|
||
| by Bridget Petrella with additional writing by John Mundazio | ||
| Paramount's ‘7th Heaven’— Essential Family Lessons. | ||
|
|
||
|
Bridget
Petrella is the Publisher and Editor in Chief of UPBEAT Entertainment
News Online. At this point in her life, she's seriously contemplating a
complete and unbridled abandonment of typical network television...
opting instead for Silver Surfer comic books, novels with wordy titles,
Retro TV Land, HBO and Showtime's Original Programming schedule and
of course... Nick at Night. |
||
|
|
||
|
|
7th
Heaven is a show that offers a nice mix of family melodrama with
some important lessons. I haven’t watched the show in quite some time,
not since it went off the air, but I used to be a faithful viewer. The
acting and writing were good, which certainly helps. I turned on a lot
of friends to this show. They expected something truly Christian
oriented though there was much more here than they expected. I was
thrilled to be able to review this boxed set. 7th Heaven was always a
favorite, so I planned to take a night off from the kids and enjoy it on
the sofa as I settled in to enjoy a show that I once watched frequently.
The Camden family offers plenty of drama. Actually, the people that I
watch it with for the first time are often surprised by what they find.
There is more than meets the eye to Reverend Eric and the rest of the
Camden family. Fans of 7th Heaven will love what they find in this boxed
set, as for the non-believers of 7th Heaven, well... you should check it
out, too. You might end up being surprised by what you find. 7th Heaven
aired for 11 seasons. It began in 1996 and just recently ended this
year, in early 2007. One of the longest running family dramas on
television, 7th Heaven was loved by many people throughout the long
reign it had. 
Although
it's never quite clear what denomination the Reverend Camden
represents, this family drama makes a point of focusing more on the
love, trust, and honesty shared among family members than on specific
religious issues. The series doesn't shy away from controversial topics,
tackling such subjects as homelessness, premarital sex, hate crimes, and
school violence. While these issues generally don't affect the Camden
household directly, the series is able to explore these important topics
through friends of the Camden kids. The premiere episode, "Anything You
Want" introduces the Camden clan and also deals with a common teenage
problem when Matt picks up the habit of smoking. Annie's mother, Jenny,
is dying of leukemia, and "In the Blink of an Eye" centers on her last
days. The Camdens learn that a family friend's church was burned down by
a racist group in "The Color of God," while "Saturday" finds the Rev.
Camden counseling a young boy about his drug habit. 
The
family originally consisted of five children (Matt, Mary, Lucy,
Simon, and Ruthie), but in the third season, Annie gave birth to twins,
Sam and David. Three of the children (Matt, Simon, and Mary) moved away
from home. Simon went to college, and Matt married and pursued his
career as a doctor. Nevertheless, the house is always full; Lucy, her
husband Kevin, and their daughter Savannah all live near the Camdens.
Frequent house guests also find the Camden house a home of their own.
Due to dissatisfaction with the show and her image, Jessica Biel was
slowly written out of the show starting in 2000 and, after an appearance
on September 22, 2003 she did not appear again until the Season 10
finale on May 8th, 2006. Many long-time viewers noticed a gradual change
in the tone of the show throughout the years. In the early seasons, Eric
and Annie are very strict with their children, often harshly lecturing
and/or severely punishing them for minor (by most families' standards)
offenses. The show also had a more dramatic tone in earlier seasons,
featuring very serious issues in each episode, such as alcoholism and
self-injury. In later seasons, however, Eric and Annie are much more
laid-back, and the show has a lighter, more comic, tone to it. 7th
Heaven was the most watched TV series ever on the WB. It holds the
record for the WB's most watched hour at 12.5 million viewers, on
February 8th, 1999, 19 of the WB's 20 most watched hours were from 7th
Heaven. No other WB series had as much success as 7th Heaven. On May
8th, 2006, it was watched by 7.56 million viewers, the highest rating
for the WB since January 2005. 
7th
Heaven had the power to make anyone feel deliciously bad because no
matter how squeaky clean you might have fancied yourself, the Camdens
were better. They didn't swear, everybody talked about their feelings,
and they always remembered to say "I love you" before going to bed. The
show existed in a world where the relatively quotidian issues of teen
dating or buying on credit were portrayed as life-altering crises. Yet
circumstances that seemed like the stuff of fantasy happened on a
regular basis, such as longtime estranged parents reuniting or a family
of five adolescent children easily finding a couple to adopt them. At
the same time, for all its conservative sexual mores, 7th Heaven was
actually one of the most sexually frank shows on television. The
parents, Annie and Eric, constantly reference their own sexual
desire—their kids even knew to let them "sleep in" on Saturday mornings
and didn't seem at all grossed out by Mom and Dad's sex life. 7th
Heaven's genius was how it worked on two levels. Parents believed their
kids were getting good values from the show's wholesome worldview. Plus,
the show's parade of hot topics gave parents a starting point for some
uncomfortable discussions. On the other hand, 7th Heaven always went
down easy— kids got a satisfying dose of melodrama and a brief visit to
a world in which they could be guaranteed to feel cooler than every
single character. 
Paramount
Home Entertainment
Television Shows
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115083/