I should explain what I’m talking about when I talked about multi-threading, social networking, and flashing arrows. These three things are part of what Johnson calls the sleeper curve. Which the sleeper curve is the things that have helped change television to what it is today. You see television has really come along way since it first started. That is really all of what the sleeper curve is.
To make things clear on why One Tree Hill is a good choice for this paper I need to summarize the show. To start of the show is about two brothers, Lucas and Nathan, that don’t get along with each other at all. You see the two brothers have the same dad but different moms. You see Nathan is the star of their schools basketball team. He is also dating one of the head cheerleader, Peyton. Then there is Lucas who is just a regular guy who plays basketball on a riverside court. As it turns out things change and Nathans couch wants him to join the team. In the end Lucas does end up joining the team. While on the team Nathan and the other players Haze Lucas really bad. Besides the basketball there is a lot of mixed up emotions going on. You see Lucas starts to like Peyton who is going out with Lucas. Peyton’s friend Brook likes Lucas, but he really doesn’t like her. Then we start to see that Nathan really like Haley, Lucas’s best friend, when he is single. After awhile things start to cool down between the two. Not just because Haley asked Nathan to. Things cooled down because of some of the things that the two had to go through with each other. Like getting away from three guys from the basketball team they just played. That is what this show has been about.
Multi-threading is when there is more then one story line going on in an episode. You see Johnson says that “multiple threading is the most acclaimed structural convention of modern television programming, which is ironic because it’s also the convention with the most debased pedigree” (65). With that statement I would have to agree with it all the way. Now a days if a show does not have these multi-threads the show just seems boring. If you would talk to anyone they would say the same thing. Multi-threading just makes the show a whole lot of fun to watch. From what I have read when this first came out people did not like it because it made them try to keep up with everything going on, which I understand why they would think that way. Back then when people watched television they liked it to be nice and simple. Sometimes it can be hard to keep up with all the storylines in the show. From what has been said it is easy to say that multi-threading does fit with One Tree Hill. This show has these multi-threading in every episode. An example of this would have to be in episode 6 called “Every Night Is Another Story”. This episode has two nice story lines in it. The first one would have to be the fact that Lucas and Nathan have to work together to get out of jam with three rival basketball players, that they just beat. The other story line is that we se see Haley, Peyton, and Brook to kind of start to get close.
Now flashing arrows are things in a show or a movie that might give off what may happen soon. Johnson gives an example of what a flashing arrow looks like. He gives us a example from a show called Student Bodies. He gives the example of when the camera zooms in on a door then backs up and then it says “Door Unlocked!” You see Johnson says that “flashing arrows is a parody, of course, but it’s merely an exaggerated version of a device popular stories use all the time (73). Which there are no flashing arrows in the show One Tree Hill.
There is one more thing I read about in Johnsons book Everything Bad Is Good For You. The last thing that I read is about character web. You see Johnson says that “ The trend toward increased social networking complexity is not the exclusive province of reality of television; many popular television dramas today feature dense webs of relationships that require focus and scrutiny on the part of the viewer just to figure out what’s happening on the screen” (109). In this show there is a nice sized character web of all of the characters. That is why this show fits in with Johnsons idea. Here is the character web for One Tree Hill.

These are the examples from the show One Tree Hill. Also to show who is connected to each other in the show. As you can see it is a very complex web. Everyone is connected to each other in one way or another. It gets hard sometimes to keep up with all the connections sometimes. I think that is why this show is so great to watch.
Now for me I do agree that television has helped make us smarter. They’re people out there though that think that television has made us in a since dumber. In the article Spudding Out, by Barbara Ehrenreich she believes that television is bad for us. It is like she is saying T.V. has taken over our lives of people. I came to this conclusion because Ehrenreich stats that “ We never see the neighbors anymore, nor, they us. This saddens me because Americans used to be a great and restless people, fond of the outdoors in all of its manifestation, from Disney World to miniature golf “ (147). Now One Tree Hill fits in here because this show is one of the reasons why so many people are staying inside to watch television. All in all I would have to disagree with her about television making us dumber. On the other hand there is another person that agrees with Johnson. Paul Adams agrees with Johnson by say that “ watching television is the greatest single use of “ free time” (time not spent working, sleeping or attending to household or personal needs)” (118). For the same reason as the one, it fits One Tree Hill. because it is a show that people watch on their “free time”. Thomas C. O’Guinn says that “television has supplanted reading and interpersonal narrative as our primary means of storytelling and myth delivery and has thus fundamentally changed our culture” (278). What he is saying is that we get are information from T.V. more now instead of reading books.
In conclusion you can see that different people have different ideas about what television has done for use. No matter what way you believe the show One Tree Hill is a show that can connect with each opinion someone may have. Then that I think that television does help us .
Adams, Paul C. Television as Gathering Place. Vol. 82. N.p.: Tyler & Friends,Ltd, n.d. JSTOR. Ithaka Harbors,Inc. Web. 27 May 2009. http://www.jstor.org/action/showAdvancedSearch.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. "Spudding OUt." The Cultural Influences of Television (n.d.): 147-48. Print.
Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad IS Good For You. New York: The Berkley Group, 2005. Print.
O'Guinn, Thomas C., and L.J. Shrum. The Role of Television in the Constuction of Consumer Reality. Vol. 23. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1997. JSTOR. Ithaka Harbors, Inc. Web. 27 May 2009. http://www.jstor.org
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