Impressive 'Again'

By Matt Zoller Seitz --
THE QUIET emotional intensity of the holidays is the subject of tonight's "Once and Again" (10 p.m., Channel 7). This exquisitely crafted Thanksgiving-themed episode, which gathers together the children and relatives of central lovers Rick Sammler (Billy Campbell) and Lily Manning (Sela Ward), is one of the finest hours of TV you'll see this year.

Written by series creators Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, and directed by Claudie Weill, it eschews conventional dramatic fireworks in favor of subtlety and nuance.

Many of the featured characters are coping with their own varieties of stress. Rick is consumed by his job designing a corporate headquarters for Client-from-Hell Miles Drentell (David Clennon). He bickers with his teenage son, Eli (Shane West), over the boy's determination to become a rock musician; he knows his 12-year-old, super-achiever daughter Jessie (Evan Rachel Wood) isn't eating as much as she should. His stress is compounded by a visit from his long-widowed mother, the wise and aggressively therapeutic Peg (Barbara Barrie), who sees the distress of her son and her grandchildren and is determined, in her measured way, to get to the bottom of it.

Though Lily and her extended family are relegated to the sidelines -- there's only so much drama you can pack into an hour show, after all -- we do get a sense that they, too, have problems and are groping towards happiness. The dinner is joined not just by Lily and her children (Julia Whelan and Meredith Deane), but by Lily's single-and-hating-it sister, Judy (Marin Hinkle), brother Aaron (Patrick Dempsey) and family matriarch Barbara (Bonnie Bartlett), who's as conservative and circumspect as Peg Sammler is earthy and outspoken. Barbara's husband (Paul Mazursky) died last season in a memorable two-part episode, and his memory hovers over the episode, along with the potent, long-gone ghost of Rick's father, an uncommunicative but supercompetent man's man whom Rick sometimes seems to be channeling.

Like other standout episodes of "Once and Again," this one takes pride in its gentleness and nearly microscopic attention to emotional details. Nobody throws chairs or breaks into tears. Anxieties, resentments and unaddressed sadnesses are conveyed through fleeting gestures and furtive glances -- which is how it usually works in real life.

And, as in real life, the dinner raises more questions than it answers; though it would be unsporting to reveal anything here, you can see the seeds of future plotlines being sown as the respective families talk, cook and try to get along.

There are only a few dramas on network television as consistently mature and emotionally transparent as this one. But "Once and Again" is certainly the most human-scaled show on network TV right now. Herskovitz and Zwick have tried for similar effects in their other dramas, notably "thirtysomething" and "My So-Called Life," both of which concerned themselves with the minutiae of upper-middle-class suburban family life. But nothing else they've created comes close to "Once and Again" in terms of sheer concentration and control.

At times this hour seems to go beyond drama and into anthropology; entire relationships are conveyed in handshakes and tossed-off comments. A piercing scene finds Rick, dog-tired after a long day, lying face down on a fold-out couch while his mother tenderly strokes his hair; in that instant, Rick's 40-some years of fatherly responsibility melt away, and we're looking at a flashback that's not a flashback -- a boy forced by his father's death to grow up too fast, a boy who still lives inside this workaholic father.

A word should also be said on behalf of Billy Campbell, who this season has flowered from a merely agreeable presence into a mesmerizing, at times haunting, leading man. He creates enormous empathy by not asking for any; he never seems sadder or more beleaguered than when he's trying to reach out to the people he loves but no longer understands. It's Emmy caliber work, and it shouldn't be forgotten.__New Jersey Star-Ledger (November 21, 2000)