In the Line of Fire (1993, Wolfgang Petersen)

In the Line of Fire is about bad use of taxpayer funds. President Jim Curley is on the campaign trail, trying to shore up support in ten states in nine days or something, and his chief of staff, Fred Thompson, doesn’t want to listen to any nonsense from the Secret Service about a viable threat. Now, Fire’s a lot of things. It’s a gentle reckoning with history as lead Clint Eastwood deconstructs the naive heroism of pre-1963 United States (very gentle, don’t dwell too much); Eastwood was one of the agents with JFK that day, and now he’s got to stop another assassin—a scenery inhaling John Malkovich—from doing a repeat.

Malkovich is a very dangerous man (with a very particular set of skills, if you know what I mean), and there’s a relatively high collateral damage body count in Fire. Because no one listens to Eastwood. Or when they do listen to Eastwood, like lady agent Rene Russo, who has to admit even though he’s a Greatest Generation edge lord, Eastwood knows his stuff, they get in trouble for siding with him.

The movie makes a big deal out of how Eastwood’s a burnout, one of the oldest field agents, doing counterfeit investigations to stay out of anyone important’s hair. A random tip brings him into Malkovich’s master plan, which involves lots of disguises, modeling composite, and a shocking amount of petty cash. Malkovich’s finances and how he uses them to further his goals are the most interesting part of his scheme, and they get very little attention. Though there are a handful of guest stars involved.

See, despite “who’s that” Jim Curley as the President of the United States, Fire features a litany of familiar faces, ranging from Tobin Bell to Patrika Darbo, John Mahoney to John Heard. There are so many people in it. But not the big guy because Eastwood doesn’t want to get to know Curley. He got to know JFK, which obviously didn’t work out, but—as Eastwood tells Russo at one point—sometimes you get to know the people and decide you’re not willing to take a bullet for them. Oh, the naivety of the nineties. Miss it.

The film’s split between Eastwood’s “I’m too old for this shit” protecting the President plot, which gives him the opportunity to bump heads with young whippersnapper boss Gary Cole and flirt with colleague Russo, Eastwood and likable but too bland sidekick Dylan McDermott (whose agent should’ve reminded him it wasn’t actually a Dirty Harry movie) trying to figure out Malkovich’s plan, and then Malkovich either executing the scheme or calling up Eastwood to chit-chat about the old days. Eastwood gets to do some good acting listening to Malkovich monologue, lips quivering, and so on, as Malkovich dregs up all Eastwood’s trauma for Russo to empathize with and literally all the other guys to mock. Not McDermott, but only because McDermott doesn’t get to play with the regular fancy supporting cast.

McDermott’s absence is indicative of the problem with Jeff Maguire’s screenplay—there’s no balance in the second half. Eastwood starts with McDermott and then graduates to the big leagues with Russo and Cole, only to go back with McDermott and forget the rest exists. Or happened. It can play into Eastwood’s stoicism for a bit, but not forever, not with some of the plot developments. And there’s no real reintegration later on, either. Eastwood should just be joining the plot already in progress, but Maguire then needs to jumpstart that plot. They’d been idling it too long.

Okay direction from Petersen. The film’s technical star is Anne V. Coates’s cutting. Fire’s an expertly edited action picture. Everything else goes off the rails a bit—Petersen’s direction, John Bailey’s photography, even Ennio Morricone’s score is a little much at times—but Coates does a phenomenal job every time. Even during the final when they either don’t have the budget—or the stunt people—for the showdown. Coates makes it work as much as anyone can. However, she can’t do anything to make the composites look better. And Petersen and Bailey really seem to like their composites. They have a bunch of needless composites to make it look like they had the first unit on all the locations.

It’s a good time—even if it is all about Curley wasting taxpayer money (not just on the Secret Service expenses, but really, why do we pay politicians to campaign for re-election)—with good star performances from Eastwood, Malkovich, and Russo. It’s fairly lean goings by the finish, with Russo left with very little, but it’s a good time.

And that Morricone score’s usually beautiful.

This post is part of the Two Jacks Blogathon hosted by Rebecca of Taking Up Room.

What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993, Brian Gibson)

Not counting the ill-advised, if still not wholly unwelcome epilogue, What’s Love Got to Do with It ends about ten years before the film came out. Love’s a biopic of Tina Turner (played by Angela Bassett except for the adorable then rending prologue), almost entirely focusing on her time with Ike Turner (Laurence Fishburne). Just present action, Love covers twenty-five-ish years.

Most of the time is spent in the fifties and sixties, as locally successful musician Fishburne makes it big when Bassett becomes his singer. Bassett’s a country girl moved to the big city (St. Louis), reuniting with the mother who abandoned her (Jenifer Lewis, whose disappearance is another of the film’s problems) and big sister Phyllis Yvonne Stickney. Who also disappears. Lots of disappearing characters in Love.

There are very few bad performances in Love. They’re uniformly white men too. First, Rob LaBelle shows up as Phil Spector, and he’s risibly godawful, then James Reyne is even worse as comeback Tina’s manager. On the one hand, the movie’s biggest problem is not tracking Bassett post-divorce and into her significant eighties success (forty-something Black woman recreating her career and stardom). On the other, Reyne’s so terrible. I don’t know if the movie could’ve sustained him.

They would have had to do some really good performance scenes.

The best things about Love are Bassett, Fishburne, and the musical performance scenes. Bassett’s got a fabulous stage presence (and lip-synching). But the music rarely matters. Love is the Tina Turner story (as of 1992) and, at that time, it still involved (at least in the public consciousness) Ike, which turns Love into a movie about a manipulated and groomed young woman (a characterization Turner disputed) suffering for twenty-some years before showing up the dangerous loser sociopath she’d kept famous.

Except part of the Tina Turner story is she’s badass. Once Bassett gets to the badass stage—even if it’s badass Buddhist (something else the film’s got a peculiar handle on, Tina’s spirituality)—the movie’s not just over; it’s so over, it brings in the real Turner for a musical number, a jiggle, and a wink. Besides knowing Bassett and Fishburne were great in the movie, one of the only other things I knew was Turner gets to finish out the movie, effectively erasing Bassett from the film’s memory. It’s a complicated situation, to be sure, and it probably could’ve been done well, but definitely not by director Gibson.

Gibson’s exceptionally bland. There’s no aspect of the film he appears interested in, which is strange since there are so many possibilities. It’s set during the Golden Age of Rock ‘n Roll (for a while). Gibson’s not interested. It’s about the transition into the Sixties. Gibson’s not interested.

Technically, the best scenes are the musical numbers. They’re where editor Stuart H. Pappé does his best cutting. Pappé occasionally will have bad cuts in other scenes (mainly towards the front), but the musical numbers are great. Even if the film doesn’t really tie them to the narrative. Love will do things like fold three years into three sequential scenes with nothing about the passage of time, so it’s not surprising the musical sequences are disconnected. Love buries the lede on Fishburne being physically abusive to Bassett for added dramatic emphasis, which is one heck of a move but also not surprising.

Like I said, the movie’s half as long as it ought to be—Bassett thriving away from Fishburne ought to be the story—but given what they do with the few scenes in that era (and the casting), it might not actually help the film. Not with the same creatives behind the camera, anyway.

Jamie Anderson’s cinematography is usually Touchstone Bland, but he does have a few really well-lighted scenes. Good production design from Stephen Altman and costumes from Ruth E. Carter. Stanley Clarke’s score is indescribably horrendous. Just a different score might be enough to pull Love up.

Vanessa Bell Calloway (as Bassett’s only friend) and Lewis are the best supporting performances. No one in Bassett and Fishburne’s entourage is bad (Chi McBride, Khandi Alexander, and Penny Johnson Jerald have the most significant parts), but they’re playing caricatures.

Even with its Touchstone-y constraints, Love ought to be better. Bassett, Fishburne, and Turner deserve it. Not Ike Turner, though. He was a piece of shit (and the scenes Fishburne had the producers add to “humanize” abusive Ike make him more obviously a sociopathic predator, so Fishburne being outstanding isn’t not problematic). Turner herself made some very astute observations about the film’s framing of Bassett as a victim (which a better second half would’ve helped, though it seems like it’s foundational).

So, very unfortunately, Love’s a mixed bag. Great acting—Bassett’s mesmerizing—can’t make up for an alternately vapid and bland (albeit not incompetent—except that score) production.

Weekend at Bernie’s II (1993, Robert Klane)

Suppose one makes it to the third act of Weekend at Bernie’s II, which is not a suggestion or recommendation to undertake such a burden. In that case, one will see some bewilderingly competent underwater photography. Including what appears to be Terry Kiser doing takes without any oxygen nearby. Maybe it’s Kiser, maybe it’s not. He already deserved an Oscar nomination for his physical performance in Bernie’s II; if he actually did the underwater stuff, it’s just more apparent he was robbed. Tommy Lee Jones should’ve called him up to the stage and handed over the statue.

Kiser gets a lot to do this movie because he’s a voodoo zombie. See, something something criminal conspiracy, it turns out Kiser was in league with some voodooed-up mobsters. It’s unclear if Novella Nelson’s voodoo priestess runs the mob or what, but she’s certainly in charge of getting Kiser’s money back. So she sends Tom Wright and Steve James to resurrect Kiser in the New York City morgue; the spell will have him leading Wright and James to the money, which they’ll then bring to Nelson.

Wright and James are actors playing a comedy routine. A lousy comedy routine, poorly directed, and entirely composed of Black media stereotypes (Wright and James are Black men). It’s sometimes a lot, sometimes quite terrible, sometimes actually impressive. Wright and James are atrocious at the physical comedy, but their dance sequence is good work. Technically. There’s not a lot of good work in Bernie’s II, so it stands out. Their dancing, the underwater photography, the rest is pretty terrible. Except Kiser.

But Wright and James are just one set of comedy duos in the film. Bernie’s II recasts returning leads Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman as a comedy team. McCarthy’s the obnoxious dumb one (with what I think McCarthy thinks is a New Yorker accent); Silverman’s the cautious, sweet, probably Jewish one. In this sequel, both actors literally repeat the performance from last time, just mixed up. They even have McCarthy repeat his lines like they were pop culture catchphrases. It’s terrible. And while it’s embarrassing to watch McCarthy humiliate himself for what cannot have been worth it pay-wise, he’s also never sympathetic. You feel bad for Silverman, you feel bad for Kiser, you feel bad for Troy Byer (as the not love interest love interest), for Wright, James, Nelson—even Barry Bostwick. But you never feel bad for McCarthy because you’re watching his complicity.

Byer’s a resort employee who makes the mistake of going out with McCarthy, which embroils her in the plot later on because she’s the only islander they know. Bostwick’s the insurance company investigator who follows McCarthy and Silverman down to St. Thomas. I assume they got a tax break to shoot in St. Thomas, who mustn’t have realized Weekend at Bernie’s II wasn’t going to do them much good tourism-wise.

See, McCarthy and Silverman want into Kiser’s safety deposit box, so they’re going to steal his body and Bernie’s him into the bank. It might be too macabre if it weren’t such an insipid film.

Anyway.

There’s nothing good about it (except Kiser, the underwater sequence, and the one dancing scene). Klane’s direction is much better than his script and still godawful. Bernie’s II leans in heavy to misogyny and racial stereotyping but then doesn’t even do anything once it’s there. There’s no joke, just a shitty setup. Klane’s not edgy; he’s just desperate.

It’s a terrible movie. And long. So long.

Much Ado About Nothing (1993, Kenneth Branagh)

Much Ado About Nothing has a machismo problem. It’s not writer, director, and star Branagh’s fault; it’s just the historical patriarchy. Though Branagh does try to do some initial counterbalancing, opening the film with a quote about the sexual dynamics. Still, that moment only carries through the first scene, setting up Emma Thompson’s character… And to the degree it’s Shakespeare’s fault, well, again, what can you expect from the sixteenth century. But everything until the end of the second act, when the machismo boils over—and then whenever Branagh and Thompson are on screen together and then whenever Branagh gets to show off his directorial chops—everything else about Ado is pretty much golden.

The story’s set in gorgeous Tuscany, with Branagh and cinematographer Roger Lanser somewhat muting the brightness, but only so Patrick Doyle’s music can emphasize the light when they find it. Branagh and Lanser have this striking repeated technique of bringing the actor monologuing into direct sunlight by the end of a monologue. The actor walks around to find that lighting; otherwise, their face is, if not in shadow, at least in overcast. Doyle’s also going to score based on the pace of conversation or content, which is phenomenal stuff to watch and hear. Much Ado constantly impresses. And not just when Branagh manages to make Keanu Reeves into a reasonable enough villain.

Reeves is a jealous prince, out to ruin half-brother Denzel Washington’s day. Not his life—there’s no overthrowing Washington’s command of the nobles—just messing around with him to make him miserable. Reeves and Washington not having an onscreen relationship should be a sign the characterizations will have problems. Still, given Branagh’s able to give Reeves at least one good scene (though having him shirtless and dousing him in oil qualifies as sleight of hand) and Ado being so much endless fun, you don’t think about it.

The plot involves Washington, his nobles, and Reeves arriving at a friendly town. Richard Briers is the governor, a sweet old guy with a marriage-ready daughter, Kate Beckinsale, and a sharp-tongued, great-hearted cousin in Thompson. Brian Blessed’s his brother and sidekick, though mostly only in the third act. Robert Sean Leonard, sidekick to Washington, has the hots for Beckinsale, but he’s shy, and so Washington’s going to court on his behalf. Actually, Washington’s going to broker a marriage. While Much Ado is great and all, it is just a situation comedy involving Washington messing with his friends to amuse his other friends. Specifically Branagh and Thompson.

While Leonard and Beckinsale’s romance is first act stuff, with Reeves and his cronies failing to make Leonard believe Washington’s courting Beckinsale on his own behalf, so they have to work a secondary plot throughout. The second act focuses on Washington’s attempts to bring banter rivals, Branagh and Thompson, together. Just to prove he can, which ought to be another warning for Washington’s character, but it’s so much fun, and Washington’s infinitely charming, no red flags.

Reeves’s eventually successful plot will force Branagh into Thompson’s against the bros, and the second act is often glorious comedy with Branagh and Thompson monologuing and mooning. Thompson’s the film’s best lead performance, able to bring fire to the third act no one else can muster. Branagh’s excellent as well, but he’s not as good as Washington at Washington’s best. Washington’s part is on literal mute for the third act, while Branagh gets a character arc. The supporting cast is good or better, but almost entirely with third-act problems. Briers is excellent, but he’s got a not-great guy arc in the third act. Beckinsale’s good, but she disappears just as she becomes the natural protagonist in the plot. Leonard’s good (with a bunch of caveats and asterisks) since it was Branagh’s job to figure out how not to make Leonard come off like a dick, and Branagh punts on it. And then Reeves is not unsuccessful. Reeves’s chief goon, Gerard Horan, will end up more important than Reeves and Horan’s solid.

The best performance in the film, of course, is Michael Keaton. He’s the local constable. However Keaton and Branagh came up with the characterization—where Keaton mixes sight gags, affected delivery, and physical presence unseen since a Marx Brother—is Ado’s finest achievement. Keaton’s singular. And he never steals scenes, always leaving space, particularly for Ben Elton as his sidekick. Elton’s hilarious too. Branagh’s balance between Keaton’s subplot’s belly laughs and then the gentle romantic comedy is exceptional. Much Ado About Nothing is expert work.

Shame the resolve is all about every guy taking the agency away from one woman or another as women are, after all, just property. Except for Thompson. Sort of. In those plot constraints, when Washington becomes a de facto conquerer (at least from his own perspective), Leonard is just an obnoxious, brutish dickhead… I mean, it’s Shakespeare. Branagh’s not going to change it. And he does try to leverage Thompson against it, which is almost successful. She can’t overcome the failure of two significant, third-act events, stray threads Branagh didn’t even need but for adaptation’s sake.

Slight bummers. But an expertly produced motion picture, with some superlative performances and masterful filmmaking.

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.

Frasier (1993) s01e12 – Miracle on Third or Fourth Street

It’s a Christmas episode and a good one. Just the right amount of humor and heartwarming, with Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) ending up alone on Christmas and in need of some good fellowship as it turns out.

Everything seems to be going swimmingly for Grammer’s first Christmas with Mahoney in Seattle, with his son coming in to visit him. They’re going to the Crane family Christmas at the cabin, where Maris will shoot at bears with her shotgun, which gets David Hyde Pierce a good laugh. Only the son cancels—no cameo from Bebe Neuwirth when she calls, unfortunately—leading Grammer to lash out at Mahoney, which dampens the holiday spirit.

So instead of family time, Grammer works the radio, unknowingly dragging Peri Gilpin in, away from her visiting mother. Grammer’s already gotten Gilpin a crappy Christmas gift, so when she gets too upset listening to the miserable Christmas callers, he sends her home. The image of Grammer alone in the sound booth, the voice of lonely Christmas, is rather affecting. James Burrows does an excellent job directing Grammer this episode.

Because it’s basically an all-Grammer “Frasier.” Once the family stuff is out of the way—including a great Hyde Pierce’s Daphne moment (sadly, Hyde Pierce’s adorable perving is usually separate from Leeves’s performance) and a major cringe transphobic joke—it’s just Grammer and the callers.

There are bunch of celebrity guests—Mel Brooks, Rosemary Clooney, Dominick Dunne, Ben Stiller, and Eric Stoltz—each with one story more devastating than the last. Writer Christopher Lloyd finds a great mix of humor and misery in the calls. They’re tragic but also funny in how tragic.

And then there’s the layered “Frasier” pay-off when Grammer goes out to dinner at the only place he can find open (where he doesn’t need a reservation), a greasy spoon run by Christine Estabrook. Grammer sits next to sleeping John Finn, who turns out to have been the subject of one of Grammer’s Christmas calls.

Great performance from Finn.

Then cool bit part from Hawthorne James.

See, Finn and James are experiencing homelessness but when it turns out snob on the sly Grammer might be in need of goodwill toward men… well, there’s a nice wholesome Christmas miracle.

And then a great punchline.

Exactly what a Christmas episode should be.

Minus the transphobic joke.

Frasier (1993) s01e11 – Death Becomes Him

I’ve got to stop being so surprised when Kelsey Grammer basically gets an episode to himself. It’s his show, it just happens to have a phenomenal supporting cast. I was going to say scene-stealing but they aren’t. No one crowds anyone out in “Frasier,” it’s exceptionally balanced.

This episode is all about Grammer getting neurotic about death because, after the family finds out John Mahoney hasn’t been going to his doctor, Grammer takes him to see a guy in David Hyde Pierce’s building. Only the doctor dies and sends Grammer on a spiral of death preparations, like his will. Only he doesn’t know what everyone wants so he gives them labels so they can affix their names to wanted items.

Leading to a running joke through the rest of the episode about Grammer finding everything Hyde Pierce has already claimed.

It also leads to a nice conversation between Grammer and Mahoney, where Mahoney gets to do a reasonably dramatic scene but then get in a good punchline. Good script from Leslie Eberhard.

The episode resolves with Grammer crashing the dead doctor’s shiva and bumbling his way through as he bullshits. He’s pretending he knew the doctor, trying to figure out why the guy—who was the same-ish age as Grammer—has died.

It’s during Grammer’s visit with the widow, Stephanie Dunnam, where everything in the episode clicks, thanks to Eberhard’s script, and Grammer gets an excellent moment of acting and character development.

Peri Gilpin gets a good scene dealing with Grammer during his ranting with a nice punchline about why they talk about her sex life as opposed to his. Then Hyde Pierce has this running joke about trying to appear buff for Jane Leeves’s benefit, which is predictably ludicrous. Some very good laughs with that one. There’s some amazing physical comedy from Hyde Pierce this episode—he’s got to open a jar for Leeves and you can feel his muscles strain and suffer at the effort.

So, excellent episode. No surprise. Though I guess a little surprise because I forgot Grammer could protagonist excellent episodes on his own.

Frasier (1993) s01e10 – Oops

It’s another strong episode. “Frasier”’s combination for success is the scripts—in this case, from writers Denise Moss and Sy Dukane—the supporting cast, and then the bigger name guest stars. Because whether you know his name or not, John Glover is a name guest star. He’s in this episode as Kelsey Grammer’s boss.

The episode starts with Grammer introducing David Hyde Pierce to some co-workers—the outtakes from Hyde Pierce giving Black guy Wayne Wilderson a jive greeting must be amazing—and quickly becomes a work episode. Someone is getting fired, which Grammer, Peri Gilpin, and the rest of the gang soon decide has got to be Bulldog (Dan Butler). Despite having high ratings, Butler’s apparently been asking for too much expense account and so on.

The next day, Grammer being socially awkward, makes chitchat with fellow radio personality George DelHoyo (the Catholic priest with the failing ratings) and says it’s Butler who’s getting fired. Butler overhears, confronts Glover, quitting.

Grammer feels terrible, of course, but it’s not like there’s anything he can do about it. Talking to Glover is out of the question.

Though once Butler shows up at the apartment needing a place to stay… Grammer gets more open to the idea.

Butler’s fantastic, Glover’s hilarious—he somehow makes the absurd reasonable but doesn’t lose the absurd impact—and some great stuff for the regular supporting cast. Like with Gilpin and the supporting supporting guest stars… it’s nice to get to see her do something more than the norm. Hyde Pierce also gets to do a “visit with dad” John Mahoney, which gets more and more painful by the millisecond, and Mahoney gets to praise Butler’s radio show in front of Grammer. There’s one of those nice layered delay “Frasier” jokes with Mahoney, Hyde Pierce, and Butler.

The celebrity caller is Jay Leno, as a guy who gets who gets fat-shammed. It’s a funny bit—like technically, the way they pull off the joke, it’s funny. But it’s still… a cheap fat-shamming joke. For all the pretense of pretension, “Frasier” goes for cheap jokes all the time. Usually telling them quite well.

It’s just, you know, extra cheap this time.

Frasier (1993) s01e09 – Selling Out

Selling Out is a Kelsey Grammer episode overall—Frasier gets into the lucrative world of on air endorsing and finds himself tempted further and further way from his professional ethics as a psychiatrist—but it’s Harriet Sansom Harris who makes it so special. The Grammer stuff would be funny no matter what, as his behavior gets more and more absurd (not to mention Grammer’s voice being so perfect for the on air schilling), but Harris is a revelation. She’s Frasier’s new agent, Bebe Glazer. She talks him into representation (she’s fellow radio personality Dan Butler’s agent already), kicking off Grammer’s descent, and she’s the devil on his shoulder.

Harris kind of does a Katharine Hepburn thing, but with a whole bunch of energy. It’s like Katharine Hepburn playing Wile E. Coyote playing Katharine Hepburn. The Harris manipulating Grammer scenes are absolute gold. This episode, scripted by Lloyd Garver, might be the funniest episode so far. There are a lot of big, long laughs in it, which doesn’t seem like it’s going to be the case at the beginning, when Butler gives a super-racist read of a Chinese restaurant ad. The joke is Butler’s a terrible racist and to laugh at him, but it’s… ick. Though the discussion of whether public racism is more or less accepted in 1993 or 2020 is a depressing one.

But once Harris shows up, the laughs start and they don’t stop. Garver’s got them for Grammer, he’s got them for Harris, he’s got them for Peri Gilpin, for Jane Leeves (who gets a great monologue about her time as a tween TV star in the UK), John Mahoney—David Hyde Pierce doesn’t show up until the very end of the episode and he’s there to cut Grammer down to size regarding his professional ethics. Grammer has spent the entire episode working himself through hoops to make it not unethical to shill on his radio show, with the breaking point being Harris lining him up a TV gig, and he runs to Hyde Pierce for a sounding board.

Hyde Pierce’s scene is phenomenal stuff. With a Maris joke—related to Basic Instinct of all things—getting the visible longest laugh in the episode because Grammer’s got to sit and wait through the audience before his next line.

It’s a fantastic episode, minus the Butler ad read. Celebrity caller is Carl Reiner, who has a boring story for the show and Grammer gets in a funny diss when hanging out… which also raises a question about professional ethics, I suppose. Anyway. Truly great episode, thanks to Garver’s script but more Harris’s Bebe. She’s incredible.

Frasier (1993) s01e08 – Beloved Infidel

In some ways, this episode of “Frasier” is the best one so far. If the show is supposed to be about Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and Martin (John Mahoney) actually connecting as son and father, respectively, Leslie Eberhard’s script does it. It does it so much you’re left wondering what the repercussions if or when Niles (David Hyde Pierce) finds out what he missed.

The episode starts with some easy jokes, which are important because there aren’t any real laughs after the second commercial break. That section is reserved for serious talk time for Grammer and Mahoney, which lets the actors show off their more dramatic muscles. But the opening—with JoBeth Williams as a French caller who Grammer can’t understand, then Hyde Pierce once again forgetting Peri Gilpin, in this case why this woman he obviously knows but can’t remember is hanging out in Frasier’s sound booth. Gilpin’s got some great lines in the scene, before and after Hyde Pierce arrives.

Grammer and Hyde Pierce head out to dinner—somewhere cheap because it’s Hyde Pierce’s turn to pay—and, after some laughs involving Hyde Pierce’s fretting over his car getting towed—they notice Mahoney at another table, having dinner with Pat Crowley. They recognize Crowley as an old family friend who became estranged and assume Mahoney’s on a date, which gets weird when Crowley bursts into tears and runs out. The “Crane first date” observation from Grammer is choice.

Well, Hyde Pierce goes through his old journals and finds a mystery involving why the families stopped being friends twenty plus years before and Grammer and Hyde Pierce determine Mahoney must’ve had an affair with Crowley. They confront him about it, which sends the episode down its serious path—the biggest subplot involves Eddie the dog rolling around on the sofa, which is absolutely adorable and just the stress reliever the episode needs.

Things get even more serious after an impertinent Grammer confronts Crowley, which in turn leads to a further confrontation with Mahoney.

The episode’s got some great light laughs at the beginning—not to mention a too cute for words Jack Russell Terrier—while still sticking to the dramatic guns for the finish.

So while not the funniest episode so far, or the most ambitiously crafted one, it might be the best one so far.