Caroline in the City

Lea Thompson was adorable as cheerful cartoonist Caroline Duffy, and Malcolm Gets got off the best lines as artist Richard. The other main characters, Del, Annie, and Charlie were fun to watch too. Then Julia came into the picture and the show went downhill fast, never to recover. Then again, you could never even FIND the show, it changed timeslots so much it didn't help. But thanks to the cast, the show was a joy to watch for 2 seasons.

Caroline Duffy (Lea Thompson) is a cartoonist with a successful character. She hires grumpy starving-artist Richard Karinsky (Malcolm Gets) forced to lower himself as a colorist for her cartoon. Del Cassidy (Eric Lutes) is her ex. Annie Spadaro (Amy Pietz) is her next door neighbor best friend. For wacky physical humor, there is rollerskating deliveryboy Charlie (Andrew Lauer).

This works very well as a standard traditional Successful-Gal-who-Can't-Find-Love show. It lasted 4 seasons. It does ramble a bit with changing work and complications in the lead's relationships. Not all of it worked but Lea Thompson is always likable. It wasn't allowed a proper ending and it ended with a cliffhanger.

This show is pretty good, I watch it whenever I can find the time. It's not really outstanding, and there are better sitcoms, but the characters are nice and especially Richad has some good lines. Compared to Suddenly Susan this show is, well, a million times better, mainly because the characters aren't as annoying (except Julia).

I was really annoyed to see all those comments about Richard's character and Malcolm Gets playing his part. Richard's character is performed perfectly by Malcolm Gets, no one would have done it better! This show is not some stupid show that makes u laugh on silly things, you actually laugh because this show links you to reality. Caroline is the perfect confused woman who needs love in her life and Richard is the perfect struggling artist who is only satisfied by working as one, not a cartoonist assistant. If you look at the real world, you will find that the show makes perfect sense and has been a success from A to Z. As for Spadaro's character, well she's the comic relief of the show, she and Charlie's character. but the show is a realistic Drama with the right amount of real life comedy and tragedy in it and it's a shame seeing it unappreciated like that.

This show became an (undeserved) critical punching-bag during its too-brief run on NBC. It was similar to several shows which ran during the same period: female centered, urban, based in arts/media. All of them were lumped together and sniffed at by sour old critics. This was by far the best of the group, however. The degree to which the viewer identified with and appreciated "Caroline" depended on the degree to which one found Richard, and by extension Richard's budding romance with Caroline, appealing. I don't know if that was always the direction planned for the show's plot, but that had become the overarching direction it followed by the end of the first season. All the performances were excellent, though some of the characterizations were not designed to be warm and cuddly. Oddly, though I completely bought the Caroline/Richard relationship, the funniest episodes were often the ones which concentrated on other things (such as the one in which Caroline got in a public feud with JoAnn Worley over a deli sandwich). Unfortunately, the show was cancelled before the final cliffhanger was resolved, so we'll never know the outcome.