“Now I go back to prison.” – Dan Scott
I have a confession to make: I’m a latecomer to One Tree Hill. It’s entirely my own fault. Way back in 2003 (that’s almost the ’90s, you guys!) when One Tree Hill premiered, I was a surly, chubby, teenager who alternated between dating no one and dating delinquents. Since One Tree Hill was marketed as a show about pretty teenagers boning each other, I made a point of paying zero attention to it.
I’m not going to say that my aversion to the show was a mistake because I remember what kind of teen I was and I wasn’t the demographic the WB was looking for and finding the kindness in my heart to sit through the pilot when I was an angry teenager wouldn’t have changed my mind at all. Lucky for the CW, I’m a way cooler grown-up who has come to appreciate the talent of being photogenic. I’m also a sucker for hype, and the hype that a series gets in its final season is irresistible. I sat through the death throes of Smallville just to say that I was there, like some kind of jaded television survivor out to earn my street cred.
Unlike Smallville, however, I’ve come to genuinely like One Tree Hill. I recently came into a lot of free time and took the opportunity to mainline the series on Netflix and certainly, the early seasons have the nostalgia factor going for them where I get irrationally happy about the fact that the soundtrack plays like the mix that was undoubtedly shoved in my first car’s tape deck when I was sixteen (‘91 Cavalier, oooh vintage, complete with leaky sunroof and hole in the radiator).
Regardless of the original appeal, I’ve come to care about the characters. Awwwww. I was even worried that Nathan Scott might really be under that sheet in the morgue, despite the fact that that jaded television survivor inside me knew better. It was an intense promo, okay? The voiceover for that whole scene was cheesy and awkward though. Sorry.
So Nathan Scott isn’t dead. Huzzah. This marginally makes up for the complete under use of Chad Michael Murray last week. Marginally.
One of the issues that plagues those of us who end up watching series backwards, however, is that our introductions to characters are often conducted in wildly different circumstances than the introductions that original viewers received. For me, nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of Dan Scott, the reviled douchebag daddy of Nathan and Lucas.
I…I like Dan. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t supposed to like Dan until I went back to the beginning and realized that he’s a perpetual jerk throughout most of the series, reaching heights of absolute villainy when he shoots his brother in season 3. With that said, I absolutely adore the direction that the current storyline is taking, with Dan being the one great hope for Nathan’s safe return. I get Haley’s apprehension, but I’m crossing all appendages in hopes that she’s wrong. Who doesn’t love a good redemption story?
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.