ONE TREE HILL Reunion

Note: Talk about being a little off the mark. I wrote this piece on ONE TREE HILL last Tuesday and noticed that it never posted to GMMR. As 50 Cent and JT so eloquently put it ‘Ayo, I’m tired using technology”. So if you are still interested in reading, just know that it’s almost a week old…sorry.

So I watched the two hour season premiere of ONE TREE HILL (airing tonight at 8pm on The CW) yesterday on the train ride from Boston to NYC and I was left feeling a bit empty. Although I hadn’t watched the show since its early days, I was really hoping that I would be able to reconnect with this reinvented version and love it as much as many of you do. And while I’m not giving up totally on the show yet, I’m really hoping there’s some kind of turnaround in the next few weeks that make me actually want to watch the show, rather than just watch it for the sake of saying I would.
I refuse to give away an specific spoilers, but I think it’s common knowledge among OTH fans that when the fifth season opens tonight we see the kids from Tree Hill navigating their lives four years from when we last saw them. I applaud the producers for understanding the pit fall of ‘the college years’ that many of their set in high school counterparts stumbled in to. It was a smart way to bring the show current and more in touch with the age range of the audience watching at home.

A lot has changed since the crew was last all together and there’s a lot to catch up on. Flashbacks are employed to help fill in the blanks of the past four years and let readers into the events that brought the characters where they are today. Unfortunately in the premiere, the director seemed to be a little confused on how to smoothly transition between the present time and that of yesteryear. It was all a bit predictable and repetitive.

But it’s not the flashbacks that were troublesome for me. I took more issue with the flash forward. It’s four years after their HS graduation and Peyton, Brooke, Nathan, Lucas, Haley, etc just don’t seem like they’re living the lives of 21-ish, fresh out of college kids…they’re living the lives of people in their early 30’s – or at least they’re acting like they are. Don’t get me wrong, they are facing some problems of 21 year olds, but when you couple that with what is going on in their professional lives, it’s all a little far-fetched and a bit tacky.

Unfortunately my reunion with ONE TREE HILL wasn’t an instant love connection. There were just a few (way too many) cliches coupled with some pretty desperate writing and acting. Things were all a little too convenient for me, and some of the events are just a tad bit over the top. And to top it all off, I couldn’t even distract myself with the eye candy that is James Lafferty (Nathan Scott). He grew out his hair and had a beard that just didn’t do it for me. Come on, if I’m going to keep watching I at least need something pretty to look at (and I refuse to linger to long on the DB that is Chad Michael Murray).

That being said, I know what it’s like to grow up with a show and fall in love with the characters and their stories, and I don’t think it’s necessarily fair for me to come in and bash your show when I clearly don’t have the relationship with it that you all do. Things that I might find grating about these characters might be the very flaws that make them who they are, and make them the characters that you love. Who am I to judge – Dawson’s Creek is still my all time favorite show.

I’m not giving up on ONE TREE HILL…yet. I’m really interested in hearing YOUR opinion on tonight’s episode. Come back here after you watch and share your two cents on what you think about how well the show has progressed in jumping into the future and what your Tree Hill friends are up to these days.