Once and Again


Once and Again is an American television series that aired on ABC from September 21, 1999, to April 15, 2002. It depicts the family of a single mother and her romance with a single father. It was created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick.
One of the show's unique aspects was the "interview" sequences filmed in black and white and interspersed throughout each episode, where the characters would reveal their innermost thoughts and memories to the camera.

Premise

Lily Manning is a suburban soccer mom in her forties, who lives in Deerfield, Illinois. Recently separated from her philandering husband Jake, Lily is raising her two daughters, insecure, anxiety-ridden 14-year-old Grace, and precocious nine-year-old Zoe. For support, she turns to her more free-spirited younger sister, Judy, with whom she works at their bookstore called My Sister's Bookstore.
Lily's life changes when, during the pilot episode, she meets Rick Sammler in the principal's office of Grace's school, Upton Sinclair High School.
Rick is a single father and co-head of an architectural firm, Sammler/Cassili Associates, which is located in downtown Chicago. Rick has been divorced from his uptight ex-wife Karen for three years and has two children, Eli, a 16-year-old basketball player at Sinclair High who suffers from a learning disability, and sensitive 12-year-old Jessie, who longs for the days before her family's disintegration.
Lily and Rick share an immediate mutual attraction and begin dating. Their budding relationship causes problems in both of their respective families. Grace strongly objects to Lily and Rick's relationship as she still hopes to see her parents get back together. Karen, a public interest attorney at the downtown law firm of Harris, Riegert, and Sammler, is worried about the toll Rick's new relationship would take on their children, particularly Jessie, who is shy and emotionally fragile. She is also working through her own feelings of jealousy that Rick is moving on to a new relationship.
In addition to Lily and Rick's relationship, the show also focused to a lesser degree on their exes, Jake and Karen, and their own struggles to move on in a post-divorce environment.

Plot summary

Season 1

Lily is in the process of divorcing her restaurateur husband, Jake. She is reluctant to begin dating again due to the sensitivities of her daughters, who are still emotional about the divorce. She meets and is instantly attracted to divorced architect Rick Sammler. However, their new relationship is complicated by Lily's many remaining emotional and financial issues with Jake. Grace and Eli become close when she becomes his tutor. Judy has a relationship with Rick's friend, Sam Blue before discovering Sam is married.

Season 2

Lily and Jake's divorce is finalized and she hopes to spend more time with Rick. However, Rick becomes sidetracked by difficulties at work and has to begin working with unscrupulous developer Miles Drentell. Things become difficult for Lily when Rick's project runs into legal difficulties and his ex-wife Karen is hired to represent the opposition. Jessie flirts with an eating disorder and begins to address her problems with the help of a therapist. Jake's girlfriend Tiffany announces she is pregnant. At the end of season two, Rick has to dissolve his architectural firm, and Lily and Rick get married.

Season 3

Rick resumes his partnership with Sam Blue, now divorced, to design a hotel for a new client. Sam and Judy try to be friends but eventually resume their romantic relationship. Jake and Tiffany have a baby girl and eventually decide to get married. Grace develops a crush on her English teacher, Mr. Dimitri ; although their relationship never became sexual, an investigation eventually forces Mr. Dimitri to leave the school. Meanwhile, Jessie discovers she is attracted to another girl: upperclassman Katie Singer, and after Katie acknowledges her own romantic feelings towards Jessie with a love letter, the two girls quietly begin dating while hiding their romance from everyone, in what became the first teen lesbian romance on American network television. Karen deals with her depression; just as she is starting to make progress, she is hit by a car, leading to months of painful rehabilitation where she meets physical therapist Henry Higgins. Lily faces more painful domestic struggles when her mother begins to show signs of Alzheimer's Disease and her brother Aaron, who is schizophrenic, wants to move in with his girlfriend. By the end of the season, Rick and Lily face big decisions when he is offered a job in Australia and she is offered a nationally syndicated radio show. Their decisions are never shown, but in the last moments of the series finale, Lily reveals she is pregnant and everyone comes together to attend Jake and Tiffany's wedding.

Cast

Main cast

Season 1 (1999–2000)

Season 2 (2000–2001)

Season 3 (2001–2002)

Production

The series was filmed at the Century Studio Corporation sound stages in Culver City, California, and also on location in the Los Angeles area.

Broadcasts

It originally aired on ABC from 1999 to 2002.
In the U.S., it was in syndication on Lifetime Real Women the spinoff channel from Lifetime Television. The channel stopped running O&A in April 2005, and no American outlet presently carries the show. Once and Again was seen on Sky One and the now-defunct ABC1 in the United Kingdom and the Seven Network in Australia. In Canada, the show was seen on the W Network until late 2007, then returned to the network in September 2008, albeit in a 3 a.m. time slot.

DVD releases

released Season 1 on November 5, 2002, mere months after the series finale. However, it took three more years and numerous petition drives for season two to be released, which occurred on August 23, 2005. A little over a month later, on September 30, 2005, news broke about the release of the third and final season, which was slated to occur on January 10, 2006. Mock-up photos of the packaging were even released. However, by October 2005 the title was delayed indefinitely with no explanation and was never released.
It was almost two years before another official word was uttered on the subject and in July 2007, it was reported that Buena Vista's license on the program was soon to expire. As a result, a new company could acquire the distribution rights to the title and potentially release the third season.
DVD NameEp #Release Date
Season 122November 5, 2002
Season 222August 23, 2005
Season 319

Ratings

Awards