A Complete Rewatch: One Tree Hill

The Desperate Kingdom Of Love is the first episode of the second series of One Tree Hill. How I love a season premiere! We pick up right where we left off at the end of the previous episode. We left Dan lying on the kitchen floor after a heart attack, and now, we're witnessing the aftermath. Nathan and Haley conciliate their newborn marriage with a family tragedy. Deb struggles with guilt while Lucas and Keith reconsider their move to Charleston. On the sidelines, Brooke and Peyton are taking a trip out to see to carry on mending their still fragile friendship.

BEHIND THE TITLE.

This episode is entitled The Desperate Kingdom Of Love after a song by English singer PJ Harvey. The track featured on her 2004 record Uh Huh Her. The lyrics seem to show love as something dark and tough to navigate and understand ("Selling your reason will not bring you through / The desperate kingdom of love") and something to avoid altogether ("I learn from you how to hide / From the desperate kingdom of love.") By the end of the song, the narrator becomes more hopeful and less cynical, and jumps in, headfirst ("I'll follow you, into Heaven or Hell / And I'll become as a girl / In the desperate kingdom of love.") All three perspectives relate to what we have on our screen in this episode. Deb being at Dan's bedside the whole time while she is navigating her own guilt and feelings matches with love being something complicated to understand. Brooke and Peyton's promise to focus on themselves line up with love being something to avoid altogether. Finally, Haley and Nathan jump into the next step of their relationship, and one can argue that "I'll follow you into Heaven or Hell" matches quite well wedding vows.

GENERAL OPINION.

I adore season premieres, whatever the show. There is a back-to-school feeling to them, a romanticised version of it, complete with brand new, shiny outfits, and clean-smelling stationery. The Desperate Kingdom Of Love, though tackling serious issues and largely taking place in a hospital, excels in bringing the feeling to life. It sets the tone for the season to come and ties up any loose strings we still had. What seems to be on the cards? Brooke and Peyton decide to focus on themselves instead of boy-related drama and put their friendship at the centre of everything. Haley and Nathan start learning to navigate being a married couple and high-school kids all at once, as shows the scene where Haley cries over CDs. (And Haley's parents are fantastic comic relief, too.) Deb deals with guilt. It's a fantastic start to the season.

SOUNDTRACK

- See Me by Robert Giles

- Empty Apartment by Yellowcard

- Take Your Mama by Scissor Sisters

- She Will Be Loved by Maroon 5

- Silence by Gomez

- Just As Well by Emily Sparks

- Lie In The Sound by Trespassers William

It is the second time in the show that the song She Will Be Loved by Maroon 5 is featured. The first one was during the party at Dan and Deb's house in honour of the basketball sponsors, back on episode seven. It was the soundtrack to Lucas and Peyton making out in a guest bedroom.

Empty Apartment by Yellowcard is one of my all-time favourite songs, and it always does something to my heartstrings to hear it in the show, especially as we watch Peyton paint the lyrics on her wall.

QUOTES

Let's start with Whitey's speech to Karen when she visits him at the hospital and confesses she has been thinking of taking classes at the university, now that Lucas is gone. "Stop thinking about it, damn it, and do it. You know what I'd do if I was your age? Everything. And then by golly, I'd turn around and do it again. I wouldn't give a rat's ass who disapproved or what I looked like doing it. Karen. Take it from me. When you're my age, you don't want to be here, tangled up in that road you never traveled. Make some time. Take a few chances." Whitey's dialogue has always been full of wisdom, and I love his deliciously Southern ode to enjoying one's youth and taking chances.

Haley's wedding vows act as a voiceover at the end of the episode: "I, Haley, take you, Nathan, to have and to hold in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or worse. I promise that I will love and cherish you and will deny all those that would come between us. I make this promise for eternity, a promise that I will keep forever until the end of time. 'Til death do us part." Interspersed with the other characters' reflecting moments, it makes for a stellar scene.

THE BEST BITS: NEW SEASON CHANGES!

As I mentioned earlier, I adore season premieres on television, whatever the show. You should see me during the premiere of any RuPaul's Drag Race season. I usually stitch while I watch shows and films, but believe me, I always leave what I'm doing on the side to give my full attention to the queens' entrance into the werkroom.

Back in Tree Hill, the changes are not so dramatic- yet. I know some people believe opening credits, complete with an iconic song (here, Gavin DeGraw's I Don't Wanna Be) are a thing of the past, but I wish they would become a thing of the present again. I love nothing more than discovering tidbits of the season to come alongside the characters and the cast. Opening credits are fantastic to set the tone and tell the audience where things are going.

In season two of One Tree Hill, the cast remains the same, and it feels like light-heartedness is injected into those opening credits, especially for Brooke and Peyton. Both are shown smiling and having fun at a party. (The same event is also shown at the end of the video, with everyone spraying streamer strings on Nathan and Haley.)

Allow me to reuse the phrase, but season premieres always feel like going back to school and seeing how everyone has changed over the summer. Continuity was obviously needed between seasons one and two as the plot picks up right where it left off. No one's physical appearance has been dramatically altered, saved for Lucas' hair- he's now sporting a buzzcut, which has been integrated into the plot.

THE LITTLE THINGS.

The scene where Haley and Nathan wake up together showcase a classic trope in television and film: characters in bed after they have had sex. The sheets are always shown to cover the woman's body up to her neck while they are magically down to the man's waist, undoubtedly to show off his abs and six-pack.

When Lucas shows off his new buzzcut to Keith, the latter replies "Whatever you say, Felicity" to the explanation. This is a reference to the TV show Felicity, which rose to fame during the late 90s. At the start of the second series, the actress behind Felicity, Keri Russell, infamously cut her hair into a pixie cut, which had such a pop culture impact that many shows of the time referenced it in their dialogue. Keri Russell has explained the move in a 2018 interview: "It's such a typical college-girl story. The guy breaks up with her and then she goes and cuts her hair and it's really bad." (Though I knew the haircut had been deemed responsible for the audience rates dropping, I wasn't aware Keri Russell had received death threats over it.)

The lyrics Peyton is painting on her wall are, as mentioned, from the song Empty Apartment by Yellowcard, which features on their 2003 album, the classic Ocean Avenue. The words read: "How's your life? What's it like there? Is it all that you want it to be? Does it hurt when you think about me?" She is also shown pinning up a drawing of Jake and Jenny before they leave on her father's boat, at the end of season one.

Mr Davis' boat is named Liquid Assets. I'm not well-versed in legal jargon, I am no Elle Woods, so I had to research what liquid assets actually meant because I would have got it wrong otherwise. Though the pun on cash and water being a liquid is super cleverly thought, a boat is actually not a liquid asset, as its value may rise or fall.

At the end of the episode, Haley and Nathan are shown tying the knot on the beach in the daylight, accompanied by Jimmy and Lydia, Haley's parents. However, at the end of season one, they leave Tree Hill High to get married at the end of the basketball game, at night. The next morning, Haley even tells Lucas they "got married last night."

The actor portraying Haley's father is none other than Huey Lewis, mostly famous for being the frontman of the band Huey Lewis and the News, whose song The Power Of Love is a brilliant 80s hit present on the soundtrack of one of my favourite films, Back To The Future. Though he's got a varied career, I love that two of the main pieces of filmed fiction he appears on happen to be dear to my heart. (He's got an uncredited cameo as a band audition judge in Back To The Future.)

The show has been somewhat liberal with diseases and hospitals during the first season, as we saw when a doctor claimed Lucas would need surgery before he even took the time to take a look at him, in the car accident episode. However, Dan's disease, HCM, is real and described properly by the dialogue. It causes the heart muscle to become abnormally thick and makes it harder for it to pump blood, which can lead to cardiac arrest.

Haley's father is called Jimmy James. Jimmy usually being short for James... Is his full name James James?

THE MOST US MOMENT

Before they embark on Brooke's father's boat, Peyton is unsure, and one of Brooke's arguments to convince her is: "We're practically a beer commercial." As someone who did not grow up in the United States and, as such, was not exposed to alcohol commercials of any kind. In France, since the Evin Law, passed in 1989, adverts relating to alcohol have been restricted. They are not prohibited, but they are limited and cannot promote the consumption of alcohol of any kind. I have only just thought about it recently and realised that, outside of segments about foreign ads, I have simply never seen an alcohol-related commercial on television.

So, hearing the line pushed me to research where the joke came from, out of curiosity and education. Big brands that are famous in the United States, such as Budweiser, tended to use women wearing little clothing and showing off their physique to advertise their product, as beer was often seen as a product dedicated to the traditional image we have of men, gruff, manly, and into sports. There is a 1999 Budweiser advert that features three women in branded bathing suits lying on the deck of a boat, which I suppose is the image the One Tree Hill writers had in mind when penning the line: "We're practically a beer commercial."

Another extremely American scene to me is when we see Deb praying for Dan's recovery in the hospital chapel. They are quite common in the United States, as a quick Google search will tell you. (They also always remind me of Fall Out Boy's song Hum Hallelujah, which has a line that reads: "I love you in the same way there's a chapel in a hospital." While I used to read it as something natural and that's everywhere, I understand now that the following line, "One foot in your bedroom / And one foot out the door" is important for the understanding of the song and the verse, but that's beside the subject. Let's just sum it up by saying Pete Wentz is one hell of a songwriter.) I do believe they exist in French hospitals, but not in the same way as you will see in shows, especially not as full-blown churches complete with pews like on One Tree Hill. I would imagine they would be more akin to separate rooms where silence would be mandatory and people could pray if they wished to.

THE MOST 00s MOMENT

The second season of One Tree Hill is still firmly planted in the early 00s and premiered in the fall of 2004. Brooke's and Peyton's outfits on the boat outing are something I could have easily worn in the summer when I was fourteen or fifteen. The tank tops and the denim mini- everything teenage me loved! (Grown-up me does too, come to think of it.) However, the most striking early-noughties item of clothing has to be Karen's lime green top, ruched around the cleavage, paired with a white tank underneath. No shirt has screamed "mum of the early 00s in the summer" louder than this combination.

I think we also need to talk about Nathan's cellphone. 2004 would have been the time when phones started being horizontal and including keyboards, not dissimilar to the ones on traditional computers. Nathan's one seems to be an old Nokia, which I remember being the cool kids' phone brand at the time. (I had one of those phones, but much later, when I was at university. Mine was a red LG, and I thought I was so cool, like I was channelling my inner Veronica Mars, who famously had a Sidekick, among other cool gadgets.)

I never want to be a spoilsport when it comes to romantic relationships on any show, especially not One Tree Hill, which is my absolute favourite. I do love Nathan and Haley together, and we will have plenty of time to discuss how they blossom into a fantastically strong pair. However, I am not a huge fan of the idea of them getting hitched in high school, for two reasons we see in this episode.

The first reason lies in the proposal. Both are in Nathan's bed, making out, and Nathan interrupts the moment to tell Haley he wants to marry her. While the scene is incredibly lovely, and I am a sucker for love-related anything in the rain, just like any girl who's been raised on rom-coms and teen soaps, adult me hears Nathan's sentences differently now. He declares Haley is the only family he has which, in his mind, seems enough to warrant getting married (ie, a serious, possibly life-long engagement) while he is seventeen and still in high school. He then justifies his proposal by saying: "What I'm feeling is definitely not normal." He is a seventeen-year-old boy in love for the first time, which seems like a pretty normal state of affairs to me. What Nathan truly is is a lost kid who has just become emancipated from his broken parents and has lost contact with both of them for the most part. His relationship with his father is full of conflict, especially where we left it off, at the end of the playoff game the Ravens lost. Nathan also seems to still hold a grudge against his mother for wanting to leave when he was younger and she knew the pressure Dan put him under. Since then, while he has developed a strong bond with his half-brother Lucas, he has also focused all his affection, time, and love on Haley. He does have a family outside of her. He could be looking to Keith or Karen for support, or to expand his friendship circle. Instead, he focuses entirely on Haley, which she reciprocates. She seems to have a tendency to care deeply about other people and has mentioned stepping up to help her family. She is said to have started spending a lot of time with Lucas and Karen because they "needed her more" than her own family. Of course, it feels natural to her to offer money to her boyfriend or run his shower in the morning. Their relationship is very adult and mature for two seventeen-year-olds in high school, and jumping from dating and debating sex to married life is what's "not normal." I imagine the writers wanted to convey Haley and Nathan not being a conventional teenage couple, but this has been taken a notch too far, too soon.

The second issue I have lies with Haley's parents. Jimmy and Lydia James are shown as a laid-back pair. They do not seem to mind a teenage boy climbing into their daughter's bedroom to the window and, when Haley asks to talk to them, they both joke about her being pregnant. When Nathan and Haley drop the bomb about wanting to get married, Lydia almost instantly offers to discuss it if that's what Haley "really wants," and her reasoning behind accepting the union is her own experience. Her parents did not want her to marry Jimmy because they were too young, and she ended up resenting them and loving them less for not seeing in Jimmy what she did. She doesn't want her daughter to grow up resenting her for similar reasons. Jimmy is initially shown as more traditional and responsible and believes Nathan and Haley should wait until after college to tie the knot, but he is easily swayed by his wife's arguments. What kind of parents would be fine with their seventeen-year-old daughter getting married and moving out of the house to fend for herself before she has even finished high school? While we can commend Lydia for not wanting to reproduce her parents' mistakes and breaking the patterns, was this really the way to go? Don't parents want to give their children the privilege of remaining carefree children as long as possible? Surely, as parents of a large family, they know how hard it is to keep a marriage afloat and build a life together. Is it something they want their teenage daughter to learn while she's in high school, a time when she should be focusing on being young and, I don't know, getting into college?

FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.

Lucas and Keith are coming back to Tree Hill after less than forty-eight hours in the end, and Dan has woken up to see his brother hug his wife, after he has caught them in a tryst in front of the fireplace- what's going to happen in this unlikely love triangle? And how is Dan's recovery going to go?