The Rewatch: One Tree Hill
I have always loved angsty teen dramas; I loved them when I was an angsty teen and I love them as a plucky 40 year old woman. I’m still not totally comfortable calling myself a woman-I don’t feel like an “adult” and I sleep with a giant Squishmallow but, as usual, I digress. Streaming services are adding my childhood and teen-era shows to their platforms at a breakneck pace and I am HERE FOR IT. I watched all of The O.C. almost as soon as it arrived on Hulu and I have been steadily bingeing teen dramas ever since.
One Tree Hill was one I recently enjoyed watching for the first time. For whatever reason, it never captured my viewership when I was a teen. Experiencing a show like that for the first time as an adult is a different experience; I enjoyed the show for exactly what it was, not for what it meant to me at a pivotal time in my life. So did that lessen my enjoyment of One Tree Hill? Not one bit. I loved every minute of all nine seasons. Did I have questions? Of course. Did it frequently and flagrantly disregard believability? Most definitely, but that’s never been a problem for me. I’ve watched Sam and Dean die and come back to life so many times that believability is not important to me when it comes to small screen entertainment.
Don’t worry Dean. It’s only season 2. You got 13 more seasons of deaths and resurrections to contend with.
Here are my thoughts on One Tree Hill more or less as they occurred in the show. I won’t give too much away-that way, if these thoughts inspire you to give it a go, I won’t have ruined too much for you.
The two main characters in this show are half brothers who live in the same town and are approximately 3 months apart in age. That’s not hard to believe, especially if you’ve been following Nick Cannon’s antics for any length of time. What’s he up to now? Has he got a full NFL roster yet? Anyway. What I find illogical about that is that the brothers, Lucas and Nathan, are in the same grade, in the same classes and play the same sport in a small town (after all, it’s only a ‘one tree’ hill) and seem to have exactly 0 friends in common. This would be plausible in, say, a 5 or 6A high school-I know this for a fact because I once taught half-siblings (who were two years apart) during a single school year who had only met twice. But I know Tree Hill High was not that big because I saw the graduation episode and there were only like, 40 kids who walked the stage. Maybe they had an unprecedented drop-out rate? I don’t know. I just didn’t love that they hadn’t joined forces against the dad they both despised.
And let’s talk about their dad, Dan. Dan Scott tops my list of “Most Despicable Villains in Television History”-a blog I will write in full at some point in the future. Dan completely accepts Nathan while pretending Lucas doesn’t even exist. What kind of person does that?! Especially considering the fact that Nathan and Lucas are basically the same guy. It’s not like one of them was a screw up. If anything, Lucas was arguably a little bit better, if overly brooding. My blood boiled every time anyone started to forgive Dan-Don’t do it! He CANNOT BE TRUSTED! I shouted at the screen. I appreciate him for what he is though-an excellent TV villain. If the audience has a visceral reaction every time a character comes on the screen, you know you’ve hit pay dirt as a writer. And Dan actually ends up uniting most of the town over how much he sucks. Although that union takes a frustrating number of seasons, it’s so rewarding for the viewer.
And speaking of dads… When I watched these teen dramas as a young person, I used to staple magazine cutouts of the young stars to the walls of my bedroom and fantasize about what it would be like to date them. Now? I find myself shocked by how hot I find the TV dads. When Peyton’s dad first showed up, I was absolutely floored by how hot he was. The man had a smile that could melt the polar ice caps
They actually had to recast him because he had too much chemistry with his on-screen daughter. And I think we can all see why. SWOON
. And I say “had” because that episode premiered 20 years ago. While I watched him, I kept getting a niggling sensation that I’d seen that smile before. I kept wanting him to come back on screen hoping that, 1-I could see it again and 2-I’d recognize where I knew it from. And then, it hit me like a karate kick to the face-I was lusting after none other than Terry Silver-the “big bad” from Cobra Kai. His character in Cobra Kai is 20 years older and about 1000% more evil so it never occurred to me that he might be hot. After my disturbing realization, I rewatched Cobra Kai and even older and evil-er, he’s still pretty hot.
Still kind of a silver fox if you ask me. Which you did. By reading this.
Like any show on the air that long, One Tree Hill has its share of ridiculous plot lines. You know the ones-it’s those episodes where you can tell the writers just really wanted to go home for the day but they had to wrap up a storyline first. One Tree Hill boasts a television moment that regularly shows up on Buzzfeed and Ranker lists of the most unbelievable plotlines in television history. Big Bad Dan is in the hospital awaiting a heart transplant, while viewers (not so) secretly hope he won’t get one. It looks like Dan will get his heart through some implausible series of events and as it is being walked inexplicably through the front door of the hospital, the delivery guy trips over a Golden Retriever (because there is a Golden Retriever in the hospital waiting room because of reasons) and drops the cooler with the donor heart in it. Which goes skidding across the floor. And flies open. And Dan’s heart slides across the hospital floor. And the Golden Retriever EATS IT. I’m ok with unbelievable plot lines on TV, but I’m not ok with outright stupid ones. I feel like one of the writers brought his dog to work that day and they were just grasping at straws, saw the dog and were like, “Yeah, ok, we’ll just have a dog eat it. Screw it. I want to go home.”
It was so iconic and so ridiculous, it made The Soup. I miss that show.
Overall, though, I really loved One Tree Hill. What made it so iconic and loveable (writers, take note!) is that the characters grew up and evolved. The popular jock marries the “nerdy” girl and becomes a better man because of their mutual devotion. The slutty girl looks inward, realizes her worth and becomes a fashion mogul businesswoman and mother. The overlooked sidekick to the jocks finds his voice as a successful sports broadcaster. Everyone ends the show in a place that brings comfort and solace to the viewer. And in this age of turmoil and uncertainty, isn’t that something we could all use?
