Tuesdays are not complete without the 7th Heaven rundown...

"A Touch of Bink", Airdate 4.28.03

God. NOTHING interesting happened in this episode. Maybe I ought to just start making things up. Even at my drunkest, my plots would make more sense than last week's Desert Smackdown. Last night's episode mainly circled around bad things happening to tertiary characters that no one gives a damn about, thereby draining it of any emotional resonance.

The Reverend gives his first sermon after six months of "If I Only Had a Heart." The roof starts leaking, so the Reverend and Chandler start raising money with the help of grouchy church lady Ms. Bink. Ms. Bink isn't my favorite church lady (that would be the one that got high on cough syrup during Annie's baby shower). Of course, Bad Things Happen to Bad People, so at 8:53 the church finds out that she has cancer. However, since Mrs. Bink has only been in 3 episodes, I don't know why I'm supposed to care.

Ruthie's boyfriend Teeth-to-Spare is upset because his mom has a new boyfriend. The new boyfriend is smarmy, intimidating, and over every night. Teeth-to-Spare is especially annoyed when the mom and boyfriend "fall asleep on the couch after talking for hours." Right, and my 10th grade boyfriend was in my room helping me with a stuck bra clasp. The mom, like all womenfolk, is clueless. At the end of the episode, the boyfriend tells Teeth-to-Spare that if he messes up the relationship, he'll get his dog kicked out of the house. I'm sure this could be a very compelling plot, but again it centers around a tertiary character that I don't give a damn about. At this point, I'm on the boyfriend's side because his name is Dick and I'm sure that created some issues for him.

Lucy and Kevin are back from their honeymoon and are living it up in the garage apartment. Roxanne presses for details about S-E-X, but Kevin tells her that "guys don't talk about that kind of stuff." Mike and I were laughing so hard we missed the next 10 minutes of the episode. I suppose guys are busy talking about shoes, self-tanners and Melrose Place. Roxanne and Lucy go out for pizza and Lucy talks about how wonderful married sex is and how so very glad she is she waited. I have given up understanding why two characters who have hated each other all season would go out for pizza.

Finally, that horrific thing we'd all been dreading has finally occured: the Poddlers got a subplot. The Poddlers take time out of their busy schedule of speaking in unison to steal money from all over the house. The weirdest part of all is when they take money out of Cecilia's purse - she has an organizer, a makeup bag and NO WALLET. All the money is just mixed in there higgeldy-piggeldy (hee, "higgeldy-piggedly"). At 8:53, they apologize and the episode mercifully ends.

Intentional humor: 2 Unintentional humor: 2 Preachiness: 6 Histrionics: 2 Items thrown at television: 0 (I was too busy sleeping).