Sometimes, despite the characters' tin ear for humor, the show decides to get funny. Lighten things up. People get kind of funny silly. They drop things. They bump into each other and get embarrassed because they're always kind of embarrassed anyway but now they've bumped into each other awkwardly or something. Oops! Ha ha! So whenever it's supposed to be kind of funny silly embarrassing, we hear the funny silly embarrassing music. Boink? B-doink doink? Ba-doink! It's kind of like in those old grade school nature films. Here's the little cub or colt or pup trying to learn how to walk -- look out, little fella! B-doinky doinky doinky doink, says the music.

"Once and Again" revolves around Lily (Sela Ward) and Rick (Billy Campbell), who are both divorced, and both have two kids, and they've fallen in love with each other, which means that on top of their self-absorption and ineffectuality and inarticulateness they have bad taste in the opposite sex. Lily is whiny and childish and annoying. Rick is dopey and eager to please and annoying. On top of all that, the actors, who are both very pretty, have no chemistry at all. There are exes around, but nobody's much better.

The wife loves that Lily. She calls her "my friend." I think she does this just to annoy me.

A lot of people watch it for the kids. Lily has two girls, teen Grace and subteen Zoe, and Rick has a teen boy and a younger teen girl. A friend of mine who loves the show (and whose boyfriend, good man, hates it) watches it for the kids, especially Grace. "I have been in mourning for Angela Chase for about five years now," my friend says, referring to the main character on "My So-Called Life," "and Grace is a pretty good sub, and even more realistic than Claire Danes because she's not as pretty, and is slightly overweight -- just like every 15-year-old I've ever known."

The same people who made "My So-Called Life" -- and "thirtysomething," by the way -- are responsible for "Once and Again." The navel gazing and whininess that were so true and appealing in "MSCL" were irritating in "thirtysomething" and are insufferable here. Kids, teenagers, are supposed to be that way. People in their 30s and 40s are supposed to be over it a little.

Grace is not just a pretty good sub for Angela; she is Angela. Or at least a wan carbon copy. I think the producers are a tired bunch. They didn't even bother to disguise the villain character, Rick's boss, who is, get this, the bad guy from "thirtysomething." Not a copy. Same guy. They didn't even bother changing his name.

Things aren't going so well for "Once and Again." Two weeks ago it had a 6.9 Nielsen rating, tied for 44th place with "Dharma and Greg." Hit shows, like "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" or shows on CBS and NBC, get half again as many viewers.

Perhaps that's why "Once and Again" resorted to the Very Special Episode gambit of a hostage crisis in Lily's ex's restaurant (starring Devon Gummersall -- Brian Krakow from "My So-Called Life"! -- as the gunman), an episode that included not one believable second, except when the gunman shot himself at the end, because who wouldn't after spending any time with this crowd.

The hostage episode got a 5.4 rating, tied for 65th place.

Last week was the moving-in-together episode -- will my drafting table fit here? Oops! Ow! B-doinky doink? Everyone has to move into Lily's house because they can't afford a new one, even though Rick is the chief architect on some sort of gigantic corporate retail/living space monstrosity. Yeah, that's generally a rough field, financially.

The kids, who all took the news that Lily and Rick had gotten engaged the way you'd expect them to take the news that the market was out of grapefruit so we got oranges instead, banded together to sabotage a family meeting to discuss the arrangements. After the kids stormed out together, stopping to warn Lily and Rick that this doesn't mean they like each other or anything, our ineffectual heroes smirked at each other and slapped five. The end.

I looked at the wife.

"So, that was a plan?" she said.

I put seven years of higher education to work on that question and, using every ounce of my critical thinking ability, came to this conclusion: God, who cares?

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