<P> One Tree Hill starts in 2003 and has an ever more complicated timeline, which varies between contrasting with and corresponding to the real world . In the first season, the main teenage characters are aged sixteen . The first and second seasons cover one year, and the third and fourth seasons another, so the main teenage characters are nearly eighteen at the end of the fourth season . The timeline was further complicated in the fifth season, when the show was "dramatically retooled and set four years into the future--after the characters (had) already graduated from college". The fifth season began shooting on July 30, 2007, and premiered January 8, 2008 . In it, the characters were stated to be aged twenty - two . In 2009, Schwahn altered the timeline again, setting the seventh season fourteen months after the sixth, thus giving a better explanation for the somewhat abrupt departures of series leads Chad Michael Murray and Hilarie Burton . </P> <P> Explaining the decision to start the series with the teenagers as juniors, Schwahn said, "Lucas and Nathan were important players on the (basketball) team, the most important, and I just couldn't see that happening to freshmen ." He also wanted to keep the characters in high school longer, saying, "I know a lot of the shows that we started with, the kids are out of high school now and into college and what have you, and I always thought that there was a loss of energy when that happened . It's hard to have everyone go to the same college and everyone stay together for whatever reason, or you lose some of your principles ." Schwahn wanted to reinvigorate the show . "The show in many ways has been refaced and reinvigorated . It's very much a twenty - something show now with some relevant adult characters, and I really like that energy for the show," he said, and elaborated: </P> <P> The reason that this compels me is, first of all, I can drop into a world that feels new and, yet, familiar . What I mean by that is this: you know the characters and you've been with them for four years, but you don't know what happened for the last four, and you can drop the audience into new situations . The (actors) can play closer to their age, and we've done a lot of what we would do in college in high school, in terms of that accelerated behavior . The other cool thing it does, and this was not by design, I'm not smart enough to design it this way, but the fact that Lucas and his mom and his dad, Dan, the fact that there was history, that we can always reach back and grab a piece of something over the last four years, like what happened with Dan and Karen, what happened before Lucas joined the team, etc . Like we dropped the audience into this world, but there was so much life before that, that you could always go back and grab a piece when you needed it . If Lucas is with a girl that we've never met, or with Peyton, or with Brooke, or living with Haley and Nathan or whatever, how did that happen and what choices framed that? </P> <P> Schwahn felt that altering the series in this way allowed the storylines to be a little more complex, and said the actors welcomed the change . One critic said, "The fifth season of One Tree Hill completely reinvented the series...It was a risky move, but one that ultimately paid off ." </P>

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