USA Today's "Critic's Corner"

By Robert Bianco --
Parenting -- and grandparenting -- is the topic of a first-rate Once and Again (ABC, 10 p.m. ET/PT), which uses its Thanksgiving get-together to explore the way even the best of parents, striving to do their best, can blind themselves to things they don't want to see. Lily is worried that her mother (Bonnie Bartlett) won't get along with Rick's mother (Barbara Barrie, who brings a glow to every scene she's in). But the conflicts are all on Rick's side, as his mother lovingly leads him to face problems he had hoped to avoid.

What the script explores, and star Billy Campbell portrays so well, is ambiguity: the idea that Rick can be right and wrong, a good father and a bad one, all at once. Like the family dynamics it strives so hard to portray realistically, Once is not always easy, but it's almost always worth the effort.__USA TODAY (November 21, 2000)