Awesome / Dawson's Creek

• In the season 1 episode Detention, Joey beating the snot out of a line-cutting, sexually aggressive Jerk Jock with a lunch tray.
• Pacey and Dawson putting their feud aside temporarily in season 4 to (along with Jack) pull off an epic senior prank (they steal the principal's boat, take it apart, then put it back together in the school swimming pool), while using their very public falling out to divert suspicion.
• Pacey's Breaking Speech to Mr. Peterson, the asshole teacher who carelessly outs Jack and continues to publicly humiliate him. He acknowledges that his initial reaction (spitting on Peterson) was utterly wrong, but then calmly takes the teacher apart and calls him out in front of the school principal on every part of his cruel treatment of his students. Peterson is gone by the end of the episode.
• In ...That Is The Question, when Jack is outed at school, Jen and her Christian boyfriend Ty are arguing over the ethics of homosexuality, and he trys to rope in Grams (who is also a devout Christian) to back him up. Her calm, measured smackdown of him is fantastic, while still being entirely in keeping with her religious principles:
  Grams: If Jack is gay, he does not need your judgement, young man. The Lord above will judge him, as he will all of us. What he needs from you, from me, from everyone else in this world is love and tolerance. If anything, that boy is feeling scared and alone and he will need the understanding of his fellow man to help him through this. Let's save judgement for someone much more experienced than you.
• After Pacey punches out his father for insulting his girlfriend, he gives him a Speech for not being much of a father to him for 16 years and that Mr. Potter (who may be involved in a crime) is a better parent than him.
• The Season 3 finale, True Love, features the first "passionate" gay kiss in the history of primetime television (though it's typically overshadowed by the Narm of Dawson crying, which even today is the trope picture).