Over and Out for 'Once and Again' By SCOTT SANDELL, Times Staff Writer

Tonight's "Once and Again" carries an important message for its passionate fans: Life goes on--after divorce, affairs, accidents and, yes, the cancellation of television shows. For this, the final episode of the acclaimed but ratings-challenged series (10 p.m., ABC), does its level best to serve some chicken soup to those souls who have analyzed its every nuance on the Internet and organized campaigns to save it, including a protest planned outside ABC today in Burbank.

In somewhat of a departure from the show's customary pace, which is just this side of grass growing, the finale presents one life-altering development after another in its adult characters' lives. For some, there's the prospect of marriage; for others, turning points in careers or relationships or both.

Into the last category fall the central figures of Lily (Sela Ward) and Rick (Billy Campbell), who began the series' third season in September as newlyweds. Back then, they were trying to unite a house filled with kids from each of their first marriages. Now, they're trying to keep the realization of their professional dreams, the intrusion of "too much good news," from tearing them apart.

As usual, the emotional development of the characters is key, as is fine acting from an ensemble cast. So often here it takes just one look, one smile, one furrowed brow to tell much more than the script or a plot point ever could. But in the effort to tie up loose ends and suggest what direction the future will take when the series is dead and gone, some things got trampled.

The children, who formed the crux of many an episode or at least provided interesting subplots, play little more than background roles tonight. More important, the confluence of all these dramatic, or melodramatic, flash points seems contrived, an incongruous end to a show seeking to reflect upon reality.

Nevertheless, the finale does offer closure. Watch the last five minutes and you'll see that, even if this wasn't everyone's idea of entertainment or the second coming of "thirtysomething," the show had a way of touching people's lives. __ LA Times (4/15/2002)

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