Remembering "Caroline in the City"

In the mid-to-late 1990s the NBC television network was riding high with shows like Friends, Seinfeld, Mad About You, Frasier, ER, Law & Order and others. In an era before streaming and cable "prestige TV", before YouTube and social media, when hit TV shows accumulated literally tens of millions of viewers, NBC was the highest rated network with its Must See TV lineups. 

One of those shows was Caroline in the City.

A sitcom about a cartoonist (Caroline) living in NYC with a wacky next door neighbor, an on-again/off-again boyfriend, a wacky assistant who's secretly in love with her, and various other wacky people who drop in and out of her life, the show ran for four seasons from 1995 to 1999. It was kind of like Sex & the City before that show ever aired -- but much, much more sanitized. Often squeezed between airings of ratings juggernaughts Seinfeld and ER, Caroline in the City was the classic "time slot" hit -- a show that got big ratings because the shows before and after it got even bigger ratings.

Unlike several of the aforementioned shows that remain beloved classics today, constantly in reruns or on streaming, or that have even been rebooted (like Law & Order and Frasier), Caroline in the City is completely forgotten today. Set in a fantasy-land NYC about white people obsessing about their love lives, it's the kind of show that, today, most people probably askance at. 

Yet I remember the show, somewhat fondly, for a couple of reasons.

First, it starred the wonderful Lea Thompson who a decade earlier had been in the Back to the Future movies (as well as other '80s classics like Some Kind of Wonderful and Howard the Duck). While the show wasn't great, she was ... some kind of wonderful in this show. Second, the show aired during my college years -- in fact, interestingly enough, it premiered a month after I started college and went off the air a month before I graduated. So, for me at least, it's a kind of time-capsule of a very special, very specific time in my life -- even though I didn't watch the show regularly. 

So today I remember a show that, while not great, while it might not "totally hold up", hold a weirdly special place in my heart.