It truly is Sweeps now. Last night was the (probable) series finale of 7th Heaven, which I watched. I think I mentioned before that I've been off 7th Heaven for the last few years. I left around the time all the kids except lame Beverley Mitchell (Lucy) took off to appear in gross-out comedies, forcing the producers to replace them with less interesting cast members. (This was also around the time Brenda Hampton started cramming her hawkish world view down viewers' throats.) The entire original cast returned for the final hour, though, so it was fairly easy to follow. It helped that the writing is still very repetitive.
I forgot what a strange show 7th Heaven was. The religious stuff was pretty odd, not just because we don't get much religion on mainstream television, but because it was expressed in such cryptic ways. No one ever really talked about God, per se. However, there was a very clear, very Christian code of conduct that everyone seemed to agree to: even transgressors knew that they were transgressing, and usually had a very articulate explanation for their transgressions.
The editing and the repetitive scripts were also very peculiar. Scenes seemed to linger so long that they sometimes inspired nervous laughter. Was there not quite enough material for an entire episode? Are short scenes immoral?
What was really odd was how, at some point, the Camden family turned in on itself. The writers managed to sustain a winning formula for about five years. Each week, one of the Camdens would encounter someone with a problem, such as smoking, cutting or Islam, and would, over the next 42 minutes or so, resolve that problem. At some point, though, the family stopped interacting with these interesting one-offs and instead became increasingly consumed with curiosity about each other's lives: "I think Simon's hiding something." "Are you going to tell Mom and Dad about Matt and Sarah?" "Did Ruthie get her period?" There was probably an entire season there where no one left the house, electing instead to stare suspiciously at each other across the dining room table and whisper in corners about Mary (Jessica Biel)'s bad credit and whether or not Simon (David Gallagher) was having you-know-what outside of marriage.
The finale was true to that second formula: a lot of gossip, not much action. I think I missed the big twist, in which Simon and his fiancee, Rose (Sarah Thompson), decided to call off their engagement. It's possible that scene didn't make it to air, because that would have been redundant: we got the gist from the remaining five or ten minutes, in which family member after family member marveled at Simon and Rose's decision.
Elsewhere . . . I saw the very end of the David Blaine underwater fiasco. Unbelievably, Salon let me access this article, in which Cintra Wilson calls Blaine a pussy. If you can't get to it via that link, try some other way: it's worth the Day Pass.
Everwood was good. It's probably just as well the WB delayed these episodes until late spring. This one seems to take place in the tail end of winter; the mood spectrum among Everwood's residents ranges from a little blue to suicidal. I'm not sure I could have taken all of it, plus the requisite mope pop montage, had the episode aired on a gloomy February Monday.
24 was kind of surreal. I wondered for a second if Jack and Audrey's reunion was a dream sequence. Jack Bauer? Happy? I'm worried that we're heading for a backlash, that the writers have had enough of (partially) smothering their misogyny this season. The first sign? Karen Hayes (Jayne Atkinson), the surprisingly competent and insightful acting head of CTU, spilled the beans to sleazy, careerist Miles (Stephen Spinella), with no doubt disastrous consequences to come. My guess is that Audrey's about to get Teri'd.
Last night was, finally, the "season" finale of What about Brian. I sort of didn't watch that and I'm pretty sure I didn't watch last week's episode, either. It never managed to get as good as I was hoping it would. Oh well. I read its numbers fell off significantly when it moved from Sunday to Monday. Someone better find something better for both Barry Watson and Amanda Detmer, at the very least. -- Peter
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