BOOK REVIEW: Billion-Dollar Kiss by Jeffrey Stepakoff

BILLION DOLLAR KISS

THE KISS THAT SAVED DAWSON'S CREEK AND
OTHER ADVENTURES IN TV WRITING
by Jeffrey Stepakoff
(Published 2007, 336 pages)

✮✮✮✮✩

Honestly, I spent the first 2/3 of this book YAWNING, because it reads like more of a Television History textbook than a TV writer's memoir. But I would just attribute that to bad marketing--looking at the cover, my expectations were a little off. The early chapters of the book, while full of facts & figures, deserve thorough reading because they explain important aspects of the Television industry such as industry hierarchies, average salaries, Nielsen ratings, ad revenues, etc.


The last 1/3 of the book was surprisingly breezy and full of fun insider accounts from the set of Dawson's Creek. Finally, the novel began to live up to its title, Billion Dollar Kiss, referring to the game-changing kiss between Pacey & Joey (Josh Jackson & Katie Holmes). That said, I think it takes a lot of guts for someone to claim responsibility for the WORST seasons (aka everything after Season 2) of the laughably bad WB melodrama. The book works because Stepakoff is well aware that he was aboard a rapidly sinking ship, and he admits that the success of the show was due entirely to the WB's whitewashed advertising campaign as opposed to the actual writing.

Up until I reached the first-person tales of working on Dawson's Creek, this book review was stuck at 2 stars, but the extensive accounts of TV industry politics were well worth the price of admission.