'One Tree Hill': Growing pains

"One Tree Hill" is still working on transitioning into its new form after getting rid of supercouple Leyton last season. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be working hard enough, as this week's episode was pretty darn boring.

In the big story of the week, Nathan assures Haley he didn't do anything with the pregnant groupie, but Haley points out that the pictures of them at the party look bad, the groupie knows it and is going to exploit it. Clay meets with Nathan and says she wants $200,000 to sign a confidentiality agreement and go away forever. Nathan says no way, but Clay lays out the cold hard facts: Nathan's image is predicated on being a good family man, and the Bobcats are a team concerned with their image. Clay says he should pay to protect himself. Considering all of the shenanigans that do down with professional athletes, I'm still having trouble thinking the Bobcats would care about infidelity. But maybe that's just me.

When Haley hears about the $200k, she confronts Clay and basically blames him for all of Nathan's troubles, saying he does things like throw the party where the groupie supposedly got pregnant because he doesn't want to grow up and always wants Nathan there alongside him. After some soul searching, Haley ends up telling Nathan he should pay the groupie if it's what he needs to do to save his career. In the end they decide not to pay her. Yawn.

Predictably, Mouth gets tasked by his boss at the TV station to look into Nathan's disagreement with his groupie at the restaurant. Nathan tells Mouth the whole story, but when questioned about it at work Mouth says there is no story to tell. Very noble of him, but I have a feeling this is going to come back to bite him in the rear.

Dan is taping his weird show when an angry audience member starts screaming about him being a murderer. Finally! At Rachel's prompting, Dan ends up using it as some sort of inspirational speech, which the audience eats up. Yes, because everyone should take life advice from a man who killed his brother in cold blood! Sigh. We do get some fun flashbacks of Dan picking Rachel up at a strip club and taking her home as his prostitute before turning her into his wife. It's just like Pretty Woman, but much, much less interesting. We learn that Rachel hired the audience member to have that little outburst. Heh.

Mouth and Skills are still having the stupid fight over Skills moving out. It's now escalated to Mouth putting an iguana in the bathroom to scare Skills. Skills enlists Jamie's help to get rid of the reptile, and Jamie is officially more mature than both of those idiots. In the end, Skills takes Jamie's advice and just talks to Mouth about the problem.

Also in this episode: Brooke, Millie and Julian keep busy wrangling the super-annoying Alex at the Clothes Over Bro's photo shoot, Quinn and Clay bond, and Quinn's husband shows up in Tree Hill wanting to talk.


Random thoughts:

• I sort of love that Clay is so cavalier about relationships (at least at this point). Every other character on this show is so consumed by every little thing that happens with their love life that it's nice to see someone just be casual. Also, it's fun to watch people lick Robert Buckley's neck.
  
• This Nathan groupie story would be a lot more dramatic if there was any inkling that Nathan actually slept with this woman. I love Nathan and Haley together and don't want them to break up, but in my opinion pressure on them as a couple (from actual cheating) would be more high stakes than pressure on his career (from a lying groupie).
• Are they really going to try to put Alex in between Julian and Brooke? I am convinced these writers have no idea how to write a happy couple.
  

Favorite quotes:

• "You might want to start with a little lying slut remover." - Brooke, to Alex's makeup artist
  
• "Don't tell any boys that I'm sober. That way if I do anything slutty, I can still blame the booze." - Alex
  

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