Whoa, Nellie! (1996) #1

Whoa Nellie01

Whoa, Nellie, one issue in, is just a Love and Rockets spin-off. There’s nothing wrong with it being “just” a spin-off; creator Jaime Hernandez has a great time with the wrestling scenes. The comic’s about would-be tag team women’s professional wrestlers Xochitl and Gina Bravo. They’re wrestler’s professional wrestlers; they’re just not a tag team. They fight each other. And Gina’s better. But she wants to do the tag team thing and refuses to give up on Xochitl.

Xochitl’s aunt, Vicki Glori, manages them. She wants Gina to do better and tries to engineer a path forward for Gina without Xochitl. Only Gina doesn’t want to do it. The biggest twist in the comic is when Vicki’s supposed to fight Gina—and elevate her—and instead has to fight Xochitl.

There’s some character material with Xochitl, who’s married with kids, and her kids don’t understand how wrestling works as far as the good and bad wrestlers. It drives a couple fun scenes. Vicki’s also got her character arc about being forced to betray niece Xochtil in favor of Gina. Gina doesn’t have much to do other than be a good friend to Xochitl.

Gina and Xochtil came into Love and Rockets relatively late in the series, and both had their initial story arcs mostly resolve (as I recall).

Jaime’s favorite material is clearly the wrestling matches, a combination of “realistic” (for wrestling) and comic strip pacing. He sets up sight gags, follows through, sets up some more. It’s a lot of fun and has a great pace. Doesn’t have any real drama so far—even with Xochitl and Gina getting in over their heads for the finale—but it’s really… nice. Even if you aren’t pre-inclined to a Love and Rockets spin-off, it’s about being good friends and trying to be a good mom and so on. There’s no malice, despite the chair-breaking wrestling matches. It’s very easy to like the characters and sympathize with them. Though, I suppose Vicki might seem like the villain unless you know her history.

But only might. Jaime gives her the most character development drama in her arc.

It’s a delightful read. Kind of slight so far, but also, who cares. The art’s great, with Jaime’s fun and enthusiasm welcome to the reader as well. The matches are great action. Yay, Nellie!.

Hitman: Local Heroes (1996-97)

Hitman: Local Heroes

Local Heroes collects two story arcs; the first is the Local Heroes one, about metahuman hitman Tommy having to team up with Kyle Rayner Green Lantern to take on the C.I.A. The C.I.A. wants to start controlling the supes, and suddenly it's like The Boys in here. I hadn't realized writer Garth Ennis worked through ideas over such a long term; Ennis has got his themes—like drunk Irish men—but if I've ever recognized echoes throughout his career, I've forgotten. I've also never read this far into Hitman before, and maybe everyone knows about the Boys echo. Whatever. Just saying.

So the main story is four issues. The second story is two issues. All by Ennis and artist Joel McCrea. You get pretty much equal amounts Hitman in both; the difference is there are subplots in the feature story, and the back-up's pretty much all action. Which one is better? Well, the feature's Ennis constantly pwning Kyle Rayner (with D.C.'s consent and, therefore, tacit approval), and it's pretty funny. It even manages to get a little deeper in contrast, with Ennis delving into the moralities of the comic and its protagonist, turning it into a slight humor bit with Green Lantern and sort of leaving it running in the background. Every once in a while, there's a return to it—also because Tommy picks up a new love interest, a suspended Gotham City cop who just happens to be intelligent, head-strong, incorruptible, and adorable with family members. Her name's Detective Tiegel, but he calls her Debs because it's post-feminist when Tommy does it. After all, he clearly respects her.

Another Ennis theme—the lady sidekick.

So Tiegel is also questioning the morality of hanging out with a hitman, which helps keep that subplot going even when Green Lantern isn't pontificating about it.

The bad guys are Truman and Feekle (sound it out); Truman's the brain, Feekle's the muscle. They hire the cops (roping Tiegel into the narrative) to help them kill Tommy if Tommy doesn't play ball, but then after Tommy doesn't, and the cops bungle it, they bring in Green Lantern Kyle Rayner because Kyle Rayner is a dope. Things continue to go wrong, leading to varied team-ups between the good guys against the bad guys. Also, in the background, Tommy is a local hero for standing up to the cops and his continued mourning over his best friend (killed last collection).

Ennis really plays up the neighborhood setting of Hitman, creating a Hell's Kitchen analog in Gotham called "The Cauldron." It's overboard, but it's okay. Like, the comics are from the mid-nineties, years before Daredevil got popular enough to make it seem like a lift. Ennis's wordy Tommy narration almost entirely focuses on his mourning, which is fine. I mean, it's definitely wordy, but it's okay.

Similarly, Tommy and Tiegel are fine. They're cute enough together, but it feels too soon. The story opens with Tommy bemoaning his recent breakup (over being a hitman), and it's not like they have enough chemistry anything needs rushing. They're just a good team. But Tommy's a good partner for anyone. Even Green Lantern Kyle Rayner. Tommy's most crucial superpower is the chemistry Ennis gives him with other characters. Tommy's a smart-ass but not aggressive about it.

The second story has Tommy and his fellow mercenaries and hitmen going up against a bunch of zombies. Some mad scientist kills his partner—it's Gotham City, after all—and wants to prove to the world they figured out how to make zombies.

The narrative's real simple; Tommy gets the job, Tommy goes on the job, it's the job. Sure, there are constantly arriving sidekicks, some with potential drama, but if it plays out, it plays out on the job. It's a mostly action story, and it's full of great zombies. Like, McCrea and Ennis come up with a great twist for the zombies and the rules to zombies. It's inventive in a way they don't need to worry about when there are four issues to the story. Two-parter is set up, cliffhanger, cliffhanger resolve, third act, epilogue. There's no time for subplots or girls or conspiracies. It's lean.

And it's great.

Kind of better than the main story. Because the main story's just good, the second story's great.

Hitman's an outstanding comic.

Hitman: Ten Thousand Bullets (1996-97)

Hitman: Ten Thousand Bullets

So when I said I was going to keep going with Hitman after reading the first volume last June, I meant it. I did not go back and reread it (though I’ve perused since finishing this second collection) and was able to mostly follow the story so Hitman can withstand a sixteen-and-a-half-month break, which is impressive.

I also didn’t read the introduction by Kevin Smith. It’s a little bit too effusive about Hitman writer Garth Ennis. So it stings when you get through a quarter of the collection and agree with Smith’s effusiveness, jealous he got to be the one to tell Garth, and you didn’t. Like, there’s a moment where Hitman just clicks, and then it keeps going all the way through.

Ten Thousand Bullets is a collection of three stories; six comics, three stories. The first is a four-issue arc–Ten Thousand Bullets, then there’s an Ennis one-shot-aside single issue, then there’s an annual. Joel McCrea does the art on most of it, with Carlos Ezquerra and Steve Pugh doing the art on the annual. They take turns, with Ezquerra doing a riff on McCrea’s art, then Pugh doing a riff on it, then Ezquerra again. It’s a great-looking issue because there’s so much contrast between the artists, but you’re already used to the Hitman visual motif because they’re doing the “house” McCrea style, so you can see the choices better having just deep-dived with five issues of McCrea.

The main story has Hitman Tommy Monaghan trying to take down a vigilante who kills drug dealers, then sells their stuff himself. Kind of like an evil Robin Hood. The vigilante’s name is NightFist, and he’s a direct riff on Jim Valentino’s ShadowHawk. Like, if the one-shot and annual hadn’t been so affecting, I was going to open this post asking what Jim Valentino ever did to Garth Ennis because there’s a story there. And if there’s not… I mean, ShadowHawk was always a good punchline.

For help with the job, Tommy calls in his old friend, Natt, and welcomes him to the regular supporting cast, which includes the bar buddies and then Wendy, the girl Tommy met before in the series.

At the same time, the existing series bad guy is back and after Tommy, hiring a better hitman—one who knows how Tommy’s superpowers (mind-reading and x-ray vision) work.

There’s action, there’s comedy, there’s tragedy, there’s McCrea’s enthusiastic art. Some of the tension in the action comes from the visual pacing alone, with McCrea building between panels. They use the same tension in the comedy sequences, where Tommy and Natt’s constant bro banter isn’t exactly funny, but it hits really well. Especially after Tommy explains we’re about to hear the story of how he lost his girl and his best friend. Ennis actually understands how past tense works, which might be where I wanted to be the one to get to write his introductions, and it brings this sense of impending tragedy in just the right way. Because the comic’s still funny, it’s just bittersweet. And then Ennis sort of leans on the bittersweet nature of it all. Though in Hitman parlance, it’s more like he pushes his thumb into a bullet wound, intensifying Tommy’s experiences, tying into the narrator versus the actor.

It’s really well-written comics.

More than makes up for the story getting loose a couple times.

The one-shot and the annual aren’t ever loose. Ennis has got them tightly controlled, he and McCrea finding the perfect pacing for the Final Night tie-in one-shot. While the Super Friends fight to save planet Earth from—was it evil Green Lantern—Tommy and his friends hunker down in the bar.

Of course, we know now if Superman got on the news and told us to stay inside or we’d get vaporized, forty percent of us would go out on the streets. Maybe it happened back in the sixties in the comics and Darwin and all.

Anyway.

The guys in the bar sit around and tell stories of when they came closest to death and what saved them. Ennis does war stories, he does parables, he does kid stories. McCrea keeps it all steady between the vignettes, doing some minute style changes, but more like he’s expanding the visual palette than switching to a new one. It’s real good and echoes back to a flashback from the main story, which is another place Ennis takes a big swing with the series and the tone.

Of course, nothing prepares for the annual, which is a homage to the Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood “Dollars Trilogy.” Tommy ends up in a modern spaghetti Western, playing good guy off bad. There’s a great Klaus Kinski joke too. It’s a funny story—lots of jokes, probably the most per capita—and a nice friendship arc for Tommy and a guest star. Ennis homages deep, sometimes running a riff on a Leone narrative beat underneath scenes related to the Hitman content. It’s very nicely done.

Though you probably need to have some strong feelings about whether Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is actually the best to get as jazzed up as me, Ennis, or Tommy get jazzed up. But seeing Pugh go wild doesn’t need any context. There’s some excellent art from both him and Ezquerra on the annual.

So, once again, I can’t wait to keep going on Hitman.

Once again, I really, really intend to do it sooner than sixteen months from now.

Lone Star (1996, John Sayles)

Lone Star is Texas Gothic. There’s nowhere else the story plays the same way except a border town, at no time other than when it does; it’s all about the sins of the mothers and fathers playing out. Actual sins, imagined sins, hidden sins. It’s about heroes and villains and how they’re the same thing. It’s very much about love and loss and anger and sadness. It’s about fear. And it’s about joy and goodness. There’s never any kindness in Lone Star without goodness backing it up. It’s hopeful without being aspirational. Because bad things happen all the time and good people suffer.

The film opens with the C tier–Lone Star has got an A plot, a B plot, and many C plots running between the two and around them. But all the actors who are in C plots have business in the A and B plots. Like how Miriam Colon’s story arc about her relationship with one of her employees, Richard Coca, is more complicated than she realized is a C plot, Colon has a lot to do with A plot actor Elizabeth Peña because Colon’s playing her mother. So when the film opens with Stephen Mendillo and Stephen J. Lang finding a body out next to an army base, Mendillo and Lang are sidekicks to the mystery. Because Lone Star’s a mystery. It’s more a drama, but it’s a mystery too. It’s about what happens when you turn drama into mystery. Or vice versa.

The body discovery introduces sheriff Chris Cooper, who we soon learn is the son of a famous 20th-century sheriff, played in flashback by Matthew McConaughey. The body’s got a sheriff’s badge next to it, so Cooper goes and talks to the mayor, Clifton James, who used to be deputy. Jeff Monahan plays the young version of James. They work for corrupt thug of a sheriff Kris Kristofferson back in the fifties, and Kristofferson disappeared. So Cooper starts thinking it’s Kristofferson’s body they found and investigates his now-dead father’s past. Meanwhile, Joe Morton has taken command of the nearby army base—the body found on property adjoining—and he’s dreading running into his own father, the only Black bar’s owner, played by Ron Canada. Lone Star’s town is a mix of Mexican, white, and Black. We find out that mix is vital to the film early on, when Morton’s wife, Oni Faida Lampley, talks to Peña about it before we even find out how their characters figure in.

Peña and Cooper used to be in love in high school before their parents broke it up. They moved on, married other people, left or were left by other people, and now they’re running into each other again. The film’s got so many timing coincidences the characters can’t help but comment on it—McConaughey’s on Cooper’s mind already because they’re dedicating a courthouse to him and the naming decision was contentious because the Hispanic population dramatically outnumbers the white now; the city’s changing. The mystery angle drives Cooper’s investigation, but how the people he interviews talk to him about the past. Lone Star takes place in a world where it’s time to start telling the truth and not the white American fairytales. Because in Texas, there are lots of bodies still buried.

Another C plot involves army grunt Chandra Wilson, who finds herself in trouble in Canada’s bar and then, incidentally, in Morton’s crosshairs too. Because of how writer and director Sayles lays out the B plot—Sayles follows Eddie Robinson, as Morton’s son and Canada’s grandson, into the bar one fateful evening, and it connects to a bunch of other plot threads as Morton goes through a self-discovery. Juxtaposed against Cooper’s, but Cooper and Morton never have a scene together. They’re just two guys from the same town who have a lot of similar trauma caused by men who never figured out how to stop causing it. It’s an achingly quiet film. Every line, every gesture is precise. Sayles edited as well, and his cuts are frankly seductive; there’s never a cut where you don’t wish the scene had held on for another moment, good or bad. Lone Star makes several promises about its characters and their dramatic potential, then it realizes them one after the other in the third act. It’s one accomplishment after another—there are four plot resolutions: the B plot for Morton, the A plot for the mystery, the A plot for the romance, the C plot for Colon. Morton’s B plot is separate, other than sharing some characters, but the other three all echo and ruminate through each other. For the mystery’s sake, Lone Star has to sacrifice the Colon and Peña plot. There’s work on it, indicators, promises; the future’s unknowable and often sad.

It’s breathtaking stuff. Sayles nails it, ably shifting between drama, mystery, and romance. Cooper and Peña are a fantastic couple. Their romance is appropriately cute, apprehensive, passionate, and tragic. Morton probably gives the best performance. He’s got the best acting in a scene. Just utterly destroys. Canada’s great. Colon’s outstanding; she’s got the most challenging part. Gabriel Casseus is great as young Canada. Tony Amendola, Gordon Tootoosis, and Frances McDormand are all stops along the way in the investigation; all are great; Amendola in particular.

Kristofferson. Kristofferson is the best supporting performance. He’s an exceptional weasel hero, up against a younger, actually heroic replacement. McConaughey’s excellent in that role.

Awesome technicals—Mason Daring’s music, Stuart Dryburgh’s photography, Dan Bishop’s production design, the sound effects crew (Eugene Gearty and Lewis Goldstein are the credited editors). Lone Star’s always gorgeous, always sounds amazing, there’s nothing else quite like it.

Lone Star’s magnificent work from all involved.

Broken Arrow (1996, John Woo)

At one point or another, everyone in Broken Arrow tries very hard and gives it their all. Sometimes it works out, like when Samantha Mathis has her violence free stunt sequences or Delroy Lindo gets to deliver a lousy line well, sometimes it doesn’t work out, like Howie Long as one of the goons or… well, lots of John Travolta and Christian Slater. More Travolta, obviously, but also because he tries all the time. Slater doesn’t try as hard so doesn’t fail as hard.

Oh, and Frank Whaley. Broken Arrow is impressive in its earnest attempts at obvious moments; it’s unclear why they’re in the movie, like if director Woo wanted to do bland American jokes or if writer Graham Yost fought for them… one-liners to exit scenes with. Really bad banter stuff. And it’s all Whaley is there for and he doesn’t do any of it well. He doesn’t do the one-liners well, he doesn’t do the nerdy analyst stuff well, he’s a charisma vacuum.

But he does try and the movie tries too with him and they both just fail. So while Whaley’s a charisma vacuum, you do feel empathy for him in his plight… being trapped in this very silly movie.

Long, on the other hand, is an unsympathetic charisma vacuum. Once the movie pairs Travolta off mainly with Long, it’s like Travolta’s bad performance gets less annoying because not only isn’t it Long, you get to watch Long watch Travolta’s performance and be entirely incapable of reacting.

Most of the other performances are fine. And Travolta’s even got some moments. He and Slater both do this “I did Tarantino” thing with their banter and it does bring some energy, but it’s only with one another and it’s never consistent. Or good, really. I mean, it’s… amusing from a certain point of view. They’re trying.

And Broken Arrow’s trying often has some ingenuity. There’s a lengthy suspense action sequence in a mine because you can do a fairly impressive mine set on the cheap. The train sequence is limited but good. Woo certainly shows off his range when it comes to action settings. There are some gunfights (but not many), fistfights, and lots of running and jumping from explosion stunts. Broken Arrow’s glorious in its pyrotechnics.

The story—involving a traitorous Air Force pilot stealing a nuclear warhead to blackmail the Pentagon—feels more like a B+ movie plot than an A one, but it’s only 108 minutes and there are a lot of pyrotechnics credits to get through. You only have to amuse for so long.

Oh, and the Hans Zimmer score. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s for a video game. Besides Howie Long, Frank Whaley (sorry, sir), and a perplexingly miscast Jack Thompson, all of Broken Arrow’s defects are kind of charming. And it’s quite competently made, it’s just… you know… silly.

And Travolta’s kind of silly. Like, really, really silly. But tolerably silly.

And Mathis is really likable. Enough I wish they’d made Broken Arrow 2: Flight Control with Mathis and Slater teaming up again. They’re not exactly good together or even charming together, but they work together. Actually, that sentence also sums up Broken Arrow.

Frasier (1993) s04e08 – Our Father Whose Art Ain’t Heaven

This episode is credited writer Michael B. Kaplan’s first; I may not be keeping good track of the writers on the show, but I’m at least staying familiar with the names and his wasn’t familiar. He does a fine job with it, getting to some good character work in both comedy and drama. Kaplan’s also good at delaying the actual A plot while deliberately laying the groundwork for it.

Art opens with Kelsey Grammer and John Mahoney arguing about the latest Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, which they went to go see as a bonding outing; it was Mahoney’s pick and not only did Grammer hate it, he didn’t let Mahoney pay, which aggravates Mahoney. Niles is hanging out at the apartment because… well, Niles is hanging out at the apartment and he’s introducing his B plot about he and separated wife Maris throwing a party for the same day and having to fight for guests.

When Jane Leeves gets home, threatening to cook a sheepshead stew for dinner, the boys run out to a restaurant. A snooty restaurant, where Mahoney wants to pay and Grammer doesn’t want to let him, leading to some conflict and priming the A plot.

So maybe nine or ten minutes in, we get to the full A plot, which has Mahoney getting Grammer a present Grammer really wishes he wouldn’t have gotten him and Grammer’s consternation over how to broach the subject. Simultaneously, Hyde Pierce is fighting to keep his guest list up. Leeves has a little subplot going, which eventually gets replaced by Peri Gilpin’s own nightmare gift situation. Gilpin only gets one real scene—at the station, providing emotional support for a sick-of-home Grammer, but it’s a very good one for the actors.

Where the episode really scores is in the resolution, which starts with Grammer, Hyde Pierce, and Mahoney before segueing into one of those great “Frasier” father and son scenes for Grammer and Mahoney. Grammer missed out on the last one (that episode where Hyde Pierce took over his plot and the corresponding bonding with Mahoney), but this episode’s even better for it. Hyde Pierce doesn’t get shortchanged, however; he’s got a fine resolve to his B plot too, playing into the A plot perfectly.

It’s another outstanding “Frasier,” with a “just right” end credit sequence for Gilpin and her C plot; Kaplan’s got a very good script, Melman’s direction is good, and Mahoney and Grammer get a nice character development arc.

Frasier (1993) s04e07 – A Lilith Thanksgiving

The title of this episode, A Lilith Thanksgiving, is simultaneously accurate and not. While the episode does indeed guest star Bebe Neuwirth and does indeed take place at Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving is tangential to the plot and doesn’t involve Neuwirth at all. The episode does one of those “Frasier” forecast and switches, where the opening introduces the idea the A plot is going to be Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde Pierce, and John Mahoney going to Hyde Pierce’s luxury cabin to celebrate the holiday, with Neuwirth accompanying she and Grammer’s son, Trevor Einhorn. It’s Einhorn’s first appearance of many as the kid; he’s good.

The first scene has Hyde Pierce on the phone with the caretaker while Peri Gilpin and Jane Leeves have quick scenes—Leeves is going somewhere else, Gilpin is house-sitting the apartment. There are a bunch of good one-liners for everyone, even if it’s obviously a way to get Leeves and Gilpin out of the action so we can just enjoy Mahoney being miserable around Neuwirth.

But wait!

Grammer gets a phone call and it turns out they can’t go to the cabin, they all have to go to Boston—Grammer and Neuwirth have to go to an entrance interview for Einhorn to go to a shishi poopoo private school on Thanksgiving morning. It’ll be Thanksgiving in Boston.

While Grammer and Neuwirth are at the interview, Hyde Pierce is in charge of cooking the turkey and Mahoney’s babysitting Einhorn. Despite the continent-trotting, it’s a very contained episode—there’s the apartment at the beginning, Neuwirth’s kitchen, then the large living room of school headmaster Paxton Whitehead. The present action is a few hours, as Neuwirth and Grammer fret over how they’ve done in the interview and continue to pester Whitehead, even crashing his Thanksgiving dinner.

Meanwhile, Hyde Pierce and Mahoney are breaking the very delicate Einhorn with baseballs, refrigerator doors, and anchovies.

Whitehead’s a perfect guest star, especially for the intensity of Grammer and Neuwirth, who are even more outrageous when acting in unison than against one another. It’s a great guest spot for Neuwirth, whose presence tempers the entire cast and they all get to react against it in different ways. She and Grammer are superb together.

Excellent script, credited to Chuck Ranberg and Anne Flett-Giordano—Gilpin and Leeves have a wonderful moment bonding over Grammer being so difficult—and fine direction as usual from Jeff Melman.

It’s not a “Lilith Thanksgiving” or even much of a Thanksgiving episode, but it’s still a hilarious episode with great performances from the guest stars and the regular cast.

Frasier (1993) s04e06 – Mixed Doubles

It’s another great episode for David Hyde Pierce. He shares the spotlight, but with Jane Leeves and the guest stars, with Kelsey Grammer and John Mahoney supporting the A plot. Their B plot involves staring contests with Eddie the dog. The A plot’s where it’s at.

Christopher Lloyd’s the credited writer and outside his easy jokes about Roz (Peri Gilpin) being promiscuous—the one about Dr. Roz and the Gabor method after Gilpin tells Leeves, who’s just been through a breakup, not to miss a man who doesn’t buy jewelry or perform well in the sack, is technically easy but also inventive—Lloyd writes an outstanding script. Great direction from Jeff Melman too. Melman toggles from sitcom laughs to sincerity quite well, though Hyde Pierce and Leeves do all the hard work. And there are still laughs, just different ones.

The episode opens with Leeves coming home after being dumped and Grammer, Mahoney, and Hyde Pierce all trying to comfort her. In that order because Grammer and Mahoney don’t want to let Hyde Pierce get too hands on while hugging her. Eventually Gilpin shows up because it’s a sitcom and she and Leeves go and commiserate properly.

Leeves’s new single status inspires Hyde Pierce—still indefinitely separated from Maris—to tell her how he feels, only to have Grammer strongly caution him. Give it a day to think about it, Grammer tells him, which becomes a familiar suggestion even after Hyde Pierce and Grammer find out—the next night—Leeves has found a new fellow. She and Gilpin went to a singles bar.

Upset with Grammer, Hyde Pierce calls Gilpin and asks her to take him to the same bar—turns out Gilpin’s an always successful wing-woman at this place. There, Hyde Pierce meets Allison Mackie and the two hit it off.

Fast forward three dates and Hyde Pierce is introducing Mackie to Grammer and Mahoney. Leeves brings home her new beau—Kevin Farrell—who turns out to be a clone of Hyde Pierce, leading to some great laughs for Grammer and Mahoney, then Hyde Pierce once he sees the resemblances.

There are a lot of good Grammer and Hyde Pierce bicker banter laughs before the twist and resolve, with the resolve being where Melman and Lloyd get to showoff their dramatic chops, all thanks to Hyde Pierce and Leeves’s excellent performances.

It’s a great spotlight for Hyde Pierce and showcase for the cast and show in general. Another exemplar “Frasier.”

Also—it’s awesome to see he and Gilpin get some additional time together. Even when they do have occasion to interact, it always seems hurried, this episode they get to take their time.

Frasier (1993) s04e05 – Head Game

The last time David Hyde Pierce got to run an episode, he shared it with Jane Leeves; this time, after Kelsey Grammer heads off to a conference leaving Hyde Pierce guest-hosting the radio show for a week, it’s all Hyde Pierce. I missed the director credit—but did happily catch the Rob Greenberg writing one, so I had high expectations—it’s David Lee, not Grammer (like last time—Moon Dance is very memorable).

The A plot kicks off after Hyde Pierce’s first show. We get to see only one of the calls, which has a great punchline, plus Peri Gilpin is messing with Hyde Pierce a little. Hyde Pierce gives an impromptu therapy session to basketball player Lorenzo Newton, who’s in a slump. Newton’s guesting on Dan Butler’s sports show—there’s a lot of good interplay between Hyde Pierce and the radio cast, it’s just not going to be the emphasis.

When Hyde Pierce gets to the apartment to tell John Mahoney about meeting the basketball player, it’s just as Newton’s about to thank Hyde Pierce on TV for the head-shrinking. Finally Mahoney gets to be proud of Hyde Pierce.

The rest of the episode has the fallout from Newton’s renewed success and Hyde Pierce’s reactions to it all. There’s a wonderful bit where Hyde Pierce, Mahoney, and Leeves get to watch a game court side and Leeves has to translate all the basketball verbiage into something Hyde Pierce can understand. There’s some good stuff with Hyde Pierce getting to be more macho—in the nineties, sports bro culture, so he’s piggish—and then great character development and dramatics for Hyde Pierce and Mahoney.

It was all supposed to be Grammer, who had to take some time off so they reworked it into a Hyde Pierce spotlight, and it shows just how well Hyde Pierce can do in the lead. “Niles” clearly would’ve worked; Hyde Pierce is just so good.

Great punchline in the end credits, outstanding performances from Hyde Pierce and Mahoney. It’s an outlier “Frasier”—an unintentional back-door proof of concept pilot—and a great one.

Frasier (1993) s04e04 – A Crane’s Critique

This episode’s gimmick—Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce fanboying over J.D. Salinger analogue Robert Prosky, who just wants to drink Ballantine’s and watching baseball with John Mahoney—ages really well. We hit peak pseudo-Salinger four years later with Finding Forrester (raise your hand if you too had a friend who thought Forrester was a real guy because the world before Wikipedia was even more lies) so A Crane’s Critique still feels inventive about it. Plus Prosky is great and not at all what Grammer and Hyde Pierce are expecting.

But the episode also ages well because everything involved—Grammer, Hyde Pierce, Mahoney (who strongly disapproves of their embarrassing fanboying), the script (credited to Dan Cohen and F.J. Pratt), and Jeff Melman’s direction—understands how good Grammer and Hyde Pierce are together when the energy’s right. This episode has little bits of competition but mostly it’s the two working as a team; first they want to meet Prosky, chasing him through the streets (as much as you can without location shooting or a street set), then they want Mahoney to introduce them… then they find themselves alone with his latest manuscript.

Lots of laughs for Grammer and Hyde Pierce as they embarrass themselves in front of Prosky, Mahoney, and, you know, themselves. Mahoney’s entirely support on the A plot, while Jane Leeves’s C plot with Eddie the dog—one keeps watch while the other does something Grammer wouldn’t like—ends up being closer to the B. Peri Gilpin shows up for the opening scene, where she and Hyde Pierce get to trade good barbs.

It’s an excellent episode. Grammer and Hyde Pierce’s chemistry and their timing together is delightful to watch, but the writing and the directing play a large part.

And even though he’s just support, Mahoney’s awesome too.