One Tree Hill stars Sophia Bush, Hilarie Burton, and Bethany Joy Lenz share their thoughts on season 5’s time jump. Created by Mark Schwahn, One Tree Hill premiered on The WB in 2003 where it aired for three seasons before moving to The CW and continuing for six more seasons of success. Set in the titular North Carolina town, the show primarily follows the rivalry between half-brothers Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) and Nathan Scott (James Lafferty) as they compete for glory on their high school’s basketball team.

The young-adult series is also remembered for the Scott brothers’ various romantic relationships with Brooke Davis, Peyton Sawyer, and Haley James Scott, who were played by Bush, Burton, and Lenz, respectively. One Tree Hill unfortunately re-entered the public eye again in 2017 when numerous cast and crew members accused Schwahn of sexual harassment, including Bush, Burton, and Lenz. The trio also recently reunited for an episode of the CBS medical drama Good Sam, which came just before the 10 year anniversary of the One Tree Hill series finale.

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In honor of One Tree Hill‘s anniversary, EW gathered Bush, Burton, and Lenz to talk about season 5’s time jump which is commonly credited with bringing new life to the beloved show. “I thought it was brilliant,” Lenz says, while Bush thinks it helped the series “shed this old, impractical mold.” Burton thinks the time jump helped bring the show’s story closer to the actors’ own personal lives, as it started to explore “the conflicting emotions of being a person in your young twenties and thinking you’re a grown up, but you’re not really a grown up. We were all living that in real life.” Read more of what the three shared below:

Bush: We were really entering an era where you almost never knew a group of friends that all went to the same college. It’s just not a thing that happens. It may have happened when our parents went to college, but things were different and it felt like we got to shed this old, impractical mold. Which I know is funny for people who did a show where a dog ate a heart to say, ‘Well that wouldn’t happen.’ It felt cool.

Lenz: I loved being able to actually be in a really unhappy, complicated space, which is where Haley was when we came back. Haley and Nathan were in a really rough spot. And I think that was a great opportunity for James too. We both got to do something that we hadn’t really been able to do on the show … up until that time. So for an actor, it was really exciting.

Burton: I kind of appreciated the realism of Peyton, coming back from that time jump. Lucas proposed to Peyton at a very young age and her saying ‘Let’s just pause’ was the right thing to do.

The season 5 premiere of One Tree Hill famously jumped ahead four-and-a-half years after the gang’s high school graduation, skipping over all their college days and jumping ahead to their post-grad life. This found many characters in unexpected places, including Nathan in a wheelchair, forced to abandon his basketball dreams, while brother Lucas pursues his as a novelist. On the other hand, Haley struggles to raise her son as her marriage falls apart, Brooke is a successful CEO in New York, and Peyton lives in Los Angeles.

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In 2008, One Tree Hill was one of a few YA shows at that time to pull off a successful time jump. Today, its influence on the genre can clearly be seen as almost every teen drama has attempted a similar narrative feat, though none were quite as successful as One Tree Hill. While the time jump did skip over the characters’ collegiate years, it reinvigorated the show by jumping to an arguably more interesting time in their lives.

Source: EW

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Adam Bentz
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Adam Bentz is a movie and TV news writer for Screen Rant. From a young age, Adam has been interested in a wide range of movies and television, but it was talented auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Aaron Sorkin who ultimately sparked his interest in the craft. Motivated by his love for the screen, Adam studied creative writing with a concentration in screenwriting at Southern New Hampshire University.

After graduating, Adam interned as a writer with The Borgen Project, a nonprofit organization working to end extreme poverty. Other than writing for Screen Rant, Adam reviews films on his website adambentz.wordpress.com

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