'Frasier' Should Be Better Than This
This statement won't exactly shatter the walls of television criticism, but it bears repeating: For a sitcom to demand your attention week after week after week, dozens of times over, the characters need to be people you actually want to spend time with. What's the line you can draw between Elaine Benes, Leslie Knope, Carlton Banks, Homer Simpson, Chandler Bing, Carl Winslow, and Janine Teagues? Yes, they brought you joy, frustration, laughs, and surprises over countless dinners, lazy Sundays, weeknight chores, and the waning minutes of your night—but they were people that you happily chose to spend 23 minutes with. And no matter what they did over those 23 minutes, you'd pick them again the next week.
Just over 30 years ago, in a different lifetime—when spinoffs, remakes, and reboots weren't Hollywood's love language—you probably chose the Frasier crew, too. How would Frasier Crane ever be a guy you'd grab a drink with if Sam wasn't pouring it? Or flanked by other Cheers mainstays, like Woody and Rebecca? Well, you pick him up and put him down in Seattle. There, he'll have a pesky brother, who will spar, bug, and love him. And he'll live with his blue-collar father—former cop, owner of a Jack Russell, heart of gold. Add Daphne and Roz to the mix, and Frasier had an ensemble that America would follow for another 11 years.
Nearly two decades after Frasier's series finale, following a long will-they-or-won't-they development process, Paramount+ gave Frasier the reboot treatment. In the first two episodes, which debut today, Mr. Crane is once again on the move, with new digs and a fresh cast of compatriots. This "third act," as star Kelsey Grammer calls it, leaves most of Seattle's players behind. This includes David Hyde Pierce ("David basically decided he wasn't really interested in repeating the performance of Niles," Grammer told People.) and John Mahoney, who died in 2018. The conditions of Frasier Crane's new journey aren't any more radical than his last cross-country jaunt: Looking to connect with his estranged son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), he moves back to Boston. Of course, Frasier's tastes lead him to Harvard, where he thinks professorship make a deeper impact than anything he did in his television show. (Yes, television. Brace yourself for a Dr. Phil parody.)
The odds of Frasier Crane succeeding in his new life and entertaining us at home aren't any different than they were in 1993. The problem is, instead of hanging with new friends like Niles, Daphne, and Martin, we're greeted with a gaggle of chatbot-speaking characters that feel like they tumbled out of the failed How I Met Your Father spinoff and into Frasier Crane's ritzy orbit. Reader, it is disconcerting.
Let's say I told you in February 1997 that Frasier Crane's son would be a scotch-chugging Masshole whose prized possession is a clump of dirt from Fenway Park. It might take a minute, but the despair I felt while watching this debut would eventually sink in. Now, you'd believe that Niles and Daphne Crane's son, David (Anders Keith) would be a little dweeby and somewhat annoying, but what if I told you he was just annoying? Add a British professor (Alan Cornwall, played by Nicholas Lyndhurst), whose schtick is bah humbug!, and Freddy's roommate, Jess—whose personality is Kaley Cuoco's Penny in The Big Bang Theory—and Frasier Crane is suddenly surrounded by people you wouldn't choose to spend 23 minutes with.
Still, Frasier is clearly the role Grammer was born to play. The voice is still a silky baritone, the existential musings always poignant, and Grammer shines in a premiere tribute to Mahoney. In later episodes, Grammer flirts with a bit of metacommentary—there are certainly parallels between the actor returning to his iconic role in the algorithm-driven streaming era and Frasier grappling the celebrification of his passion. In its best moments, the Frasier revival is aware of that. But without a Niles or Martin to push him, Frasier is too often just musing into space.
I left the first few episodes of Frasier with a feeling I keep coming back to with late-2023's television slate: disappointment. It's Kelsey Grammer! As Frasier! He should not be trading barbs with a Boston bro on the leftover Kevin Can Wait set. Maybe it's the strike, or even more, the existential crisis triggered by the strike, where we're facing the continued anti-intellectualization of what's in front of our eyeballs. I'm sure that Frasier Crane, in a different life, iteration, or revival than this one, would have something to say about that.
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