One Tree Hill: The Slippery Slope Continues 5

Posted by: haro1d

So the drama continues … and continues … and continues …

The other night’s episode of “OTH” had “it was only a dream” sequences galore — clips which the series loves to use as teasers for upcoming episodes. It also was what my wife refers to as a filler episode. The escalating tension between Lucas and Peyton broke into a shouting match. Quentin started reading Victor Hugo in order to stay on the basketball team. Mouth still can’t get out from under his boss (in more ways than one) and little Jimmy is having nightmares about his monster granddad in prison.

But the biggest deal on this week’s show is — you knew it was coming — nanny’s attempted seduction of Nathan, culminating in her swimming nude in the pool  in his sight. And naturally, the just-recommitted family man just sits there, looking helpless.

If there’s a gripe I have about TV dramas — way more than just OTH, here — it’s that this has to be the most overused plot device in history. True, it’s a classic way to introduce tension (i.e., conflict, the essence of any story) into the proceedings and to stir the maelstrom, but really — the NANNY? Could that have been any more predictable?

I’d like to say that I’m torn between wanting the show’s creators to do better and wanting it to stay as it is, but the truth of the matter is that I’m always secretly hoping it will just get cheesier. It often succeeds. Loads of loose ends have never been explained (and I hope they’re left that way), plot lines have been rehashed time and again, and no one ever really seems to learn from his or her mistakes. Will Nathan do the sensible thing for his marriage and family and fire the frisky nanny? Eventually, maybe, but surely not before he allows the situation to nearly destroy their whole world.

Really, though, when you boil all of this down, it’s just the way soap operas tend to work. Which is sort of a shame, really — if the show had the cojones of REAL opera, we’d be seeing way more go on in Tree Hill. Incest would be the everyday; there would be duels; half the cast would get tuberculosis while the other half would be pregnant and committing suicide; and every now and again maybe you’d get an absurdly placed dragon or a magic bird with its own Leitmotif. When I consider those possibilities, the prospect of yet another corny seduction attempt in Tree Hill can only sound like a snooze.

But as the slippery slope continues, and OTH slides closer to its inevitable end, there’s still a chance for it to reach its pinnacle (nadir?) of greatness. If they somehow manage to drag the whole cast down in one orgiastic bloodbath at the end — in the classic operatic tradition — then maybe, just maybe, someone out there will come up with “One Tree Hill: The Opera (Brought to You by Sunkist).”

THAT would be something (hilarious) to see.