Presenting more in this series we call Mind Numbing Muppets - a Soundtracksforthem response from the underbelly of the keyboard to the kaleidoscope of dazzlingly silly cahnts who impose themselves on us via their access to the media.

Number 2: Gillian Evans

That skanky ho Mary Camden has sinned again. For long term viewers of Seventh Heaven, this can't come as much of a shock. Residing in the sort of television universe where the cliff-hanger ending of the first season was a camera close up of Mary's (Jessica Beil) face as she was handed a bottle of beer at a party. Viewers nerves were left painfully taut, fingers bitten to the quick as anticipation mounted as to wheter or not she would take a sip. Of course she did, and a personifcation of evil like no other was born.

The show operates as a thinly disguised public service announcement for the Christian right, it is the Brady Bunch without a hint of the kitsch value. From it's nauseatting opening tune of "where do you go?/when the world don't treat you right/the answer is home" you know you are settling in for an hour of overly wholesome lunacy. The show has been running for the past part of a decade now, for the most part on what seems like auto-pilot. Watching it can be a hugely frustrating affair. Throughout the first season the eldest son Mat provided the tense moments of familial tension with his developing smoking habit that was more Johnny Blue than Afghan Black. The most developed character biography focused around oven chained Annie's flirtation with gange, which of course in a series of flashbacks led to the death of several of her close friends. Her delayed admittance to drug use saw her marriage flounder on the rocks for a good two episodes, as a result the kids for some reason were made live in the garage. Since then moments of crisis have included Ruthie's addiction to bubble-gum, the fact that Simon an apparently health 20 year old is riding young ones left, right and centre. And worse, much worse the fact that Mary Camden who has was cast off to Alaska for developing a non-descript drug problem by her folks has, bless your self in anticipation: filed for divorce against her husband and left her kid to move to England. In a show where the dog Happy is the most rounded character this really is gripping material.

Really, one would really have to hope that the writers of this show are a bunch of college drop out, stoner wasterals lost in this fabric of irony they have pulled over the eyes of the TV networks, the christian right and viewers. But really, I'm left terrified and shaking with the sort of gut pains that only an infestation of maggots can give that - no - this show is for real. It is increasinlgy over stretching itself, with the Camdens house rivalling Home and Away's Pipa's at the height of its use by transitional kids. Two of the "sinners" that currently reside there have developed an odd obsession with the suddenly buxom Ruthie - stalking her on dates, sabataging relationships and eavesdropping on phone calls. But for a show where a 14 year old girl is regularly stalked by two grown men without comment, it really does have an astutely didactic effect. It does exactly what it says on the tin presenting the family as the pivotal social unit in society. Apart from the fact that the Camdens who have blatently closed their eyes to 40 years of birth control have popped a set of twin sprogs who erriely talk in constant unison. If only the writers would transform theses twins into the offspring of Satan spawned in the heart of WASP-ish America, let the local Marilon Manson militia defecate on Rev. Camden's altar then perhaps no more Sunday dinners would be ruined by stumbling across this show on tv and the accompanying desire to slit my throat.

Labels: Muppets, Society, TV