For 'Once,' an honest take on divorce

By Marilyn Elias -- Creators take second trip down whining road Nothing ever happens. When is something going to happen?

That's the weekly gripe from the guy across the family room, remote in hand, as he watches Once and Again.

But he hasn't missed an episode of the new ABC drama, resuming on a new night at 10 ET/PT tonight.

A slow show in fast times, Once and Again is a hit for creators Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, fathers of the late thirtysomething.

Their new program tells the awkward story of two 40ish parents, Lily (Sela Ward) and Rick (Billy Campbell), who stumble into a romance after their first marriages split up. Rick is three years post-divorce; Lily has been separated for 10 months.

Between them, Lily and Rick have four spirited kids. Three, God help this brave couple, are adolescents.

Just about anything that could go wrong does.

Lily's two girls, accompanied by father Jake (Jeffrey Nordling), stop by her home to pick up something and find the couple partly disrobed in the living room.

Fourteen-year-old Grace (Julia Whelan), newly aware of her own sexual stirrings, looks like she wants to burrow down to China instantly.

How does Mama explain? Not very well, of course.

As for Rick, he has shared custody. So why doesn't Mr. Mellow get tough with 16-year-old son Eli (Shane West), who's flunking school and might not make it to college?

Because he's so preoccupied with Lily that he's not acting like a grown-up, says ex-wife Karen (Susanna Thompson), a no-nonsense lawyer.

Maybe Rick does have his faults. But when Eli, enraged at his nagging mom (the designated family worrier), tells Dad he can see why the man divorced her, Rick soberly orders his boy never again to criticize Mom to him.

Nobody is perfect on Once and Again, but they all struggle to muddle through and even do the right thing at least some of the time.

Psychologists and divorce experts are finding much to admire in the program.

It's a natural magnet for baby boomers, says consumer psychologist Ross Goldstein of Mill Valley, Calif.

"Flawed characters are more acceptable to us because all illusions about our own perfection are gone by now," he says. "Many have been through divorce themselves, and it's pretty refreshing to see it portrayed realistically."

Two-thirds of the show's viewers are 35 or older, Nielsen ratings show. Most likely to watch: women ages 35 to 49.

"The show is groundbreaking. We don't have anything like it for realism about divorce and remarriage," says psychologist Constance Ahrons, author of The Good Divorce. She has taped episodes to use in workshops training future marital therapists.

Among the truths told:

Older doesn't mean smoother.

Rick and Lily's painfully tongue-tied early dates are right on the money, Ahrons says. "It probably works against you if you've been married awhile. You just don't have skills for playing the dating game."

Sex at middle age - Ripley's Believe It or Not!

At a vulnerable moment, Lily falls into bed with ex-husband Jake (for the last time). Very common, experts say.

In Lily's first liaison with Rick, he loses his erection, then regains it. Too much for some to watch, co-creator Zwick says: "We lost a lot of viewers in that scene."

"It's fantastic that they showed it," says psychologist Janet Shibley Hyde, president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex. Not all lovers are pubescent hunks on automatic pilot. What happened to Rick "is a very common experience for men in their 40s."

Kids aren't parental clones or marionettes; expect the unexpected, especially after divorce.

Eli's parents may be professional hotshots, but he struggles with a serious learning disability. His 12-year-old sister, Jessie (Evan Rachel Wood), gets her period for the first time when she's staying at Dad's. Oops!

Holidays? What celebrating?

Rick spent Thanksgiving at his office. (His daughter guiltily brought leftovers from Mom's.) Lily's feast was miserable, as her parents had the audacity to invite ex-husband Jake.

The first year or two after separation "can be horrendous," Ahrons says. Kids prefer everything as before, so family boundaries blur. Grandparents who like their child's ex-spouse might want the family reunited. The searing betrayal Lily felt isn't uncommon.

Men often can't figure out what went wrong.

Jake's casual infidelities are no reason to break up the family, he thinks. Rick is still wistful and bewildered three years after divorce.

"Lingering bonds of attachment go on much longer in men than women, and men are more likely to have fantasies of mediation," says Mavis Hetherington, a divorce researcher at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "They often don't know what the problem was. About one out of four men say they're astonished when wives ask for a divorce because they thought they were getting along well. And they feel adrift (like Rick appears) until they remarry."

The program shows all four kids suffering from divorce. It shows their resilience and strengths, too.

"This is real life," Goldstein says. "Anyone who's gone through a divorce knows there's no way children come out of it without some scarring." That doesn't mean the parents should have stayed together, he adds.

So, does anything happen on the show? "We don't have car chases, and we don't have doctors saving lives," co-creator Herskovitz concedes.

That doesn't mean nothing happens. About 60% of U.S. kids now spend some time in one-parent homes. At least for the middle-class ones and their parents, Once and Again portrays the kinds of things that can happen to them. ________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ Creators take second trip down whining road

Critics of Once and Again say the adults on it are whiny and self-absorbed, the thirtysomething clique 10 years later and none the wiser.

Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, co-creators of both shows, don't necessarily disagree. "Absolutely, they can be," Zwick says. "But I hold this really radical theory that people are whiny and self-absorbed."

Once food's on the table, he says, "the first thing you do is complain about it."

Adults on the show do their fair share of complaining. It's cathartic for Zwick and Herskovitz, though. Herskovitz was divorced six years ago; Zwick's parents are divorced. The men's own four kids range from 7 to 16; kids on the show are 9 to 16.

"We're all looking for a reflection, a way to look deeply into our lives," Herskovitz says. Sometimes he doesn't like what he sees around him. "I'm often appalled at the behavior of divorcing couples around their children, how narcissistic they can be."

Rick and Lily are not paragons. "They were so besotted with each other in early episodes" that they did neglect their kids, Zwick says. Upcoming shows will depict "some very grown-up moments," he says, as Lily's "whole way of being the last 40 years is called into question. She goes through a crucible."

Adds Herskovitz: "As divorce becomes more prevalent, we all need to believe it's fundamentally OK and won't do serious harm to children. In truth, we don't know, but we have to look at the price children pay."__USA TODAY (January 24, 2000)