
Season Highlights: “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance” Just kidding, that is also terrible, no matter how cute that Logan kid is. Okay, some of this was because James Lafferty only signed on for half a season, but … that was the best we could come up with? Even Clay (Robert Buckley) suffering a fugue state only to realize he’s forgotten he had a son who he erased from his memory six years ago is easier to swallow than that. That episode aside, much of season nine is bogged down by, wait for it, a story line that involves Nathan getting kidnapped by cartoonish Eastern European mafiosos over a basketball player he tried to sign, that ends with Dan (Paul Johansson), CHRIS KELLER (Tyler Hilton), and Julian (Austin Nichols) putting together a rescue mission to find Nathan. The actual finale episode is a lovely little send-off that includes a flash-forward to Jamie Scott beating his dad’s high-school shooting record, lots of hopeful voice-over about saying what you mean and life moving forward and growing up, which is all so very One Tree Hill your heart might explode. Season Highlights: “Danny Boy,” “One Tree Hill”Įven the most die-hard One Tree Hill fans will admit that the show stayed a few seasons past its expiration date. Seriously, there were a lot of them for one group of friends. Of course, the show was so much more than that: It was about surviving high school, true love, the one and only time teenagers getting married might work, the birth of our once and future queen Brooke Davis (Sophia Bush), and how if you try really, really hard, you too can have your very own psycho stalker. Reading that sounds ridiculous, but, man, if you lived with it, you’re already feeling things.

Through basketball, they learn to become family. In case you need a refresher (all nine seasons are currently streaming on Netflix, if you feel so inclined), One Tree Hill is about half-brothers Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) and Nathan (James Lafferty) Scott, who share a villainous father and not much else. On this, the fifth anniversary of its finale, we take a trip back to that small North Carolina town to rank all nine of its sometimes earnest, sometimes wack-a-doodle seasons. On April 4, 2012, we said goodbye to One Tree Hill, the WB turned CW teen soap that felt like it would be around forever.
