Why I'm Glad for Commercials:
In Praise of ONCE AND AGAIN

by Greg Beatty -- Most of the time I hate commercials in the middle of a television show as much as anybody. But recently I was watching a re-run of ONCE AND AGAIN and I realized that I had muttered, "Thank God!" when they cut to a commercial. When I stopped and thought about it, I realized I meant it, and that the reasons I was glad for a commercial were the same reasons that the show was so good, and that Sela Ward won her Emmy.

ONCE AND AGAIN opens with a montage of the many, many different characters who make up the show. It is a family show, but it follows two divorced families, the Mannings and the Sammlers. That means that there are at least four households involved, and often more, as the divorced parents begin to date and draw in outside partners, or collapse and their parents come riding in to the rescue. The emotional landscape created by this multiple focus is confusing and treacherous and is therefore completely realistic to what a lot of us are going through these days. Evidence of this can been seen on the message boards at ABC Boards, where viewers not only debate the validity and emotional resonance of character actions, they share their own experiences with divorce, dating as single parents, or simply, of the loss they feel from not being there for their own kids as they go through difficult times. It is quite clear that ONCE AND AGAIN has struck a chord.

Actually, it has struck at least three very important chords, and Sela Ward's character of Lily Manning is wrapped up in all of them. The first is the one that has been mentioned: the fragmentation that comes with divorce. Lots of shows have dealt with the pain of divorce, and have done so from well to badly. Few, however, have dealt with the way divorces splinters people and asks them to live in contradictions. Because they had two children together, because they shared dreams, because they were in love for so long, Lily and Jake (Jeffrey Nordling), her husband she is separated from, don't quite know how to act towards one another. They bounce between familiar affection for one another and an equally familiar anger, and attempting to be functionally adult. When Lily's older daughter Grace (played with amazing honesty by Julia Whelan) wants her dad to be there, or to simply to love and trust him as a daughter should love and trust her father, Lily is torn. Shove Jake out, because he has lied to her? Reveal his betrayal to her daughters? If she does, would she be acting to protect them or because she is so angry and wants to get back at him for sleeping around? Sela Ward manages to communicate all of these; emotions race across her face and choke her speech at lightening speed.

The second chord is the importance of the ordinary. ONCE AND AGAIN is a show about emotions, and some of its flaws come from this purpose. These flaws are also why it was picked up so fast by Lifetime, who is showing the first season in re-runs now (Friday nights; check your listings). The characters will sometimes stop living to Communicate About Their Emotions. Other times, they get swallowed up by psycho-babble. But more often, ordinary life takes on the importance it does have in times of crisis, but which it rarely gets on television. Think for a moment about your favorite show. Whether it is FRIENDS or E. R., the set is usually just where things happen. The white screen in E. R. is important because it hides a dying patient; the couch on FRIENDS is important because that's where they sit. It isn't much in itself. In life it is different. Families fight over what house to buy, and they decorate those houses over years. Because of that every piece of furniture is full of meaning; the emotions soaking into the wood like good varnish. That happens in ONCE AND AGAIN. When Rick's son Eli (Shane West) wants to move from his room down into the basement, the door that leads from the basement to outside becomes a battleground for Rick and his ex-wife Karen (Susanna Thompson). They are really arguing about the door, and the possible draft that might come in around the edges. But they are also arguing about the increased independence Eli has-and the threat that he can just "walk out of her life," the way Rick did, and the way all children do when they get old enough. In every scene after that, the door to the outside draws the eye. That happens in every show, with food, clothing choices, gifts from parents or "the dad," as Lily's daughters call Rick (Billy Campbell). Ordinary things become tremendously important, and as Lily Manning, Sela Ward must most often communicate why it matters so much that she didn't get a phone message, or whether she and her sister Judy (the lovely Marin Hinkle) put a coffee bar in their bookstore. That means that Sela Ward has to act wildly upset over little things without falling into all the clichés about women that have been around for ages and not seem petty or hysterical. Somehow, she does.

The third chord of rare truth that the show evokes is adult sexuality, especially adult female sexuality. It's the one that makes me squirm in my seat most often. ONCE AND AGAIN takes on one of the most difficult divisions in a woman's life today: to be a sexual being or to be a mother. Much of the show revolves around Lily coming into her own desires toward Rick, and acting on them, after an extended but rocky marriage to Jake which crashed when he repeatedly cheated on her. Lily is a supermom for the millennium, and she is dating again for the first time in close to twenty years. She is wracked by all the fears of growing older than women have in our society, must dodge disapproval from her children (she jokes about them being "her parents" in one episode), and somehow find desire in her spare time. When she and Rick first make love (in the second episode), the desire gets swamped in her self-doubt and sense of loss and heartache from her marriage. She essentially breaks down in the middle of sex and tells him to go ahead and finish, which effectively kills his desire. In another episode she sleeps with Jake when he is upset over possibly losing his restaurant. Was it habit? Despair? Happiness that he finally opened up to her emotionally? She doesn't know, and neither do we. She's in a territory that most of us know but few can name: reality. Sela Ward's face can shift fifteen years in age during these moments, from the defeated woman she fears herself to be, to the glowing, confident beauty she really is. Unfortunately for those of watching her, those moments of self-doubt are excruciating, and they are why I find myself praying for commercials.

I don't always like watching ONCE AND AGAIN, because it takes me places that are too real and too close to the dark places in my heart. I don't always like it, but I do love it, and you might too. Give it a chance, and you'll see why Sela Ward deserves that Emmy.__TVZone@NZone Magazine (October 13, 2000)