The Sins of the Seven: Behind the Scenes

The stage for the reunion is set as the cracks begin to show.

Enjoy a preview of Rhodes Ave. Press’ upcoming novel, The Sins of the Seven coming May 21!

Preface

The following story is a work of fiction that unfolds in a familiar world of pop culture—a world of yesterday, as I remember it: the vibrant, rebellious 90s—setting the stage for a narrative that flips reality on its head.

Ever wondered what really happened behind the cameras of your favorite hit TV show that never existed? This isn’t just a reimagining—it’s a confession, a revelation, a secret diary of a phenomenon that could have been.

Prologue

It’s often said that friendships come and go throughout life. And, often in this endless transit of friendships, there are those that bisect our paths if only for a moment while others may divert our paths entirely and it’s often in these most transformational of friendships that we can find the course of our lives altered dramatically.

That was certainly the case with my group of friends. The one major difference with The Seven as opposed to the other friendships I had in my life thus far in that we were all brought together by chance as opposed to choice. Our destinies were all rapidly brought together like multiple lanes of traffic all\ merging together on a busy highway at rush hour, our courses in life suddenly colliding together.

Our paths were also different in that we formed our friendship under the searing spotlights of fame where friendship has the hardest time fully blooming. But in spite of it all, we forged our bonds and pushed ahead as best we could.

The Seven was the result of a time in our lives that could never have been planned and could probably never happen again. It really was lightning in a bottle when each of The Seven needed it the most.

As time has passed, we’ve each drifted in and out of each others lives, the results of changing priorities and waxing and waning loyalties and grudges. But while some things changed, one thing never seemed to change: we were the closest of friends in the best of times bound together by our loyalties and in the worst of times we found ourselves ultimately bitterly divided by our differences.

To say we have a complicated history would be putting it mildly. So, as we approach the 30th anniversary of the show that made us famous and brought us into each other’s lives, I’m attempting to document the history of our friendship.

As with anything purely based on memory there is always room for interpretation, hyperbole and creative storytelling but I’m attempting to do my best to present an honest and unbiased accounting of our shared history beginning with the moment that started it all, ‘Breakers Beach’, the show that skyrocketed us from obscurity to stardom.

The following is the story of a group of friends and those caught in our orbit who became closer than family, we were an extended family who could fight like cats and dogs one minute and make up like best friends the next.

The following is an accounting of their good sides, their bad sides, their pretty sides, their ugly sides, their sins and their tragedies.

These are the stories of Paige, Marion, Richard, Sierra, Kylie, Brad, and Alex.

These are the sins of The Seven.

Requiem: The Seven

NexTV Studios, Burbank, September 2022

Paige Bauer held her hand up to shield her eyes from the piercing sun. In a twist of Hollywood magic, the sun she was protecting her eyes from was not actually real but rather an enormous stage light brought into the soundstage to simulate the afternoon sun shining off of the ocean into one of the original sets from Breakers Beach - NexTV’s hit primetime series that originally ran from 1992-1999.

Paige held up her hand, not just to block the blinding glare that burned at her cheekbones, but to remind herself that even this sun was nothing more than an illusion—a carefully engineered ray of light, much like the life she led on set here.

In its heyday, Breakers Beach shot its unknown cast to superstardom. Dubbed ‘The Seven’ by gossip mags and tabloids—from North Dakota to New Delhi—this group of seven young, striking actors captured the public’s imagination.

The show’s global hit status is still debated, but many agree it arrived in the early ‘90s at a perfect moment. As America recovered from the Reagan hangover, the Gulf War, and the LA Riots, audiences craved something sudsy, silly, and escapist.

Breakers Beach was born from the same soapy DNA as Knots Landing, Dynasty, and Dallas, yet it broke the mold. Instead of standalone episodes, it wove tangled, long-form narratives about relationships and youthful misadventures—stories that resonated with a modern audience. It wasn’t just a show; it was a cultural wave that left lasting ripples across a generation.

And, as the news cycle of the 90s evolved to resemble more of a sudsy, reality show circus itself, more and more viewers began to seek refuge in the fictional town of Breakers Bay where scandal and secrets became the ultimate currency.

Breakers Beach’s over the top antics and firm grasp on what resonated in the 90s had instant water cooler potential and became to many became a sort of socially acceptable guilty pleasure - after all, in the early 90s no one would spend their evenings eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and then tell their whole office about it the next day. But what happened on Breakers Beach was quickly becoming a figurehead of the burgeoning wave of appointment TV - the happenings of Breakers Bay becoming fodder to be endlessly discussed and dissected by fans and casual viewers alike.

Breakers knew who its audience was and wisely integrated issues and storylines that were of interest to its young, upper-middle class viewers. While the show’s cast was admittedly deficient in diversity by today’s standards, Breakers still broke down barriers and defiantly introduced several firsts for American network TV such as daring to have the first ever Lesbian as show runner of a major primetime TV show and the first-ever HIV-positive character who’s storyline was treated with great reverence and empathy — almost unheard of in the 90s when conservative titans like Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh were hiding around every corner ready to unleash torrents of vitriol upon the denizens of Breakers Bay for their transgressive progressiveness. The very act of the beloved characters of Breakers merely existing was protest and progress in and of itself.

Breakers’ enduring legacy was that it came along while many of its viewers were growing up and also growing into themselves while allowing viewers to see themselves reflected in the world of Breakers Bay - similar to the “Sex and the City” effect seen many years later - the fans of Breakers found common ground over debating which character they aligned their hopes and passions to the most:

Nomadic dreamers who desired to belong were able to easily find themselves in Sierra Waggoner’s portrayal as Lori Jacobsen, the new girl in town who suddenly finds herself absorbed into the plots and ploys of Breakers Bay’s residents.

Girls who envisioned being swept off their feet by a dashing Prince Charming could see themselves in Kylie Irving’s delicate and nuanced portrayal of Maxine Hughes, the spoiled rich girl who aspired to something more than a life handed down to her.

Not to be outdone by all the girly-girl action, Brad Lowery’s quietly powerful performance as Jo Byers was created with all the tomboys in mind - Jo was the solemn loner who answered to no one and beat to the sound of her own drummer and stridently rejected the feminine norms of the era - you’d never see Jo in shoulder pads and ruffles.

Paige Bauer’s star shone the brightest as Beth Davies who rounded out the roster of girls as the sensitive but troubled artist who seeks to chart her own course and forge her own future.

After Lori, Kylie, Jo and Beth, the most oft-desired character was Marion Grace’s Jamie - the oversexed villain, sure, but the Queen Bee of Breakers nonetheless. Everyone secretly wanted to be “a Jamie.”

Every girl of the time wanted to be a “Lori,” a “Kylie,” a “Jo,” a “Beth” or even a “Jamie,” and wear their allegiance with pride.

Adding to that “must-see” quality was the fact that in an attempt to push boundaries and redefine what a “hit” drama was in the early 90s, producer Howard Kessler and the team at NexTV shrewdly looked to capitalize on the emerging celebrity culture of the early 90s.

Realizing that people wanted to follow the movements and machinations of celebrities, Howard envisioned that his young, hot cast would go beyond simply reeling in viewers to see the outcome of the latest love triangle, he’d leverage the media world to move his cast around like chess pieces who would then extend the fantasy and fiction of Breakers Beach beyond the screen and onto the page of magazines.

Howard’s ploy was truly ahead of its time, in a way, he was helping to shape the blurry world of “reality” TV-meets-scripted programming that would rise to prominence nearly 30 years after the premiere of Breakers Beach.

The most famous example of this stratagem was the union of Richard Warren and cast mate Marion Grace - a tumultuous relationship that threatened to tear The Seven asunder before they even began to fully realize their true potential.

In the years since Breakers went off the air, it has experienced a second life in the form of reruns on Next, NexTV's popular streaming service. The arrival of Breakers on Next has allowed a whole new generation of fans to become friends with Lori, Maxine, Jo, Robert, Beth, Jamie & Sammy. In addition to finding a new audience, the arrival on Next allowed fans who grew up with the Breakers crew the ability to revisit a simpler time before pause buttons, the infiltration of the internet and allowed viewers to see the show which when seen through the hazy afterglow of nostalgia tricks those caught in its wake into remembering the show’s heyday as “the good old days.”

As Paige sat staring into the sunset, she looked around the set which at one time was the interior set for El Farallon, the Breakers Club’s bar and central locale, a sort of hornier beach-side version of Cheers where the characters would meet, mingle and manifest the schemes that drove the show’s central plot.

The set had been rescued from the studio’s prop department and painstakingly recreated for the show’s 30th anniversary reunion special.

Next, realizing how lucky they were to still own the lucrative streaming rights to the show planned to celebrate their prized investment and the 30th anniversary of the show’s premiere with a splashy special that would reunite the remaining members of The Seven for the first time on-screen in over twenty years.

Amongst The Seven themselves, it was a chance to face each other after years of distance, a chance to make amends and to make peace with the past, not to mention the things they had done to each other along the way to where each was now.

In reality, The Seven recently reestablished contact on a long-running group text as well as recently meeting at Paige Bauer’s house in Malibu to take a first stab at settling their resentments with each other, to let off just enough steam so that the reunion didn’t devolve into a bloodbath of epic proportions and even more epic egos.

While it was good for the group to briefly reunite before having to do it in front of the cameras, it was obvious that a lot of the hurt inflicted almost 30 years before still ran in rivers of pain just beneath the surface. The cast thankfully and quickly slid back into old rhythms and were able to mostly pick up where they left off also managing to sidestep any potential landmines which could threaten to derail the whole endeavor altogether. Sierra, Kylie and Brad picked up where they left off, cracking jokes and engaging in the gossipy girl talk they used to love so deeply.

Eventually the subject of Richard came to the fore. In 2022, just as it was in 1992, everyone was left wondering if Richard would show up and if so, what Richard would they be meeting? Would it be the friendly, handsome devil that could charm anyone with his roguish good looks or the dark, brooding, self-destructive asshole who was hell-bent on destroying himself along with everyone in his vicinity?

Not surprising to anyone, Richard never made it to Paige’s house for the reunion pre-game in Malibu. So, as the days to the reunion ticked down, a growing sense of unease was emerging in the group as to if and how Richard would chose to return to the spotlight alongside his former cast mates.

Sierra Waggoner leaned over in her seat towards Paige, “You want to place bets on if Richard shows up?”

Paige laughed saying back to Sierra, “I got $20 on him showing up two hours late.”

“Oooh, good one,” Sierra replied poking her finger in the air, saying, “Two hours seems about normal Richard time.”

Overhearing this conversation, Kylie Irving craned her neck around from her seat towards Sierra and Paige adding, “I got $50 saying he’s fucked up when he gets here.”

Brushing her long, stick-straight brown hair out of her face, Brad Lowery huffed, “If he gets here, that is. Here’s my 20 saying he never makes it,” Brad says as she pulled out a wadded $20 bill from her pants and placed it in Sierra’s hand.

The four women shared a knowing glance before a production assistant approached letting the nearby assistant director know that Richard has just arrived on the lot.

Paige and the girls inhale deeply and hold their breaths as Paige lets out a deep exhale and says to the girls, “Okay, girls, it’s showtime.”