Perhaps there will be something like 'Once' again By Chuck Barney
MONDAY WILL DELIVER a dismal setback for those who demand so much more from television than cookie-cutter sitcoms and redundant reality shows. ABC's exceptional domestic drama "Once and Again" is being forced into early retirement after a three-year run that prompted high praise from TV critics but generated low wattage in the Nielsens.
For viewers who never embraced "Once and Again" -- and apparently that constituency contains nearly everyone in the free world -- the show focuses on two families forced into an often awkward blending by the second marriage of Lily Manning (Sela Ward) and Rick Sammler (Billy Campbell). It's bolstered by a phenomenal cast and packed with the kind of intelligent writing, challenging content and psychological complexity rarely found on network television.
In other words, it never stood a chance.
Actually, it's a minor miracle that "Once and Again" lasted as long as it did, considering the show's habitual failure to attract the mass audience it deserved. Its average freshman viewership of 10.9 million slipped to 8.5 million last season and plunged even further, to 6.5 million, this season. To put that in perspective, a show typically needs to muster an audience of about 15 million to crack the Nielsen Top 20.
Dismayed hard-core loyalists who recently rallied in vain to save the show likely will overlook those numbers and direct their snarling hostility at ABC. They'll claim that the network's programming dimwits never fully appreciated "Once and Again" for the rare, prestigious property it was. They'll also argue that ABC didn't do enough to nurture the show. And, to a certain extent, they have a legitimate gripe.
ABC, after all, did put the series through the indignity of multiple time-slot relocations, and repeatedly yanked it off the schedule for several weeks at a time. In addition, the network's promotional backing of the show often seemed half-hearted at best.
The short, bumpy life of "Once and Again" exemplifies a disturbing tendency at hapless ABC, where execs repeatedly have failed to capitalize on distinctive quality programming. In recent years, ABC dramas such as "Nothing Sacred," "Wonderland" and "Gideon's Crossing," along with Aaron Sorkin's formula-defying sitcom "Sports Night," all quickly came and went without registering much of a Nielsen pulse. This season, the wonderfully unconventional cop comedy "The Job" also looks like a sure goner.
On a larger scale, this trend is not only an ominous sign for ABC, but for viewers yearning for a few substantive entrees among a TV diet riddled with junk food. We're already part of an era in which broadcasters at all networks are continually enticed by low-cost reality programming and headline-grabbing gimmickry (i.e., "Celebrity Boxing"), so it's reasonable to assume that producers of subtle, sophisticated shows will face even tougher obstacles in the cutthroat struggle to crack prime time.
In retrospect, the chief "sin" committed by "Once and Again" creators Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz is that they chose to embrace engagement over escapism -- always an iffy proposition in their chosen medium. Like it or not, most viewers generally don't watch the small screen with the same kind of intensity that they view a stage play or a feature film (hence the unflattering term "couch potato").
No matter. As they did with their earlier TV efforts, "thirtysomething" and "My So-Called Life," Zwick and Herskovitz willfully avoided the standard crowd-pleasing devices of TV drama in favor of an introspective series that strove to examine its characters in all their frailty, flaws and contradictions -- even if it often meant doing so through unsettling or downbeat ways.
"I guess we feel there isn't a show doing exactly what we're doing," series writer Winnie Holzman told the New York Times in the show's second season. "It isn't about huge, earthshaking events. It's about smaller people and the smaller moments in their lives. In the end, it's about how people's minds work."
Indeed, the show's writing staff seemed to have a firm handle on the beats and riffs of everyday domestic life. And although their focus was on families and friends experiencing the fallout of divorce, the issues they dabbled in were ones that resonate with us all: messy romantic entanglements; obsessive parental concern; sibling rivalries; teen-age alienation; the ongoing struggle for self-worth ... Sure, the emotional honesty wasn't always easy to endure, but it usually was well worth the effort.
Of course, "Once and Again" was hardly perfect. (What show is?) Occasionally, it veered toward melodrama. Also, its characters could, at times, come off as too self-absorbed, talky and whiny -- traits that no doubt sent many viewers fleeing to the mindless comfort of televised car explosions or reality show back-stabbing.
On the whole, though, "Once and Again" was a quietly stunning achievement that, for 63 absorbing episodes, managed to somehow remain true to itself in a TV world where commerce and conventionality trumps creativity 95 percent of the time. And now, as the show takes its final bow, the once-urgent question of "What can be done to save it?" gives way to another:
"Will there ever be anything quite like it again?"__ Contra Costa Times (April 15, 2002)
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