'Once and Again' avoids sophomore jinx, but can it avoid the ax?

By John Levesque* Seattle Union Record --
TV critics tend to be leery of "issues" episodes. You know, the ones where a main character has to cope with cancer, impending death or irreversible acne. These episodes usually show up during a ratings sweep and, while we all end up sobbing as the credits roll and the local news anchors tease us with the latest fear-inducing theatrics upcoming on the late news, we secretly hope the show returns to its regular, issue-free story line next week.

Yet I love "Once and Again," aka Tuesday Night Therapy. I wish it were on twice a week. (OK, it is: once on ABC and once on Lifetime, but you know what I mean.) Which is like saying, "Lay another crisis on me, guys. I'm feeling a little issue-withdrawal here."

How can that be? How can a hater of fine whines such as moi put up with Lily Manning's self-absorption? With Rick Sammler's self-flagellation? Not to mention the cute-but-troubled Sammler kids, the cute and only slightly less-troubled Manning kids, and Rick's obsessively compulsive ex, Karen Sammler.

Two words. Zwick and Herskovitz.

Sorry. Guess that would be three words. 'Scuse me while I do a little self-absorbed navel-gazing over that one.

Thanks. I'm back. And I'm here to say "Once and Again" in its second season is better than it was last season. Huzzah! That is no easy feat for a returning series. Think "Ally McBeal" in its second year, when a lighthearted drama became a silly free-for-all. Or "Sports Night," which went from crackling good dialogue to repetitive posturing for effect.

When modest success begets second-season renewal, the pressure is on to grow the characters, to make art imitate the quotidian rhythm of life. Too often, though, the writers hit the sophomore-season wall, a barrier erected by our own expectations of where the character development ought to be going coupled with the creators' reluctance to deviate from the material that got them renewed in the first place.

With "Once and Again," co-creators Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz have cleared the fence without breaking stride, bringing viewers a steady stream of "issues" that don't descend from the stratosphere completely out of context but arise instead from the fertile compost of stories that have gone before. And so the more Lily becomes distraught over whatever mundane calamity has befallen her, the more I become traught at the opportunity to see her work it out. The more Rick is disturbed by his own insecurities, the more I am turbed at the prospect of more soul-searching by two people whose first marriages failed and who are now dancing the second-chance tango with all the fervor and uncertainty of frisky adolescents.

As was the case with their series "thirtysomething" in the late '80s and early '90s, Zwick and Herskovitz are aware that "Once and Again" is the kind of reflective, insightful programming that makes some folks change the channel so fast you'd think it was a PBS pledge drive.

And yet others can't get enough.

"It's a very interesting litmus on a kind of personality," Zwick said last week. "Certain people don't think this kind of time or attention should be paid to one's feelings or analysis of them. And then there's another group who actually value that kind of introspection and find it stimulating."

Zwick is being modest, because I'm actually a tough sell on the kind of touchy-feely stuff he's talking about. But the writing in "Once and Again" is so accessible, so dead-on situational, that it makes the mundane – grocery shopping, dinner preparation, you name it – magnificent. Better still, it makes the big "issues," such as Jessie Sammler's current battle with anorexia, not the least bit contrived.

Zwick says a lot of that realness comes from improvisation, from feeling free to "riff and let the voices emerge."

The result is a spectacular range of characterization that encompasses every member of a gifted ensemble, from Sela Ward and Billy Campbell's crazy-in-love Lily and Rick, to Susanna Thompson's icy-hot Karen, to Evan Rachel Wood's achingly unconfident Jessie, to Julia Whelan's older-than-her-years Grace, to Shane West's brooding Eli, to Marin Hinkle's beguiling Judy.

Their interaction as members of families in transition is astoundingly natural. And the contributions of recurring players such as Bonnie Bartlett, Barbara Barrie and Mark Feuerstein are huge in the sense of establishing the principal characters as pieces of an ever-growing mosaic. Zwick himself appeared last week as a psychiatrist because, as he described it, it seemed like the natural thing to do.

This all means bubkes, of course, if "Once and Again" fails to attract an audience deemed significant by the network. It is ABC's lowest-rated drama and gets its clock cleaned each week by another family drama, CBS's "Judging Amy." But it's not as if ABC has done the show any favors. Introduced in September 1999 as a sort of Tuesday night placeholder for "NYPD Blue," which traditionally has a late premiere, "Once and Again" was expected to be one of those six-episode curiosities that disappear below the surface without leaving so much as a ripple. But it generated enough of a following that ABC delayed last season's premiere of "NYPD Blue" until January, when it could move "Once and Again" to Monday nights in the spot vacated by "Monday Night Football."

That scenario is being repeated this season, with "Once and Again" tentatively scheduled to leave the Tuesday-at-10 schedule after the Dec. 19 episode and resurface at 10 p.m. Mondays on Jan. 15. But now there are reports it may move to Wednesdays at 10 instead, opposite the NBC stalwart, "Law & Order." Zwick seems to like the idea, though it could be a case of sending a good show to almost certain death.

It's enough to make one contemplate therapy. But as long as it's on the air, "Once and Again" is all the psychoanalysis I can handle. Besides, without Zwick and Herskovitz there to join me on the couch, my "issues" just aren't that interesting.

* When John Levesque isn't on strike, he is the television critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.__Seattle Union Record (December 12, 2000)