Guilding the Tree

Creators of "One Tree Hill" decided to skip that awkward moment that comes when most of the cast graduates from high school. Do they all go to the same college by some miracle? Or, more realistically, go their separate ways but try to keep in touch?

To heck with it. "One Tree Hill" for its fifth season has advanced four years -- or four years, six months and two days, to be exact, to quote the episode's title. In doing so, the characters are either fully ensconsed in their careers or solidly spinning their wheels.

At the same time, though, it seems the show's tone has changed. Not just from high school to real world, but from a small town show to yet another big money city show. I may not have been watching enough to make this claim. But while the show never had the exquisite small town focus of, say, "Friday Night Lights," it was also not about limos and red carpets and the fashion and recording industries.

Now it is, with Brooke a 21-year-old fashion mogul, with a big business, billboards on Sunset, limos and red carpet strolls. Why, she could almost be amid the "Cashmere Mafia" (if she weren't so young). Peyton isn't quite on top of the music business (who is?); instead she's more a reception one flirtation from getting ahead.

Lucas is no more credible as a novelist than the dude is on "October Road," but his dilemma is the same. Having sold one book with a terrible title (his is "An Unkindness of Ravens" -- kind of like "To Kill a Mockingbird," but terrible), now he struggles with a sequel.

Nathan and Haley in many ways have the most normal life, married and raising an adorable, now four year old James. But he, too, was on the verge of becoming a millionaire with multiple houses when he was about to be signed by the NBA. In the one sour twist of the future, he sits instead in a wheelchair, trying to nudge out the liquor bottles Haley has hidden with an old basketball trophy.