A complete rewatch: One Tree Hill

To Wish Impossible Things is the eighteenth episode of the first series of One Tree Hill. The Ravens are auctioned for charity, and the highest bidder gets a five-hour date with the boy she has chosen. Haley decides to reconnect with Lucas and forces Peyton to bid on Nathan. Nicki ends up paying for Jake and trying to make her way back into his life. Due to a mix-up, Brooke buys Mouth, and their night together proves very enlightening. Finally, outside of the auction, Larry and Karen go on a dinner date.

BEHIND THE TITLE.

This episode is entitled To Wish Impossible Things after a song by new-wave classics The Cure, from their album Wish, released in 1992. The lyrics are very nostalgic and focus on past times that are gone. ("Remember how it used to be / When the stars would fill the sky") Seeing as this episode focus on rekindling old relationships and focusing on the past, seeing how it ties up to the present, the lyrics are very well paired with the plot. Everyone in this episode wishes on impossible things, for the past to come back to the way it was, for a second chance, for a better life.

GENERAL OPINION.

Though the premise looks a bit strange from the outside (auctioning teenage boys for dates and making the midnight kiss a rule?!), To Wish Impossible Things remain an episode I love. All the moments that could have slid into unsafe territory, or too sexual territory, were perfectly balanced out to focus on the feelings and on the here and now as opposed to the past. It's a fun episode, focusing on one night, which I love, and it's also a great moment for conversations and taking stock of what happened in one's life. The balance of both is so well executed.

SOUNDTRACK

- Big Brat by Phantom Planet

- Push It Up by Cham Pain (also heard in episode 1x08)

- You Can Leave Your Hat On by Tom Jones.

- Fo Sho by Master Source

- Ladies Night by Kool & The Gang

- Nothing Can Change It by David Grahame

- Without You by Tyrone Wells

- You Bring Me by Pop

- Note To Self: Don't Die by Ryan Adams

- It's Over Now by Ricky Fanté

- Call Me Crazy by Marla Sokoloff

- Been Around The World by Extreme Music (was also heard in 1x14)

- Just Be Simple by Songs:ohia.

The big name in this list for me is Phantom Planet, who are mostly known for their song California, the opening credits to The O.C, One Tree Hill's rival show at the time. (Also, I had no idea Tom Jones had ever performed You Can Leave Your Hat On.)

THE BEST BITS: THE SETTINGS.

Sometimes, I simply love praising the show for things that are not the plot, and in this one, I want to talk about how aesthetically beautiful this episode is. Some of the sets absolutely own my heart and have definitely contributed to my life-long love story with the idea of small-town America I build from fiction. The first one is the mini-golf Haley and Lucas have built at the top of Karen's Café. It's illuminated with fairy lights and old-school neon lights, and who wouldn't want to hang out on a rooftop with such a cool background? I simply adore it. I also love the swimming pool in Nathan's building, and, no spoilers, but I wish it had remained a part of the show in the future. I love the lights coming in from the pool while everything else is in the dark- it's so beautifully done. The idea of sneaking into a stadium at night, à la Larry Sawyer and Karen Roe, is everything, as is the late-night supermarket parking lot situation Jake and Nicki are in.

QUOTES

- I enjoy corrupting America's youth. It's kinda one of my hobbies.

There are so many things to be spoken about when it comes to Brooke Davis' relationship to sex and what she is allowed to do at the tender age of seventeen, but I do love this line a lot.

- The Internet sucks.

There is such a strange innocence in Mouth admitting he's never seen a girl naked anywhere else than on the Internet, something absolutely normal about it. For all the ways I adore One Tree Hill, it contributed to a culture where teenagers were all expected to be sexually active and comfortable in high school, and I love the moments when we are reminded that it's not necessarily the norm for everyone.

- You're not a mess. You're just in love.

Haley discovering what it's like to be in love for the first time and seeing her life as she knows it slip away is such a vulnerable moment. Lucas says a number of questionable things in this show, but this line remains one of his loveliest.

- Every day you wait is another day you'll never get back.

Whitey acts as a father figure for everyone in this town, never mind their age, and his words of encouragement to Keith, so he will find the courage to confess his feelings to Karen, can strike a chord with everyone.

THE LITTLE THINGS.

So. I know we have spoken about fake IDs and how you risk virtually nothing by using them in the United States before, but...how have these children been to clubs before? How have they been allowed to get tattoos? In the case of Brooke, we are aware she doesn't have much parental supervision (she even told Karen, a few episodes ago, that she could set herself on fire, and her parents wouldn't notice), but...What about the others? Haley's family seems to be around, how did she manage to get a visible tattoo of her boyfriend's basketball jersey number?

Speaking of Haley's tattoo, she claims she got it a few days before, but it's never protected and isn't made to look fresh in any way.

While Haley and Lucas are hanging out in Karen's Café, you can spot a Plain White T's poster in the background. (The music in this show truly is superior.)

I discovered the phrase "What in the Sam Hill's going on here?" when Whitey shouts it at Karen and Larry. I had to look it up to figure out who that Sam Hill was- either a reference to the devil or to various American people, from store owners to politicians, who lived in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The tour t-shirt Karen and Larry find in the time capsule is from a Bon Jovi and Scorpions tour in the summer of 1984, during which Bon Jovi supported Scorpions. Logistically, the show they would have attended took place at the Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, North Carolina, on the 8th of July, 1984.

In the episode where Nicki met Lucas in the bar, we discovered she was older, as she admits when she says "I like them young." In To Wish Impossible Things, she tells Jake she has dropped out of school but is thinking of transferring. Where? To Tree Hill High? She also mentions her friends going to college as one of the reasons why she abandoned her boyfriend and daughter. How old exactly is she? The timeline is a little muddy here.

THE MOST AMERICAN MOMENT.

If the idea of auctioning the boys of the high school basketball team could not be seen on my side of the world, I could also briefly mention all the things that are open in the middle of the night. During their date, we see Jake and Nicki head to a fast-food, which is pretty common at this time, and then, they go to a local supermarket. Where I live, you'd have a hard time finding a shop open past ten in the evening, and chances are, they wouldn't even let you in after half nine. In the UK, where I have also lived, they do have twenty-four-hour supermarkets, but we're clearly not like that in rural France.

THE MOST 00s MOMENT

So, let's talk about Tim, who we briefly see in the episode, when he dances on stage, and then, misunderstands Deb when she says she "plans on getting dirty." Something hit me while he was dancing: Tim Smith is the epitome of the American Pie vibe of the early 00s. Back in the day, the coming of age comedy about a bunch of teenagers losing their virginity and experiencing all things sexual was nothing short of a smash it, and most other fictional programmes had a character or a plot point that could have easily fit in the franchise. Tim Smith is One Tree Hill's answer to it. There are his obvious dance moves, and the way he thinks everything Deb says is sexual. The early 00s was also the golden age of the MILF, and in this episode, Deb is very much Tree Hill's answer to Janine Stifler (played by the iconic Jennifer Coolidge).

All throughout the episode, Brooke is sporting frosted blue eyeshadow, a staple of every cool girl of the era. It was the first item of make-up I ever owned, and chances are, I applied it just like everyone else, with a tiny, double-ended foam brush. Brooke's looks a lot cooler, and that's a make-up look I could see myself copying in the future.

There is something so deliciously early century when Haley tells Lucas she'll be right back because she forgot CDs she had for Nathan. Ah, the early 00s. Listening to music on CDs. Lending them to people and being terrified they wouldn't give them back, because those babies were expensive. (I have an extremely vivid memory of me lending a CD single to someone from my class in primary school and my mother dragging me to his flat to get it back because he had not planned on doing so himself.) Taking your CDs to school discos and house parties. Listening to them in the car and having piles of them in the glove compartment. Those annoying plastic CD towers. The good old times.

THE FIVE DATES.

All five dates in the episode showcase interesting moments, expand the plot, and reveal more about our characters.

Haley bids all her café savings, a whooping a hundred and fifteen dollars, to spend an evening with Lucas, and they head to the rooftop of Karen's Café, which they have turned into a mini-golf course, complete with super cool fairy lights and neon signs. They have a water balloon fight, just like they used to, and the fight stops when Lucas discovers Haley has got a tattoo of Nathan's jersey number, because she's in love with him and, if in twenty years' time, she can look at the tattoo and remember how she felt in that moment, she'll be okay with that. I loved, for once, seeing Haley and Lucas interact in ways they used to, before the Ravens and popularity got in the way, before rivalries happened, but I am always ticked off by how Lucas immediately assumes the worst. Haley gets a tattoo? She has to have been "branded" by Nathan. Lucas sees Nathan kiss Peyton, as part of the auction and date package? He has to be cheating. As Haley says, he "holds her to a higher standard than most people, and that's not fair." Plain and simple.

At the end of all the bids, the ladies who did not get a date start offering money for Mouth, and Brooke wins it, throwing two hundred dollars in. At first, she doesn't want to go on the date, as Mouth is not who she had planned on hanging out with, but she changes her mind when she sees how genuinely excited he is. They go to a strip club and get a lapdance and, in the limo, he asks about dating and what girls want, because he thinks he cannot get a girlfriend because "girls like jerks." Afterwards, they head to a bar and, while they are dancing, some guy checks out Brooke. They immediately kiss, and he recognises her from another night where they have already made out, but she has entirely forgotten about it, which upsets her greatly. That's where the shift happens. Mouth could have stayed behind, as he was having fun. However, he immediately goes after her, follows when she says she wants to leave, and he overall acts like a wonderful friend to her. Brooke's vulnerability and openness in the car afterwards are touching and a real shift in the way her character is presented. She has been petty, vindictive, sexual, angry, bitter, but she has never been upset, sad, and vulnerable, to a point where she says: "Girls just want somebody to want them back." It truly summarises how she has felt and still feels about Lucas. She wanted him, he didn't, and that really, really hurt her.

Nicki outbids Peyton for Jake, and he reluctantly goes into it, undoubtedly driven by the fact that these are the rules, and the auction was for charity. From the get-go, we see how utterly manipulative Nicki is. She tells Jake why she left- she was not ready to be a mother, she was seeing all her friends have fun and go to college, and she didn't want to give it all up. She claims she still wants to be in Jake's and Jenny's life. When that doesn't work and he is still angry at her for leaving, she makes a move on him, and they kiss until she says: "we can be a family." What a delusional statement. Surely, she cannot think she's going to get her way after she abandoned her younger ex-boyfriend with a newborn baby, only because she "wasn't ready?" Jake tests her by asking her to buy things Jenny could need. She obviously gets it all wrong, but we see her delusion again when she buys the pint of ice cream. A part of it is sweet- she remembers one thing he particularly likes, and something precise he said. And at the same time, her saying "You said the only thing you'd need to be happy was a pint of this ice cream, and I want you to be happy." I guess that would have changed after she took off? At the end of the episode, she comes to his house to beg for his forgiveness, and when he refuses, you see the change on her face. If begging and feelings won't work, then she'll fight. It's also the first time we see a different layer of Jake's personality. Up until now, he was that sweet guy with a baby daughter, who played the guitar for her and was a good friend to Peyton and Lucas. Now, we see a young man who's so fiercely defending his daughter against everything. He's not about to get tricked by Nicki again, he is not in love anymore, he sets his boundaries, and he is always going to put his daughter first. Jake is one example of excellent writing in this show. (And that has to be one of the reasons why everyone had a bit of a crush on him, back in the day.)

From the moment when they leave for their date, we see there is still a friendship between Nathan and Peyton and, considering the way they left things when they broke up, it makes us realise they were never meant to be a couple, but they would work great as friends. At first, there is something innocent in the way they get in a water fight in the swimming pool (and the parallel with Haley and Lucas having a water balloon fight at the same time was stunningly done.) They are talking and, at one point, he says "it's just sex, right?" Immediately, Peyton stands up for Haley and protects her above everything else. Before they part ways, he admits he still has feelings for her, as one often does for their first love, but he doesn't want to act on them because he wants to be good for Haley. I absolutely love their budding friendship, and particularly the way they put Haley's feelings and the positive influence she has on Nathan's life above everything else, above their old flame, above sex.

Outside of the auction, Larry turns up at Karen's Café to ask her for dinner at its place. He initially sells it as "just dinner with a friend," but calls it a date when she says yes. From the moment he tells her she can just sit back and relax at the end of the meal, you can see it is one of the very rare opportunities for Karen to exist solely for herself. She is invited to someone's house, and she will be a guest. The feeling intensifies when, after looking at Peyton's artwork, they head to the stadium where Karen and her high school friends buried a time capsule. It's so good, just plain good, to see Karen being rewarded with one fun night. From the start of the show, she has been portrayed as a hard worker, a single mom who built herself from the ground up and raised a son by herself. She felt guilty for going abroad on a cooking course, and, technically, it wasn't even for fun- it was to learn something and expand her skills. Finally, after all this time, she deserves to feel like a high school girl again, do something fun, drink wine at the football stadium and get caught by the coach.

FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.

The episode ends with two quite big announcements: Keith proposes to Karen, and Brooke tells Lucas she thinks she might be pregnant. We also have to address one tiny moment, just before Nathan and Peyton head on their date. Nathan says something about getting it over with, and Peyton jokingly says: "Funny, that's what he used to say before we had sex." There is a look on Haley's face at that moment, a mixture of embarrassment and confusion, because she and Nathan aren't having sex. Is this going to worry her some more in the future?