One Tree Hill Season 5

In an interview with Mark Schwahn, the creator/producer/head writer of the CW show One Tree Hill, he talks about his ideas for the upcoming Season 5. Here is an exerpt from the interview (copied from www.buddytv.com):

"Last question. After this year, your High school characters will be going off to college. How will you make the transition into your 5th season?

I want to do something that's unprecedented. And, maybe it's unprecedented because it's a bad idea, or maybe it's unprecedented like the Nathan and Hailey marriage: just because nobody's ever done it and it's actually a very good idea. I want to skip college. And what I would do is graduate them at the end of season four and then we'll pick them up five years later to start season five. The reason that this compels me is, first of all, I can drop into a world that feels new and, yet, familiar. What I mean by that is this: you know the characters and you've been with them for four years, but you don't know what happened for the last four, and you can drop the audience into new situations. The kids can play closer to their age, and we've done a lot of what we would do in college in high school, in terms of that accelerated behavior. The other cool thing it does, and this was not by design, I'm not smart enough to design it this way, but the fact that Lucas and his mom and his dad, Dan, the fact that there was history, that we can always reach back and grab a piece of something over the last four years, like what happened with Dan and Karen, what happened before Lucas joined the team, etc. Like we dropped the audience into this world, but there was so much life before that, that you could always go back and grab a piece when you needed it. If Lucas is with a girl that we've never met, or with Peyton, or with Brooke, or living with Hailey and Nathan or whatever, how did that happen and what choices framed that? So, while you're advancing and learning about his new career and what he's doing after college, you're also allowed to go back and pick out that night in college when it could have gone either way and the decision he made that night and how it frames where he's at now. And I haven't ever seen anyone do it, but I think it's a great idea and, as a storyteller, the adrenaline I had in season one is increasingly difficult to find, but as a storyteller, to drop into a new world with all these characters that I love and tell new stories and yet be able to bounce back once in a while, it's incredibly invigorating for me and I would think it would be for an audience too, as opposed to skipping ahead to college and doing the same old stuff."




Personally, I think it is an EXCELLENT idea and I am SO excited about it!