Spin City is a sitcom about the deputy mayor of New York, his boss and their staff.
It holds up really well. A big part of this is the amazing ensemble cast headed up by Michael J Fox. The humor is rather timeless and Fox’s delivery is amazing. Michael Boatman is wonderful as Carter, dry humor with such perfect timing with his delivery of one liners and side comments. Alan Ruck as a inappropriate man who can’t stop talking about sex is also hysterical and I can’t help but wonder if done today the character would be toned down to be politically correct. PC or not, he’s funny as hell. Barry Bostwick as the airheaded mayor, Richard Kind as a naive media liaison, and Alexander Chaplin as James, a farm kid in the big city are all great. But one of the real strengths of the show is the women. Strong characters with no bullshit. Victoria Dillard, Jennifer Espisito, and Connie Britton are all perfect for the show.

The half hour episodes don’t really deal with anything really deep, or at least not often. A raunchy DJ challenging the mayor to a fake election, a misstep with the mayor saying there is no Santa, the mayor’s daughter speaking out against the treatment of horses in central park. In fact, a lot of the shows are the staff putting a spin on something silly or disastrous that the mayor has said or done.
The humor is timeless as it deals with relationships, in what seems like an accidentally realistic way. Relationships not just between people romantically involved but also with work mates and the people around them. One especially good episode was Michael Flaherty (Michael J Fox) dealing with his Mother sleeping with the Mayor.

Spin City is still funny as hell and it’s priced nice. So if you are building a library of television on DVD I would say that Spin City definitely needs to be a part of it. These first two seasons are terrific and I just ordered season three.