Now and Again

I first caught this show early Sunday morning on the Sci Fi channel. The quality of the episode and the early morning air time told me that the series had already been canceled. I have still never seen the pilot with John Goodman, but I have seen most of the episodes.

It is a marvelous show. Eric Close is brilliant as Mr. Wiseman, the human guinea pig of a government experiment in creating a super soldier/agent. His humor in dealing with the dour Dr. Morris and his almost palpable yearning for his wife and daughter left me with an aching pain for a man caught in a surreal nightmare. What makes it even more poignant is Wiseman's refusal to allow himself to be just a guinea pig. He adamantly asserts his humanity and forces Dr. Morris to accept it also.

Dennis Haysbert is Dr. Theodore Morris, the brilliant but tightly wound Frankenstein creator of a most uncooperative monster. One of the great aspects of this show is the fact that Dr. Morris is not a villain. He is a complex man who needs the humanity his creation forces from him. Wiseman refuses to let Morris be a cold and heartless mad scientist. He picks and prods and digs out all of humanity that Dr. Morris tries so hard to bury.

Margaret Colin and Heather Matarazzo are Lisa Wiseman, his grieving widow, and Heather Wiseman, his grieving and angry daughter. They are confused and frightened of this strange handsome young man who calls himself Mr. Newman. He moves in and out of their reality doing inexplicable things (such as asking Lisa to hold an egg without breaking it on a busy subway platform) and displaying an uncannily intimate knowledge of their lives and thoughts.

Now and Again was intelligent, touching and funny all at the same time and it was much too good to last.