A Complete Rewatch: One Tree Hill

Life in Tree Hill comes to a seemingly joyous halt as the Scotts throw a party to celebrate the sponsors for the Ravens at their house. The whole town is going to be there, some with plans in their head, some reluctantly. Brooke is trying to play matchmaker between ex-lovers Peyton and Nathan, who both have other love interests in mind. Karen finally decides to take a step forward and move on from her heavy past- and even makes a new friend in the process. Haley finally admits her feelings for someone- and Lucas does too.

BEHIND THE TITLE.

The episode is entitled Life In A Glass House, after a Radiohead song. I really like this one. First, it is reminiscent of the phrase "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones," meaning, don't aim for someone when you are yourself vulnerable- which is exactly what happens in this episode. The lyrics hint at a similar feeling, too- "Once again, we are hungry for a lynching / That's a strange mistake to make."

GENERAL OPINION.

We have gone through this several times before, no later than last week: I love episodes revolving around parties and social events of all sorts. The gathering at Dan and Deb's house doesn't have the same "everything could change in the space of a night" feeling, but it does portray another one I love: under the cover of night and the influence of alcohol, people's true colours start showing. The first few episodes of the show were an introduction to our characters and their relationships with each other- who dates who, who likes who, who hates who, and who had tangled histories and bridges burnt. Now, everyone starts moving, the relationships start shifting, and when all put together in a space smaller than their already pocket-sized town, our characters evolve in ways we might not expect them to. Life In A Glass House holds some of my favourite moments, and to top it all off, the soundtrack is killer.

SOUNDTRACK

- Play It Straight - Bosshouse

- Kennedy - Kill Hannah

- She's Got It So Phat - Bosshouse (this song also appears in 1x02)

- Pacific Ocean Blues - Gigolo Aunts

- I'll Always Love You - Michael Campion

- She Will Be Loved - Maroon 5

- Beautiful One - Jonny Lang

- Say Yes - Bryan Greenberg.

- Calling All Angels - Train.

This will become more prominent in future episodes, but Life In A Glass House is the start of actors of the show having their original music featuring in the soundtrack. The first-ever one is Bryan Greenberg, who we know on screen as teen dad Jake Jagielski. This episode features one of my very favourite songs, Maroon 5's She Will Be Loved. I have since grown out of the band's music, but Songs About Jane remains flawless, and She Will Be Loved is a wonderful track.

QUOTES

There are four that particularly stuck out to me in this episode, for different reasons. The first one comes from Keith when Deb comes to the café to invite him and Karen to the party. His reply, a sarcastic and cutting "For some reason, when I think about Dan, I don't think of the word party," is perfect. Same here, Keith. I don't think anyone thinks of the word "party" when they think about Dan Scott, not even himself.

The second one is a perfect expression of Deb's sass, quick wit, and remarks that put Dan in his place because, on top of having a flawless delivery, they are true. When she catches him flirting with Lori, the young bartender, undoubtedly trying to keep himself feeling like he's still got it, she snaps: "She's young enough to be your daughter, and in this town, she might just be." Bring some ice for that burn! I love the way Deb politely leads her husband away from the counter to talk to him. She is so classy.

I have a special place in the One Tree Hill corner of my heart for clueless Nathan, and the way he answers "Probably, if I knew what that meant" when Peyton asks him if he's being self-deprecating always makes me chuckle.

The last quote is one of Brooke's many one-liners, happening when she introduces the game of truth or dare. "It's time to play truth or dare, or maybe just dare, because no one really tells the truth anymore." What an accidental yet fine analysis of this episode.

There is no voiceover in this episode.

THE BEST BITS: LUCAS AND PEYTON.

If we have to talk about shipping characters and, without spoiling the following nine seasons of the show, I have never been partial to Lucas and Peyton. I see it, I understand why it's meant to be endgame, and I can even appreciate why some people love them as a couple as much as they do. It simply never did it for me. However, their obvious chemistry is my favourite part of this episode.

I love the way they steal glances at each other across the room, across the terrace, and across the garden. I love how subtle and understated they are trying to be, especially compared to Brooke's attitude, their polar opposite, but at the same time, they are so obvious. They are the two kids in the class who like each other and can't stop staring, but they are scared of making a move, because what if it ruins everything.

After Peyton kisses Lucas during the game of truth or dare, they meet up by the swings, underneath a tree, and the moment is just so gorgeous to me. I love the setting, the colourful lights in the distance, and the garden. I love the obvious connection between them, the way they are tiptoeing around their feelings, even though you can feel that one of them, somewhere inside, just wants to blurt out: "I like you, you idiot, now, let's make out." They just don't have the words or the courage of their feelings yet.

I think one of my favourite parts of their stolen moment in the sunset, if not my favourite, happens right after Haley interrupts them before realising what is happening. Right before it moves to the next scene, Peyton bursts out laughing, embarrassed, and leans into Lucas. There is such a sweet vulnerability at this moment, the fact that we have rarely seen Peyton laugh so far, if at all, and we never see her be embarrassed either. She has kept herself so guarded and protected, her shell strong and solid, until she finally admitted to herself (and us) her feelings towards Lucas, and her ard exterior came crashing down in the most endearing way possible.

THE LITTLE THINGS

There are few in this episode, and the first one that comes to mind veers in the continuity territory. After making out with Peyton and getting caught afterward by Dan, trying to be the omniscient narrator of his own home, Lucas decides he will leave the party and wait for Karen and Keith in the car. First of all, no one fusses with car keys or asks anyone for them, so...Are we supposed to assume Lucas is carrying them? Then, he simply does not wait in the car, as we see him arrive at Karen's Café while Karen and Keith are still at the Scotts' house. Are these just plans that have changed or is this a continuity mistake?

When Peyton somewhat, under the poor disguise of a story she's heard, asks Lucas to come to Dan's party, he says he'd rather stay home with The Great Gatsby. See, I am a pretty keen reader, and I have read F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic in the past. It's not a long book by any means, and Lucas is already halfway through it when Peyton asks him out. Now that's a transparent excuse to refuse to go somewhere.

In one of the last shots of the episode, we see Peyton drawing in her bedroom, trying to deal with the heartbreak. She is sitting in front of her webcam, wearing a tank top adorned with the cover of a Matthew Ryan record. During the first seven episodes of the show, we have seen Peyton don various artists' merchandise, a way for her narrative to convey that she truly cares about the music she loves and advertises it during her everyday life. As someone with a largely alternative style who owns more band t-shirts than underwear, I love seeing this in fictional characters, as it's all too rare and often just shown in teenage girls obsessed with equally fictional pop stars. However, I couldn't help but notice how handmade Peyton's shirt looked. It seemed as though someone had just printed the album cover on a basic white tank top instead of official artist merch. (I have an eye for those things, believe me.)

After a quick internet check, a Screaming Orgasm, as ordered by Brooke at the bar, is a real cocktail. It's part vodka, part coffee liqueur, part amaretto, part Irish cream liqueur, part single cream, part milk, and, on my end, definitely part lactose intolerance. (Also, why would a sixteen-year-old girl order a cocktail with milk and single cream? If they wanted to have her ask for something with a sexual name, they could have just gone with a Sex On The Beach and make it vaguely believable.)

THE MOST AMERICAN MOMENT.

This is a short and obvious one, as it summarises the key event of the plot. Dan and Deb throw a party to celebrate the sponsors of their son's basketball team. I notice a lot of what I call "American" moments are simply people going out of their way to get involved in high school sports, but as I remind everyone almost every week, as someone who grew up in a small suburban town in France and who went to an underfunded school, we never had anything like it. If American people who were exposed to almost professional sports in high schools saw what our equipment looked like, they would have a heart attack.

THE MOST 2000s MOMENT.

It's a detail in the grand scheme of the episode, but it took me back to my teenage years in such a particular way that I simply HAD to include it. When Brooke is snooping around Nathan's bedroom, she finds the box Haley made him and comes across the sweet note she wrote for him. ("Believing you'll do well is half the battle...Call me if you need anything at all, Haley.") The contents of the note are not what we're interested in here, but the paper in itself. Haley didn't write on any old piece of lined paper torn from a notebook, she used properly nice writing paper. It's pretty and purple with flowers, and it has the letter "H" printed in the middle. With hindsight, it's obvious Haley would be the kind of girl to own stationery with her initial. When's the last time anyone used fancy paper to write someone a note? This takes me back to my pre-teen years. I used to exchange letters with my friends at school, and they'd be written on cute paper with cartoon characters or sweet flowery patterns printed. I remember receiving writing paper as a birthday present more than once. And then, you know. We invented MSN, texts, social networks, and we stopped sending cute letters to our school friends about the boys with spiked hair we had a crush on.

THE MANY SIDES OF BROOKE DAVIS.

In the previous episode, Every Night Is Another Story, we saw Brooke Davis, who I choose to believe grew a little mean towards the end because she was so fiercely defending her only true friendship. In Life In A Glass House, we see Brooke Davis, boy-obsessed, who seems like she will go to any length to get what she wants. Ambition is a fine quality, but in this episode, it is taken so far that it looks more like game-playing than anything else.

Brooke starts before the party. Peyton's "courtesy hold" on Lucas is over, so she wants to go for him, nevermind anyone's feelings. Because she senses that Peyton and Lucas are interested in each other (I mean, these two are so obvious the nearest trash can would know), she starts playing matchmaker between Peyton and Nathan, knowing he misses his ex-girlfriend and just won't tell anyone. Brooke's behaviour escalates in such a way that I cannot even decide where to draw the line and when to say okay, you took this too far, now. It could be when she tells Nathan that Peyton said she wanted to get back together and, after he mentions that she's the one who initiated the break-up, she responds: "That was pot Peyton." Not that there would be any problem if Peyton were to smoke weed, but we don't have any sort of inkling that she does, and we know that Brooke is lying already anyway, so inventing her best friend a slight drug problem is nothing, after all.

At the sponsors' party, it seems Brooke is willing to do everything in her power to get to her end goal: Lucas. Before the truth or dare game, it appears the issue lies somewhere else. Her goose chase is not about Lucas as such: it's about herself. When Peyton tells her to "give it up," she replies "I'm trying," and I still cannot believe it took me so many years and rewatches to clock it and understand what she means. This now begs the question: is boy-obsessed Brooke, the girl who couldn't find a question to ask during a game of Never Have I Ever because she has done so much, a virgin? It seems like it. And the more she becomes obsessed with boys, the clearer it gets. She is not simply trying to find herself a boyfriend, she seemingly feels uncomfortable to some degree because everyone around her has lost their virginity, but she hasn't. She's trying to reach this milestone too, hence why she is trying her luck several times with Lucas, hence why she is playing so many games, then trying it on with Jake, because she's drunk and he will do. I'd even argue that falling asleep on Nathan's bedroom floor might be the consequence of yet another failed attempt at losing her virginity.

I think the bottom line of Brooke's personality this episode, and maybe so far, is that she doesn't seem to know who she is or where she is going, which is natural and normal at sixteen. She sees her friends advancing in ways that she isn't, reaching milestones first (ie, sex and relationships), and she feels like she is dragging behind, as if she had to do everything to follow in their footsteps, as close as possible, especially in an age when young girls are pressured into sex by societal norms and losing your virginity late might imply that you have a problem. It seems like throughout the years, Brooke has understood she was a very attractive girl and has learnt to play with it. To hide the fact that she is lagging behind her not-virgin-anymore friends, she switches her narrative to make it look better. She pretends she's comfortable with her sexuality, and she's a spectacular liar who pretends she knows what she's doing but only makes things up as she goes along. She's probably never drunk a Screaming Orgasm before. (Unless she has a fake ID.)

CRUSH, CRUSH, CRUSH.

In this episode, we finally see Haley breaking out of her "Tutor Girl" shell and admitting her feelings for Nathan. She doesn't say anything per se- we never hear her say the words "I like Nathan," or anything similar. She simply tells everyone there's no reason to be careful, because she knows better than getting caught up, and her body language and tiny gestures do the rest. How did Nathan not realise this girl liked him? She made him a box full of stationery and eye drops, and she wrote him a cute little note to study for his exams. Boys truly are blind. When at the party, Brooke decides to humiliate Haley in front of Nathan, pretending it all came from him, which is just another way for her to get her way. The next we see Haley, she is crying on the floor of Karen's Café, hiding behind the counter, begging Lucas to tell her he told her so. In the meantime, Nathan, unwillingly caught in Brooke's web of lies, tries to offer an apology and seems to realise that, for the first time in his life, maybe, "you gotta believe me" is not going to lead him anywhere.

In the middle of situations that are sometimes extrapolated for drama or that could be exaggerated for fictional purposes, something like what Haley feels for Nathan is so unbelievably relatable. She felt a connection with someone she was never supposed to bond with. When she explains Nathan confides in her, he talks to her, you can see the glow of her face- she means it with all her sixteen-year-old heart. This boy with a bad reputation talks to her, he confides in her, he is vulnerable and honest with her, and, because he isn't like this with anyone else, she wants to believe he is good underneath it all, like she's cracked the code. It's likely that it is her first real crush on a boy, and she doesn't necessarily know what to do about it. Should she ask friends for advice? Should she just forge full speed ahead, notes on pretty paper and all? Watching her get her heart broken, thinking she's been humiliated by the cool kids' gang she isn't a part of, hits so close to home. We've all been there. We've all liked the wrong person, we have all liked the boy who broke our heart with no consideration for our feelings and yes, many of us won't ever bring cakes to a big party in a mansion downtown, but we'll all get our heart broken, and we will all feel like Haley on the floor of Karen's Café.

WHEN THE FEELING'S GONE AND YOU CAN'T GO ON, IT'S TRAGEDY.

This one is definitely my English Literature degree speaking, but there is such a classical play feel to this episode. Think Romeo and Juliet, but less bloody. We have a party, that could be the equivalent of the ball. We have couples that are attracted to each other and should be ending up together, in a perfect world. (Nathan and Haley, Peyton and Lucas.) We have a disrupting element in the form of Brooke, who's got dark deeds in mind and is willing to do anything in her power to get her way, whether it makes her friends or enemies. We have the side characters, Karen and Deb, unravelling the past and someone else's web of lies and deceits. We have Dan, eavesdropping on every conversation and spying on everyone, trying to know everything and get involved in every story, be a part of everyone's past, present, and future, a tryhard omniscient character playing king of his own home. We have everything going wrong and people being lied to and deceived. With different costumes, this would have been a damn good Shakesperean play.

FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.

- This episode leaves us so intrigued about Haley's family life. She seems to have a mum and daughter-like relationship with Karen, and when she feels heartbroken and needs to have a good, ugly cry, she does so on the floor of her shutdown workplace instead of her own bedroom.

- The budding friendship between Karen and Deb and all the secrets revealed about their somewhat mutual past are everything. I simply adore them together.

- Finally, at the end of this episode, we discover why Jake is allowed to be late at every practice and leave early, and why he never parties with everyone else: he has a baby daughter. And we are all dying to know her background too.