Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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60 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Welcome to Tree Hill, October 27, 2004
When I originally heard about the show "One Tree Hill" I couldn't help but think that it was going to be nothing more than a rip-off of "Dawson's Creek" which was one of the WB highest rated shows (and ended it's 6 year run 4 month before "one tree hill" premiered). But as a fan of the WB I tuned into the Pilot of the show. And the Pilot was bad, but it showed potential so I continued to watch the show and after about 8/9 rocky episodes, the show finally found it's footing and starting slowly to becoming one of my favorite shows on the air.
The show is about two brothers who grew up in the small town of tree hill and yet they barely know each other. Luke, who along with his mother was abandoned by his father before he was born, is the outsider; while Nate, who his father considers to be his only son, grew up to become one of the popular kids in school. But when Luke join's Nate's Basketball team, the two brothers beging to breakdown the years of walls their father has put between them.
Warner Brother's has put together a really nice set, releasing it a little earlier than usual (they usually wait til at least the third season of a show to release the first on DVD). The Set comes packaged the same was as all of Warner Brother's other WB sets (bookstyle packaging). The Special Featuresing include Commentary on 4 episodes, A Making-of Documentary, a Behind-the-Scenes Featurette, a Music Video, Gag Reel, and 48 Minutes of Deleted Scenes.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The whole package, October 14, 2004
This is a great show, and I can't wait for it to get licensed- hopefully they'll grace the DVD with a few worthwhile extras, too.
When I first heard about One Tree Hill, I thought it'd just be a nice replacement for Dawson's Creek (RIP, m'dear), which I'd always enjoyed, so I gave OTH a shot. And it started off pretty well- okay, the characters were a little generic, and the storylines all felt a little 'been there, done that', but only because shows like Dawson's Creek and Roswell had cornered the teen drama genre so well already. Honestly, at first the thing I enjoyed most was the basketball- the games were really exciting, and drew me into the show.
But as the series progressed, it started tackling bigger issues than most teen dramas will pit themselves against; broken homes, severe depression and self-harm, drug abuse, teen parents, expectations of self up against expectations of others- it's not just teen problems and melodrama, and a token 'uh oh, lookit all the angst!' as something awful happens to prompt a character into a self-absorbed spiel on life in this awful world; something Dawson's Creek was guilty of quite frequently. I think it was characters like Whitey and Keith who kept it grounded, actually, throughout the angst.
And that was what else impressed me: the fact that the show wasn't content with generic characters. That was just a starting point, to make it easier to grasp a fairly comprehensive cast- after all, try and explore and assert the depth of more than four characters from day one and you'll just have a confused audience and a pretentious cast, and I'm glad OTH didn't try and do that. Instead, the plotlines developed around the characters and helped them grow and develop on their own, and it really worked. They actually changed and grew, instead of acting in the same old predictable way every single episode (again, something Dawson's Creek did- they relied on new characters to freshen up the cast's dynamic).
By the end of this first series, I really actually gave a damn about the characters and their lives- even the ones I couldn't stand at the start. And the constant 'will they, won't they' didn't get on my nerves the way the Dawson/Joey or Rachel/Ross pairings sometimes did.
This really is a cool show, going from strength to strength throughout the series and hitting home in a lot of ways. If you like good drama and characters you can empathise with, as well as humour, excitement, a great soundtrack (Gavin Degraw, Keane, Maroon 5, Dashboard Confessional, Five for Fighting, Sheryl Crow and Switchfoot to name but a few) and some really kickass basketball games, OTH is the show for you.
And yeah, Chad is fit. ^_^
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
wonderful show, wonderful people, wonderful story, November 12, 2004
When I first heard about One Tree Hill, I was intrigued because I had heard of Chad Michael Murray, and I really wanted to see if the show was worth watching. It was. The Pilot was... well bad. No point denying it, but like someone else said, I saw potential, I saw a show that had a heart, I saw characters that were interseting and could be explored, and wasn't just about who was slept with who one week after another. I know that it has constantly has been compared with both Dawson's Creek and The O.C., and I for one don't find it even on the same level as either, much less worse than them. I never got into DC. O.C.... well, OC is entertaining, but at the end of the day, I can't relate to any of the characters like I can relate to the ones on this show. OC is so completely unrealistic, and lack of heart and soul is seriously killing it.
One Tree Hill is about two half-brothers, Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) and Nathan (James Lafferty), who share the same father, Dan (Paul Johansson), but different mothers, Lucas' mom, Karen(Moira Kelly) and Nathan's mom, Deb (Barbara Alyn Woods). The show basically revolves around the two brothers and the girls in their lives and what they deal with everyday. Dan left Karen their senior year of high school after he found out that she was pregnant with Lucas. He went off to college and met Deb, got her pregnant, and the two later got married and had Nathan. Keith (Craig Sheffer)is Dan's older brother and has always had feelings for Karen, although those feelings haven't been reciprocated. He's also been like a father to Lucas. Peyton (Hilarie Burton) and Brooke (Sophia Bush) are the two girls that both loved Lucas last season, they were best friends, and Lucas liked Peyton, then went out with Brooke, then cheated on her with Peyton, just to put it in a nutshell. Haley (Bethany Joy Lenz) is Lucas' best friend who falls in love with Nathan.
Someone said that they think James Lafferty is the most underrated actor on the show, and I just wanted to say that I agree with you whole-heartedly. At the beginning of the show, he was the biggest jerk in the world, and I love the journey and development it took from him being an ass to him being a really loyal and wonderful boyfriend. I find it very sad that he is so underappreciated, and that everything is always focused on Chad. But James can play both the ass and the sweet boyfriend incredibly well, and I for one really want to see what the future has for this young actor. One of my favorite things about the show is the relationship between Nathan and Haley, they are so perfect for each other, fit so well, and James and Bethany's chemistry on screen seriously crackles. Their storyline and the development of how they started going out is truly spectacular writing and I can't wait to see what the writers have in store for them.
Another thing that I really enjoy about this show, is the variety of songs that they play. A lot of shows just play the "biggest hits" of the season on their show just because that's what they are, the biggest hits. But have absolutely nothing to do with what's going on. You can really tell that the producers spend time to make sure that the songs that they choose for each individual scene, to make sure that it fits perfectly and that it has actual relevance to what's happening. And they don't just play one genre like other shows, they have a variety of different groups and types of music that I have come to love and look forward to.
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