Best shows sometimes get the ax By Joanne Ostrow
Tuesday, April 16, 2002 - Let's not get our hopes up.
Just because there are feverish late-night fan group discussions on the Internet holding out hope that Monday's "Once and Again" finale wasn't really final, optimism at this point would be ill-advised.
It's been suggested (OK, it was reported by online gossip Matt Drudge) that the sets for "Once and Again" haven't been struck and that, since ABC has a dearth of strong pilots for fall 2002, there may be a future for the series at the network after all. Others wonder if a cable network might come to the rescue of the dear, departed drama.
It's also been suggested that a familiar bumper sticker visible in the finale sums up the feelings of the show's co-executive producers: "Kill your TV."
We would follow that directive, but we know we'll fall helplessly in love with the next risk-taking, well-written, honest, adult series that comes along - perhaps several seasons from now - only to see it canceled, too, for low ratings.
Television is a cruel business. Whether we're mourning "I'll Fly Away," "My So-Called Life," "EZ Streets" or, this week, "Once and Again," we realize we have nobody to blame except the tens of millions of our fellow viewers who would rather watch easy, lightweight family drama or predictable hospital, cop or lawyer melodrama.
Take "Judging Amy," "Providence" and "JAG," put them all together and you have sentimentality without the sensitivity, gravity and delicate truth of "Once and Again." Take "ER," "Law & Order" and "NYPD Blue," lump them together and you have excitement, but without the soulful, interior moments so brilliantly depicted by "Once and Again."
We will remember "Once and Again" as television's most intelligent weekly exploration of second marriages and the dynamics of blended families. After a three-year run, during which ABC played timeslot roulette with the series, it managed to attract 8 million devoted fans. That would be a huge hit for a cable network but, in the world of commercial TV, 8 million simply won't keep the lights on.
The creation of Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick (who wowed us first with "thirtysomething"), "Once and Again" was a more mature, moody, sometimes dark and difficult work. The ensemble cast was superb, including the best young actors on weekly television.
Sela Ward and Billy Campbell set the life-affirming tone as divorced parents who start over together in second marriage; Susanna Thompson was sensational as the emotionally damaged ex-; Marin Hinkle was achingly credible as sister Judy; Shane West, Julia Whelan, Evan Rachel Wood and Meredith Deane - as the Sammler-Manning kids - rose to the challenge. They're released into uncertain futures now.
Delicately negotiating tricky territory like anorexia, adultery, homosexuality, drugs and Alzheimer's, "Once and Again" made a case for unconditional love and acceptance within the unwieldy, unpredictable living organism called family. It also dared to portray therapy sessions as legitimately as the more celebrated (and more self-consciously hip) "Sopranos" on HBO.
ABC can make more money more easily with simpler, cheaper fare, without taxing the imagination of viewers or running afoul of sponsors. The network can strike it rich, at least temporarily, with a game show like "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," so why bother with probing family drama?
We have to hope the mainstream networks will continue to bother, that other writer-producers will rise to the impossible challenge of treating television as a serious artistic medium, at least once and again.__Denver Post (April 16, 2002)
Home
2002 Review Archive Index
