ONCE OVER By Matt Roush
If ever a show deserved a happy ending, even if it's coming much too soon, ABC's Once and Again qualifies more than most. When Rick (Billy Campbell) and wife Lily (Sela Ward) toast "to too much good news" in tonight's series finale, it's a startling change of pace.
It's also a crying shame.
Literally. And also a waste of some of the best writing, producing, directing and acting talent that network TV has been fortunate enough to ever have at its disposal. Unfortunately, disposal is exactly what happened to this luminous but perpetually underappreciated family drama throughout its three-season run.
A delicate and often dangerously dark-hued (some would call it depressive) adult saga of second-chance romance and its rippling repercussions through a large and fascinating family, Once and Again was bounced between time periods from the very start, never able to claim a night as its own. This fall, the show's fate was sealed when ABC moved it to Fridays, saddled with terrible lead-ins and negative publicity after news superstar Barbara Walters griped about 20/20 being temporarily displaced.
Ratings plummeted, and the show was yanked into hiatus oblivion just as the season's most shattering storyline reached its apex, with Rick's ex-wife Karen (the brilliant Susanna Thompson) severely injured when hit by a car just as she was emerging from a debilitating depression. Her recovery, both physical and mental, has provided the show some of its most transcendent moments.
But then, there have been so many, often involving the younger members of this blended family: angelic Jessie (the prodigiously gifted Evan Rachel Wood), struggling with anorexia and homosexuality; intense Grace (Julia Whelan), so creative yet so insecure; and aimless Eli (Shane West), taking baby steps toward adult responsibility through a haze of pot smoke.
As Jessie tells her mother in one of tonight's quieter but more affecting moments, "Sometimes things happen between people that you don't really expect. And sometimes the things that are important are the ones that seem the weirdest or the most wrong, and those are the ones that change your life."
Change for the better is the primary agenda of this premature finale. Rick gets a fantastic career opportunity that would relocate the family to Australia, while Lily - whose burgeoning career as a talk- radio advice personality has felt phonily contrived all season - is being wooed for national syndication. Meanwhile, Lily's ex-husband Jake (Jeffrey Nordling) finally proposes to a stunned Tiffany (Ever Carradine), the mother of his new baby. And even Karen, who has suffered mightily this year, is given another chance at happiness.
As Lily tries to figure out her own future, she comforts nervous bride Tiffany with this description of marriage (and distillation of the entire series): "No map, no directions. Just two people trying to do the best they can."
Stay tuned beyond the final romantic fadeout to see the actors - and executive producers Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick - finding a new use for the show's trademark device of black-and-white internal monologues spoken into the camera. Everyone involved seems reluctant to say goodbye, to each other and to us.
Anyone who's ever watched and cared about these characters will return the sentiment. This is one of those times when the cold reality of the business of network TV can really break your heart. __ TV Guide.com (April 15, 2002)
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