The penultimate 7th season of Bewitched aired during the 1970/1971 TV season. This season was shorter than past seasons, having just 28 episodes. All the main cast members (Elizabeth Montgomery, Dick Sargent, Agnes Moorehead, and David White) returned, as did several of the major recurring and supporting cast members, including Erin Murphy, George Tobias, Sandra Gould, Alice Ghostley, Mabel Albertson, Paul Lynde, and Bernard Fox. Guest stars this season included Cesar Romero and Parley Baer. The show mostly retained the story-of-the-week procedural format, but the first 8 episodes were set in modern-day and 17th-century Salem (and filmed partially on location in Salem, Massachusetts). The most notable episode of the season was the Christmas episode titled Sisters at Heart, which was created from a story written by students at a Los Angeles high school, and was the first episode to directly tackle the subjects of racism and prejudice (although the series had always used the marriage of Samantha and Darrin as a metaphor to comment on those subjects).
As of this writing, the individual seasons are only available on DVD, and the blu-ray set is only available as a complete series release. In that set, the seventh season episodes are on discs 19 and 20. The A/V quality is very good, but in a couple of episodes, the video quality is significantly lower for part of the episode (most likely due to the condition of the original film). There are two commentary tracks on the Christmas episode and one on episode 24, each including Herbie Pilato. Notably missing on the Blu-Ray is the introduction to, and season's greetings message at the end of, the Christmas episode filmed by Montgomery, which are included on the DVD release.
The series was definitely getting a bit stale by this point in its run. This season would mark the final appearances by Lynde, Tobias, and Gould, and the writers were using recycled storylines in some episodes. That said, there are several good episodes and funny moments during the season. Ultimately, it is not the best season of the series, but it is still worth checking out.
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