One Tree Hill: The Complete Fifth Season takes an unorthodox approach to advancing the popular television series by skipping over four years in the lives of the show's characters. The Scott brothers and their sundry friends from the small town of Tree Hill, North Carolina, were last seen in The Complete Fourth Season vowing to keep in touch after high-school graduation and remain the same people, even while some went off to college and others made different plans. The fifth season leaps over that transitional period, and we find everyone now in their early 20s, dealing with adult relationships, career moves, disasters, disappointments, and all the rest. For the first time in One Tree Hill, the actors actually look close to the age of their characters, and that makes for an even more sophisticated show.

Lucas Scott (Chad Michael Murray), following a well-received first novel, is facing writer's block on his second effort. But he fills his days as the new head coach of his old high-school basketball team, the Ravens, aided by his old pal, Skills (Antwon Tanner). Meanwhile, Lucas' brother, Nathan (James Lafferty), is lost in a dark hole of despair after losing his dream of signing with an NBA team. Barely able to move his legs, Nathan is almost crippled in a bar fight and spends his days and nights boozing and raging around while wife Haley (Bethany Joy Galeotti) and young son Jamie (Jackson Brundage) try to survive his emotional torrents. Lucas is no longer with Peyton (Hilarie Burton), the latter having moved to Los Angeles to become a disgruntled assistant's assistant in a music recording company. Brooke (Sophia Bush), however, has hit the jackpot in New York as the celebrity founder of a designer clothes empire that has made her wealthy yet not quite free of her domineering mother (Daphne Zuniga). Everyone ends up back in Tree Hill, looking for roots and a future that involves support from one another. Friendship matters, but it doesn't inoculate this bunch from the pain of Peyton's ongoing love for Lucas (who is romantically involved with his pretty editor), or Brooke's emptiness after briefly fostering a child who then must leave her, or Nathan's slow crawl back from misery. In true One Tree Hill fashion, the characters' collective challenges come together in a critical mass during the season finale, ending with a very unusual cliffhanger involving four cell phones. --Tom Keogh