{End of an Era}

• “Always & Forever” – Call me sappy, but this saying kind of “stuck” with my fiance and I after hearing it a few times on the show.
• Cheerleading – As a former high school/all star cheerleader, I loved the first four seasons of OTH, which featured quite a few episodes revolving around Ravens’ cheerleading.
• Weddings – Obviously I love weddings, especially now. 🙂 But really, what girl doesn’t love watching sweet, romantic weddings and celebrations on TV and daydreaming about her own? 
• Wilmington or “Tree Hill”, NC – One of my favorite places in the real world to visit. One day I’d love to live in Wilmington. 
• Relationships – I could relate to most of the female characters’ relationships at any given point during the show. I feel like I’ve experienced many of those relationship situations at some point while growing up from high school until now. 
• Family – Admittedly, there were some screwed up family situations on OTH…but there were also touching moments that the show portrayed about family that you couldn’t help but smile about…and you probably could relate to it as well.
• The MUSIC – Probably one of my absolute favorite parts of OTH was the use of music to really pull the story together. After all, the show was named after a song and every episode was titled after a song. The show also used music to really draw on your emotions during critical scenes of the show. I love music so much and find that I associate songs with moments in my life…so naturally, I totally GET the use of music throughout every episode. 
• Inspiration – After watching the show from Day One until now, I’ve realized how inspiring the show was and how much of an impression it made on my life. It may sound silly, but Mark Schwahn (the creator of the show) really showed the characters pursuing goals in their lives. What I loved was that while he showed the characters’ lives going right, he also showed their lives going wrong at times. A lot of movies and TV shows seem so fake because they all seem to have a “happy ending” but if you watched OTH over the years, you’d see that not everyone gets that happy ending. Some of the characters faced serious struggles, some of which they were able to overcome and some they weren’t. 

Truthfully, I could probably keeping listing things I love about OTH, but I’ll spare you all of those. 🙂 I just felt compelled to write something about the show, since tonight is the series finale and it’s so crazy to think that at 10pm tonight, there will be no more new episodes to watch every week. I think the biggest impact it has on me is that I feel OLD! After watching 9 seasons (9 years!) of OTH, it makes me wonder where that amount of time has gone. It slipped by so quickly – I remember sitting there in 9th grade watching the Pilot episode and thinking about how easy it was to relate to the show and here I am 9 years later, a college graduate and working full-time, planning my wedding….and still able to relate to the heartfelt show that blossomed out of a silly teen drama.