"One Tree Hill" producers and writers did a really smart thing before the beginning of this season — they skipped four years.
But that's where the genius ended and the stupidity resumed.
The "One Tree Hill" (8 p.m., Ch. 30) leap was not in the vein of a-whole-season-was-just-a-dream, as was the case on "Dallas" more than two decades ago. "OTH" wrapped up its fourth season with the gang graduating from high school; it started its fifth season after they had graduated from college — "4 Years, 6 Months, 2 Days" after the Season 4 finale, as the episode was titled.
Which made a whole lot of sense because a lot of shows about high-school kids have struggled through the college years. The most notable example is "Beverly Hills, 90210," which went from hot-hot-hot to not-not-not.
Plus, the kids on "OTH" were already acting like 20-somethings anyway, what with all the sleeping around. Not to mention Nathan (James Lafferty) and Haley (Bethany Joy Galeotti) getting married and becoming parents.
Any optimism about the show quickly evaporated as the season began. It's just as ridiculous and downright dumb as it ever was. And it was easier to believe time could shift four-plus years than it was to believe what happened to the gang in that time.
Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) has not only written a best-selling book but he's the new varsity basketball coach at Tree Hill High School. Because a lot of high schools — particularly those in basketball-crazed North Carolina — hire 22-year-olds to coach their basketball teams. He's also having an affair with Lindsey (new cast member Michaela McManus), the woman who is his book editor.
Nathan, the big basketball star, had his NBA dreams ended when he got in a stupid fight, got tossed through a plate-glass window and was temporarily paralyzed. We could tell he was tortured because his hair was long and he stopped shaving.
Brooke (Sophia Bush) is a fabulously successful clothes designer who makes millions of dollars and graces the pages of celebrity magazines like she's a movie star. She's just so darn successful that she finances the start-up of Peyton's (Hilarie Burton) new music company.
All of this comes complete with the kind of stilted dialogue, ridiculous situations and laughably bad acting that have made "One Tree Hill" one of the worst shows on TV.
Hey, talentless Kevin Federline guest starred on a couple of episodes, and his inability to act didn't stand out at all. And he was more believable as a talented singer (really!) than most of the other actors were in their roles.
The hard part is picking what's the most ludicrous. Is it Brooke acting like a prom queen while her evil mother (Daphne Zuniga) insults everyone in the background? Is it Nathan acting like a drunken psycho one minute, then getting a haircut, a shave and his sanity the next?
Or — my personal favorite — is it Mouth (Lee Norris) getting into a horrible argument with his witchy boss, Alice (Kelly Collins Lintz), suddenly planting a kiss on her and then the two beginning a torrid affair?
OK, it's not like "One Tree Hill" is totally without entertainment value. It's often laugh-out-loud funny.
Of course, we're not supposed to be laughing at how bad it is, but that's unavoidable.
IT'S SORT OF CREEPY every time Bush and Murray are on screen together. They were, of course, briefly married until she found out that he wasn't exactly the true-blue kind of guy he plays on "One Tree Hill."
Maybe Bush deserves some sort of special Emmy simply for being able to act opposite Murray.
AND HOW ABOUT a big chorus of boos to The CW, which rather deliberately deceived "One Tree Hill" fans last week with a preview that showed Lucas proposing to Peyton.
What the preview did not in any way make clear is that that was part of the flashback. Yes, tonight's episode takes us three years into the past to plug some of the gaps made by the great leap forward.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com