Frasier (1993) s03e17 – High Crane Drifter

This episode’s got an outstanding last scene, which basically makes up for the rest of it. And the last scene is outstanding because of David Hyde Pierce as a showcase for his mix of physical and dialogue comedy, nothing else. It’s a bit of a deus ex machina just because Hyde Pierce hasn’t had anything to do for the majority of the episode, except occasionally play off a ranting Kelsey Grammer.

Grammer’s mad because no one’s got any common decency or courtesy anymore. It starts, rather amusingly, with him being late to his radio show because someone took his spot. Peri Gilpin has to fill in, which gives her a nice scene, and there’s a decent—albeit insensitive—punchline.

But the more Grammer goes about his day, the more discourtesy he experiences. The episode’s fairly tone-deaf—script credited to Jack Burditt—especially when Grammer and Hyde Pierce are standing around waiting for a table whining about their lives as upper middle class (or are they lower upper class) white men who can’t get a table after their four hours of hard work a day. The table becomes the big plot perturbation, when fellow privileged white guy John Cygan steals their table and Grammer loses it–getting cheers from the rest of the restaurant.

Because they wouldn’t have had the courage to fight for their own tables, even though they may have gotten them without waiting appropriately. No deep thoughts.

Anyway, Grammer quickly becomes a hero to the people of Seattle and a crusader against discourtesy, which makes Hyde Pierce jealous and John Mahoney proud. Mahoney fawning over Grammer the tough guy makes those scenes. Hyde Pierce being dejected not so much.

There’s a funny laundry subplot with Jane Leeves, including a great resolve in the end credits sequence.

But yeah, Hyde Pierce saves the day and the episode it turns out. There’s just something way too easy (read: lazy) about Burditt’s script. It’s a generic sitcom script with some “Frasier” trappings but not enough.

And the callout to How Green Was My Valley—part of Grammer getting fed up involves his pursuit of a VHS copy, little does he realize his video store only stocks Paramount releases (because Paramount produced “Frasier”)—is an odd one. Maybe it’s just been too long since I’ve seen it. But it doesn’t seem like the right reference.

Anyway. Yay, Hyde Pierce. Eh, Burditt.

Frasier (1993) s03e16 – Look Before You Leap

Look Before You Leap is one of those exemplar “Frasier” episodes. It’s just the regular cast, it’s just the regular sets, and it’s perfect situation comedy.

The episode starts with Kelsey Grammer taking Eddie the dog for a walk, which should’ve forecasted everything being off since Grammer abhorring the dog is one of the show staples. It’s February 29th—a leap year—and Grammer starts encouraging everyone to take a “leap,” which leads to disastrous results for nearly everyone involved. Once the episode—with a great script credited to Chuck Ranberg and Anne Flett-Giordano—establishes things aren’t going to go well for anyone, it becomes a waiting game to see how the disasters are going to unfold.

Grammer gets the idea from dad John Mahoney talking about his friend having a big sixteenth birthday party (which leads to Mahoney doing an outstanding impression of Jane Leeves’s Daphne character, giving some wonderful insight into the characters’ relationship between their scenes). Whether it’s flying to Montana for the party, Leeves getting her hair cut, or Peri Gilpin using the radio show to try to find a missed connection from her morning commute, Grammer can’t stop encouraging people to be bold with the extra day.

Except brother David Hyde Pierce, who gets an unexpected request for a booty call from estranged, ever offscreen wife Maris, and Grammer spends the episode telling him not to do it. Hyde Pierce doing uncontrollably horny is probably the funniest thing in the episode; they use the device sparingly because it’s just so good. Great physical comedy from Hyde Pierce. And also great banter for he and Grammer; Ranberg and Flett-Giordano find a perfect balance between talking heads, sight gags, and so on. Gilpin gets a similar mix of styles, including a nice bit during the PBS telethon finale, where Grammer is going to make his own “leap” in his choice of song.

There’s a great punchline at the finish, then another great one during the end credits.

I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed the studio audiences’ laughs delaying the actors so much before. After at least two particularly excellent jokes, Hyde Pierce and Grammer visibly have to wait for things to calm down enough so they’re not talking about the still laughing audience.

Eventually good direction from James Burrows? It’s weird, but it’s like he takes a second to wake up in the first act. He’s initially lethargic, then has this too rapid swoosh of a camera movement and is good afterwards.

It’s a great episode. Excellent performances all around, particularly Hyde Pierce.

Frasier (1993) s03e15 – A Word to the Wiseguy

Is the “member of the Italian-American social club” visits a WASP-y sitcom a trope or just does seem like a trope? I feel like every sitcom with a sufficient number of episodes is going to to get to it eventually… at least when you still could make Godfather and GoodFellas dialogue references. Not sure anyone’s out there trying to work The Irishman into banter.

Anyway.

Not Italian-American Harris Yulin is the guest star. He’s apparently a local mobster who knows enough dirty Seattle cops and D.A.s he can get Maris’s warrant cancelled. She got busted for unpaid parking tickets and ran to David Hyde Pierce (proverbially and obviously offscreen) for help, probably assuming he was going to ask ex-cop dad John Mahoney for help.

Hyde Pierce tries, but Mahoney doesn’t think the law should apply differently for cops’ families because there was never a better time to be a naive liberal sitcom writer than the nineties.

Peri Gilpin knows a guy who knows a guy, who turns out to be Yulin. He can take care of Hyde Pierce’s problem, but he’s going to want something in return. And thanks to Kelsey Grammer going along to the meet, Yulin thinks he’s got the radio psychiatrist in his pocket too. So when the favor comes a-knocking, what will Grammer do?

It’s a funny episode—decent material for the regular cast, including Gilpin, who gets some more screen time when the action returns to the radio show—and Yulin is fine. He’s seemingly alternating between a Christopher Walken and a Marlon Brando as far as his voice goes. Or his Brando just sounds like his Walken. The end punchline is really good.

It’s just a bit of an easy episode.

Also, see The Irishman if you haven’t had a chance.

Frasier (1993) s03e14 – The Show Where Diane Comes Back

Shelley Long is a very good guest star for “Frasier.” She irritates John Mahoney in a particular way he’s never been irritated before and it leads to some great expressions from him and some great one-liners too. Long’s also really good with David Hyde Pierce; they’re both snobs but he wants to be more of a snob so he’s on the defensive.

Long’s visiting because she has a new play coming out in Seattle and she’s there to work on the production. She comes to see Kelsey Grammer at the radio, prompting him to race across town for an emergency therapy session with Hyde Pierce. It’s an absolutely fantastic scene between the two, with writer Christopher Lloyd getting in what’s going to be a great recurring bit about Hyde Pierce’s notepad. See, Long left Grammer at the alter—“Cheers” season three season finale—and there’s unresolved hurt, which Grammer’s never told Long about. Presumably they didn’t talk about it during seasons four and five of “Cheers,” even offscreen.

So ignoring Hyde Pierce’s advise to confront Long and talk to her about the pain she’s caused,Grammer decides he’s going to show up Long—out snob her, out wealth her—and invites her over to the apartment. There we find out she got to meet Mahoney and Hyde Pierce back in the “Cheers” days, which leads to a good Maris joke.

Eventually, we get to see Long’s play, which suggests she has a very different recollection of “Cheers” seasons four and five than Grammer—it’s a very funny scene, but probably lost on anyone not versed in their “Cheers”—and they work toward some sincere human understanding. With some good laughs.

Really good direction from James Burrows—his first episode this season—and excellent performances from Grammer, Long, and Mahoney. And Lloyd’s script’s real good too, all the way through.

Frasier (1993) s03e13 – Moon Dance

I miss guessing when an actor will be directing an episode based on their character going out of town for the show. The episode opens with Kelsey Grammer rushing through one last call to the show—my “Frasier” ears are broken because I had no idea it was Jodie Foster and I tried on this one—before flying east to visit his son. I think they first mentioned these regular cross-continental visits in the first season, but I don’t think we’ve seen one until now.

Or not seen one. And, yes, indeed, Grammer’s directing. He picks a choice episode to do as well, all about Jane Leeves teaching David Hyde Pierce how to dance for his first date since his separation. At some point in the lessons—they have a week to prepare—the date cancels, putting Hyde Pierce into the position of having to give up the dance lessons with his dream girl, which leads to some good material for Hyde Pierce and John Mahoney. Having a break from Grammer and letting the supporting cast develop outside supporting him… works for the show. And Grammer’s direction is excellent.

The dancing’s good, the plot twists are good, Leeves and Hyde Pierce—so often paired together purely for punchlines—do great with the soft dramatics. There’s a lot of character development here for Hyde Pierce—and Grammer’s direction very capably, very intentionally showcases Hyde Pierce’s acting—and a funny subplot for Mahoney (he’s trying to prove Eddie the dog is smart; it doesn’t go well).

For an episode with a truly startling amount of credited writers—eight, including two writing teams, three regular solo writers, and then one new person—it’s seamless. Hyde Pierce, Leeves, Grammer, Mahoney, the eight writers, they create a stellar, lovely half hour of television.

Frasier (1993) s03e12 – Come Lie with Me

The episode begins with Jane Leeves in bed with boyfriend Tony Carreiro, having slept in, and her antics trying to get him out of the apartment unseen. Since she’s not up to referee John Mahoney and Kelsey Grammer, they’re already bickering with one another. There’s a nice layering to the plot threads, which all come together at the worst possible moment. With Eddie the dog then able to up the awkward. It’s really funny, giving Leeves more of a chance with physical comedy than she’s had lately.

Grammer goes about his day, starting at the coffee shop—where he doesn’t tell David Hyde Pierce about the incident (Hyde Pierce is kept ignorant of Leeves and Grammer’s entire arc this episode, presumably intentionally). Instead, he’s busy with his own subplot about Maris not inviting him to one of her charity benefits, keeping him from seeing their hoity-toity friends.

The subplot will lead to a cowboy hat—the charity event’s called “Hoedown for the Homeless”—and figure into Grammer and Mahoney’s eventual arc, which is nice plotting from Levitan. Even though Hyde Pierce is sort of absent, it’s cohesively done.

Because Grammer is going to talk to Peri Gilpin about the incident with Leeves and he is not going to heed any of her—or Mahoney’s advice—and he is going to demand Leeves not have any sex while living under his roof. Not because he’s a prude, but because imagining it will interrupt his reading.

The episode itself is mostly going to center around Mahoney and Grammer, who it turns out can’t live alone together. There’s some great material for Mahoney, both sight gags and dialogue-based jokes. He and Grammer both play annoyed quite well.

It’s a good episode. Lots of laughs. Leeves gets more substantial screen time even if it’s less than it ought to be given it’s kind of her episode; it’s not like they satisfactorily unpack Grammer’s assumption he can control Leeves’s personal life.

Frasier (1993) s03e11 – The Friend

It’s the first Kelsey Grammer-centric episode in a while, with Grammer realizing he doesn’t have any friends outside his family and ending up stuck with annoying new bestie Griffin Dunne, who Grammer can’t dump because Dunne’s in a wheelchair and what if Dunne thinks it’s about the wheelchair. Kind of wants to turn ableism inside out. Or outside in. It was the nineties, wheelchairs were still sight gag.

The script’s from one of the show’s co-producers, Jack Burditt, and it’s his first time with a script credit. There’s still a lot of funny stuff, but the hook has to do with Grammer getting two tickets for the track and David Hyde Pierce not being able to go with him.

To the track.

To watch the ponies.

It leads to a Maris joke, which might’ve been the point, but it’s a long way to get there and a very strange detail. Especially since Grammer apparently does not take Dunne to the race track. After their first meeting, the action jumps ahead two weeks. Maybe they went to the race track. Probably should mention it.

Anyway.

Hyde Pierce has a fun subplot about trying to make new friends too. John Mahoney and Jane Leeves both get solid jokes. Peri Gilpin gets an awesome couple scenes—totally as backup to Grammer—so Burditt does give everyone something, even when the focus is on Grammer and Dunne.

It’s a funny episode. It’s an easy sitcom, but it’s definitely funny, and well-acted from Grammer and Hyde Pierce in particular. Dunne’s fine. It’s fine. Just not particularly special.

Frasier (1993) s03e10 – It’s Hard to Say Goodbye If You Won’t Leave

I thought this episode was the season finale but, no, it’s not even halfway through the season.

As Kelsey Grammer realizes he’s still pining for station manager Mercedes Ruehl (they’ve behaved since their on-air tryst) and commits to doing something about it, Ruehl is accepting a transfer to Chicago. They’ve both been fantasizing about each other—a hilarious use of stock footage and some original, with an additional gag after Peri Gilpin makes the mistake of imagining the couple. She finally finds out Ruehl was Grammer’s partner for the on-air escapade, but doesn’t seem to remember she should be upset Grammer was getting busy with his negotiation adversary for Gilpin and the station personnel’s raises.

It works out real funny, just seems like a missed opportunity in Steven Levitan’s script but, what can you do, sitcom continuity.

After a good conversation scene with John Mahoney—David Hyde Pierce and Jane Leeves are there, but they have their own running comedy bit about old movies going—Grammer decides to tell Ruehl how he feels and see what happens.

It ends up being another fine showcase for Ruehl and Grammer, with some great dialogue and some funny twists. It’s not the best they’ve ever been together, but it’s a solid—albeit functional—episode. Grammer does a particularly good job as the romantic hero here, keeping enough of the character’s goofiness, but finding the heart under it all.

The ending tag is particularly cute too, because it involves Hyde Pierce doing physical comedy and the dog being the dog.

Hitman: A Rage in Arkham (1993-96)

Hitman A Rage in Arkham

A Rage in Arkham is the first Hitman collection, but it’s not all the first Hitman stories. There’s his first appearance, during the Bloodlines crossover—which I can’t forget to address, in a Garth Ennis and John McCrea Demon annual, then a Contagion tie-in with Hitman and Batman, then the first three issues of the ongoing, an arc titled… A Rage in Arkham.

But there’s more Hitman before Rage in Arkham; I’m guessing the most informative would be the other Ennis and McCrea Demon comics. Who knew.

Because Rage in Arkham (referring to the collection from now on) makes some fast moves. Not just when considering it with Hitman (aka Tommy Monaghan) in mind as the protagonist. Because in the Demon summer crossover annual written by Garth Ennis, words I never expected to type… it’s still all about Tommy. It opens with him getting his powers after being hit with an Alien inner mouth, only not dying. It’s not an Aliens crossover with Dark Horse—did people mention at the time the villains, “a race of monstrous dragon-like aliens who killed humans for their spinal fluid” (thanks Wikipedia)–were unintentionally absurd and generally terrible. It’s like they were trying to come up with transforming action figures but gross or something. Is there a good behind-the-scenes story to Bloodlines?

So the Demon annual is just Demon and Tommy teaming up to take on the bad guy who attacked Tommy in the first place. Lots of good writing from Ennis, who loves doing the Etrigan stuff, and good art from McCrea. They sort of do it as a spoof of gangster comics. And the humor’s very obvious but also way too dry for American comics. I think I’m going to read that series too.

Anyway.

Then there’s the Contagion crossover story, which just introduces Tommy and Batman. It’s all about Ennis’s characterization of Batman, who comes across like a really dopey jock. It’s awesome. Because Tommy can read thoughts and has x-ray vision—he’s also just an incredible shot, which is why he’s a hitman already—we get to hear all of Bruce Wayne’s thoughts. Again, awesome.

And really nice art from McCrea, whose style for the comic seems to fit Tommy a lot better. Glen Murakami’s colors are a nice compliment.

And it’s immediately rough going from those nice Murakami colors to whatever’s going on with Carla Fenny’s colors in the first issue of the ongoing. Fenny’s doing a lot of the shading work, so McCrea’s art actually regresses a bit. It gets better immediately on the second issue and then is fine for the third; what happened? Issues two and three have a Heroic Age color separations credit supposedly.

Because when the colors are doing the light angles… they’re a lot more important.

The Demon annual opener is only ten fewer pages than the “feature” story, and with Ennis’s excellent pace, the arc is a bumpy—though sometimes entertainingly so—ride. The last part has a somewhat clunky wrap-up, which Ennis can save at the last minute, but only because he’s been doing so much background character development. The issues also might seem clunky because we’re jumping ahead in character development, whereas Ennis wrote that progression.

Tommy in story one isn’t Tommy in story two isn’t Tommy in story three. So the first issue of the ongoing is coming with a different set of baggage. It might explain the bumpy.

But, again, Ennis makes it work. He’s got a particular humor about Hitman and, once he gets comfortable narrating with the character—the first arc in the ongoing is basically a pilot for this character as narrator, a newly created DC antihero guy. There are many smart commercial decisions in Rage, though I’m not sure Batman as buffoon was going to ingratiate the book. At least not at the time. But even as a buffoon, Batman’s still Batman. It’s a very awkward characterization and always intriguing.

Tommy’s a good lead. The arc introduces some supporting cast, including a non-hitman sidekick, and the villains (literal demons trying to hire him for hellish purposes) are excellent.

It’s a lot of fun. Even when Ennis pushes too hard trying to qualify an assassin protagonist in a mainstream DC comic. I’m also curious how they decided the main bad guy would have a swastika tattoo in Hell but not on Earth. I’ll bet there are a lot of interesting notes from Hitman.

So. Really good comic. This time—the third time I’ve started it—I’m definitely going to finish it.

The Daytrippers (1996, Greg Mottola)

There are two profoundly well-directed scenes in the third act of The Daytrippers, including the last one, so you really want to give what you can of it a pass. Daytrippers is very straightforward, even through the various complexities of the third act, but just because Mottola (who wrote as well as directed) knows what he needs to do with the characters at a given point in the story doesn’t mean he knows how to do it with them. The film spends most of its runtime promising to give Anne Meara and Pat McNamara these great roles but instead reduces them both to caricature. Sure, not the initially implied caricatures—she’s an overbearing Long Island housewife and he’s the hen-pecked husband—but changing from one caricature to another isn’t character development. Because Mottola asks for a lot of leeway on Meara, who’s shown as terrible person throughout and one not even deserving of empathy, implying along the way any woman over a certain age are raving harpies, only to make her even worse than predicted.

It’s a lot.

And then Mottola’s done with her because she’s just a distraction. She’s been distracting the film from Hope Davis, the ostensible lead, for the previous seventy minutes or so and then all of a sudden it’s like… oh, yeah, she’s just MacGuffin. Because we couldn’t get Stanley Tucci for anything but a supporting role. Tucci is Davis’s husband. The film opens with them coming home from Thanksgiving and having an intimate moment. The next day, Tucci goes off to work in the city and Davis discovers what appears to be a love letter on the floor. Presumably fell out of his briefcase. So she heads over to mom Meara’s, where we’ve already met the rest of the cast. We get introduced to Meara and McNamara as they make as much noise as possible to wake other daughter Parker Posey, who’s home from college for the holiday with boyfriend Liev Schreiber. Posey and Schreiber are going into the city and waiting for McNamara to give them a ride to the train.

But then Davis arrives with her problems and, counseling against her calling Tucci, Meara decides McNamara is going to drive everyone into the city. Hence The Daytrippers.

The family has various misadventures getting into the city, their journey set to Schreiber summarizing his novel to the mostly disinterested audience. Watching Posey and Schreiber’s relationship slowly implode over the film as the pressure in the car keeps on ratcheting up is one of Daytrippers’s most deliberate and least successful subplots. Eventually Posey meets author Campbell Scott—Tucci’s a literary agent or something—and he’s everything Schreiber wishes he could be—published, self-confident, smarter. The scene where Scott takes Schreiber’s insipid political philosophy out back and beats it with a stick until it crumbles is something else. The Daytrippers always feels very indie, with John Inwood’s realistic (and gorgeous) photography, Richard Martinez’s score, Mottola’s long takes… but the story’s basically a sitcom episode and a lot of the characterizations are similarly shallow. Even Meara’s performance works more appropriately in that context.

Only Mottola is very clearly not directing a sitcom. He directs against the script, which somehow works, but the script’s still got its problems. And then there’s Schreiber, who’s too tall to be puppy dog and a little bit too absurd. Six foot three, Cambridge-educated, mama’s boy fops who work construction in Michigan require a lot of… something. And neither Mottola or Schreiber know how to do that something.

Davis gets very little to do in the first half of the film—see, they can’t find Tucci so they have to traverse the city through the runtime with the aforementioned adventures, which are have limited budgets and often involve parties or at least social gatherings with food and alcohol present—but then she gets a bunch in the third act. Only not a lot of dialogue, just a lot of long takes of Davis thinking. She’s awesome at them and you wish Mottola had been doing them the whole time because they add up while the stuff he had been focusing on did not.

McNamara’s okay. I was expecting more from him, but he’s solid. Posey’s good. Not a great part overall (which is a big problem), but she’s good. Tucci’s great. Great cameo from Marcia Gay Harden.

The Daytrippers is a well-made picture, with a few moments of inspired brilliance. In the end those moments just make you wish Mottola had figured out how to do them sooner. And more frequently.