Two New Shows with Confounding Characters

By Diane Werts --
YOU KNOW HOW you go to the movies, and sometimes you can't figure out at first exactly who's who in the plot or what tone the film is going to take? You sit there concentrating in the dark until suddenly you've been sucked heart and soul into a wonderful experience, thanks largely to that same complexity or ambiguity that initially had you off balance.

Now . . . You know how you watch the first episode of a new show on TV, and sometimes you can't figure out at first exactly who's who in the plot or what tone the series is going to take? You sit there concentrating amid household distractions until suddenly . . . you grab the remote and flip around to see what else is on.

TV critics don't watch new shows that way. We do the tube movie-style - sitting down, focusing in, for the long haul. We watch preview tapes straight through, without commercials, letting their unbroken storytelling weave a web around us.

That advantage would do wonders for two strong fall-season debuts this week that may be too crafty and intricate for their own network-ratings good.

Tonight's ABC drama "Once and Again" (10 p.m., WABC / 7) plays loose stylistically, having divorced-parent would-be lovers Sela Ward and Billy Campbell sporadically relate their feelings to the camera, in commercial-style black-and-white confessionals.

Tomorrow's NBC drama "The West Wing" (9 p.m. on WNBC / 4) hits the air as frenzied as a whirlwind, racing 'round Washington and the White House with various political players whose duties and relationships are revealed organically over time. Lots of time. Bustling, intercut, character- crammed time.

The tune-in tonight at 10 should be huge. "Once and Again" is from the "thirtysomething" folks (Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz) and spends its first six weeks in ABC's hot "NYPD Blue" spot. Ditto tomorrow at 9 for "West Wing" from Aaron Sorkin, the auteur of TV's "Sports Night," scripter of the not-unrelated movie "The American President," and beneficiary of weak time- slot competition.

But how many folks will stick around till 10:20? Or 9:15? Scribbled notes from my "West Wing" screening contain one observation repeated several times early on: Who are these people? Rob Lowe busily beds a babe, then rushes off for an important meeting because he's an important - somebody political. John Spencer ("L.A. Law") is dashing about because he's a key operative of some kind. In rushes harried Allison Janney ("Private Parts"), another somebody-or-other, connected to the first two somebodies, with whom the familiar faced Brad Whitford also works. They're all employed in the White House, I could tell that much one-third into the pilot. Also they're fascinating to follow in a sort of industrious, authentic-feeling way. But who are these people? " The West Wing" asks a lot of its viewers from the start. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Shows that make us keep pace with the performers - "Homicide," "ER," "The Practice" - are often among the most ultimately rewarding to watch. But tomorrow's first episode from Sorkin doesn't pay off that attention for awhile. Faces and facts are thrown at us in the progressive manner of actual life, but we don't have any foundation upon which to file th em for future reference.

If you stick around, you can start to sort them out: Lowe's the deputy communications director, Janney's the press secretary, Richard Schiff ("Relativity") is their head honcho, and Spencer is chief of staff, with Whitford as his tart-tongued second. And Martin Sheen, making an appropriately imperial entrance late in the game, is the folksy, anecdote-spouting prez.

Moira Kelly comes in from the outside as one of those ruthless election consultants, Whitford's former squeeze, now attached in more ways than one to a presidential rival. While politics is mere sport to the career-minded among them, others are truly worked up about ideas, stances, and betrayals of the above.

There's real thought behind "The West Wing," a blessed exhilaration in this increasingly apolitical medium. For those who remember when '70s TV comedy took on the world, this is a welcome arrival. True, the pilot takes some fish-in-a-barrel potshots at sanctimonious evangelists, in Sorkin's speechifying manner from "Sports Night." But it also delivers that series' sa tisfying depth of reflection and rich characterization. Eventually. Once we know who these people are.

"Once and Again" gets down to business quicker. "All I ever wanted, I think, was to be safe," Sela Ward concedes to the camera right at the start of tonight's pilot. "That's the funny thing, because I never chose the safe thing. I would try. And somehow, it would always end up being unsafe." Risking your heart, and reeling it back in - that's what Zwick and Herskovitz are about here, just as they were with "thirty- something," "My So-Called Life" and "Relativity." And again, they' re [?sic] deep into expectations and reality - what you want and anticipate from life, what you get and don't get - in a key generational decade. This time it's the 40s when your marriage has broken up, your kids are old enough to test your soul, and you've learned that stoicism is "a useless virtue." Ward and would-be lover Billy Campbell ("The Rocketeer") behave universally enough to be relatable to many viewers and specifically enough to be annoying . The creators are still spot-on in capturing the inner emotions going on between the lines, moments that reveal much more than those too-clever to-the-camera testimonials.

The protagonists' kids, too, are keenly drawn, freaking out at the prospect of their parents - gross! - dating. They have so-called lives of their own.

Antagonistic ex-spouses make life even more conflicted.

How conflicted? Ward and Campbell, and their kids, will tell you. To your face.

In black-and-white interjections that come too frequently and become altogether too coy. Can't they let us figure out a few things for ourselves? Interior monologues are this fall's most annoying trend, wedged into what seems like a dozen new series. Well-written dialogue once clued us in to revelations like Ward's: "I just don't know where fit in my own life anymore." Now it's series creators who just don't know where viewers fit in their shows anymore. We're wind-whipped bystanders at the start of "The West Wing" and Father Confessors in "Once and Again." Maybe these are roles we're ready and eager to step into. Or maybe not. I'm all for tube innovation, but I'd sooner see something fresh unfold at a pace and tone more immediately congenial in both coherence and consonance.__Newsday (September 21, 1999)