I've you've been reading my blog for a while, you've probably seen my confession of my sad addiction to the CW's One Tree Hill. I once pleaded for cancellation to free me from that particular guilty pleasure, and then later in my naivete, I composed what could have been a eulogy for the show two years ago. I should have expected the show would escape the Reaper that time. In nine seasons, the show's one constant has been experiencing more resurrections than Christ if he were trapped in Groundhog Day.
At yet this time it seems that the show's ninth season - which began last night - is at long last the end. This seems as good a time as any for me to formalize a thought I've had for a while. I've called One Tree Hill "the worst show on television" and have taken some pretty strong shots at the writing ability of its showrunner. (See either of the columns linked above for those examples.) As to the first charge, I can honestly say that One Tree Hill is no longer the worst show on television, nor is it even the worst show on network television. Heck, it's not even the worst show on it's own network.
As to the second charge, I came across this article on showrunner Mark Schwahn:
THR asked Schwahn to look back for just a moment, and think if there’s been any story line that he never got to cover. For a show that’s had everything from kidnappings to school shootings, dogs eating hearts to murders, what could Schwahn have missed?
“We seriously pitched zombies a couple years ago,” said Schwahn. “We had this great opening where Jamie came into the bedroom and woke up Nathan and said, ‘Uncle Keith’s at the door.’”
“Outside of the Scott house everything was on fire and everything was desolate,” he added, with a laugh. “And we wanted to do a whole season where our characters were still our characters, and the rest of the world is zombies. If I'd gotten the green light, I'd probably have done that."
Bad? Perhaps, but it's so bad it cycles around to awesome. Mark, all is forgiven. Consider this my first full pardon issued as The Bitter Script Reader. It takes balls to come up with an idea like that and pitch it without shame. Sure, bad ideas come from that kind of fearlessness, but genius often springs from it as well. If nothing else, that probably would have been fun to watch. I salute you, sir.
If you want to check out the final season, but are worried about not being at all familiar with the backstory, Vulture has this awesome recap of the previous eight seasons.
