Spin City

I only consider this show great during the Michael J. Fox years. Between those four delicious seasons, political satire and humor were at a peak on television. Fox and his assorted cast of friends and co-workers were exceptional, making this one of the best sitcoms in the history of television. People will disagree, but come on. Friends? Seinfeld? Please!!! In an age where reality TV is becoming a norm, I can always look back to this show in syndication and watch one of the last good shows that hasn't been stretch thinner than a Hollywood actress' waistline. The most underrated actor in the show wasn't even an actor. The lovable rat/dog/wombat "Rags," a scene stealer everytime he was carried onto the screen. All of my favorite episodes have Rags in it, especially the episode when Rags rediscovers his libido and the episode when he brought back to life by Christopher Lloyd. Good stuff all around, and its too bad Fox had to leave the show.

Michael J. Fox is a terrific actor. The supporting cast for this show

were a witty team. However, for some reason the secretary Stacy

was replaced by Heather Locklear. Heather really killed this show,

it was almost dead even by the time MJF left. When she was

added, all the other charactars were pushed to the background

and we hardly ever saw them anymore. Instead, we saw a lot of

Heather interacting with Michael in a strange, contrived way. Then

when Michael J. Fox left, they brought Charlie Sheen in. Charlie

Sheen was all right, but at this point the show was unbearable to

watch because of Locklear's wooden acting abilities and the way

the other cast members (which had dwindled to just four, counting

the Mayor) were shown only once or twice per show. If Locklear had not been brought in and the other cast members

had remained with the show, this show could have survived even

without Fox. This show went off the air in 2002. If you happen to

catch it in reruns, only watch the MJF episodes and the first few

Charlie Sheen episodes, but no more than that.

Spin City works primarily because of great characters and their interactions and chemistry. I haven't seen any of the new Charlie Sheen episodes, but I saw the Michael J. Fox episodes, and they were quite good. I love Barry Bostwick as the mayor, and how he basically acts like a child.

In Michael J. Fox's last episode, everyone started crying, and you could tell they weren't fake tears. They were real. It wasn't because he was leaving because he was tired of the show. It was because he had Parkinsons disease.

I've always liked Michael J. Fox, because I always thought he had a strong screen presence, especially in Back To the Future. He wasn't one of those stuck up guys. He knew he was short and funny. Now he has moved on to animation films like Stuart Little, but I will always remember his goodbyes from Family Ties, up to the emotional goodbye on Spin City, as he ran out on stage, and the camera picked up one last image of him waving to the audience.

"Spin City": Network: ABC; Genre: Sitcom; Content Rating: TV-14 (for language and strong sexual content); Available: syndication; Classification: Contemporary (Star range: 1 - 4);

Season Reviewed: Seasons 5 & 6

To keep this little project manageable I have roped off the new millennium as a starting point to look at television. The trap door in this rule is that if a show was on the air at all after that time I can review the whole thing - except in the instances where that show underwent a change, for better or worse. Unfortunately, as with 'The Drew Carey Show' and 'The Daily Show', 'Spin City' is one such series whose glory days lie before the year 2000 and out of my jurisdiction. Thus, this review is really of a version of 'Spin City' that isn't the heart of this show. It is of a show that had lost it's lead, reshuffled the cast and was on it's dying legs. The change in the show is undeniable, and it would be irresponsible to simply ignore it, but this is not what 'Spin City' really was about.

Created by Bill Lawrence and Gary David Goldberg, 'Spin City' is a traditional sitcom about the womanizing deputy mayor and his staff of spin-masters struggling to save and protect the image of flaky New York City mayor Randall Winston (Barry Bostwick). The real 'Spin City' was driven about Michael J. Fox's terrific lead performance and absolutely impeccable comic delivery (for which he garnered a well-deserved Emmy award and 2 Golden Globes). It crackled with sharp, adult and always laugh-out-loud writing and an awesome ensemble cast to contend with any other on TV. Michael Boatman, Alexander Chapman as James, and Jennifer Esposito's hot Stacey are just 3 of my favorites. And the reunion episode with Christopher Lloyd was superb. Truly one of the funniest shows on the air, It probably gets my vote for the most underrated sitcom of the 90s. During the first 4 years, 'Spin City' was a 4 ½ star show by my scale. It was that good.

At the close of the 2000 season, Fox made a classy exit to fight a private battle with Parkinson's disease. At that signal, the rest of the cast (save for Boatman, Bostwick, Richard Kind and Alan Ruck) jumped overboard like rats form a sinking ship. But all was not quite lost as replacement Charlie Sheen - reportedly hand picked by producer Fox himself - stepped in and stepped up, filling the new role with surprising success and agility. Sheen has picked up Fox's mannerisms for the arrogant Mike Flaherty and incorporated it into his own completely new character, Charlie Crawford (like Fox, taking his own first name). In fact, with this his first project after coming out of rehab, Sheen is something of a revelation here. As hard to believe as it may be for the purists, but he almost comes up to par with Fox.

The fast and steep decline of the series really has nothing to do with Charlie Sheen. I believe it had more to do with the rest of the ensemble leaving and the show making the suicidal decision to shoulder the series on Heather Locklear. 'Spin' then quickly became a 2-person series in which we are supposed to agonize over the sexual tension between the leads and wonder if Sheen and Locklear's characters will get together. It should have occurred to Lawrence that it's fans where smarter than that. Locklear is a black hole that sucks every remaining ounce of life out of 'Spin City'. Sheen's efforts to save the show and the legacy of it's name deserve far better than this. Forget about this. Stick with seasons 1 through 3, and 4 as a bonus, and you will be in good hands.

* ½

I used to love spin city; set around the Mayor of New York and his staff, it provided a lot of laughs and politics in comedy actually quite works.

The mayor's deputy Mike was one of the best and brilliantly played by one of my favourite actors, Michae J. Fox who has so much screen charisma. The way Mike interacted with his staff was great; his relationship with Carter was hilarious and the way he mentored James was often touching. So many of the characters were great including James, Stuart, Carter, Paul, Nikki and Stacey.

Then they ruined it by casting Heather Locklear as Caitlin. I hated Caitlin, she was so annoying and she replaced the fiesty brooklyn gal, Stacey who was far superior.

When Stacey left it started to go wrong, then Mike, James and Nikki left too and Charlie Sheen couldn't be good enough to replace the loss of three great characters. Charlie was good, not as good as Mike but still a great actor, but Caitlin seemed to be the focus, it should have been called the Charlie Sheen and Heather Locklear show at the end as it was always about their relationship, just like it had been with Caitlin and Mike.

The later episodes are not as memorable, James was such a good character that the show suffered without him, everyone else was so self assured but James was the innocence of City hall and without him it was a bunch of big shot Caitlin's who wanted to rule the world.