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.

Frasier (1993) s04e03 – The Impossible Dream

The Impossible Dream ages surprisingly well. Or, actually, maybe it doesn’t because you can imagine the exact same story being done twenty-five years later….

The episode opens with Kelsey Grammer waking up in a seedy motel, discovering a tattoo on his arm and a lover in the shower. The lover turns out to be Edward Hibbert (the radio station’s food critic). Grammer wakes up screaming. On with the show.

The dream becomes recurring and the episode covers the various changes as Grammer tries to figure out what it’s all about. He enlists David Hyde Pierce’s help (after unintentionally revealing his dream paramour to an amused Peri Gilpin) and they research the episode.

I think season four is where “Frasier” figures out how good Grammer and Hyde Pierce are together in various situations. They’re good while being competitive, but they’re also good working together and spitballing a problem. Lots of good banter, lots of desperate attempts to explain the dream.

After nothing works, Grammer decides it’s time to just cut to the chase—maybe he’s gay. There’s some aged terminology and concepts, but here’s where the show does all right with it, especially when he starts talking to John Mahoney about it. Mahoney’s been involved in the antics to a lesser extent throughout—he and Jane Leeves get a hilarious bit where they try to freak out their fellow condo residents in the elevator—but once it gets serious for a sustained moment, Mahoney and Grammer show off their dramatic chops.

Hibbert gets a good scene in reality and a bunch of good ones in the dreams, but after the setup, he and the radio station cast (Gilpin and Dan Butler) are done and it’s all Grammer and family cast working through it.

It’s a hilarious episode for Grammer and Hyde Pierce—Rob Greenberg’s script is real funny—so it doesn’t matter too much about the cast not getting balanced attention.

The end punchline dream is excellent and the credits bit is good too. It’s a really good episode. And very nice it’s still funny twenty-six years on.

Frasier (1993) s04e02 – Love Bites Dog

The episode opens with Dan Butler—who’s a regular per the opening titles this episode (but not last; he wasn’t even in the previous episode)—on the phone breaking up cruelly with his latest romance. And, it turns out, her sister as well. It’s dated—at least I hope it’s dated—but, you know, it’s just Butler being Bulldog. I wonder if he was out at this time, which always made Bulldog seem less harmful and more absurdist, having an out gay guy play him. It was the nineties. If you were out and gay, you rarely got work.

Oh, wait. It hasn’t gotten much better, has it.

Anyway.

Suzanne Martin wrote the script, which is the rather funny tale of Roz (Peri Gilpin) trying to set up Kelsey Grammer on a blind date with her friend, Jennifer Campbell (who’s only in one scene but is good). But then Butler crashes it and starts arguing with female golf pro Campbell about golf being a real sport so they run off to fight it out at the links, leaving Grammer alone.

The episode’s already established it’s been a while since Grammer’s had female companionship—it’s a great recurring gag—so he mopes around until he has to step up and be a good male friend for Butler, which gives Grammer a wonderful chance to flex. And David Hyde Pierce a great reacting opportunity.

The episode’s a lot more balanced too—Hyde Pierce has got a subplot about him needing to advertise his psychiatry practice with unexpected snafus while Jane Leeves and John Mahoney go on an odyssey to find shoes. Most striking about their subplot is much of it taking place outside. Like on location exteriors. Can’t wait to see if they get out more this season.

It’s a really funny subplot though the punchline manages to date just as poorly as the opening with Butler.

Gilpin gets the least amount of time for the regular cast, but it’s balanced between her and Hyde Pierce—they have a great interchange as one exits so the other can enter—and the material she does get is a funny showcase.

Butler gets quite a bit to do, including showing some (comically) emotional range and he’s excellent. “Frasier” is already a full show but they seem—if Martin’s approach is an indicator—to be working harder on the balance between regular cast than they’ve previously done, especially for Leeves. She and Mahoney are so good together.

The handful of problems are problems but the episode makes a fine case for the addition of Butler as a regular.

Frasier (1993) s04e01 – The Two Mrs. Cranes

Joe Keenan for the win.

I missed the writing credit on this episode and put off finding out who wrote this marvelous script until now. Keenan starts the season out on a very high point, with an endless amount of always good one-liners as the regular cast gets to do a group showcase episode.

Jane Leeves’s ex-fiancé is in town to take her up on her promise to reconnect if they’re both single in five years time (which, for the normally continuity vague “Frasier,” actually does match with the previous season’s flashback reveals). She doesn’t have any interest and is planning on telling him to shove off, but loses her nerve when he arrives and casts David Hyde Pierce as her new husband.

The episode opens with Hyde Pierce over at Kelsey Grammer’s apartment, still separated from Maris, getting on Grammer’s nerves with his latest eccentricity, so when Leeves and Hyde Pierce inform the ex (Scott Atkinson in an outstanding performance as the straight man) it’s their apartment and Grammer is their martially troubled erstwhile lodger….

The show is layers upon layers of slightly acerbic character conflict, which then comes out in force once Leeves has some second thoughts about Atkinson but Peri Gilpin’s since come over and met him and is interested too.

Meanwhile John Mahoney gets maybe the most constantly funny part in the group subterfuge as he comes up with a very creative career history for himself, given Grammer and Hyde Pierce think—although he was an undercover cop—he won’t be able to think on his feet.

Throw in a subplot about Mahoney needing someone to take him to a reunion with his war buddies as a blackmail and leverage chip for people to pass back and forth and there are some stakes. So Keenan’s got the plot, he’s got the arcs, then he’s got the constant one-liners. Only Mahoney’s are “in universe” and ought to be as funny to his mortified sons and Leeves, otherwise they’re all these wonderful character moments.

I imagine four seasons in they were trying to figure out how they could possibly pick up any viewers not already watching the show but Keenan does a phenomenal job selling the characters, cast, and concept.

Excellent performances from the cast. Mahoney’s the winner, Leeves gets some great stuff, then probably Hyde Pierce (who manages to do his “being this stalker-y is somehow not creepy when Hyde Pierce does it” best). Grammer and Gilpin get the least to do but they’re still good, of course.

And then, again, Atkinson. It wouldn’t work without him.

“The Two Mrs. Cranes” is an exemplar “Frasier” for sure.

Frasier (1993) s03e24 – You Can Go Home Again

For the third season finale, “Frasier” goes with the wholesome flashback (with some bite) route. The script’s from Linda Morris and Vic Rauseo, which is appropriate for the flashback—although they’re executive producers, they haven’t had many script credits this season—but they wrote a bunch in the first and second seasons.

The episode opens establishing it’s the three year anniversary of “The Frasier Crane Show” on the radio—which had already happened in the first episode of the series—and Kelsey Grammer and Peri Gilpin get each other gifts. She gets him a recording of the first episode of the radio show, which he goes home and puts on, kicking off the flashback.

Along the way to the tape deck, Grammer walks in on Jane Leeves on the phone with her mum in England, trying to get out of her annual visit home. They have a quick chat about how annoying family gets, then Grammer puts on the tape and the flashback begins.

It’s set about six months (or is it three) before the first episode of the show and if Grammer’s short hair is any indication, either they’re not worrying about hair style continuity or Frasier cut his hair after “Cheers” but grew it out in time for “Frasier: Season One.” We get the first meeting between Grammer and Gilpin, which has a lot of the biting humor before finding a rather nice resolution, then we check in on Grammer and the other Crane boys, David Hyde Pierce and John Mahoney. They’re at an even more dysfunctional stage than when we meet them in the first episode, with Grammer still a beer drinker who finds Hyde Pierce a “weird little person” and Mahoney still living on his own.

There’s some good comedy for everyone, plus some rather solid gravitas for Mahoney and Grammer before the nice wholesome wrap-up. There are also some amusing “continuity-safe” moments like Hyde Pierce getting a whiff of Leeves’s perfume before ever meeting her, plus some bickering with Gilpin before they’re formally introduced, which happens onscreen.

It’s a good episode, with the initial Gilpin and Grammer stuff and Hyde Pierce in general being the flashback highlights. The stuff with Mahoney and Grammer is well-acted and decently affecting, but it’s not memorable or weighty. The good cheer in the resolution is a far better season send-off.

Also we get to hear the first caller ever on the radio show in the flashback–played by Sherry Lansing, chairman of Paramount Pictures at the time. It sort of makes sense (since “Frasier” is Paramount) but also doesn’t (she doesn’t appear to have had anything to do with television).

Frasier (1993) s03e23 – The Focus Group

The episode opens with a lengthy setup for the eventual A plot, getting most of the B plot out of the way in an early chunk. Both Daphne (Jane Leeves) and Niles (David Hyde Pierce) are upset; she’s mad at her boyfriend for ditching her on their anniversary weekend to go to Vegas (we learn John Mahoney really likes strip clubs so long as the strippers are lecturing about American history) and Hyde Pierce is mad because he got some foie gras on a Jackson Pollock and needs to pay to get it cleaned.

Their bad moods collide in a bickering session, which is fine but more amusing when they both apologize, only then we find out Hyde Pierce is rather excited by the whole thing. Presumably Leeves just goes off to sulk appropriately about the boyfriend while Hyde Pierce does a “walk and talk” with Kelsey Grammer about it. Presumably because we don’t establish she’s left the room.

The main plot is about the focus group for Grammer’s radio show, specifically how special guest star Tony Shalhoub (not playing his “Wings” character, despite “Frasier” and “Wings” being cousins) doesn’t like the show. Grammer starts obsessing over it, eventually wrangling Mahoney into questioning Shalhoub after the focus group and so on. It’s great stuff, the right mix of an infinitely capable guest star in Shalhoub and Grammer being able to be a complete ass. Plus really good use of exteriors and the chemistry between the regular cast, specifically Grammer, Mahoney, and Hyde Pierce.

There’s some decent stuff with Peri Gilpin during the focus group scene—she and Grammer aren’t supposed to be watching the discussion but for some reason get to watch the discussion (or maybe the focus group facilitator is just a liar)—though it gets a little weird at the end for the end credits thing. Sometimes realistic for the characters doesn’t mean it should make the cut. Especially when it’s really gross.

I suppose I should’ve prefaced mentioning Dan Butler shows up to give his take during the focus group too.

Excellent direction from Philip Charles MacKenzie, sometimes good, sometimes better script from Rob Greenberg, and great performances from Shalhoub and Grammer. Even with a few bumps, it’s an exemplar episode (thanks to Shalhoub).