This Scrapped 'Frasier' Reboot Idea Is Much Better Than What We Got
It almost goes without saying that Cheers had a lot of popular characters. Ted Danson was a former baseball player nicknamed Mayday Malone. Georgt Wendt played Norm, a bar regular who would evoke "NORM!" chants when he walked through the door. Cheers even added Woody Harrelson after Season Four, as a bartender who eventually wins a seat on the city council. Still, the inevitable spinoff—which ran for over 11 seasons—was given to Kelsey Grammar's Frasier Crane, a psychiatrist and love interest of another recurring bar regular, Bebe Neuwirth's Lilith Sternin. Even after the two characters divorced, we were still palling around with ol' Frasier as if Tom Selleck's Richard from Friends got his own show.
Frasier was so beloved, in fact, that he's back for a third time. This time, Frasier is streaming on Paramount+, sans most of the original cast returning. Jack Cutmore-Scott replaces Trevor Einhorn as Frasier's son, Freddy, and Neuwirth makes a brief appearance to keep some sort of continuity going in the series. According to showrunners Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli, however, the original plan was for Niles Crane (David Hyde Pierce) to return and open a theater with his brother. Unfortunately, Pierce was finished with the role. "I don’t have a strong feeling that there’s anything more that I can think of that I need to say about the character," Pierce told Vulture. "I love those characters, but I don’t miss them."
Instead, Frasier got a job at Harvard University. If only the real theater world had Harvard as a backup plan! "For a long time, the idea was that Frasier and Niles were going to run a black-box theater, like how they bought that restaurant and brought it back to life," Christalli explained. "But it’s hard for Frasier and Niles to run the theater when you don’t have Niles, so we had to step back from that." Of course, I have a million questions. Could Frasier and Niles have possibly rivaled "Death Rattle" from Only Murders in the Building? Was Frasier about to perform Shakespeare? Could Frasier and Niles sing?! There's still time, David. I don't know how we got here, but we have unlimited Frasier reboot ideas at our disposal.
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