There they go again. When the bandages fly off Max on the ABC soap One Life to Live later this week, he'll be a carbon copy of daytime veteran Nicholas Walker. Funny, before that flaming car crash, Max looked distinctly like actor James DePaiva. It's the latest example of soap's most abused and ridiculous ruse: radical recasting via a disfiguring accident or plastic surgery. As our resident soap scholar Alan Carter points out, One Life helped initiate the practice two decades ago with a hospital fire that made it possible for Michael Storm to replace his brother James as Dr. Larry. Since then, just about everybody has used the device. Last year on General Hospital, Duke had plastic surgery and somehow lost his Scottish accent in the process. My all-time favorite occurred on Dynasty when Steven (Al Corley) got trapped in an oil-rig blaze overseas and came back (in the person of Jack Coleman) a head taller, 50 lbs. heavier and decidedly more interested in women. That must have been some fire.

>A good week for children's programming on pay cable begins Thursday (March 1, 6 A.M. and 7:30 P.M. ET) with Storybook Classics on Showtime. Danny Glover gives a spirited reading of "Brer Rabbit and the Wonderful Tar Baby," which features the fanciful illustrations of Henrik Drescher and music by Taj Mahal. The Disney Channel introduces Avonlea (Mondays, 9 P.M. ET), based on a sequel to L.M. Montgomery's juvenile classic Anne of Green Gables. The quaint 13-part series stars Sarah Polley as an independent girl sent to live with her country cousins in rural Canada.