Michael J. Fox in a fat suit

So I just saw a rerun of Spin City, a sit-com I normally avoid because somehow I’m just not interested in comedy about Michael J. Fox’s sex life. In this particular episode, however, a group of fat activists come to Fox’s office (in the show, Fox is the deputy mayor of New York City) with demands for wider doors on buses, bigger subway seats, wider bathroom stalls, and so on.

Somehow, this turns into the Michael J. Fox character (I tried typing “the Fox character, but it doesn’t work; he’s not “Fox,” he’s “Michael J. Fox”) agreeing to wear a 300 pound fat suit for the day. And he ends up wearing it to the annual “bachelor auction,” where of course none of the women bid on him at all. And so Fox learns and grows… awwww.

But as Bean (who watched it with me – oh yeah, baby, if I’m going to admit in public that I watched an episode of Spin City, I’m taking my friends down with me!) pointed out, the scriptwriters utterly missed the point. To understand what the fat activists were saying, the character should have worn the fat suit while wandering around the city attempting to use public accommodations. Forget being attractive to women at an auction; try getting through a subway turnstile..