'Once and Again' comes to the end of a glorious run

By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

4/4 stars

It would be slightly easier to part with Once and Again if this achingly exquisite show weren't taking an entire genre with it.

When Once exits tonight after a three-year run, so does serious family drama, a never-robust genre that is now officially on the endangered-species list. In its stead, we're left with the easy-answer sap of 7th Heaven or the fantasy soap of Six Feet Under, a ludicrously overcelebrated show that exists to make viewers and critics feel good about themselves for having less insane families.

To its ratings and hip-quotient detriment, Once neither pampered us nor pandered to us. Earnest and honest, Once asked you to face uncomfortable truths: That your children and parents might not be the people you thought they were, or hoped they would be. And that you were required to love them anyway.

Appropriately enough for a show that tended to whisper when others shouted, this lovingly produced show from thirtysomething creators Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick does not so much conclude tonight as set its characters off on their paths. Because ABC cut the show's season short, some of the regulars head off in their new directions a bit too quickly, but the producers probably rightly concluded that fans would prefer a hurried resolution to no resolution at all.

In TV, of course, failure is a relative term. At the end, Once was drawing 8 million or so viewers: Too few for ABC, but about three times the number MTV draws for the media-anointed hit The Osbournes. Had Once run on cable, it might have run forever.

But that's the bargain Herskovitz and Zwick made. They gave up the longevity of cable for the greater reach and, aside from HBO, the bigger budgets of network TV. In exchange, they knew they had to draw a minimum mass audience, and they failed to do so.

Yes, it would have helped if ABC, in its misguided attempt to save the show, had not moved Once so frequently that even the producers couldn't find it. But in the end, people simply didn't tune in.

Yet rather than apportion blame, let's be grateful for what Once brought us. It gave us one of TV's most sterling ensembles, wonderfully led by Sela Ward and Billy Campbell, and boosted by a supporting performance from Susanna Thompson that set the season's Emmy standard. It introduced us to three remarkable young actors: Shane West, Julia Whelan and Evan Rachel Wood--names to remember, because you're likely to hear them again. And it reacquainted us with Herskovitz and Zwick, artists who take the medium seriously, and who believe the family home is as interesting and important a dramatic setting as any courtroom, hospital or police station.

My hope is that everyone involved returns to TV again. As wonderful as it was, Once was not enough. __ USA Today (4/15/2002)

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