All that promotion for two measly scenes?

After weeks of heavy P.R., the loudly trumpeted 'Life Unexpected' and 'One Tree Hill' crossover on The CW Tuesday night amounted to, well, not much.

Haley and Mia traveled from their home in Tree Hill (at 8PM on The CW's Tuesday night lineup) to a music festival in Portland hosted by Ryan and Cate's radio station (in the timeslot immediately following their own). To an unfamiliar viewer, the concept of their transplant into 'Life Unexpected' could've felt contrived. In fact, it was quite believable within the 'One Tree Hill' world. Mia and Haley are established musicians on the show, so actually broadcasting one of their concerts (instead of just vaguely referring to offscreen performances) was not out of the ordinary at all.

As for 'Life Unexpected,' the integration of the musicians wasn't any worse than the uber-'90s bands of the week on any given episode of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' but one of the writers is clearly a HUGE Ben Lee fan.

The first scene between Cate and Haley was essentially the full version of the trailer we saw last week -- they meet, realize they both got pregnant in high school, were valedictorians and were impregnated by sports stars named Nathan or Nate. The second saw Haley giving Cate some much-appreciated advice about dealing with her mother. And...that was it. Lovely songs by Mia and Haley were featured at the beginning of the episode, but Ben Lee's music got more screen time than either of the Tree Hill ladies'.

Presumably, the idea of the crossover was to get 'One Tree Hill' fans watching 'Life Unexpected.' And a lot of them probably did. But how many of them will actually stick around? The rest of the 'Life Unexpected' plot contained much of the best and worst aspects of the show. The snappy dialogue gems -- Cate's mom threatened her daughter until she spilled a secret by saying "Start talking Cate, or I'm going to get the wine and day drink it out of you" -- were bogged down by the cringeworthy duds -- Baze invited his 16-year-old daughter and her friend to "'all bring dates" to the concert. Creepy.

Sadly, the final scene might've been the most telling part. Sarah McLachlan, a guest earlier in the episode, provided the soundtrack to the closing moments -- "I WIll Remember You" played while the characters all learned their lessons. Yes, the singer's 1999 hit. 'Life Unexpected' has gotten a lot of comparison to The WB shows of yore, but who knew they were actually striving to be as '90s as possible? I'm all for the nostalgic family drama owning a spot among the spoiled rich kids on The CW, but until this wildly uneven show can find a more tolerable cheese-to-drama ratio -- and this is coming from someone who loves cheese, drama, creator Liz Tigelaar AND every single actor on this show -- I think its days are numbered.