Watching 7th Heaven -- The Seventh Season, now available on DVD, marks my first sustained experience with the Camden family. With a total of eleven seasons to its credit however, I couldn't help but have some awareness of the show. Until now, that awareness though was limited to catching a random episode here and there. After a few of the seventh season episodes I got hooked. Yes, the show gets corny and sappy at times - but that's part of its charm. No matter how over the top the cutesiness can get, the warmth and love amongst the many members of the Camden family remains genuine.
Over the course of these 22 episodes, various plot lines are interwoven. Not being a regular viewer of previous seasons wasn't much of a hindrance. To my dismay, Mary (Jessica Biel) appears in only a five episodes. Biel and her bodacious body would have provided sufficient eye candy regardless of whether or not I grew to like the show. Mary, working as a stewardess, had left home in the fifth season so I guess I was lucky she was included at all. Also no longer living at home is eldest son Matt (Barry Watson), who turns up for a few cameo appearances. As usual, the remaining regulars are Reverend Eric Camden (Stephen Collins) and his wife Annie (Catherine Hicks). Their children, from oldest to youngest, are: Lucy (Beverly Mitchell), Simon (David Gallagher), Ruthie (Mackenzie Rosman), and twins Sam and David (Lorenzo and Nikolas Brino, respectively). Beyond that there are a number of boyfriends, girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, in-laws, and hangers-on. Suffice to say that this show has no shortage of characters upon which to base new plots.
The dual foci of the seventh season are Lucy's impending marriage to longtime boyfriend Kevin (George Stults) and Eric's heart surgery. Beverly Mitchell does a good job of conveying the self-centered immaturity of Lucy. Throughout many of the episodes, she pesters Kevin to propose to her -- even at the hospital as her dad undergoes a double bypass. Kevin is a policeman with an attractive female partner, Roxanne (Rachel Blanchard). Lucy can't stand her fiancé working so closely with her, and obsesses over whether Roxanne has designs on him. Kevin has to put up with so much crap from Lucy, I found it a little unrealistic that he actually wants to spend the rest of his life with her.
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