7th Heaven

7th Heaven is an American family drama television series, created and produced by Brenda Hampton. The series premiered on Monday August 26, 1996, on the WB, the first time that the network aired Monday night programming, and was originally broadcast from 1996–2007. The series finale was scheduled for May 8, 2006; however, the show was renewed by the CW when the intended final episode received high ratings. The 11th and final season premiered on Monday, September 25, 2006 and ended on May 13, 2007.

7th Heaven was the longest running series that has ever aired on The WB and was the longest running family drama in television history (beating out both Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons). It was also the longest running show produced by Aaron Spelling. The show tells the story of a Protestant minister's family living in the fictional town of Glen Oak, California.

Each episode deals with a moral lesson or controversial theme that the family handles either directly or indirectly. Some range from the traumatic (e.g., Eric's sister came to visit and the children found out that she was an alcoholic) to the somewhat trivial (e.g., in one episode, every child acquired an addiction, with even Ruthie being addicted to gum). Beyond the moral lesson in each show, there are also longer-running story arcs, such as Eric's difficulty coping with the maturing of the female members of the household. The first episode involved Lucy's (lack of a) period. In the later seasons, Annie enters menopause and Ruthie needs a training bra.

The topics are usually approached from a socially and politically conservative Protestant Christian point of view (devoting almost all of Season 9 to the importance of abstaining from pre-marital sex). However, several pre-marital incidents do occur, including a Season 10 episode where Eric mentions that his parents had to marry because his mother became pregnant with him. Additionally, the episode in which Ruthie disclosed that she lost her virginity while in Europe over the summer (though it was later revealed to be a lie). As a rule, the series generally avoided touching on "hot button" issues (i.e. affirmative action, abortion, and homosexuality). A 2004 episode about the importance of voting on election day seemed to suggest that men in the family were voting for former president George W. Bush, while the women were voting for Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, although the script went out of the way to make sure that no mention of either candidate was ever made directly by name, leaving the viewer to decide and the message of the episode simply being "vote, no matter who you vote for". In the same episode in which Matt discloses that the family is Protestant, he also discloses to Sarah that his father is a Democrat.

The show is reliant on the very special episode concept, attempting to introduce contemporary social issues to lend greater emotional resonance to episodes. These episodes do in fact lead to high ratings for the show. The January 24, 2005 episode, which featured the birth of Lucy's daughter Savannah, garnered 7.99 million viewers—the highest WB rating since 2003. Another example included the would-be series finale, now simply known as the Season 10 finale, which scored 7.56 million viewers on May 8, 2006.