I was seven years old when the Christian family drama 7th Heaven debuted on the WB in 1996. The show follows the Camden family, a suburban middle-class tribe of seven, including two picturesque parents, their five children, and a dog wishfully called Happy. The patriarch, Eric Camden, is a reverend in the Christian church, which distinguished 7th Heaven at a time when pop culture was secular, profane, and at times outright blasphemous.
The year before 7th Heaven's debut, Larry Clark's Kids conjured an apocalyptic tableau of godless adolescence. Kids showed drugged-up youths cutting their teeth on the streets of New York City like it was a modern-day Sodom or Gomorrah; they brutalized strangers, raped unconscious friends, and got HIV from serial acts of unprotected sex. Fueled by reckless grunge bands like Nirvana, teen spirit was anything but divine in the 90s.