AUTHOR'S NOTE

Here I close this little tale. It's not the end of the story, of course; life stories are ongoing and there are a lot of things that could happen to the Hans the bold Camdens after this. But stories do need a finish, and unless and until my muse strikes me otherwise (she is a harsh mistress and carries a whip, you know), this will be it for this story arc.

As I stated at the outset, my point has been to show, hopefully, the validity of one of my main criticisms of 7th Heaven; namely, that if the producers and writers chose to make it so, it could be a fine drama in the tradition of shows like "Life Goes On" or "Promised Land". There is potential in this series, with these characters, and even with several of the actors on the show. Having a primary character be a member of the clergy is rare in Hollywood, and there is a lot that could be done with this; who can forget John Lithgow's excellent work with such a role in "Footloose"?

Unfortunately, 7th Heaven, despite some good episodes ("Nothing Endures But Change" and "Yak Sada" come to mind), has fallen well short of its potential, particularly in recent years. I believe the main reason for this is that the show, like most television shows today, is written by committee and by the marketing department at WB, rather than by individuals with an artistic vision for what they want the show to be. They have identified a niche in the viewing audience and they write to exploit that niche. In this way 7th Heaven is really no different from "Dawson's Creek" or "Beverly Hills 90210"; only the target market has changed. There is no doubt that this approach has been, from a purely commercial perspective, a success. These marketing people are experts at what they do and 7th Heaven draws in more viewers than any other WB show, creating significant commercial revenues for the network.

But there are problems with pandering to one's audience too closely. It is too easy to fall into the trap of not challenging one's viewers, of not addressing the failures of their world-views as well as the successes. With 7th Heaven this has manifested itself in a number of disturbing ways, most notably the show's ever decreasing grip on reality. The scripts present real life problems but insist that they can be solved in the span of an hour minus time for commercials. The Camden children never grow up and have no friends, as normal young people do; rather, they remain obsessed with getting boyfriends/girlfriends, and almost every episode now dwells, much like a soap opera, on whether Lucy will hook up with Jeremy or Robbie or Mary will hook up with Wilson or Robbie or Matt will hook up with Heather or Cheryl or Simon will hook up with Deena. Eric, instead of being a man challenged by God to confront his own humanity and that of those around him, is nothing more than a voice for a type of patriarchy that almost always fails in the real world or a mouthpiece giving us a public service announcement on whatever issue is trendy this week, and Annie is increasingly nothing more than a premenopausal hormone bomb played for laughs and false drama. Ruthie, in the writers' attempts to make her cute, has become a frightening sociopath in training. Instead of posing questions and challenging its viewers, the show gives us pat and simple answers.

Further, in pandering to the self proclaimed "family values" audience, 7th Heaven has become increasingly misogynistic and narrow in its solutions to the problems it addresses. There is a disturbing trend toward showing the female characters as immoral, shallow, stupid and dependent, and the male characters as being moral, strong and in authority, being told in at least once case (the Colonel to Wilson) that it is the responsibility of the husband to control his wife. Interesting issues that might offend the target audience, like abortion or homosexuality or atheism, are ignored. Complex issues are diluted and made simple, and everything is presented in terms of black and white. While I believe there are some absolutes in the universe (Osama bin Laden is evil, for example), there are many more things in life without clear or easy answers. Worst of all, the show has, in the last year and a half, taken to playing for laughs the issue of spousal abuse and child abuse.

The result, of course, is storytelling that both fails to live up to its potential and which often sends distinctly unhealthy messages to its viewers. This is particularly troubling when one reads the web pages of 7th Heaven's more ardent fans and sees that many of them idolize the Camdens as an ideal family and even express a desire to model their own behavior after them. What I have tried to do in my series of stories is both write good drama around the show's premise and show that the kind of behavior that the show treats lightly (Annie's clear emotional problems and the family's addiction to simple solutions and happy endings, among others) is actually very serious. This is not to say, however, that I find the issues confronting my Camdens to be hopeless; rather, solving them will simply be a lot harder and a lot messier than the show itself maintains.

As I said above, there are of course many places this narrative could go from here. As in real life, the struggles of the Hans the bold Camdens are just beginning. But for now, there are other projects with my own characters that await my attention, and their demands to have their stories told I can no longer ignore.