Last night, I watched the season premiere of 7th Heaven. You remember the show; it’s been on for years. It’s the one about the preacher and his wife, and his seven children: Matt, Mary, Lucy, Simon, Ruthie, and the twins. When we last saw the show, on the series (yes, I said series) finale, everyone had returned, and the three oldest children were about to become the parents of twins in the sort of a plot twist that occurs only on series finale’s, when the writers know they won’t have to follow up the story line.
Guess what. The show got renewed, on a promise that costs would be cut by cutting the staff.
When the show opened last night, two of the new parents (Matt and Mary) to be were happy parents, living 3,000 miles away, and thus “phoning” in their appearances (i.e., off the cast). Another child (Simon) was barely mentioned. The one “teen” character who might be remaining (and thus might appeal to the WB’s the CW’s target audience) was off in Scotland, again phoning in their appearance. The only children left was one adult child (Lucy), who had lost her twins for some unexplained reason over the summer, and the two six-year-old twins. Many of the other superfluous cast members related to the missing kids were gone, leaving only Martin (a quasi-adopted kid) and Sandy (a single-mom). Thus, we now have a cast cut down to six adults, of which only the two oldest ones can really act (George Stults, who plays Lucy’s husband, could serve as a model for the definition of “wooden”). None of the kids can act or are particularly cute.
Now, on to the title of this post. So, last nights episode was about Lucy getting all emo about losing the babies, to the point where she gets on the pulpit of a church, does an extemporaneous sermon where she (a) blames her husband for the loss of the babies for wanting more children too soon after the first, (b) states that everyone wants to sleep with her husband because he is hot, and (c) starts quizzing random women in the congregation as to whether they would sleep with her husband. Of course, this being television, she gets away with it (in real life, her keister would been on the street for a sermon like that… perhaps nepotism saved her job).
As I said to my daughter as the sermon started: she’s on the ramp, the motorcycle is revving, and off she goes…
I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll watch this postultimate season to see how bad of a train wreck it is, or whether I’ll watch something more intellectually stimulating… like Wife Swap.
Well, the tea has cooled to a drinkable temperature, and so I’m off to do something productive…
