In 1992 there was an episode of Cheers, “The Girl in the Plastic Bubble”, where Frasier’s wife Lilith leaves him for a violent psychopath, leading to a public suicide attempt from Frasier and a thwarted mass-shooting event at the bar from the psychopath. All these events are treated with the classic 80s/90s seriousness, which is to say that there are laugh lines throughout (at one point Norm grabs the bullhorn from the police to ask if he can have Frasier’s half-finished beer once he dies). I tell you this to tell not to scare you (Frasier survives), but to illustrate that the character of Frasier Crane has spanned FIVE DECADES and like any great artist, a few reinventions are pretty necessary.
It is with this mindset that I approached the new installment in the Frasier canon, aptly titled “Frasier” (I had hoped for “Frasier Reborn: The Rise of Niles”, but casting restrictions arose). Unlike a lot of beloved sitcom characters (looking at you, “Joey” Friends spinoff), Frasier is singular in his ability to re-home himself in vastly different settings and casts. Save a few guest cameo episodes on the later seasons of the original “Frasier”, none of the characters from Cheers ever made an appearance (or even a mention) in the show. Out of sight, out of mind! As long as Frasier was Frasier, everything felt pretty good. As a matter of fact, they were grand.
Anyways, I held off writing something like this for a while because I always like to give a show a bit of time to get up on its feet. Critiquing the first season of a new show often feels a bit unfair, like kickboxing a baby - whereas critiquing the second season of a show feels a lot better, like kickboxing a toddler. The show has certainly smoothed out a lot of the rough spots (not all, but a lot) that marked the initial run, and you can tell the show’s producers and writers felt a lot more comfortable with the task this time around. So let’s get into it.
THE GOOD STUFF
The Show Is Still A Very, Very Clever Farce. The absolute best thing about the original run of Frasier, in my opinion, was the writers’ ability to contrive incredibly elaborate and clever farcical scenarios into which they could throw the unwitting characters. Episodes that involve overlapping mistaken identities, confused romantic entanglements, and tragic attempts at social gatherings were always solid goddamn gold. The newest installment in the Frasier saga keeps this going strong - here’s an episode where Frasier plays Cyrano to both people on a date, there’s an episode where Bibi returns to trick Frasier into thinking he is the father of her adult daughter, and there’s an episode where the whole cast adjourn to a vacation rental and suffers through a series of comical sexual misunderstandings. Anything that can go wrong, does go wrong - and mistaken identities run amok. This aspect of the show is a full 10/10. No notes.
Frasier is Still At The Top of his Game. What can you say about such a colossus of a man - a towering figure who transcends time, generation, and culture? Frasier is A God, and all is right with him in his kingdom. The first season had some missteps with the character, putting him in some very un-Frasierian scenarios (a long, pointless and very unfunny plotline about him being a landlord?!?), but that’s all over now, and it’s pedal-to-the-metal on the good old-fashioned farce. There is a moment in Episode 5 where Frasier is positively bellowing in some lady’s face in that haughty and extremely loud way he would do, and I thought to myself “my god, he’s still got it. He never lost it for a moment.” While I’ve had my issues with the show, absolutely none of them have been with Grammar’s performance. Frasier reigns supreme.
Nicholas Lindhurst Fits Wonderfully Into the New Cast. I will get to my issues with the rest of the “new” cast in a bit, but Nicholas Lindhurst’s character Alan Cornwall is not in that group. He hits all the key notes for a successful Frasier supporting role - quirky bordering on downright fucked-up, crotchety and anachronistic in his style, and very comfortable in one-on-one comedy scenarios with Frasier. He’s a gross lazy old bitch with an absolutely ridiculous haircut, and it feels like he’s maybe been on the show the whole time. He’s no replacement for John Mahoney’s Martin, but in some sense he fills a void left behind by the loss of Niles.
Lots of Original Characters Return and They’re All Perfect. I can’t say I’m surprised, but Bulldog is gay now. I always thought the way Dan Butler (himself a gay man) played the character was a kind of funhouse mirror reflection of the exaggerated way straight actors would often play gay characters, and this was a fun way to turn that dynamic on its head yet again. He does at one point heavily imply that he jacks off to photos of Frasier’s adult son Freddie, but it feels somehow okay because it’s Bulldog? Roz is back, and she’s just as drunk and horny as she was in 1993. Gil is still an unabashed pussyhound. Bibi Glazer is at the height of her glory, pulling emotional scam after emotional scam on her beloved client. In these moments, it really feels like we never left. We get to return to Seattle, KACL and Duke’s, and the whole thing feels a bit like a glorious homecoming.
THE BAD STUFF
I Hate Freddie More Than I Thought Was Possible. I used to confidently say that my most-loathed television character was Ted Mosley from How I Met You Mother, but a new king has been crowned. Frederick Gaylord Crane. A hallmark of the child-era Freddie was that he sucked so so much. He was the fucking worst every time he popped his disgusting little head up, and yes I’m including his infamous goth phase. I personally believe that the family court judge in Boston gave Lilith full custody of Freddie partly as punishment for how shitty of a mom she had been, and partly to punish Freddie by giving him a shitty mom. This is all further evidenced by the fact that Frasier clearly hates his kids guts, as he does not acknowledge the boy’s existence 364 days a year. Adult Freddie is just as annoying and lame, but now he is a handsome firefighter who is virtuously helping to raise his dead best friend’s child. He’s deeply contemplative, and loves playing air hockey. FUCK YOU. The characters that always made Frasier shine are, to put it politely, abject freaks. Gil Chesterton, Bulldog, Niles - in a different era they would’ve been thrown into cages and wheeled around the countryside to shock and amaze rural audiences. Now we get a t-shirt wearing millennial who likes to go to trivia night at the bar and plays fantasy football. Fuck you. Fuck you.
Most of the New Cast Feels Very Unnatural. As I mentioned before, Frasier is at his absolute best when surrounded by people as strange and quirky as he is - which is why it’s genuinely so baffling that the show’s creators decided to pack the cast with so many normal ass people. It’s not just Freddie - about half of the cast feels like they were pulled directly out of a Capital One commercial, standing around Dan Levy at a backyard party. They do normal things, they like normal stuff, they dress normal - they’re normal. Even their comical foibles are normal. In the original run of the show, Martin served as straight-man to the entire apartment, playing against Frasier, Daphne and Niles’ inherent oddness. Cheers was wall-to-wall weirdos. Even at KACL, Roz played the solo straight-man against the cast of absurd characters who graced their airwaves. Now the tables feel strangely turned, and Frasier is the lone oddball, playing against a dull gang of straight-men. The best scenes in the show are the ones that don’t involve them, and the showrunners should toss all these characters into the same active volcano I’m gonna push Freddie into.
The Seasons Are Unbelievably Short. It’s an unoriginal complaint, but TV seasons being eight 20 minute episodes is the real “shrinkflation” of our times. American audiences used to get twenty four brand spanking new episodes every season, and shows would run for a decade. Our parents were feasting while we are tossed only crumbs. A modern season of television, like the current run of Frasier, are a grand total of two and a half hours. You could finish both seasons of the show in less time than it would take to fly from New York to Denver. This is a travesty, and should be called out wherever possible.
Overall, the show is a fun, easy watch, and I fully recommend anyone who loves the character to give is a spin. There are enough great Frasier moments in each episode to make it fully worth it, and there are times where you feel like this could even maybe be part of the original show. Having said that - fuck Freddie, fuck him so so much, I will do everything I can to watch the lights go out in his eyes, etc. He does not deserve the Crane name, for he embodies none of the qualities that made his father and grandfather the Gods that they are. Crossing my fingers for a big season 3 🤞