It's Monday again, and again I'm going to urge you to watch "Once and Again." The show airs tonight at 10 p.m. on ABC. Last week, it got a good ratings bump and some good publicity from a storyline that involved two teen-age girls kissing. The episode even got pulled by an affiliate in Virginia, and as we all know you can't buy that kind of press. Interesting that the great outrage seemed to center around the teen lesbian storyline and not the other major plot thread of the episode, which involved a teen-age girl's intense relationship with her English teacher, which almost but not quite ended with a kiss between the two. I guess as long as the teacher's a guy, that's okay.

 

Tonight, as is this show's often frustrating habit, those plots will be on the back burner, if they're mentioned at all, and completely different characters will be in the spotlight. This week, it's Judy, sister of Sela Ward's character; her off-again, on-again boyfriend, Sam; and Sam's son, who has some sort of non-specified neurological/psychological/behavioral impairment. On the only other episode he's been on, his father said only that they'd been to lots of doctors and tried lots of medications, and nothing works. Whether this means that the writers are lazy and haven't researched these problems, or the father is so self-absorbed he's taken in only enough information about his son's challenges to make him feel sorry for himself, remains to be seen. However, these writers have handled storylines on anorexia and schizophrenia with impressive accuracy and verisimilitude, and this character has never shown himself to be anything other than a self-centered lout, so I'm thinking it's the latter. Tune in tonight to see where they're going with this.