The year has started a little bittersweet for movie and TV lovers everywhere. Shows like Bridgerton and The Lincoln Lawyer released banging new seasons. But then we lost a remarkable talent like Catherine O’Hara on January 30th, and then February 11 brought the sad news of James Van Der Beek‘s death. To anyone who grew up in the late ’90s, watching Van Der Beek on Dawson’s Creek was something to look forward to every week. He stepped into the shoes of Dawson Leery, a teenage boy who’d often stand in his bedroom surrounded by movie posters, overthinking every feeling and pondering about young love. One of the reasons Dawson’s Creek hit the spot was because Van Der Beek immersed himself in it. Even when things got cheesy, eyes were still glued to the screen.
Perhaps what made his career even more satisfying was what he did next. Instead of trying to shake off the shadow of Dawson’s Creek, he cracked a joke and leaned into it. In Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, he played a sort of caricature of himself, name and all, and even without trying, viewers’ eyes searched for him when he wasn’t in the frame. It takes real confidence to parody your own legacy as hard as he did, yet another reason he will be missed.
What Actually Happens in ‘Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23’
You would think the title pretty much gives it all away, but Don’t Trust the B is about a lot more than the shenanigans of some mean girl in apartment 23. At the start, the show focuses on June (Dreama Walker), a sugary-sweet, borderline-green Midwestern girl who moves to New York with huge ambitions without the street sense needed to fulfill them. Fate throws her into the same apartment with her antithesis, Chloe (Krysten Ritter). She’s a hurricane of a person that’s as selfish as she is sharp-tongued, and she makes it her sole purpose to both educate and upend June.
Their mismatched friendship forms the driving force of the show, using absurd situations and pop culture references to build their lives. The cherry on top was James Van Der Beek playing an exaggerated version of himself and fully leaning into the stereotypes perpetuated about Tinseltown natives. Combining these three personalities somehow created two seasons of weird, hilarious, and meta TV, which is clever without ever taking itself too seriously.
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James Van Der Beek’s Celebrity Self-Parody Made Every Meta Joke Land Perfectly
If there’s one thing that James Van Der Beek proved in Don’t Trust the B, it’s that sometimes celebrities are not like us. He leaned hard into the whole meta joke of it all, and at some point, he transcends the realm of a celebrity cameo and becomes part of the show’s absurd world. Take his Dancing With the Stars storyline in Season 2, Episode 6, “Whatever It Takes,” he comes up with this wild scheme with June’s mom (Eve Gordon) to get the best dance partner. Every over-the-top line or action is more hilarious because this is the James Van Der Beek himself, and he is in on the entire joke about him being this self-important star. That awareness makes the chaos even funnier.
While he was admittedly larger than life on the show, some tiny, perfectly timed moments resonate just as well. Take his micro interactions with Eli (Michael Blaiklock), the building’s extra who gets pulled into the JVDB orbit. In one episode, he leans out a window, panicking about something minor, and shouts instructions at Eli across the courtyard. By cranking up his personality to the max, Van Der Beek shows he’s a good sport while offering viewers little or a lot of insight into his personality… he was an enigma.
Van Der Beek Played Off Krysten Ritter’s Chloe to Maximum Comic Effect
Perhaps one of the funniest running threads in Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 is the way Van Der Beek’s fictional version of himself gets pulled into the orbit of Chloe’s schemes. It’s because they simply click, he’s selfish, she’s even more selfish, he’s impulsive, and she matches that energy. Their horrible decisions become even more hilarious because it’s like the blind leading the blind with the pair. When Chloe spends years sending him fake letters from the Dawson’s Creek cast begging for a reunion, he slurps down every word because it feeds his ego. He even rewards her for protecting his image.
More specifically, in Season 2, Episode 11, “Dating Games,” he creates and hosts his own reality dating show. As the fates would have it, Chloe and June end up liking the same guy and trust James to milk that dynamic for all it’s worth. Meanwhile, Chloe’s lack of regard for anyone besides “Chloe” makes her treat the entire thing like a game she has to win, lying and scheming her way through each round without caring how it looks. All in all, the friendship works because they accept each other warts and all; there’s not an atom of shame between them.
To see James Van Der Beek go full meta Van Der Beek, watch Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 on Netflix.
