You need a psychiatrist if you miss 'Once' again

BYLINE: Robert Bianco * * * * (out of four)
Sometimes the answers are right there in front of us, but we choose to look away.

Take Rick and Karen Sammler, who have finally had to acknowledge that their teenage daughter, Jessie, has an eating disorder. The question is, why?

The answer, it turns out, has been hiding in plain sight all along. Yet neither her parents -- nor, I'll wager, most viewers -- have been able to spot it, even though it was staring us right in the face.

That moment of revelation in tonight's Once and Again is typical of this sometimes profoundly moving family drama, which offers hard-earned truths without the softening comforts of melodrama or phony epiphanies. It's also why Once and Again is the rather obvious answer to the TV question "What is the best show airing at 10 p.m. on Tuesdays?" -- even though, as the ratings will tell you, most people are looking the other way.

Written by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, who also directs and makes his acting debut as a psychiatrist, tonight's episode continues the season-long focus on Rick (Billy Campbell) and his family. Concerned for their daughter's health, Rick and ex-wife Karen (Susanna Thompson) bring Jessie (Evan Rachel Wood) to a psychiatrist. The doctor says he needs to see the three of them at once to find out "if this girl is trying to tell us something with her symptoms that she can't tell us any other way."

As usual, the entire cast shines, including the sometimes underappreciated Campbell, who allows genuine rage to break through his gentle veneer.

But Wood is the true stunner, if only because you don't expect such conviction and nuance from one so young. Her honesty and restraint make her performance all the more heartbreaking.

So why aren't more people watching? Well, maybe viewers are waiting for the show's January move to Monday, or maybe they have been confused by the uneven path the show has followed this season in its attempts to expand its universe. The effort has been laudable, but not every character has held up to the increased scrutiny -- particularly David Clennon's Miles Drentell. He was a fascinating character on thirtysomething, where he represented both what wanted to be and was afraid he'd become, but here he just seems out of place. (It doesn't help that the building Rick designed for him looks like a coffeemaker.)

And yet, even at its best, as it is tonight, Once may not ever be a crowd-pleaser like its CBS competition, Judging Amy -- which offers the simpler, less challenging pleasures of overblown emotions and pat solutions. Within its limitations, Amy is solid entertainment with an appealing cast, led by Amy Brenneman, the very likable Dan Futterman and the great Tyne Daly. They're fine actors all, but the material asks very little of them and virtually nothing of us.

Yes, Once takes more work, but it also offers greater rewards -- like the episode tonight that opens a window into a family's soul.

Look again.

Once and Again__USA TODAY (December 5, 2000)