Frasier (1993) s04e18 – Ham Radio

Ham Radio relies heavily on the situation in situation comedy; it gets some good laughs, but because of who’s in the episode—and how it’s written for those particular guest stars (specifically Edward Hibbert). But the David Lloyd-credited script only advances by one-upping itself, trying to appear chaotic but always coming through linearly and predictably. Not to mention the episode relies way too much on cheap jokes. Not easy jokes, cheap ones. Like Dan Butler doing a very racist Chinese accent and then a humdinger of an ableist joke mixed in with some hard-core misogyny.

It’s frustrating because it really is a great idea for an episode (albeit entirely built around the situation). The radio station is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary so Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) wants to do a live mystery radio play; he’ll direct, the other radio station hosts and staff will play the other parts. The first scene sets up the special show and forecasts some of the drama via David Hyde Pierce’s concerns about Grammer’s “Orson Welles complex.”

As Grammer gets things arranged at the station with Peri Gilpin’s help, lots more foreshadowing of his eventual nitpicking, while also setting up Hibbert and Butler’s participation. There’s a table read sequence at Grammer’s apartment, which has guest star Richard Easton playing a “Man of a Thousand Voices” covering six of the parts. So it’s just a funny sequence of Grammer slowly getting more and more controlling, first towards Jane Leeves—who is helping time the rehearsal—then pretty much everyone. It’s good, well-directed by David Lee, minus the Butler joke with the Chinese accent, which gets an appropriate condemnation after the joke is made.

Later on when everyone makes fun of Butler’s girlfriend, Hope Allen, it’s just funny he’s dating a dyslexic stripper. Ha ha. She can’t learn her lines.

But all of the eventual disasters with the special show are pretty obvious, just none such a combination of icky and mean. But someone’s got novocaine, someone else gets mad about Grammer over-directing, someone else is mad about script changes—by the end of the episode, when Grammer’s peak megalomaniac director, it’s unclear why various people are even mad at him. Specifically. In general, sure, but specifically.

Patrick Kerr shows up for the first time in a while as the station technician; he helps with the sound effects. There are some funny set pieces with them and good recurring gags.

Hyde Pierce’s performance is probably the best, with Hibbert delightful as well. Everyone else is good, just no one quite excels, which isn’t great given it’s ostensibly spotlighting various actors throughout.

The Lee direction helps. But it’s never as funny as it ought to be and the missed opportunity hurts Grammer in particular.

Frasier (1993) s04e17 – Roz’s Turn

I’m still waiting for the great Roz episode for Peri Gilpin. It’s actually her second one in the last handful of episodes but, just like before, she gets upstaged by a guest star. This time it’s going to be it’s going to be Harriet Sansom Harris as agent-from-Hell Bebe Glazer and not the voice of Darth Vader.

Harris shows up in the second half of the episode, throwing a wrench in Gilpin’s plans to apply for to do her own show—with Kelsey Grammer’s full support—and while the episode still manages to give Gilpin a lot to do… it’s as support for Grammer. It’s a deft move (Jeff Keenan gets the writing credit) and it leverages the heck out of Harris (who once again I’m shocked didn’t ever get an Emmy for this part). But it still takes episode away from Gilpin, who gets a lot to do until she all of a sudden doesn’t. But, that initial takeaway is to showcase Jane Leeves and John Mahoney doing things they don’t usually get to do—and giving David Hyde Pierce a chance to play so horny he could die (while maintaining decorum)—but it’s still a downgrade.

The cast is helping Gilpin prepare her demo tape—a call-in show without being boring like Grammer’s, basically—and so everyone gets to do a persona. Mahoney’s a Casanova, Leeves is a vixen. It’s all really good showcasing. Keenan’s got funny stuff. It just doesn’t have a good narrative flow. Because once Harris shows up, nothing can compete. The material isn’t even the best, the delivery’s what matters and Harris is great.

We even get to see what Harris’s office looks like (her machinations end up being the A plot, more than anything stemming from Gilpin’s audio tape).

It just would’ve been nice if the episode had tried a little harder and didn’t just rely the cast being able to make the material sparkle. There have been easy episodes before, but this one just seems a little bit too easy. Like Keenan (and the room, obviously) did a fine job plotting, just not refining. If everything in the front half is just going to be prologue to a Harris tour-de-force, maybe don’t have it be one where the gags are all relying a little too often on silly absurdity. Again, Harris is awesome—and everyone’s good, with the great Mahoney and Leeves spotlights (and Hyde Pierce)—but it’s a little too self-satisfied.

Some great one-liners though. Just awesome. It’s a mixed bag with a lot of good candies.

Frasier (1993) s04e16 – The Unnatural

It’s a fathers and sons episode, both for Kelsey Grammer and guest star Trevor Einhorn and then Grammer and John Mahoney. There’s also some nice stuff for Dan Butler—implying the possibility of character development, which hasn’t really been present before—and then David Hyde Pierce gets a hilarious subplot. Both Peri Gilpin and Jane Leeves get functional roles to play, which makes certain jokes easier but brings more attention to Leeves never being in on all the jokes because of the Hyde Pierce crush more obvious. Or maybe it’s a female director (Pamela Fryman) doing a great job with it—they really do win with Einhorn though, he’s a good sitcom kid actor—and so it stands out. Michael B. Kaplan script, which increases its high points all the way to the end.

Actually, wait, there is a “reward” of sorts for Gilpin in the end credits tag, which is a single gag, but full of good implication.

The initial conflict in Kaplan’s script is Grammer trying to get a Microsoft campus tour for he and Einhorn, which requires him to ask Gilpin to contact an old boyfriend. Concurrent, Gilpin and Butler have a station softball team—did every business from the 1970s and 1990s have a softball team—subplot. The plots will collide when Gilpin gets injured and Butler—trying to be nice (it’s a very weird scene because Butler’s trying to be nice instead of pretending to be; weird and good) lies to Einhorn about Grammer’s softball skills. Einhorn decides he’d rather watch Grammer play softball than tour Microsoft.

You know, Grammer would make a good Ballmer.

Anyway.

Of course, anti-jock Grammer presumably isn’t and good at softball and he’s got to figure out what he’s going to do not to disappoint Einhorn. He’ll bring Mahoney into it for this layered father and son hopes and disappointments arc. Lots of good acting from Grammer and Mahoney. The show has these touching family scenes and they almost always happen in the apartment; getting them away—as they do in this episode—livens things up a bit and forces the actors to adapt to new settings.

The softball arc is always pretty serious—it’s probably funniest when Butler’s kicking it off, making it worse every sentence—so the big laughs come from Leeves’s subplot with Einhorn and Hyde Pierce. Einhorn’s got a crush on Leeves and everyone thinks it’s adorable but Hyde Pierce is convinced Einhorn’s a rival. Lots of really good laughs and some great acting from Hyde Pierce.

The episode is really good. The show doesn’t waste its recurring guest stars.

Frasier (1993) s04e15 – Roz’s Krantz & Gouldenstein Are Dead

It’s producer William Lucas Walker’s first writing credit on the show. I wish it weren’t so obvious—it even sounds like the laugh track is louder and more persistent in the first half of the episode (which ends up being significant entirely for its guest stars)—but every line gets a laugh and they’re not very good lines. Jeff Melman’s direction keeps it in check and the actors manage to find the timing but it is a rough first act.

The episode opens with Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce out driving and seeing Peri Gilpin working on a road crew. They whisk her away after some mediocre but also some good banter; Gilpin’s got community service and it’s road crew or visiting the old folks. Grammer talks her into doing the old folks instead of the road and her first day, the resident dies on her. Second day, resident dies on her. The subplot for the episode is Hyde Pierce needing a date for an outdoor wedding, which turns into he and Grammer making fun of each other’s wives. It’s really easy jokes from Walker, who stays sex oriented for a recurring erectile dysfunction joke.

Thank goodness it all goes away once Grammer accompanies Gilpin to the old folks home for her final attempt to fill her hours (and not kill anyone).

While Gilpin goes in and starts bonding with fun old dame Lois Smith, Grammer finds himself meeting a super-fan played by… James Earl Jones. So about a quarter of the episode is just Grammer and Jones talking to each other with their perfect voices. Their plot line has to do with Jones being blind—Walker’s got the most original ideas—and it’s a fine enough structure, albeit obvious, for a good guest star.

But Smith’s great too. She gets the deeper role, telling Gilpin all about aging while they suck down cigarettes.

It’s an oddly assembled episode—Grammer and Jones’s bit is just filler, the Hyde Pierce offscreen but fret-worthy subplot is just filler—and Gilpin doesn’t get the biggest laughs, she gets the serious stuff and Smith (rightly) runs those scenes. Though Gilpin does get the entirely solid end credit tag.

Still, it’s a far more uneven episode than this season’s seen in a while if ever.

Frasier (1993) s04e14 – To Kill a Talking Bird

“Frasier” has gotten to the point where—unless I miss the writer credit—I eagerly anticipate it. So after listing all the producers and executive producers (who’ve had writing credits on excellent episodes this season), the writing credit on Talking Bird is Jeffrey Richman, whose name wasn’t familiar (and it’s his first credited script on the show), but I wasn’t worried. Confidence in “Frasier: Season Four” is very high. And he does indeed deliver a phenomenal episode, where he’s able to get Kesley Grammer and David Hyde Pierce into a very silly sitcom situation and is able to contain the silly. Mostly thanks to Hyde Pierce being able to sell it as reasonable.

The episode opens with an overdue resolution to Hyde Pierce’s dog situation; he’s moving into an exclusive apartment building—so posh they turned up their nose at Grammer, which is some of the reason it’s worth it for Hyde Pierce—and he needs to do something about the dog. They take animals, just not cats and dogs. Lots of good one-liners in Richman’s script.

So as Hyde Pierce is trying to shove the dog off on John Mahoney, Grammer finally cracks and tells Hyde Pierce what everyone else has known—the dog’s just a stand-in for his estranged wife (and the closest we ever get to seeing Maris, I think)—which has a wonderful punchline.

Grammer’s subplot for the episode is his failed dating life. He’s ready to throw in the towel after scaring off a blind date Peri Gilpin set up, only to meet the perfect woman (a delightful Patricia Wettig) in Hyde Pierce’s building. Not only did she see him perform in Pirates of Penzance at Harvard, not only does she praise his performance, not only is she divorced too, she name-drops Harvard just like Grammer. It’s kismet. Even if Hyde Pierce didn’t want her over to his first dinner party, where he’s going to ingratiate himself to the sapphire blue blue bloods in the building.

Hyde Pierce’s apartment set is spacious and glorious, way too big for a single person, so he’s got himself a new pet to keep him company. A talking cockatoo named Baby, who it’s subtly obvious—based on Grammer’s expressions alone—Hyde Pierce got to have someone tell him he’s loved. During the family’s tour of the apartment, Mahoney gets into a great battle of the wits with the bird, which is one of the places where Richman shows off how silly he’s able to get the characters to act without breaking character. It’s excellent.

But it’s nothing compared to the dinner party, which has the bird ruining the evening in an absurd, painful, lengthy manner, with one exceptional punchline after another. Richman arranges the domino pieces discreetly and early, with the last one a particularly excellent gag.

And there’s even time for some sincere dramatics for Hyde Pierce and Grammer.

The only time it’s not superb is the end credits joke, which is appropriate enough—and leverages Hyde Pierce’s physicality and Grammer’s grumbling—but is a bit of a forced non sequitur.

Frasier (1993) s04e13 – Four for the Seesaw

It’s such a good episode. Clearly season four is where “Frasier” hits its stride, but even so, Four for the Seesaw is a really good episode. It starts with Kelsey Grammer getting his flu shot on air and it not going well to the point he faints—giving Peri Gilpin time to flirt with shot administering doctor, Andrew Heckler, which is important because when it’s time for Grammer and David Hyde Pierce (great Gilpin and Hyde Pierce banter too) to find a table at the café, Gilpin begs the single free one off them to meet him. It leaves Grammer and Hyde Pierce in a conundrum about what to do (for a second it seems like they might actually go somewhere besides Nervosa). Instead, Grammer talks a very nervous (no pun) Hyde Pierce into asking a couple women if they can sit with them while they wait for another table to open up.

The women, played by Lisa Darr and Megan Mullally, agree and the quartet sets about making small talk. Darr and Mullally are positive the brothers won’t be interested in their profession, but it turns out it’s right up their alley and they hit it off. There’s great writing—David Lloyd gets the credit—and directing (Jeff Melman), but Darr and Mullally are also key.

After coffee they go to dinner, then back to Grammer’s apartment to meet the fam, have some drinks, and suggestively flirt. John Mahoney’s very happy to see Grammer and Hyde Pierce with women he can stand. He also offers Grammer a cabin in the mountains for the weekend because he won’t be using it (it’s not the previously established fishing cabin they had a season ago). After some back and forth, Grammer decides to keep going with spontaneity and suggests they all head to the cabin for the week. Darr and Mullally agree, but Hyde Pierce is hung up on his separation from Maris… until Grammer reminds him it’s never happened attractive women have been willing to run off with the Crane boys for the weekend and maybe he should embrace it. Between Grammer’s persuasiveness and Mullally finding Hyde Pierce hilarious (in such a perfect way), Hyde Pierce agrees and it’s off to commercial break then the cabin.

The cabin sequence is going to end up funnier than anything before it, which is an achievement, as Hyde Pierce and Grammer’s separate (and individual) neuroses plague them as they try to ascertain their dates’ intentions. The episode’s got two perfect resolutions, first for the quartet, then for Grammer and Hyde Pierce (in the end credits tag). Grammer’s far more sure of the situation than Hyde Pierce, which leads to some valid conflict, internal and external, as well as some great scenes for Hyde Pierce. There’s also a very interesting contrast between Grammer and Hyde Pierce.

Mahoney and Jane Leeves get a follow-up to the flu shot opening scene which is hilarious too. It’s a brief aside, but wondrous.

It’s a hilarious, well-acted, well-written, extremely well-directed episode. Darr and Mullally—and Grammer, for that matter—don’t end up with a lot to do in the last few minutes, but they’re all just right.

Frasier (1993) s04e12 – Death and the Dog

Death and the Dog does a couple things I think are new to “Frasier” and immediately seem like series standards. The first is using the radio show as an episode-long bookend device. The episode opens with Kelsey Grammer and Peri Gilpin bored on a sunny Seattle day and getting a single caller—Patty Duke (not playing Patty Duke, obviously)—and Grammer regales her, the listening audience, and the viewer with a moral tale to help her with her depression problem. I’m pretty sure the episode’s never used a call for bookending before. It’s an obvious device—and it even plays fairly obviously, with occasional interruptions from Gilpin as Grammer divulges too much about her personal life—but all plays well thanks to an excellent Suzanne Martin credited script.

The other new but familiar part of the episode is the entire regular cast—sans Dan Butler, who’s not in this episode and hasn’t been around for a while and must only be included in the regular cast titles when he appears–sitting around the apartment for a lengthy group conversation. James Burrows’s direction is really good on it, but it’s the actors and Martin’s script. See, Eddie the dog has been depressed and the pet psychiatrist Mahoney calls thinks he’s mirroring depression. So everyone talks about what’s got them depressed. It’s a phenomenal talking heads scene, bouncing between the five participants, exquisitely timed and acted.

Zeljko Ivanek guest stars as the pet shrink, who Grammer and Hyde Pierce mercilessly tease (turns out justifiably but it’s no less mean-spirited). Ivanek’s awesome. He’s got this very droll take on the character, which contrasts with Grammer and Hyde Pierce doing their gleeful snob thing. It’s a great scene.

We also get to see Hyde Pierce’s dog again—who hasn’t appeared since last season—as he brings her over to cheer up Eddie while Grammer cautions Mahoney not to point out the obvious similarities between the dog and Maris, Hyde Pierce’s never seen, infamous (and estranged) wife. It’s a quick, but thoughtful and effective set piece. Martin’s script has a number of such set pieces, including the cast discussing how they’d imagine Eddie the dog as a person, in addition to some great recurring bits. Jane Leeves gets the best recurring dialogue, while Gilpin gets this amazing subplot about dating gynecologist Tom Lagleder (against her better judgment).

It’s an excellent episode. The way it showcases the cast’s ability to play off one another (thanks to Martin and Burrows as well obviously) is spectacular. Not to mention how it’s able to get away with the pedestrian framing device thanks to everything else excelling so much.

Great end credits joke too.

Frasier (1993) s04e11 – Three Days of the Condo

I just realized we never get to see the undoubtedly hideous antique Kelsey Grammer is supposed to get from Marsha Mason. Mason’s John Mahoney’s new girlfriend (who the show’s established sons Grammer and David Hyde Pierce do not like because she’s too… earthy) . Grammer and Hyde Pierce get back from antiquing and Mason promises to bring over a new item for his collection; we don’t get to see it, which is a bummer. Though also immaterial because the episode’s so hilarious it doesn’t end up mattering.

It’s another Michael B. Kaplan credited script and it’s an excellent one. From the opening scene, the plots splinter with Grammer getting into a hallway decorating dispute with the condo board and Hyde Pierce and Mahoney getting into something else for a bit. Mahoney needs a place to have date night with Mason where they won’t be interrupted and so Hyde Pierce lends him his bachelor pad during opera night. Unfortunately, it’s a bad performance and Hyde Pierce heads home early to discover (offscreen) Mahoney and Mason. They’d forgotten to hang a tie from the door handle.

Meanwhile, Grammer’s trying to get evil condo board president Dana Ivey (who’s exceptional at dagger stares) to let him have his antique Japanese door knocker, leading to an impassioned speech from Grammer at the meeting. Grammer’s performance this episode’s outstanding; not just that first speech, but then when he’s running to unseat Ivey and doesn’t have the facts on his side, something the viewer knows, something the other condo residents know, and Grammer doesn’t.

Conflict with the homeowners’ association—condo owners’ association—had to have been a trope by the time they got to this episode, but Kaplan’s able to get some fine gristle out of it. Both Mahoney and Jane Leeves have pre-existing conflicts with Ivey (it occurs to me Mason would’ve been the perfect one to take on Ivey but Mason’s offscreen after the first scene), which complications things as the episode unfolds. Peri Gilpin pops in—literally coming over to do work on a Saturday just so she can get a scene and a joke (but good ones)—to offer Grammer her advice.

Hyde Pierce never gets looped back into the A plot, with he and Mahoney resolving their subplot early, though maybe Mahoney’s Mason-fueled enthusiasm for life fuels the final twist. Untied plot knots don’t end up mattering as Kaplan’s writing is so strong and Grammer’s delivery is so good; plus director David Lee’s pacing of the final scene, when Grammer gets an unexpected, unwelcome comeuppance.

Very fun cameo from Austin Pendleton, especially if you know Austin Pendleton.

It’s a really funny episode.

Frasier (1993) s04e10 – Liar! Liar!

It’s a Seabees episode, but only sort of and only at the beginning (the Seabees are the annual radio awards on “Frasier” and there’s always an episode). Always with conditions, however, as the episode opens in the apartment at Kelsey Grammer’s Seabees after party, where the regular cast is doing their best to get the extras out so the story can start. The only winner at the awards was Dan Butler, who annoys everyone with his bragging, and there’s a great sequence with Peri Gilpin getting him out of the apartment under false pretenses. The episode’s going to be about lying, specifically the consequences of it. Though there’s going to be a lot of privilege in play and how sometimes that privilege can get you out of consequences.

Seriously, white men avoiding responsibility for their actions in an amusing way is basically the most standard sitcom trope.

Turns out when they were kids, Grammer and David Hyde Pierce pulled the fire alarm at their prep school and dad John Mahoney defended them as not being liars. They were, in fact, liars. And utterly indifferent to their lie getting another kid expelled. The other kid bullied them—even being established as the primary culprit in Hyde Pierce’s infamous, previously established flag-pole hanging—so Hyde Pierce feels no guilt while Grammer just has to know how the kid’s life went.

Turns out it did not pass go and went straight to jail , which is where Grammer goes to meet the grown-up kid, now an intimidating adult played by Saul Stein. Thanks to Grammer’s prodding, Stein’s able to identify the most salient point in his juvenile delinquency as it relates to long term effects—back when he was kicked out of a prep school where he could’ve gotten out of his working class situation and excelled as a productive white collar member of society. Grammer feels bad he’s given Stein so much self-awareness, so he sets out to right Stein’s rocky relationship with his wife, Carlene Watkins.

Little does Grammer know Watkins is a sex addict who needs the danger and nothing’s more dangerous than Stein potentially killing her partners during coitus.

As they do, complications ensue, and manage to get Grammer to the finish without actually having to learn any real lessons or to make writers Chuck Ranberg and Anne Flett-Giordano—who write a very funny script (one caveat in a moment)—figure out if there’s a moral. Given Mahoney’s the moral authority in the episode, some kind of resolution with him would help but he’s out. After his initial outrage, he instead joins the Hyde Pierce and Jane Leeves subplot, which has Hyde Pierce hurting his back (adjusting his Mercedes’s seat) and Leeves applying an icy then very hot liniment to make him feel better. Mahoney hates the stuff, Hyde Pierce has to appear tough. Lots and lots of great physical comedy from Hyde Pierce and decent material for Leeves and Mahoney, but it definitely doesn’t do anything for Mahoney’s pseudo-arc.

The aforementioned iffy bit is a “too early to actually be hurtfully transphobic” joke but it’s iffy because it’s also slightly misogynist in addition to be mired in toxic masculinity. It’s a way easier joke than Ranberg and Flett-Giordano’s other easy jokes in the episode and they seem to realize it’s a dead-end because it too doesn’t get the natural resolution. Though the natural resolution would’ve definitely been hurtfully transphobic?

It’s a solid episode, with a lot of potential—Watkins and Stein are excellent guest stars (look, two in the same episode again)—but the end is a definite cop out.

Also, the question of why does Frasier Crane have a lighter is possibly more profound than why does God need a starship.

Frasier (1993) s04e09 – Dad Loves Sherry, the Boys Just Whine

It’s a pretty good episode, even if most of the laughs are cheap and mean. The cheap starts right away, with Peri Gilpin getting her one scene in the episode opposite David Hyde Pierce. She’s celebrating and the punchline’s gross funny. And Hyde Pierce’s reactions to it are great. But then the episode’s done with her because it’s going to be too full, starting with returning guest star Jane Kaczmarek, who’s having coffee with Kelsey Grammer during the Gilpin and Hyde Pierce bit.

Kaczmarek was the cop who Grammer liked but she liked his ex-cop dad more; apparently she and John Mahoney have been happily—albeit unmentionably—dating since the end of last season. Only now she’s breaking it off and telling Grammer because… well, to set up the joke where Grammer tells Mahoney before Kaczmarek has a chance. Mahoney has an unexpected reaction to the bad news because he really wanted to dump her to date Marsha Mason, his bartender at—wait, is it at the bar where Mahoney met Kaczmarek. I can’t keep the bar names straight. I think it was McGinty’s—yep, it’s McGinty’s. So, um, there’s a whole other layer to the already iffy episode.

Mahoney introduces Hyde Pierce, Grammer, and Jane Leeves to Mason on his birthday; they’re all going out together. Only Mason is too “brass and flamboyant” for Grammer and Hyde Pierce so they’re miserable. Plus she makes them drink cheap champagne.

The rest of the episode is about Grammer and Hyde Pierce trying to decide whether or not to tell Mahoney they don’t like Mason, while Mahoney’s thrilled with his new romance. Once it all finally comes out, there’s a big argument scene—with the best acting easily from Mahoney, as he’s the only one where there’s any reality to the character; Grammer and Hyde Pierce are playing petulant caricatures, albeit with some appropriate details, but they’re being cruel and mean. The resolution isn’t about them being dickheads, it’s about how Mahoney’s a dickhead too—comparisons of Mason to Grammer and Hyde Pierce’s spouses—and it’s a very strange finish.

Though given the highpoint is either Gilpin with the grody celebration topic, Grammer not letting an upset Leeves have too good a whine, or some banter about Hyde Pierce’s imaginary protege—actually, wait, Grammer teasing Hyde Pierce for wetting the bed as a kid is probably a good forecast of the episode’s empathy.

There are some amusing moments—Keenan’s script is better micro than macro—and Mason’s a lot of fun, but it’s awkward to turn all your male regular cast into jerks because you can’t find better laughs.