TV SERIES OFFERS DOUBLE-EDGED VIEW OF SECOND TIME AROUND

byline: Dale Hanson Burke, publisher of Religion News Service --

What exactly is sin and what are its consequences?

It's not a question raised in polite conversations. It's not even a discussion heard in most churches these days.

Calling something a sin seems far too definitive in a society given to legal ambiguities and shifting moral guidelines.

And yet those of us who have lived long enough cannot deny our lives are littered with consequences of bad choices and selfish behavior. Even if you don't call it sin, you can see its fallout.

A new and controversial television show seems determined to explore this theme. Once and Again was simply touted as a show developed by the creators of thirtysomething.

It started out with the simple plot of a beautiful, recently separated 40-something woman (Sela Ward) meeting a handsome and recently divorced 40-something man (Billy Campbell) at their children's high school.

Those of us who actually are 40-something and actually do hang out from time to time at our children's high schools immediately realized this was a fantasy show. No father at my school looks remotely like the male lead. Fortunately, there aren't a lot of women resembling Sela Ward at my school either.

Of course, when two such attractive and newly available people meet each other, sparks fly. The subsequent episodes offered a glimpse of the two falling in love and cavorting despite jobs, car pools, and homework. The steamy scenes offended some and titillated others.

I confess I appreciated the fact that the man did not fall for a woman half his age and the characters actually look like they are in their forties. But if any two parents ever kissed passionately in the car pool line at our school they'd probably be rammed by the impatient folks trying to keep the line moving.

Had the show continued on this track it would have run out of steam in the first season. But the creators were clever and patient. Slowly they began to leave clues that this was not really a show about passion and love being lovelier the second time around.

As we began to see a full tapestry of the characters' lives it became clear love might be grand, but life was messy. The teenage son fails a test because he can't bring himself to retrieve his book from his father's apartment when he hears him with his new lover.

Friends begin to be torn by loyalties and responsibilities.

Former spouses begin to unfold not as villains but as complex, loving and attractive people in their own right.

We begin to see that the main characters are not so perfect after all and clearly contributed to the downfall of their marriages.

At the end of one show the adolescent daughter, too old for her years, tearfully asks her father, "Will we ever be a family again?" He chokes out, "Not the same way we were," and the awful consequences of divorce seem as real as the earlier passionate embraces.

Increasingly, the audience is left to ponder why each couple couldn't work things out with the original mates and to sense the problems that could destroy a remarriage.

I have never been divorced, but I have suffered through the experience with enough friends to know this show has it mostly right. The fallout of divorce, especially for the children, is enormous. The happiness of finding a more perfect match is inevitably complicated by the pain of the family left behind.

Once and Again may not be a morality play, but it is a reminder that by the time we reach our forties we have responsibilities that should mitigate our own desires. It is a picture of relationships fractured by expectations. And it is a wake-up call that our behaviors have consequences for ourselves and our children.

There are some who think the show is too steamy and an example of a lower level of morality on television. But from what I have seen, the show is a chilling view of the consequences of what some would call sin.__Orlando Sentinel (January 1, 2000)