by Matt Sernaker, Managing Editor
It was 1996, and Michael J. Fox had left television for movies. His career was waning, and it seemed like he was going to be relegated to lesser, direct-to-video releases. In comes Gary Goldberg and DreamWorks with a new television series. This series was Spin City, and it aired on ABC Tuesday nights. Spin City: The Complete First Season was recently released on DVD and collects the entire first season, including the pilot onto DVD.
Spin City was about the deputy mayor of New York City, and his day to day life where he practically ran the city under a pretty much incompetent mayor, and wacky staff.
Episode Highlights
“Prototype”: Pilot – City Hall has to deal with a garbage strike going on, and an insensitive comment that the mayor makes toward gay people.
“Dog Day Afternoon”: Paul and Carter end up losing the body of a beloved police dog after the mayor upsets the city’s Chief of Police. Also, Mike buys an air hockey table in the hopes that the staff will use it to relax…
“Bye Bye Love”: Mike’s girlfriend of the whole series so far leaves and moves to California, and Paul makes a new year’s resolution to be less gullible. This is the best running gag bit in an episode this season.
“Striptease”: Mike is dating a law student who is stripping to pay her way through college, and Nikki is using a bit of advice that was given to her by the guy that she is dating, of how to control a person, on Stuart. This is the second funniest episode long running gag in the season.
Overall
The DVD has a few special features throughout. Disc one has an excerpt of an interview of Michael J. Fox and Gary David Goldberg, the show’s star and producer, at the Museum of Radio and Television in 1996. Disc four has a feature about the making and popularity of Spin City. Spread throughout the set was commentary by differing pairs of the stars on select episodes. The series is better on DVD than it was on television. The chance to watch the whole first season straight through gives the humor of each episode a chance to piggy back on the last one, making the series funnier as it goes along. I watched it off and on during the original run of the series, and I did enjoy it, but I was not a fan of the series. I thoroughly enjoyed the series as I watched it on DVD, and now will jump at the chance to keep watching each subsequent season. Buy this if you like Michael J. Fox, or just good funny television.
Rating: 
ComicsOnline gives Spin City: The Complete First Season 4 inept press secretaries out of 5. 
