A Complete Rewatch: One Tree Hill

In episode three of the first series of One Tree Hill, Lucas scores the winning basket for the Ravens and watches everything change in his life, in the blink of an eye. Overnight, he becomes popular and secures himself a spot in the team. Nathan feels threatened by this evolution and does everything in his power to stop it from happening, from harmless pranks to kidnapping, through taking an interest in Lucas' best friend, Haley. We are properly introduced to two of our female leads, Brooke Davis, a cheerleader with a crush on Lucas, and Haley James, Lucas' best friend, and tutor at Tree Hill High. Karen faces her own set of problems as she is invited to join the Boosters, a club for the mothers of the Ravens, but her impromptu reunion with her old high school companions doesn't go as smoothly as she would have hoped.

BEHIND THE TITLE

This episode is named Are You True? after a song by the band The New Amsterdams. I love discovering some of the lyrics to these songs and checking if some of the lines match the episodes I have just watched. In Are You True?, the lyric "The one with the cards is the one you've forgot" points to Haley's newfound central role in the feud between Nathan and Lucas. No one could have expected this quiet girl, often in the background, to get there, least of all herself. The song closes with the words "There's no way I can lose, are you true?" and I like how perfectly it goes with Lucas' closing speech to Nathan: "Whatever you got, you better bring it, 'cause I'm not going anywhere." There's no way Lucas is going to lose.

GENERAL OPINION

I adore many things about Are You True?, and it stands as a beloved episode for me. First of all, it is another chapter during which even the tiniest events mean things can change beyond belief for the characters, a true definition of the butterfly effect. When you see Haley speaking with one of her students, Brandon, you see it as a footnote and don't expect her tutoring skills to become the key to a part of the plot. When you watch Shari invite Karen to join the Boosters, you don't picture it being Karen's breaking point in refusing to let go of her past. Another event I love in this episode is the Burning Boat Festival. I will be going into more detail about it further down, but, since one of the reasons I love One Tree Hill as much as I do is everything that ties to what my mind calls "small-town America," and a town-wide tradition with such a positive meaning ticks all the boxes.

SOUNDTRACK

- You Own Me by Sense Field

- Glad To Be Alive by Low Flying Owls

- Apologies by Bosshouse

- How Good Can It Be by The 88 (fun fact: this song was also featured on The O.C)

- Shoulder by Cactus Groove

- Hang by Mojo Monkeys

- Silence Is Easy by Starsailor

- Multiply by Forty Foot Echo

- Stones by Pete Francis

- You Dance by eastmountainsouth

We are starting to notice some artists and companies reappearing in the One Tree Hill universe, such as Bosshouse and Forty Foot Echo, who were both featured in the previous episodes. The soundtrack also shone a light on emerging bands like Starsailor, whose track Four To The Floor would later become a hit. (If a song reached France and got mild radio airtime, it was a hit.)

QUOTES

As mentioned in my analysis of the Pilot, I try to save the hindsight and future references for when they become relevant to the plot at hand, but Nathan giving Haley the Cracker Jack bracelet and telling her "Don't say I never gave you anything" NEVER fails to give me goosebumps.

When Lucas and Peyton argue about her art being picked up by thud, Lucas tells her: "Maybe you are ready. You're just scared." It's such a simple line, not poetic in the slightest, but it hits you in the gut and makes you take a look at your own life, wondering if there is something you are ready for but aren't doing because you're just scared. By showing us teenagers who feel so intensely and who were allowed to be imperfect and scared from the get-go, One Tree Hill gave us all a chance to look at our own fears and imperfections, accept them, and learn to confront them.

"e.e cummings once wrote: "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle, which any human can fight, and never stop fighting." This voiceover originates from e.e cummings' A Poet's Advice To Students. Some other lines from this piece tie in quite prettily with the episode, such as "the moment you feel, you are nobody but yourself," as well as with the title, Are You True- if you are true, you are nobody but yourself. The end of the speech resonates with some of the themes of the episode as well: "do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world- unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die."

THE BEST BITS: THE BURNING BOAT FESTIVAL.

An underlying theme and event through this episode are Tree Hill's Burning Boat Festival. When they reach the boat, Haley tells Lucas this tradition is a rip-off from Viking funerals, so I looked it up, and the comparison is interesting. In Norse mythology, boats symbolised safe passage into the afterlife, so they often appeared in funeral rites. If you were higher ranked, you even stood a chance at being buried with your boat.

As briefly touched upon earlier, I hold dear everything that has to do with what I tend to call "small-town America," which I imagine is the fictional world of small towns in shows such as One Tree Hill and Gilmore Girls. It's this idea of a sense of community and particular events that would be part of a local tradition, everything that makes the place feel like your whole world, small, and give it a homely feeling. What could embody this sensation better than an annual festival opened by one of the town's best known and most beloved citizens, Coach Durham? (He's got a gym named after him, it's no surprise he was next in line to replace the original speech master, who is said to have recently passed away.)

Another reason why I love the idea of the Burning Boat Festival is its meaning, as we can discover through the voiceover heard behind Haley and Lucas' conversation: "Burn your bad karma, bad luck, or bad choices, and start anew." Through this tradition, it's almost as though the show is getting a second pilot. People throwing old objects in a fire get a clean slate, as if their past or mistakes stopped defining their identity or present. The ending of the episode, when the boat is set on fire, is a textbook One Tree Hill conclusion and one of my favourite narrative devices on the show. The voiceover interweaves with the different characters' interactions, and it is perfect.

What I wouldn't give to attend something like this.

THE LITTLE THINGS

This episode was a bit lighter on the details that caught my attention. The first one I have is Lucas' bedroom, which still, somehow, looks different than it did during the first two episodes.

The second one is the story of Brooke's leopard print bra. When she gets naked in the backseat of Lucas' car, she sets it on his shoulder, and he gives it back to her at school the following Monday. This implies that she left it with him. During the next scene, Brooke and Peyton are chatting outside, and Peyton calls the leopard print bra a "welcome mat" and jokes about how taking her clothes off in boys' cars is a typical Brooke move. All of this would mean that Brooke has regularly abandoned the same leopard print bra in several boys' cars and would have retrieved it each time? I call bullshit. There had to be at least one of these teenage boys who would have held on to a hot girl's bra. At least one.

THE MOST AMERICAN MOMENT

In this episode, the concept that made my brain say "Oh, that's SO American!" is the idea of the Booster moms. At the end of the basketball game, Shari, Tim Smith's stepmother, comes up to Karen and informs her that she is eligible for the Booster moms club. From what I gathered, the mothers of the basketball players, regulars or reserves, meet up and discuss how they can help and contribute to the team. I have always been aware of the important spot high school and college sports hold in the United States, but the idea of a club of mothers of the players who decide who does what to contribute to the team is taking the involvement a step further. You're not just a kid playing basketball in high school anymore. Now, your mother's involved, and she might have to bake cookies to raise funds for new uniforms or something.

THE MOST 2000s MOMENT

Before I get to my favourite one, I have to mention everyone calling each other on landline phones and owning answering machines. I like the absence of cellphones (or, at least, the idea that they aren't as overwhelmingly present as they are in today's world) in TV shows, but I often tend to forget One Tree Hill premiered in 2003. Back in the day, barely anyone I knew owned a cellphone, let alone people my age or at school. I still called my friends on their landline phones, I had to ask their parents if I could speak to them (oh, the social anxiety of it all!), and it wasn't even as cheap as it is now.

My favourite one, though...As the girls on the Drama Queens podcast would say, it all comes back to hair. Can we talk about Brooke's haircut for a minute? The flipped-out layers she rocks were a staple of early 2000s fashion, and it was such a popular haircut you could probably consider it the decade's equivalent of the Rachel. I remember so many celebrities donning this hairstyle, such as Mandy Moore, the Olsen Twins, or Gabrielle Union. It screams early-to-mid 2000s to me, casual red carpets, lip gloss, and flip phones.

"THERE'S A NEW SCOTT IN TOWN!"

Are You True? picks up where we left off at the end of The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most. We are now at the end of the Ravens game, Lucas has taken his surname out from his jersey, and he scores the winning basket after Nathan misses his throw. You can hear the cheers and enthusiastic screams of the crowd, but, most importantly, you hear the voiceover drowning them out as if you were listening to the game on the radio. The host joyously claims: "There's a new Scott in town!"

After Lucas has given the Ravens a win, there is. Everyone's focus starts to shift away from Nathan and transfers onto Lucas, who discovers popularity. People stop him in the school corridors or in town and compliment him on his playing, encourage him for the next games. Girls become interested in him, mostly cheerleader Brooke Davis, who hides naked in the back of his car. It seems as though Nathan has stopped being the main character in everyone's life. He is still Tim's best friend, he still thinks highly of himself, and his father still heavily cares about his career, but he slowly becomes almost invisible to everyone else. He isn't the one being complimented anymore, he isn't Mr. Popular anymore and, to reclaim his lost title, he decides to go low.

Watching Nathan and his young, impressionable teammates perform such low-level pranks brings back a 90s and early 2000s trope in teen fiction, what I like to call the sitcom bully. Most of the time, they were girls whose popularity was being threatened by other girls, usually quieter, so they resorted to pranking, rumour-spreading, and the like. Think Kate Sanders in Lizzie McGuire, Libby Chessler in Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, or Lana Thomas in The Princess Diaries. In One Tree Hill, the throne being threatened isn't only popularity but a spot on the basketball team, especially after we watch Coach Durham decide Lucas is going to move to shooting guard, Nathan's original position.

The pranks are disguised as initiation tasks, another 90s and 2000s trope in teen fiction, because, obviously, after having your clothes stolen while you were in the shower or being fake-kidnapped and thrown in a swamp away from town, you want nothing more than making friends with your abusers. Here, Nathan is crystal clear about the fact that despite surviving the pranks and taking the high road, Lucas is not going to be accepted on the team, so he should just quit. There is something about the audacity of asking a new, promising player you simply don't like to quit the team, you can tell no one has ever said no to Nathan.

Outside of his typical pranking, which seems to be recurring with him, Nathan asks Tim who is the girl who keeps hanging out with Lucas, meaning Haley, and it's interesting to see how low he is willing to go to keep his spot in the team.

FATHER VS SON.

In this third episode of the show, the conflict intensifies between Nathan and his father, Dan Scott. Despite him thinking so highly of himself, we know nothing about his life apart from the fact that he has fathered both Lucas and Nathan, he owns a car dealership, he is Keith's brother, and he is heavily invested in his son's basketball career. Nathan's athletic successes seem to be the be-all and end-all of his life. Dan Scott is, by all accounts, a textbook "father living vicariously through his child's accomplishments," a common trope in teen fiction, especially the one focusing on children with ambition and high aspirations.

Nathan's discontent is bubbling, especially as Dan repeats how he is only pushing his son because he is doing what's best for him and only wants him to be happy. Those are perfectly valid concerns to have for your offspring, except when they only tie into sports. At various points, you notice Nathan having insecurities, he might want to define himself differently, a lost kid who's only ever been described by his talent at throwing a ball into a basket. Those are always brushed under the carpet, there is no space for them in the Scott household because Dan wants Nathan to have a better life than he did. (Friendly reminder that Dan is a successful business owner who fathered a child and abandoned the mother without suffering any sort of consequences for it, who lives in a mansion, and who is powerful enough to get his son out of grand theft auto and breaking and entering.)

The relationship between father and son is built on something fickle and unstable, only on the surface, something that could vanish in the blink of an eye, and Nathan's status quo is maintained thanks to what could be defined as borderline emotional abuse.

THE ONLY KAREN WE LOVE.

The name Karen has acquired such a terrible reputation over the past few years, becoming the title for the cliché of the middle-class white woman with an awful haircut who wants to speak to the manager and spews Facebook-born lies to get her way. Fortunately, somewhere in our Tree Hill universe, there is one Karen to redeem them all: Lucas' mother. In a show where parents seem to be either absent or abusive, the best motherly figure we have is a single mum, a successful business owner who knows how to stand up for herself. Early on, we find out that Karen raised Lucas by herself after Dan left, all while building her business from the ground up. With every episode, we see more of her headstrong and protective personality, and her run-in with the Booster moms seems to be another turning point in her life. Compared to her forced companions, Karen has a fully-rounded personality. She is a mother, but she is also a business owner and a woman with feelings, fears, regrets, and insecurities. The other ladies in the club are, well...mothers. They seem only to exist through their children's extracurricular activities. Karen's personality is a delight and everything a woman could possibly wish to be. Abandoned while a pregnant teenager, she grew into a force of nature. She stands up for her son in more ways than one. She stood up to Dan in the pilot, and she confronted the other mothers when Lucas while being pranked (bullied?) by the other basketball players. Yes, we are only three episodes in, but I want to argue that Karen is the best damn parent in One Tree Hill.

MORE THAN WE MADE HER OUT TO BE.

In the first two episodes of the show, Haley James was painted one way, and one way only: she is best friends with Lucas. She only gets scenes in which she is either with him or relating to him, and she isn't ever shown to have a personality of her own. She is Haley, best friends with Lucas, full stop. (She might be slightly obsessed with Dawson's Creek as she places two references to the show in conversation in the space of two episodes, but that's beside the point.) It took about eighty minutes of the programme, but we got to where we wanted to go: we know more about Haley James. First of all, she works at the tutoring centre of Tree Hill High and, according to Brandon, the student she runs into at the Burning Boat Festival, she is brilliant at what she does. We also hear the first pieces of information about her family, when Karen explains to Keith that she has a large number of siblings and took to hanging out with her and Lucas because they "need her more." Finally, through the deal she struck with Nathan about their tutoring and how she originally confronted him, we discovered that she is brave, strong, fearless, and she doesn't take shit from anyone.

THE DEATH OF A CLICHE.

In episode two, we were introduced to Brooke Davis. Evidently close friends with Peyton, she is also a cheerleader and seemingly the cliché of the sex-obsessed girl who doesn't seem to believe she amounts to anything if she isn't pretty and valued by a man. In episode three, the scales tip both ways when it comes to Brooke's personality.

On one hand, she is perceived as obsessed with sex and boys. She hides naked in the backseat of Lucas' car after the Ravens game, and Peyton calls her leopard print bra a "welcome mat." When she plays a game in class with Lucas, she asks him about his favourite sexual position and, when he doesn't have an answer for her, she decides to use hers instead. This is the point where we have to address the over-sexualisation of young women in One Tree Hill and in teenage shows in general. I could understand it in Peyton's case, as she is clutching at straws to save her relationship with Nathan, and sex is as good an idea as any for her, but Brooke's situation is completely different.

I am not about to imply sixteen-year-olds do not have sex, and, yeah, I wasn't cool or popular in high school, granted, but no one I knew at that age would have done anything vaguely similar to what Brooke is showed doing in One Tree Hill. Yes, teenagers have sex and concerns about sexuality, they talk about it, they experience it. No, teenagers are not getting naked in multiple backseats, regularly abandoning their bras in other people's cars, or talking about their favourite sexual positions in class. In the Drama Queens podcast, the actresses explained that production decided to "turn the sexy up" after watching The O.C, so it would explain what they made out of Brooke's character in those early episodes.

On the other hand, they seem to be smashing every cliché of the popular, pretty cheerleader into smithereens. Yes, Brooke is comfortable with her sexuality, and she seems to use sex to get what she wants, but not only. The question she asks Lucas after the game is the first insight we are given about the complexity of her brain and character. "When that last shot went through, did you feel it change? (...) Everything. How many moments in life can you point to say and say: That's when it all changed." Bear in mind this was said by a girl who had just snuck into a boy's car naked to get his attention.

It seems to me Brooke is at a crossroads. Is she going to stick to being the overly sexual girl, the girl she knows how to be? Or is she going to become something else, something more, a girl capable to be insightful, clever, and inspiring? One of the last lines she says in the episode, responding "I know, but you're the only guy to ever say it" when Lucas tells her she doesn't have to behave like this, might be the start of the answer.

(Disclaimer: I am aware a lot of the over-sexualisation in One Tree Hill ties up to the allegations against Mark Schwahn, the producer, but it is not my place to assume so much about things I don't know more about than what is public.)

FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.

After the math exercise scene at seven in the morning and the present in the form of a Cracker Jack bracelet, it is exciting to watch what will become of Nathan and Haley. Are they going to find a dynamic? Will their tutoring sessions remain a secret? Will Nathan hold his end of the bargain?