One Tree Hill --- The Premiere Season of the hit show (A 1st season success)

Once Dawson's Creek ended, and with no teen dramas really staking a claim on the teen television audience, One Tree Hill premiered on the WB Network. It seemed at first like the audience was being spoon-fed something that was thrown together, because the first episode seemed a little rough in presentation. It did present exactly what it promised though, a teen high-school show, with a lot of drama and angst, along with a number of interesting characters. The twist to One Tree Hill, was that it used basketball as a heavy sub-plot, with all of the characters having some direct or indirect affiliation with the Tree Hill basketball team. Tree Hill is of course the name of the town, and the name of the high school, and easy enough to remember, because it is hammered home in those first few episodes. Though it admittedly had that really rough start, it did get better.

The central character of One Tree Hill in the first season was Lucas Scott. Lucas (played by Chad Michael Murray) is intended to be the "heart-throb" of the show, and is the brooding source of a lot of drama that comes about in the first season. The twist for audiences, is that Lucas as a half-brother that has been raised in the same town all their lives, but whom has received all of the benefits that Lucas hasn't. His half-brother is the other attractive guy in town (of course) who has been living the good life as captain of the high school basketball and spending his free time dating a cheerleader. Lucas has been living with his mother, while brother Nathan (James Lafferty) has been living with their father Dan and the woman that he married and had Nathan with. This sets the stage for a lot of drama, and puts Lucas at odds with the man that left his mother, and the brother he has never come to know.

Beyond the two guys at the center of most storylines, there are of course other supporting characters that make their mark in most episodes of the first season. There is Peyton (played by Hilarie Burton) the blonde cheerleader who is dating Nathan and who is often an off-putting presence on campus. Then there is Haley (Bethany Joy Lenz) who helps out Lucas's mother at her family cafe, and has been a great friend to him through the years. Finally, you have Brooke (Sophia Bush) who is another popular cheerleader who often is at the center of any drama that develops on the show. The 5 main characters always have stories that interlock involving friendships, romances, drama at high school, and of course basketball. Playing smaller, but no less important parts, are Paul Johansson as Dan, Moria Kelly as Karen (the mom), and Barry Corbin as the basketball coach.

Now this is definitely a show about teen angst, and a lot of the troubles that they go through and the cliques that they are a doomed to form. The characters start out falling into a lot of their written stereotypes, and the first few episodes of season 1 does suffer as a result. But, as the writing improved, and as the characters started getting flushed out, the episodes started getting a lot better, and the storylines became more dramatic. I became really hooked after watching a few episodes, and it is honestly one of my guilty pleasures that I have watched for the last couple of years. Sure some of the plot is paper-thin at times, and you may be able to predict where some of the characters are heading, but there are still a ton of surprises in store to people who get engrossed with the show. The 22 episodes set the stage for the future of the show, and makes Season 1 of this angst filled teen show great for any fans of the genre.