Welcome back!  One Tree Hill returns after a very long hiatus that saw the show get picked up for a seventh season and rumors that said season 7 would NOT include Chad Michael Murray and Hilarie Burton.  So soak up every last moment of Leyton action that you can.

Hilarie Burton, One Tree Hill

Last time, the movie began production, Mouth and Millie broke up, Skills was MIA, Dan needed a heart, Brooke was boinking Julian, Peyton was preggers, Nathan was on the road, Chase and Mia were an item, Sam was snarky, Haley wanted back into the music biz, Deb was boffing Skills, and Jamie was awesome.  Wow, I forgot how many characters this show has.

To get back into One Tree Hill, the show has nicely divided everyone into five neat, separate subplots. Peyton has a complication with the pregnancy, Mouth and Millie deal with their break-up, Haley and Nathan celebrate their wedding anniversary, Julian and Brooke discuss their relationship status, and Jamie tries to get Dan and Deb back together.

“The Surprise”

Lucas has a surprise for Peyton, but she collapses in pain. When they get back from the hospital, she sees the surprise: a perfectly decorated baby room. The surprise is incredibly depressing, not because she had a miscarriage, but because something else is wrong and the doctor said if she has this baby she could die.

She doesn’t care because she wants to have the baby and name it Anna for a girl or Sawyer for a boy. Lucas tries to explain that there’s a good chance both she and the baby could die if she has it, but she starts breaking plates at the mention of an abortion.

This is brutal and uncomfortable. The two fight and Lucas gets angry at the thought of losing Peyton. He says they can still adopt, but she resents the fact that he tries to guilt her into terminating the pregnancy. He’s depressed, and she’s scared, but she makes jokes about how Lucas would be a sexy single dad like Jake Jagielski.

Peyton thinks the whole Leyton love affair may have been leading to this baby, and that if she dies, that’s her destiny. The baby starts kicking, and the magic of life lets Peyton win the argument so Lucas reluctantly goes along with Peyton’s vision of everything ending happily ever after.

“The Long Goodbye”

Millie shows up again to collect her stuff because she’s leaving for good. Mouth is there and the two engage in more of their boring and tedious relationship. Millie had Lasik and Mouth admits to being at fault because he ran up a huge phone bill texting Gigi.

She admits to having fantasies about ripping Mouth’s cloths off and ravaging him, but she feared the sex wouldn’t live up to the expectation. I used to think she was smart, but if Marvin McFadden is her biggest sexual fantasy, there must be something seriously wrong with her. How could anyone go back to him after having the beefcake that is Owen? After Mouth pours his heart out, she leaves.

“The Seven Year Itch”

Haley surprises Nathan in Charleston with a romantic evening in an empty house for their seven-year wedding anniversary. Is it just me, or have these two been leaving Jamie with a babysitter in just about every episode this season?

The two open their fortune cookies and play the “in bed” game, which Haley has never heard of. Was she raised in a cave? His cookie says “You are a master of your craft…in bed.” He’s feeling a bit cocky, but gets knocked down a peg when hers says “Prepare yourself for a big change…in bed.”

She tells him about being suspended from teaching because of publishing San’s essay, so now she thinks she and Jamie should move into this house in Charleston. She wants to practice her music while looking out onto the driveway where Nathan would play basketball shirtless. Of course he would.

Nathan thinks it would be better if she went back on the road to pursue her dreams of performing once again. He thinks she could tutor Jamie on the road, since she’s very good at tutoring Scott men. It’s nice to see these two are still in love and just as sexually playful as ever.

“The Deleted Scene”

Brooke runs away from Julian, creeped out by what he did in bed. Austin Nichols accepts his initiation into the male cast of One Tree Hill by wearing nothing but a low-hanging blanket. The ladies and gay men in the audience thank you, writers.

She hides in the bathroom and makes him swear never to do it again. While we’re led to believe he tried some naughty sex act, all he really did was say “I love you.” And he keeps saying it over and over again.

Instead of leaving, he logs onto WhosDatedWho.com, a website that tracks celebrity relationships. Apparently while in New York she dated Ryan Reynolds and Colin Farrell. Wow, for a promiscuous girl, she has pretty good choices in men. FYI, that’s totally a real website, and it’s my newest obsession. Sadly, no real women overlap with Reynolds and Farrell, but it’s worth noting Farrell has 32 women on his page while Reynolds only has five.

He’s still wondering why she gets so freaked out by men who say “I love you,” and he’s afraid it’s because she’s still in love with Lucas. She turns this around, since he only came to town to win back Peyton in the first place, so he’s all about Lucas’ leftovers. He wants her to say “I love you,” but all she can muster is “I like you a lot.”

He accuses her of hiding behind Sam because Brooke doesn’t think she deserves love and doesn’t want to have her heart broken again. He gives another emotional speech about loving her, and it doesn’t work. The difficulty of getting her to open up to him lets him deliver a classic zinger: “Never let it be said that Brooke Davis is easy.”

He then backs off and tells her to get ready for dinner and they’ll both pretend the last hour never happened. Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to work.

“The Cold War”

Deb is babysitting Jamie and promises to let him stay up late and watch cartoons. “I’d rather watch Gossip Girl,” Jamie says. “It’s so bad for me.” I love Jamie so darn much. She thinks he invited his friend over, but actually Jamie invited Grandpa Dan in a misguided attempt to get his grandparents back together. Doesn’t he know that she’s with Skills and he has one foot in the grave on his way to Hell?

Dan puts Jamie to bed and he asks a bunch of questions about why Dan and Deb stopped being married. Dan gives a non-answer, but assures him that Haley and Nathan will last forever. Dan tells Jamie a cute story about when he took Nathan to Disney World.

Jamie’s asleep, but the story gives Dan an opening to reminisce with Deb about their marriage. The good times vanish quickly when Deb remembers Keith’s murder. However, this gives Dan an opening to blame her.

He provides the whole story. He killed Keith because he thought he was getting revenge for Keith setting the car dealership on fire, though it was actually Deb. He also traces it back to how Dan hired Jules to sleep with and dump Keith because Dan caught his own brother sleeping with Deb. Wow, that was more informative than reading the “Dan Scott” Wikipedia entry.

She angrily tells him to leave, but Jamie shows up with Dan’s heart beeper, which goes off letting him know there’s a donor heart for him. Huzzah, Dan lives!

Next week on One Tree Hill: Sam gets in trouble, the movie gets made, and Dan gets a heart.

(Image courtesy of the CW)

John Kubicek

Senior Writer, BuddyTV

John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire DiariesSupernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.