A Complete Rewatch: One Tree Hill

I Will Dare is the fifth episode of the second series of One Tree Hill, and it aired on the CW on October 19, 2004. Felix organises a night of dares to get everyone together and celebrate his arrival in Tree Hill. Everyone is split into teams and performs fun tasks to earn points. Karen and Andy grow closer, and Keith meets a new woman at the dealership.

BEHIND THE TITLE.

The episode is entitled I Will Dare after a song by the band The Replacements, released in July 1984 on their record Let It Be. Fun fact, it has been included in The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock And Roll. The writers chose the song to pair it with the Dare Night theme of the episode, but let's still take a closer look at the lyrics, just in case something matches. It's a love song, somewhere, as seen in the chorus ("I don't care, meet me tonight, if you will dare, I will dare"), but one can easily interpret these lines differently to match the episode. Everyone meets up, and if their teammate dares, they, too, will dare. Just as Felix explains, it's about pushing your limits, trying something daring and seeing how far out of your comfort zone you can go.

GENERAL OPINION.

I Will Dare is one of the most fun episodes of the series, though I tend to become queasy watching people eat, sometimes, and I felt just as Peyton did in front of the pickled eggs. It's simply a lot of fun, and it allows us to find out more about how the characters feel at this moment in time. Through a series of silly sounding dares, we discover Tim's feelings of exclusion by his best friend since he tied the knot. We find out Brooke and Felix are more similar than they seem at first glance. We see Lucas still trying to atone for his past, and Peyton gets deep about her mother. I have seen the first series more often than the last, and I always love rewatching these episodes, however controversial my opinion is.

SOUNDTRACK.

- 16 Below by Light FM

- Endless Shovel by Rogue Wave

- Welcome To The Movement by Dee.

- The Keys To Life Vs. 15 Minutes Of Fame by Atmosphere.

- Everything Is by Nectar.

- Funny Little Feeling by Rock 'n' Roll Soldiers.

- Good Time by Walkie Talkie.

- I'm Sorry by Black Toast.

- Somersault by Zero 7.

- Dare You To Move by Switchfoot.

- Hey Sugar by D'Lovely

- Collide by Howie Day.

It's the second time Switchfoot's Dare You To Move features on the show, and the first one was during Haley and Nathan's first kiss on season one.

When Karen drops by Andy's office, she asks him about the music he's listening to, and he answers with Constantines, an indie-rock band from Canada. Though their music does not appear in this episode, they earned a mention as they were blowing up within their genre. Around the time of the show, the band's second album, Shine A Light, their first to receive an international release, would have just come out.

THE BEST BITS: JULES.

On this fine night, Keith meets and interacts with a woman on a mission: she needs a new car. From the get-go, Jules sounds very decided, claims she has seen the retail prices, and doesn't need any options or any small talk- she knows what she wants. "Condescending man selling a car to clueless woman, then using his position of power to seduce her" is a common trope in fiction. It has even appeared on the show! However, I loved how the narrative flipped it upside down in this episode. We see Jules through Keith's lens and eye, and he is charmed by how unusual she is, how sure of herself she is, how confident she is. And how could you not be? Jules is so refreshing. I love her first appearance on the show.

QUOTES

Most of the ones I have written down while watching this are silly little one-liners from Tim, and I have to say, years down the line, they always make me giggle.

"- I'm in it to win it.

- Just say yes, Tim."

"- I can't believe I'm wearing a skirt.

- Yeah, in public."

I have seen this show and episode a large number of times, and I cannot believe I had never clocked Tim confessing to wearing skirts in private, as seemingly something of a regular occurrence?

"Don't you miss your Tim time?"

This one has to be my favourite.

"The Tim is in the house, and you better recognize..."

Other quotes I love are Brooke describing herself as "bored and ignored" and Haley clapping back with "Well, you did with Lucas" when Peyton said she did not want to cheat at the game and eat the pickled eggs.

THE LITTLE THINGS.

Cingular receives a few mentions in season 2, so I had to look it up. It is a telecommunications company that rebranded in 2006 and became AT&T, which I had heard of. (It might be the default network my phone settled on when I visited the United States, but don't quote me on that.) I suspect the brand acted as a sponsor of the show, and having these cellphones on display was nothing more than product placement.

Here is a detail I had never noticed before: Haley is of Christian faith. When she and Peyton enter the church to perform the fake-confession dare, she passes because she wants to avoid "eternal damnation," meaning she believes in God, heaven, and hell. As the show takes place in North Carolina, a region known for its devotion to God, a religious character makes sense. However, I had never noticed it before.

Once again, the American Pie-style of humour displayed by Tim's character is visible in this episode. One of the dares he and Nathan have to perform is to get "the special" from a spa of Felix's choosing, and his first thought directs to something with a sexual connotation. Tim Smith built himself around dumb humour and frequent sex references (the bachelor party episode). It is safe to assume he was a traditional teenage boy of the time, obsessed with porn, believing the things he watches in films are reality. Watching this twenty years later could feel icky and problematic if you take it literally, but it truly is a stunning time capsule of the early 00s, in all its strange glory.

During her confession at church, Peyton starts with "Last week," and it reminded me of something I used to believe in when I was a child and a teenager. See, at the time, we could not binge-watch anything. When you liked a show, you had no choice but to wait for the next episode and the following week. I somehow grew to believe it meant there was a week between wherever the plot ended and wherever it picked up at the start of the next chapter. Even when I understood this was not necessarily the case, it remained something my brain drifted towards every time I watched something. If it had been a week for me, it had also been a week in my favourite characters' lives.

THE MOST 00s MOMENT.

We have quite a few to review! The first one takes place at Karen's Café before the yet-to-be-formed teams leave to perform the dares planned by Felix. He explains to the gang that they will take photographs and videos of them playing and send them over on a Cingular cellphone, and Tim gets excited about having a phone that takes pictures and videos. Nowadays, try to find a phone that doesn't! (Side note: did Felix buy everyone a cellphone for Dare Night?)

Next up, we have Brooke's purple top, with that pointed hem, inverted V-shape, whatever you want to call it. That style of top, quintessential to the "stylish but still teenage appropriate" aesthetic Brooke rocks during the high school seasons of the show, was a staple of every teenage girl's wardrobe at the time. (It's making a comeback, alongside a lot of other fashionable y2k clothing. Oh, dear.)

During one of the scenes showing Felix, we can notice he wears chains on his jeans, just like every cool boy of the early 00s, though I mostly remember skater boys who were into pop-punk and alt-rock wearing them. In 2018, I attended a pop-punk show, and someone in the moshpit rocked those over their jeans, so it's safe to assume they are still in the wild, somewhere.

If I counted correctly, there were fourteen dares in Felix's game. Let's take a closer look at them.

Number one, Lucas has to return clothes to the mall while wearing them, and obviously, they are not boy items of clothing. They are a bra and a pair of leather trousers. Would I do that? Probably not. But it was fun to watch, and it gave us the gift of Anna.

Number two, Peyton has to eat five pickled eggs. As I mentioned earlier, I tend to get queasy watching food scenes on TV (you should have seen me watching RuPaul's Drag Race last night when Daya Betty ate the dead dragonfly), but it's a bit of harmless fun and a classic thing on dare games. I would bail.

Number three, Nathan and Tim ask for the special at the spa, which turns out to be a full-body wax. As a woman, expected by society to routinely go to the beautician to have my body entirely waxed, this does not seem like a dare to me.

Number four, Brooke has to get a table with no wait at the hottest restaurant in town, and once she is there, she should dine and dash. It also seems like a standard dare, though I would feel bad for the waiter, especially as I became educated on the treatment of hospitality staff in the United States. (I am also expecting Felix to have paid in advance in the same way he booked a table before the night.)

Number five, Mouth, Skills, and Fergie, then Haley and Peyton have to get a hit on the fastest pitching machine with their heads. It feels like something that came straight out of the Jackass sense of humour, though the cast would have done it without protective helmets. Again, it's pretty harmless and fun.

Number six, Nathan and Tim have to sell a box of cookies in girl scout outfits. Paired with the "charity for strong and independent women" speech Nathan half-heartedly delivers, this sounds like a dare that has not aged well at all. It aims at poking fun at boys dressing up as girls, as well as boys supporting women's rights. In 2003, feminism was not as big a part of the societal conversation as it is today, and something viewed as passé, women burning their bras. In 2021, it didn't feel right. The general idea of prank-selling things door to door is not terrible, though.

Number seven, Brooke and Felix go to the cemetery to take a picture in an open grave. First of all, open graves are different in France than they are in the United States, and here, they mean spots that are derelict and have suffered so intensely from the passing of time the stone has broken and, if you are so inclined to look, you can see the coffins. Second, I'm too superstitious, even though, objectively, it is just a hole in the ground.

Number eight, Skills, Fergie, and Mouth have to perform a song at the karaoke. It is the most fun one, and Mouth tears it on stage. What a star.

Number nine, Anna and Lucas have to find five dollars in change in a fountain where I imagine people have dropped coins and made wishes. (I suppose this was a dare?) A bit gross hygiene-wise, but not awful.

Number ten, Lucas is supposed to make out with a stranger in a photobooth. Who can pull that off? I have the social skills of a teaspoon, and I would bail.

Number eleven, Mouth, Skills and Fergie have to borrow a wild animal from the zoo. Which zoo is still open at that time of night? How do you steal an animal from the zoo? Where is security? Someone, please tell me they have picked up the turtle from the water instead of leaving it out to die. Objectively, Mouth, Skills, and Fergie have got the simpler end of the stick in this episode and have had to perform the least complicated, tough dares.

Number twelve, Peyton has to make a fake confession at church, pretending she has impure thoughts about her dog. Let's mention how Haley gets off really, really easy on that one- she doesn't eat the eggs, she bails out of the church dare. I am personally not a believer, but I would also not perform the confession. It's just weird to me. However, the scene where she opens up to the priest about her deceased mother is beautiful and heartbreaking.

Number thirteen, Nathan and Tim had to steal something from the minigolf, I think? It turned out differently because of the unfortunate typo and meshes well with the scatological type of humour that was popular at the start of the century, especially among teenage boys.

Number fourteen, Someone had to kiss a teammate on the mouth. This one has also aged questionably, with all the boys staring at each other like they can't kiss another boy on the mouth. It's also evident Felix has made it up to get Brooke to kiss him at the end of the night.