 1997 album, Vanishing Point, which celebrates Richard Sarafian’s 1971 film, Vanishing Point, which celebrates highway suicide – a particularly troubling poster in context of Jake’s motorbike. However, we see it in Jake’s mirror, reversed – symbolizing that Hamilton’s love is reversing Jake’s self-destructive behavior – as we see Jake, for the first time, wearing girl clothes. A shot of Hamilton kissing Jake then fills the mirror, replacing the symbol of self-destruction, symbolizing that Hamilton’s love is eradicating the emotional causes of her self-destructive behavior. Meanwhile, “This year’s love had better last” plays, underscoring the message of the visual symbolism: the stakes for which Hamilton is playing are high, nothing less than Jake’s soul – which is why he’s willing to take risks and make sacrifices.

Like “Tender,” “Which Will” and “The Way You Look Tonight” before it, this song plays not only during a Jake-Hamilton scene, but during a Bella-Scout scene immediately preceding or following it, thereby inviting attention to the contrast between the two parallel story-lines, which do not even begin to intersect dramatically until the last scene of episode 6.

“Let’s Talk About Sex,” by Salt ‘N Peppa (1991)

The refrain is played while Monica asks about her daughter Jake’s love life -- but asks only about sex, not about emotions.

Refrain:

Let's talk about sex, baby

Let's talk about you and me

Let's talk about all the good things

And the bad things that may be

Let's talk about sex

Let's talk about sex for now to the people at home or in the crowd

It keeps coming up anyhow

Don't decoy, avoid, or make void the topic

Cuz that ain't gonna stop it

Now we talk about sex on the radio and video shows

Many will know anything goes

Let's tell it how it is, and how it could be

How it was, and of course, how it should be

Those who think it's dirty have a choice

Pick up the needle, press pause, or turn the radio off

Will that stop us, Pep? I doubt it

All right then, come on, Spin

(Refrain)

Hot to trot, make any man's eyes pop

She use what she got to get whatever she don't got

Fellas drool like fools, but then again they're only human

The chick was a hit because her body was boomin'

Gold, pearls, rubies, crazy diamonds

Nothin' she ever wore was ever common

Her dates heads of state, men of taste

Lawyers, doctors, no one was too great for her to get with

Or even mess with, the Prez she says was next on her list

And believe me, you, it's as good as true

There ain't a man alive that she couldn't get next to

She had it all in the bag so she should have been glad

But she was mad and sad and feelin' bad

Thinkin' about the things that she never had

No love, just sex, followed next with a check and a note

That last night was dope

[Take it easy now...]

Let's talk about sex, baby (sing it)

Let's talk about you and me (sing it, sing it)

Let's talk about all the good things

And the bad things that may be

Let's talk about sex (come on)

Let's talk about sex (do it)

Let's talk about sex (uh-huh)

Let's talk about sex

Huh...

Ladies, all the ladies, louder now, help me out

Come on, all the ladies - let's talk about sex, all right

Ladies, all the ladies, louder now, help me out

Come on, all the ladies - let's talk about sex, all right

[Yo, Pep, I don't think they're gonna play this on the radio

And why not? Everybody has sex

I mean, everybody should be makin' love

Come on, how many guys you know make love?]

(Refrain, twice)

Comment: This song is used to underscore that the problem at the root of Jake’s emotional troubles is that her mother, Monica, has given up on love that is more than just sex – given up on being loved for herself, not just for her body. (Her despair is needless; she’s pretty, talented, witty and empathetic.)

Jake tells herself and Hamilton that her problem is simply that her mom doesn’t love her, that she feels unloved. However, her interaction with Monica in episode 5 makes clear that Monica neglects Jake because Monica feels that Jake doesn’t want Monica in her life, and that Jake doesn’t want her mother in her life because she can’t stand her mother’s despair of love.

Despair of true love, personified by Monica Pratt and exemplified by this song, is what Jake is really rebelling against. Subconsciously, Jake is pretending to be a boy at least partly in the hope that she can be “truly loved,” for her personality rather than her body. She comes to Rawley hoping hopelessly for a miracle – for a straight boy to sacrifice his sexual preference for her – and she gets it.

“Sail Away,” by David Gray (1999)

Played before and during final race of the parents’ weekend rowing regatta.

In Young Americans, that race scene is one of only two extended rowing scenes (the other being in episode 2) for which music other than Hans Zimmer’s “True Romance” theme is used as the soundtrack. It is the only occasion for which a song with vocals, rather than a purely instrumental piece, is used as the soundtrack for a rowing scene.

Sail away with me honey

I put my heart in your hands

Sail away with me honey now, now, now

Sail away with me

What will be will be

I wanna hold you now

Crazy skies all wild above me now

Winter howling at my face

And everything I held so dear

Disappeared without a trace

Oh all the times I've tasted love

Never knew quite what I had

Little Darling if you hear me now

Never needed you so bad

Spinning round inside my head

Sail away with me honey

I put my heart in your hands

Sail away with me honey now, now, now

Sail away with me

What will be will be

I wanna hold you now

I've been talking drunken gibberish

Falling in and out of bars

Trying to find some explanation here

For the way some people are

How did it ever come so far

Sail away with me honey

I put my heart in your hands

Sail away with me honey now, now, now

Sail away with me

What will be will be

I wanna hold you now

Sail away with me honey

I put my heart in your hands

Sail away with me honey now, now, now

Sail away with me

What will be will be

I wanna hold you now

Comment: This song starts to play before the race, exactly as the extremely perceptive and bright Bella, sensing that Scout has just lied to her about why she can’t meet his father, sadly tells him, “You gave up too soon, Master Scout.” That’s a superb summary of the Scout-Bella storyline, except that it applies to Bella no less than to Scout.

The song then continues while Scout’s father, Senator Calhoun, makes a speech in which he tries obliquely to exculpate himself for whatever past mistakes of his have led Charlie Banks to believe he’s Bella’s father. He says: “It is our children who most clearly embody our potential. … We hope they … learn from our mistakes. … They are the true measure of our success.” That evasion of the imperative to keep growing is antithetical to the message of Young Americans about adult potential for moral rejuvenation.

The song then continues, on lower volume, while Finn delivers to the rowing crew a pre-race homily that what matters is winning, not a rowing race, but the struggle to overcome “personal obstacles.” Finn’s homily invites us to consider rowing in Young Americans as a metaphor while we watch the race and listen to “Sail Away.”

Reflection on that metaphor in that context leads to consideration of the symbolism of the rowing positions in the shell. Jake is cox, Hamilton is stroke. They face and read each other, leading the crew, its success dependent upon their coordination. Hamilton’s job is to respond to Jake’s wishes, the job of the other rowers is to match Hamilton’s pace. Winning the race – overcoming personal obstacles to growth, avoiding the despair of growth that as Senator Calhoun has just voiced – means keeping up with Hamilton’s response to Jake. That’s a daunting task, but it’s what Young Americans seeks to inspire viewers to do. As the song concludes, the Rawley crew does win the race, suggesting that the task is not impossible.

It is in that metaphorical context that the lyrics of “Sail Away” may best be understood for purposes of appreciating the drama’s use of this song. In that context, its lyrics may express the love of the adult Will-as-dreamer-and-narrator for Jake and Hamilton as a couple, his inspiration by them, his hope to be led by their example.

“Please Forgive Me,” by David Gray (1999)

Played at the end of the scene in which Scout's father apologizes to Scout, and during the scenes in which Jake says goodbye to her mother in front of Rawley Girls’, and in which Bella serves Senator Calhoun at the gas station.

Please forgive me if I act a little strange

for I know not what I do

feels like lightning running through my veins

every time I look at you

Help me out here all my words are falling short

and there's so much I want to say

want to tell you just how good it feels

when you look at me that way

Throw a stone and watch the ripples flow

moving out across the bay

like a stone I fall into your eyes

deep into that mystery

deep into some mystery

I got half a mind to scream out loud

I got half a mind to die

so I won't ever have to lose you girl

won't ever have to say goodbye

I won't ever have to lie

won't ever have to say goodbye

Please forgive me if I act a little strange

for I know not what I do

feels like lightning running through my veins

every time I look at you

Comment: As the start of the song in context of Senator Calhoun's apology to his son makes clear, the ostensible reference of this song's use in Young Americans is to parents' need for their children to forgive their imperfections - and, in context of the episode's central metaphor, for us to forgive ourselves for being what we are even as we strive to grow better than we are, to "exceed expectations." Scout's dad proves less perfect than Scout had thought; but Jake's mom proves better than Jake had thought -- neglecting Jacqueline only in response to Jacqueline's having made her feel that Jacqueline doesn't want her mother in her life.

However, “Please Forgive Me” is a romantic love song, ostensibly sung by a boy to a girl; its lyrics describe the erotic sensations he feels when they look at each other. At first glance, its use in three parent-child scenes seems a bit odd.

On the other hand, the two scenes during which “Please Forgive Me” plays are separated by a shorter scene during which it does not play. In that interrupting scene, set in the Rawley Boys’ common room, Scout confides to Will his disappointment in his father, and says: “I thought growing up would feel better than this.” Will’s response – “I’m pretty sure it will,” delivered with a faint smile – is one of the funniest lines in Young Americans. However, to get the joke one must understand that Will is speaking as the mature narrator of the drama, briefly dropping his pretense of being young in order to order to comfort his friend. Immediately after Will’s joke, “Please Forgive Me” resumes playing and the scene shifts to Bella’s gas station.

Not surprisingly, given the drama’s pervasive irony, it is context of that intervening scene, in which Will drops his mask, that the use of “Please Forgive Me” in Young Americans may be appreciated most fully. In that context, the song may interpreted as a message from the mature Will-as-narrator-and-dreamer -- a persona for YA's creator, Steven Antin. Will does “act a little strange,” going to prep school as a mature man - "cheating on the entrance exam." And Antin acts a little strange in writing a teen drama full of symbolic, allusive content not readily accessible to most teens – one that few educated adults who could appreciate it are likely to watch.

Understood in that context, this song, with which episode 5 ends, sets up the next episode of Young Americans, “Gone,” much of which centers on Bella’s writing a stunningly beautiful letter that she never means to send, that she’s writing for herself. Bella’s letter in episode 6 seems to be a metaphor for Young Americans – something that Antin was writing chiefly for himself, because most teens who would watch it on The WB wouldn’t understand it, and few adults who could understand it would watch it.

Ichabod Grubb

Created: April 2014

Last updated: April 2014