Obviously based on (or at least inspired by) the success of Cathy Guisewite and her eponymous comic strip, Caroline in the City follows the professional and romantic exploits of Caroline (Lea Thompson), a successful cartoonist (with a whole array of affiliated merchandise, like greeting cards) with an on-again off-again relationship with one of her publishers, Del (Eric Lutes). Though the subsequent seasons of the series played up the romantic triangle between Caroline, Del, and her colorist (i.e., the guy who colors her cartoons, not her hair stylist), Richard (Malcolm Gets), this initial season pretty much relegates Richard to making snarky comments while Caroline and Del ping pong between ardent lust and frequent lovers' quarrels.

The dearth of real comedic inspiration throughout this primary season is made all the more incomprehensible when you see such solid talent as James L. Burrows in the director's chair, not to mention stunt casting cameos by such other Thursday Must See denizens as David Hyde Pierce, Jane Leeves and Matthew Perry. But it's all mostly for naught, unfortunately. While Thompson and Gets make an appealing pair, Eric Lutes, with that weird mop of hair (did anyone in the 90s really have a hairstyle like that?), doesn't exactly light up the screen with charisma, and his relationship with Thompson never catches on fire for that very reason. When Caroline and Del are forced to make jokes about Thompson's big screen fiasco Howard the Duck, you know you're scraping the bottom of the comedy barrel. Thompson tries hard (too hard, some would argue--she's virtually manic at times) and struggles valiantly with the poorly written material, but even her native spunkiness can't lift the entire series for more than a few seconds at a time.

The best things about this first season are the supporting turns by Gets and especially the delightful Amy Pietz, as Thompson's next door neighbor, Annie, a chorus member in the long running Broadway musical Cats. In fact some of the verbal duels between Pietz and Gets provide some of the most solid laughs along an otherwise often lethargic path. Gets' Richard, part clinically depressive, part smart-aleck know-it-all, is a great character mixing sadness with perfect sarcasm, and Gets plays him for all it's worth. Pietz is a comrade-in-arms, sarcasm wise anyway, though with a cheery exuberance that simply frosts Richard most of the time, to great comedic effect. (Somewhat off topic, but fans of Gets should try to get the Original Broadway Cast CD of a sadly short-lived musical in which he starred, "Amour," with a sumptious score by noted--no pun intended--film and television composer Michel Legrand).

The show has a nice comic strip opening bit for the first several episodes (it's replaced with a subsequent title sequence showing brief snippets of well known strips like "Peanuts," "Beetle Bailey" and "Hagar the Horrible"), giving it at least a passing distinctive quality. Perhaps the animation was too expensive to continue, but these snippets, which tie into the main episode by way of subject matter, contain some of the best jokes of the entire series. Unfortunately these same initial episodes are saddled with a totally annoying sax-laden soundtrack by Jonathan Wolff which just begins to grate after a while.

There are some fun guest star spots, including Jean Stapleton as Caroline's aunt, and, for you Gilmore Girls fans, a young Lauren Graham as Richard's daffy girlfriend, a girlfriend he doesn't especially want to be with but who refuses to give him up. In fact, one of the few exceptional gags is the denouement of her giving her dog away, a dog Richard has professed is the reason he can't keep seeing her--when he tracks the dog's new owner down, there's a reveal that is at once hilarious and perfectly in keeping with Richard's "I can't win for losing" philosophy. If only the first season as a whole could have been filled with such sharp, albeit politically incorrect, observation.

Caroline in the City definitely picked up some comedic steam in subsequent seasons, when Del became more of an afterthought and Caroline started courting other boyfriends as well as engaging in a starcrossed relationship with Richard (something set up nicely toward the end of the first season). While it was never at the level of other NBC staples like its Thursday night bedfellows, it ultimately developed a more stable voice that provided some solid yucks with a nice array of dysfunctional characters. This first season is definitely a work in progress, with sporadic but occasionally effective laughs.

The DVD

Video:
Caroline's full frame image is reasonably sharp and detailed for television fare, with excellent color, saturation and contrast. No compression artifacts were apparent.

Sound:
The standard stereo soundtrack has excellent fidelity and routine separation. There are no noticeable dropouts or hiss in any episodes.

Extras:
Promos for each episode are included, in what appear to be from the syndication package (I base this on the promo for the pilot, where the voiceover states "See where it all began"). Image quality for these promos is significantly worse than for the series as a whole; they appear to have been taken off of an old videotape with tracking issues and degraded quality.

Final Thoughts:
There's the making of a very solid sitcom here, it just hasn't been fully realized in the first season. Nonetheless, Caroline in the City is certainly worth a rental, if only to hunt and peck through various episodes for the occasional comedy gem moments scattered throughout.

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"G-d made stars galore" & "Hey, what kind of a crappy fortune is this?" ZMK, modern prophet