Reviewing Movies

One Tree Hill is a town where the people surrounding Lucas Scott; either on purpose or by misguided intent seem powerless to stop themselves from causing evil things to happen to one another. In the middle of this high-school soap opera Luc evinces near saint-like qualities. In the main the seventeen-year-olds in this series display a great deal more maturity and centeredness than the adults who are their nominal guardians.

Lucas Scott was raised by his unwed Mother and his Uncle Keith who last season was murdered by Luc’s biological father Dan who is father to Luc’s half-brother Nathan who has emancipated himself from his father and his drug-dependent alcoholic mother and is married to Luc’s best friend Haley. This improbable maze is set among the players of the town’s high school basketball team and their cheerleaders, their coach, their teachers, and their parents.

The force holding all this together is series creator, writer and producer Mark Schwahn. He has created an ensemble cast of characters who draw the audience into their lives and make you care about them as if they were family members. As implausible as it is that any single close-knit group of people could find themselves week after week involved in so much high drama using classic cliff-hanger plot lines the writer keeps one wanting to come back for more.

Using the device of Luc’s diary the writer provides an ongoing background commentary on the events and experiences that surround his characters. Luc’s “girlfriend” Peyton, on the other hand, keeps an online Video Blog. The series is current with all the latest teen-aged fads and their music provides the background for their lives with many popular bands appearing on the show in person. The whole is so seamlessly knit together that I found myself watching all 880 minutes of Season 4 over the New Year’s Holiday in less than four days as with a book one finds oneself incapable of putting down.