New York — When 38-year-old Michael J. Fox walks onto the tiny New York soundstage of Spin City to hug fellow cast members in tonight's season finale, it will be the swan song, for now, of an American rebel, says show creator Gary David Goldberg.
"To me, he was always kind of Andy Hardy," Goldberg says, "a very acceptable American rebel."
Fox won't be a rebel without a cause. On Tuesday, he was on the job in Washington, beating the drum to raise more money for research into Parkinson's disease, the malady whose increasing control of his body forced him to leave the 4-year-old ABC sitcom.
His departure, though, signals the breakup of what has been a tightly knit family, according to cast members. "I am so grateful for the four years that I had," says Connie Britton, who also is leaving, to pursue independent films. "I loved it. I was challenged by it. I adored the people I worked with."
That kind of atmosphere made shooting the farewell scene for Fox's character, Michael Flaherty, both easy and hard. "We were saying goodbye to Michael Flaherty, and we were saying goodbye to Michael Fox," Richard Kind says. "And believe me, the lines crossed. If you are crying at home, imagine how we were crying on the set."
But if Fox has a new task, the Spin City crew has a new mission, too. Next fall, Charlie Sheen steps into the deputy mayor spot vacated by Fox.
He will have a tough act to follow - and one to compete with: He'll be facing his father, Martin Sheen, on NBC's The West Wing in the same time slot.
"The writing will have to be superior," says TV analyst Paul Schulman of Schulman/Advanswers NY. "Currently, the show has good weeks most of the time," but "people are quite willing to watch the weeks with subpar writing because of Michael. He can carry an ordinary script. Charlie's very talented, but it'll take a while" for viewers to warm to him.
"It's obviously a double-edged sword," Goldberg says. "Mike hangs the moon for all of us. You don't replace Michael Fox. Charlie will play a much different character, although he'll have the same title."
Sheen is known as much for his drug abuse and legal troubles as his acting, but Goldberg says he is "immensely appealing, and we're trying to take advantage of that."
Sheen wants to prove himself. "This is not about my shenanigans in the past," he says. "I bring some of that negativity with me, because that's how some people see me. But if I do a good job on this show, a lot of that will fade. People will see the good part. It'll help me bury the negative part of my past."
The change in male leads will mean a more prominent role for Heather Locklear, who plays the mayor's campaign manager. "We would like to use this opportunity . . . to have a little more of a female presence than I think we've had," Goldberg says. The show's male-dominated story lines often have left its actresses underused, but four female writers join the show next season.
And Goldberg hopes to add a female character - a "kind of outer-borough, blue-collar, working-class young woman" - to replace the three women and one man (not counting Fox) who have left in the past two years. The resulting cast will be smaller, which is better. "It may have been a little too big" for a 22-minute show, Goldberg says.
Whatever the differences next season, Goldberg says, he hopes "people will be curious, and people will give us an opportunity to succeed. That's all you can ask." If audiences do respond, Goldberg says, it would be nice to continue for three more years. That would make Spin City's run as long as Fox and Goldberg's Family Ties.
But whenever the sitcom ends for good, that finale is unlikely to be as wrenching as this year's. "This was the most emotional of anything ever," says Goldberg, who has known Fox for more than 20 years. "It's not like the ratings were bad, or we were tired of it. Mike is stepping aside in his prime. This is different. This is very hard."
Stacked
(Christopher Lloyd) Come Away Home
(Lea Thompson) House of Wax
(Robert Zemeckis)
Mysterious Skin
(Elisabeth Shue) War of the Worlds
(Steven Spielberg)
Dreamer
(Elisabeth Shue)
The Break Up
(Peyton Reed)
