Alternate reality episodes can be pretty hit or miss. In the case of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Community," their episode-long departures from their standard timelines are all-time fan-favorite installments. Pretty much every episode of "Rick and Morty" could be considered an alternate reality episode, to some degree. But alternate realities don't always work out terrifically, as we've seen in "Friends," "Glee," "The Big Bang Theory," and sadly, "One Tree Hill."
In Season 2 of "One Tree Hill," after getting in a car accident, Nathan dreams that he and Lucas have switched lives and that, to get into the lucrative High Flyers basketball camp, the two half-siblings must face each other in a game of one-on-one.
In this timeline, Deb (Barbara Alyn Woods) is a single mother raising Nathan alone, Karen (Moira Kelly) is married to Dan Scott (Paul Johansson), and Lucas is the bully that Nathan was at the beginning of the show. It's supposed to be a humbling moment for Nathan to make him empathize more with his brother. But in the end, it's treated like some kind of nightmare for Nathan, as if Lucas' reality of growing up without a father was some kind of punishment. Up until that point, the show tries so hard to show that Lucas became a good guy without Dan in his life. In "Lifetime Piling Up," the writers erased all of that by making Lucas' life somehow a regrettable one.
