Frasier (1993) s05e12 – The Zoo Story

It’s a Bebe (Harriet Sansom Harris) episode, even though Kelsey Grammer fired Harris last time she was on—last season. But it’s only sort of a Bebe episode; she’s still Peri Gilpin’s agent (maybe the biggest offscreen character continuity detail the show’s had to date, actually) and she wants Grammer back as a client, but Grammer’s still angry Harris is a soulless agent. Instead, with station negotiations looming, he’s going to find a nice guy agent.

Even though everyone, including John Mahoney (who simultaneously shouldn’t have a valid opinion on the subject but is also really funny in the scene), tells him it’s impossible to find a good nice guy agent. Grammer finds one–Robert Stanton—who spends most of his time volunteering around town, not being a cutthroat advocate for his clients. But he’s wholesome and Grammer wants it to work out.

Even though everything Stanton comes up with ends in disaster—to be fair, however, Mahoney does aggravate at least one of the disasters, rather comedically—and Grammer has to weigh his morals against success with Harris and potential ruin with Stanton. Complicating things are the disasters having public ramifications for Grammer, making him Seattle’s laughing stock, something David Hyde Pierce revels in.

Hyde Pierce’s subplot has him in martial counseling troubles with estranged wife Maris, who wants him to fire their latest counselor and is withholding their weekly naughty time until he does so. Grammer convinces Hyde Pierce to take the high road and stand his moral ground, leading to some very funny lustful Hyde Pierce moments.

Most of the episode’s entirely solid and often very funny—good script, credited to Joe Keenan, and decent direction from Pamela Fryman—but the conclusion’s incredibly rocky because Fryman doesn’t seem to know how to direct Harris. Or doesn’t know how to compose shots when Harris is in a scene? It’s a very strange disconnect and rather unfortunate.

Good guest performances from Harris (not quite the usual showstopper or showcase) and Stanton. Hyde Pierce is the regular cast standout. Mahoney’s got some good material, Jane Leeves has a funny subplot about stanning a news anchor; Grammer’s the straight man throughout.

Its parts are better than the whole, but the whole’s all right.

Michael Hayes (1997) s01e20 – Devotion

It’s an almost entirely middling episode with a great as always guest star performance from Joanna Gleason—she’s married to family values congressman, Jim Haynie, who’s schtupping Godly campaign worker Gina Philips—and they’re getting death threats because Haynie wasn’t pro-gun enough with the Republican party’s white supremacist base. The episode opens with David Caruso on a politics talk show opposite Haynie, who just rambles about the culture war, before we find out Caruso’s only on the show because he’s dating host Susanna Thompson.

The episode’s B plot is Thompson getting a job offer in Los Angeles and having to figure it out with Caruso whether or not they can keep going. They’ve only been dating a few weeks (at most) but it’s ostensible character development for Caruso so the show’s going to pretend Thompson might stick around. Who knows, maybe they’re floating second season possibilities by the network (though at this point “Hayes” was in summer burn-off so they were probably already not renewed). It’s hard not to see Thompson as a stand-in for Helen Slater, a similarly blonde, similarly upwardly mobile girlfriend Caruso had a while back. Maybe if she’d stuck around the story would have some heft to it. With Thompson, it’s fine, but it’s obviously filler.

The A plot is almost entirely Caruso and Rebecca Rigg, with Ruben Santiago-Hudson out of commission due to a foot injury—he at least shows up for a couple scenes throughout, whereas Peter Outerbridge and Hillary Danner are as forgotten as Caruso’s extended family. It’s such a weird show; they aimed low, they aimed high, they aimed desperate, and it turns out their best goal was just being middling. Get good guest stars, do a reasonably engaging investigation procedural (it’s inexplicable why Caruso and company—i.e. Caruso and Rigg, though Jodi Long gets a bunch to do presumably because it wasn’t in her guest star contract to shoot pilots or get to run away after the show didn’t get renewed). Both Rigg and Caruso have acting moments where you remember the show used to be better, used to require better acting moments. Not anymore.

As “Michael Hayes” heads towards its sunset, it’s nice it isn’t going out on its low point (there’s still time of course) but it’d almost be better if it had. Reminding of all its potential—and its occasional successes—doesn’t do it any good.

Frasier (1993) s05e11 – Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do

It’s a potentially great episode, done in by David Lee’s oddly inept direction during the most important scene—though Ken Lamkin’s photography doesn’t help—and the script. Jay Kogen gets the credit. I’m starting to recognize the new crop of writers on “Frasier” and it’s never for good reasons.

The episode resolves one of the show’s longer running subplots, John Mahoney dating Marsha Mason. Mason hasn’t been around much this season and she gets an okay part this episode (it’s like someone else wrote the dramatic stuff, which is great until Kelsey Grammer can’t act it). She and Mahoney get stuff to do in the second half. The first half is the rest of the cast freaking out about Mahoney proposing to Mason. Rest of the cast except Peri Gilpin. The only thing Kogen can find her to do is a mini-scene leading into another scene in the cafe. It’s a good joke and the episode ends up not having room for Gilpin, but she’s missed when it’s not focused on Mahoney and Mason.

Jane Leeves has found an engagement ring and tells Grammer and David Hyde Pierce about it. All three of them are freaking out, though Hyde Pierce most of all because he hires a private investigator to snoop on Mason’s past. Grammer’s taking the more respectful of Mahoney’s wishes route, though if the detective’s already done the work what’s the harm….

There’s some bad material with about sex jokes about Maris (at , there are a couple transphobic jokes—which is apparently Kogen’s thing, he had one the last episode he wrote too—but eventually, when the story becomes about Hyde Pierce and Grammer intruding on Mahoney’s life, it gets surprisingly good, mostly because of the acting. So it’s even more disappointing when Grammer’s got no idea how to play the dramatic scenes with Mahoney later on. The same ones Lee can’t figure out how to direct and Lamkin can’t figure out how to light. There’s this exceptional performance from Mahoney, but the show lets him down.

It ends up being better than it ought to be, but never deserving of the good work Mahoney puts into it.

I spent the entire last scene wondering how Lee could whiff it so much on the direction; he’s always been absolutely competent to this point and he just cannot make it happen. And then there’s Grammer’s bad approach to it too. Thank goodness for Mahoney, shame he had to Atlas it.

Michael Hayes (1997) s01e19 – Power Play

The entire episode hinges on Allison Smith’s performance as a Patty Hearst-type who falls in with a post-Waco vengeance militia. Or at least if it were good it would. The performance. The episode’s not bad, with decent guest star turns from Byron Minns as a suspicious ATF agent, and then Linda Carlson and Frank Converse as Smith’s parents. But it’s nowhere near as good as it ought to be.

The episode spotlights Smith, time and again, even though she just draws attention to the flimsiness of the story. The real story kicks off after the episode’s over—given all the reveals on what’s been going on before the episode. David Caruso and Peter Outerbridge are trying one of the militia guys for murder only Smith shows up to say Minns is lying. They start investigating (Ruben Santiago-Hudson is around at this point in the episode… he’s going to disappear, hopefully to shoot a safety pilot for next season), bringing in Converse—a hard ass blue blood judge—and Carlson and giving Outerbridge a decent scene or two but then Minns arrests Smith and it becomes Single White Female all of a sudden. Smith starts stalking Caruso and so on.

The conclusion—or more like second half of the episode—has one of the militia members taking hostages in a federal building and Caruso trying to convince Smith to help de-escalate the situation. Hillary Danner’s around presumably because it was her week not to go off and shoot that safety pilot (in addition to Santiago-Hudson vanishing from the episode, Rebecca Rigg never appears). Though Jimmy Galeota does show up for a couple scenes to remind when Caruso had some kind of character development on the show. Some kind of character even.

Before the hostage situation, the episode has a mildly intriguing thing going—it’s doing Caruso investigating government conspiracies without it being the conspiracy mythology the show’s been trying to gin up and the corruption angle is engaging–but once the hostage thing takes over….

It all of a sudden matters whether episode director Vahan Moosekian is going to be able to make it thrilling (he’s not) or suspenseful (also no). And then to have it all be about Smith during that portion of the episode too… it just doesn’t work. It can’t. Bonnie Marks gets the script credit and the script’s at fault for many of the episode’s problems, including Smith’s character and its writing. But everyone else is able to make the writing work—Jodi Long finally gets more to do after being office scenery for most of the series (she hasn’t had anything to do until she had to tell Caruso not to be passively racist about ten episodes ago) and then ends up getting the shit end of the stick in a scene to showcase Converse’s privilege.

With a good lead guest star and a better plot, this episode could’ve been a slam dunk. Instead, it’s just not as bad as the new normal (yet still manages to remind the show’s a shambles of its potential).

Frasier (1993) s05e10 – Where Every Bloke Knows Your Name

I don’t know if the laugh track is actually louder in the first scene or if it just seems louder because the laughs seem a whole lot more forced. The episode opens with an inspired flashback to Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce’s characters in middle school having lunch and being obnoxious prigs, then fast forwards to them having a similar conversation in the cafe. Only all of the jokes are really forced in the present and the laugh track seems to be amped up to convince everyone to laugh along instead of accompanying existing laughter.

Laugh tracks were weird.

Anyway.

The episode sadly has nothing to do with the flashback kids (Andrew Dorsett plays young Grammer, Michael Welch plays young Hyde Pierce—Dorsett’s better but Welch is funnier), instead having to do with Grammer being sick of hanging out with Hyde Pierce all the time and looking for something else to do. It ends up being Jane Leeves’s hangout bar, as it taps into something Grammer hasn’t had since “Cheers,” though it’s an English pub in Seattle where Grammer’s the only Yank and so it fuels his obnoxious Anglophilia.

On one hand, it eventually gives Leeves an arc where she gets to treat Grammer as an equal not act like she’s the hired help, on the other, Leeves initially brings Grammer to the bar to meet her lingerie model friend (Gabrielle Fitzpatrick), which isn’t without awkward optics.

The episode’s mostly Grammer, Leeves, and the bar. Peri Gilpin’s single scene has her playing poker with John Mahoney and his buddies, which is one of the best scenes in the episode (I wasn’t expecting much from an episode with a solo Rob Hanning writing credit, but the poker scene’s real good). And Mahoney’s got the poker and then trying to take advantage of an empty apartment and giving Leeves advice based on that desire.

Though Mahoney gets the excellent end credits sequence.

The episode’s got its moments and it’s nice to see Leeves eventually get some agency, it just never lives up to any of its potential. Again, it’s about on par with what I was expecting from Hanning but Jeff Melman directed; I’d gotten used to Melman episodes being better.

Michael Hayes (1997) s01e18 – Gotterdammerung

It’s recognizable guest star week on “Michael Hayes.” Lots of guest stars. Sadly former “Facts of Life” co-stars Meredith Scott Lynn and Charlotte Rae don’t share any scenes. But there’s also the return of Larry Miller—he gets a “special appearance” credit—and does his best Gene Hackman in “The Conversation” (or Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State trailers) as a CIA agent who gives David Caruso the dirt on the CIA hiring on a bunch of Nazis after World War II, which is true but the show’s so silly at the conspiracy stuff it doesn’t come off truthy. The main guest star is Lawrence Dobkin, playing an elderly German immigrant who changes his testimony on the stand. He’s testifying against other guest star Vyto Ruginis.

Dobkin changes his story right after Holocaust survivor Rae spots him in the court house, in such an obvious sequence (even without the show’s “cut in a Nazi uniform” montage technique, even worse than the show’s flashback devices) you have to wonder if Hillary Danner’s character is supposed to have never seen or heard of Marathon Man.

Last recognizable guest star is Lawrence Pressman as the government Nazi hunter who tries to find out the story on Dobkin.

Meanwhile, Caruso, Danner, Peter Outerbridge, and Ruben Santiago-Hudson are all scrambling to save the case against Ruginis (for murdering a federal agent) while wondering if they fell for an old Nazi’s lies or if Rae’s just mistaken.

Once the CIA gets involved, Miller comes back for a scene—which just leads Caruso off to another visit with jailed CIA whistleblower now conspiracy crank Thomas Kopache (who isn’t a recognizable guest star so much as what I assume is a desperate attempt at appealing to “X-Files” viewers)—and then Caruso’s got to figure out how to uncover all the secrets.

There’s some good acting. Rae’s really good, Pressman’s good, Dobkin’s pretty good—the problem for Dobkin is he’s in it too much, doing too little, and the script (credited to show runner Michael S. Chernuchin and Barry Schkolnick) doesn’t really know how to do the story. The script shoehorns in conspiracy when it’d have been more affecting and effective without it. The regular cast just gets to be angry about Dobkin hoodwinking them—or is he—and all of a sudden you’ve got a roomful of righteous rage and not just the seething righteous rage of Caruso. Caruso’s righteous fury a lot more effective when the bad guys aren’t potentially actual Nazis. It’s over kill, lighting a burner with a flamethrower; though it does give Caruso endless one-liner deliveries to try out, just not a lot of acting.

It’s well-acted enough, just really thinly written—the episode disappoints in an all new way; even towards the end of the season, “Michael Hayes” can always find a new fail vector.

Also, one final complaint—no Rebecca Rigg (but Danner, who’s been sitting out Rigg episodes). Not sure why they can’t be on the same episodes anymore, possibly because all the characters are purely functional at this point.

Michael Hayes (1997) s01e17 – Lawyers, Guns and Money

I desperately wanted Joe Spano’s guest spot to be the worst part of the episode. Even as Spano continued to try to chew the scenery, his mouth open, half-chewed chunks falling out all over the place, if Spano were the worst thing… it’d be tolerable at least.

Sadly, no, they go full “plans within plans” conspiracy nonsense. I had been hoping not having new co-showrunner Michael S. Chernuchin’s name on the writing credits (it’s Fred Golan solo) would somehow keep it at bay. Or, actually, they’d just let the silly storyline—David Caruso versus the shadow government—drop. I mean, they let David Cubitt getting knifed to death in the street a few episodes ago drop; instead he apparently magically survived and is off in witness protection (the forecasted conclusion of the story arc before the shock stabbing). It gives Caruso something to do with infrequent regulars Mary B. Ward and Jimmy Galeota. Galeota’s been cutting Cubitt out of family photos, which is incredible when you think it’s because Cubitt died. Only “Michael Hayes” isn’t for people who watched the whole show, just some of the show.

If you watched the whole show, for instance, you might wonder whatever became of Hillary Danner. Rebecca Rigg gets a single scene here—Danner must’ve been busy trying to line up a pilot for the next season. Peter Outerbridge is still around, providing vaguely suspicious blue blood opposite righteous Caruso. Though Caruso’s not in the episode anywhere near as much as Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who takes it personally when an Eastern European diplomatic attache (Levani) starts selling guns to thirteen year-old Black kids. Santiago-Hudson’s got to flip Levani’s contacts, first Cress Williams (in a lousy part but with a bunch of solid energy) and then Tangi Miller. Miller’s Levani’s kept girlfriend, who knows more about drug running than she thinks.

Miller’s pretty good considering her part makes absolutely no sense the further the episode goes on. There’s not really any legalese in Golan’s script, just one liners from Caruso (unknowingly prepping that “CSI: Miami” audition no doubt), and vague conspiracy crap. There’s an oil pipeline, there’s an election, blah, blah, blah. Two fits of performative physical rage from Caruso, which makes you really hope secretary Jodi Long doesn’t have to clean up after him.

I was really hoping the show didn’t keep offering limbs to the sharks, but it’s apparently just going to be lathering itself in chum from now on.

Michael Hayes (1997) s01e16 – Under Color of Law

“Michael Hayes 4.0” continues with zero emphasis on David Caruso’s character, other than his potential as a righteous savior. And writers Ray Hartung and John Romano (it may be Romano’s best episode or maybe second best, but it’s aces compared to his usual) find a great place for him to save—upstate New York cop Brian Wimmer pulls over a young woman, rapes and murders her, gets away with it because he’s a fucking cop. Only the prosecuting attorney (an in-it-too-little Jenny O’Hara) knows it’s just the kind of wrong Caruso will want to right, even if the Attorney General of the United States is behind rapist, murderer cops.

Caruso hangs around the office most of the time, bickering with Peter Outerbridge (who wants to suck up to the Attorney General because white man) and getting updates on the case from Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Rebecca Rigg, who do all the legwork for the first half of the episode, until it’s time for Caruso to menace the truth out of the lying witnesses for Wimmer.

The biggest change—other than brief backstory about Caruso turning in a father figure when he was a teen for hurting people (is it supposed to scream Catholic priest?)—is the Attorney General no longer being an offscreen, implied Janet Reno, and rather Holland Taylor as a Mrs. Big type villain who just wants the system to prevail. Taylor’s not great playing an advocate of white supremacy, but kind of kudos to a show acknowledging it in 1998?

There’s some good acting in the guest stars: David Dukes as the victim’s father, Cynthia Ettinger as one of the witnesses, Phill Lewis as the Black cop who stands by racist Wimmer because small towns right. Sadly, Kyle Howard’s terrible as Ettinger’s teenage son. Wimmer’s great. Not sure it’s a compliment.

There are way too many poorly realized flashbacks—Lou Antonio’s direction is fine but bad flashbacks are one of the few things “Hayes” has kept going since jump; they make sense given star witness Howard certainly wouldn’t have been able to appropriately convey in exposition dumps, but they’re still poorly realized. “Hayes” flashbacks are black and white shaky cam.

It’s definitely better than I was expecting from new show runners Michael Pressman and Michael S. Chernuchin, even if it’s exploitative as hell and fairly thin. Bringing Taylor in has the whiff of defeat and Outerbridge being outright “raped murder victims deserve it,” which sets him up as a sub-villain now….

“Hayes”’s finite future is no doubt going to be bumpy.

Michael Hayes (1997) s01e15 – Imagine: Part 2

Despite some better than necessary acting from the guest stars and nicely competent direction from Mel Damski (though Damski can’t make the silly black and white flashbacks to last episode work and every time they’re jarring and terrible and there are a lot of times), it’s a reductive conclusion to the big conspiracy two-parter.

Given the timing, had the Enemy of the State trailer come out yet? Were CBS and new show runners Michael S. Chernuchin (who also gets sole writer credit here) and Michael Pressman just trying to get into the zeitgeist? Because even though the episode convinces most of the regular cast the world is being run by a combination of the mob and Wall Street, the conclusion punts on it. I suppose “The X-Files” was running at the time too, right? Is “Michael Hayes 4.0” going to be David Caruso versus aliens? Fingers crossed.

The episode opens with Jimmy Galeota and Mary B. Ward coming back to the show for the first time in a couple episodes. Everyone’s gotten over their grieving apparently and the dead brother, dead husband, dead father elephant in the room never gets a nod or even addressed. Chernuchin very intentionally doesn’t give Caruso much acting to do—and Damski directs for the guest stars—so it’s impossible to read any character development into the performances. There’s just a new normal and they’re trying again. Maybe this time they’ll figure it out.

Everyone’s working the conspiracy angle, which brings in Alex Rocco as a guest star (there’s also a Godfather 2 reference no one acknowledges, making it worse); Chris Mulkey’s back for a scene and he’s still bad. But Kevin Conway—who only gets a couple—is still fun. Lisa Banes and Gail Strickland are the good guest stars.

Larry Miller shows up in an overly suspicious conspiratorial part but, I mean, he’s still good. It’s Larry Miller.

“Michael Hayes” never really got a good break. The show’s first pass was already trying to correct, it got rushed through what seems to have been the most earnest stretch, and now we’re in the desperate for attention phase.

There’s a solid chunk of the season for them to try to correct or just to continue to fail, but retracting the scope of the conspiracy angle really feels like they tried sacrificing a limb to the shark in the first tank to swim on to the second.

It’s very hard to be upbeat about the show’s potential at this point.

Out of Sight (1998, Steven Soderbergh)

Right up until the third act, Out of Sight has a series of edifying flashbacks, which reveal important facts in the ground situation; almost enough to set the start of the present action back a few years. The film starts in flashback, which isn’t immediately clear, and then the series of consecutive flashbacks builds to inform the opening flashback. The film opens with George Clooney getting arrested for a bank robbery, the film proper starts two years later when Clooney’s planning a prison escape.

Or does it, because it’ll soon turn out there’s something from two years before the start of movie with the arrest and it’s really important.

We—the audience—get to know Clooney more through the flashbacks than the present action. In the present action, outside having a strained friendship with ex-wife Catherine Keener (in a fun credited cameo, the film’s got a bunch of both), we don’t learn anything about Clooney except he really, really likes Jennifer Lopez. Lopez is the U.S. Marshal who happens across Clooney’s prison break and he takes her hostage, only for her to outsmart one of his partners, played by Steve Zahn, and escape.

So the movie is Clooney and his partner, Ving Rhames, trying to pull off one last job while Lopez is after Clooney because of professional pride and a bewildered enthusiasm, while Clooney is trying to flirt with Lopez. At no point does Out of Sight not embrace the fantastical nature of their attraction; Clooney’s a weary career criminal, Lopez is a gun enthusiast who likes beating the shit of out bad guys when they deserve it, and she can’t figure out if Clooney deserves it. Those deliberations lead to some inevitabilities, some more tragic than others. All of them wonderful. Clooney and Lopez’s chemistry, under Soderbergh’s lens, Anne V. Coates’s cuts, Elliot Davis’s photography, David Holmes’s music, Scott Frank’s script… is singular. Lopez is great in Out of Sight, while Clooney’s just very, very good. But Lopez is just as singular as their chemistry. And it’s her movie… right up until the third act turns out to be a poorly engineered addition on the actual plot.

If Out of Sight is about Lopez’s Three Days of the Condor with Clooney, it’s pretty great. There’s not enough of a finale scene between the two of them; it’s like Soderbergh and Frank split it up, but what the film’s already established is Lopez and Clooney need to spend more time together, not have more scenes together with a lot less time. It’s a strange bummer because it’s this very obvious rising action and they screw it up. But it’s pretty great. And it’s Lopez’s movie. Obviously.

But if it’s about Clooney’s last big score, which conveniently involves the exact same cast of characters as appear in the flashback so there can be all sorts of neat reveals as the runtime progresses… Out of Sight is a fail. It’s a high fail. But it’s a fail. There’s just not enough of a story to it. Soderbergh’s direction is always great, but Frank’s writing isn’t as invested in the homage to seventies crime thrillers thing Soderbergh is doing. It’s underprepared. Beautifully shot, with some great dialogue, but this aspect of the film feels artificially constrained. Because the actual protagonist in the crime arc ends up being Zahn’s in-over-his-head stoner. Zahn’s fine. He’s not great. He needs to be great for it to work. So even if it weren’t a problem character in the narrative, it’d also be a problem performance. But a fine one. There aren’t any bad performances in Out of Sight, just great ones, good ones, middling ones, and concerning ones (i.e. was Isiah Washington’s terrifying sociopath just his real personality). Soderbergh gets really good performances out of the cameos too (with the exception of Michael Keaton, pointlessly crossing over from another Elmore Leonard adaptation, Jackie Brown). There aren’t a lot of comic moments in the film and Soderbergh clamps down hard on all of them. Keaton’s scene has Dennis Farina elaborately messing with his head in pseudo-polite conversation. Farina’s sadly the least of the good performances. There’s also no meat to the part.

Luis Guzmán gets a good small part in the first act. He’s good. Rhames is good, Don Cheadle’s real good, Albert Brooks is good. Really nice performances from Viola Davis and Nancy Allen, like Soderbergh goes out of his way to showcase their acting. It’s very cool.

Though no one’s real super cool. Out of Sight’s careful with its potential crime glorification. Clooney’s a tragic figure, he just also happens to be George Clooney. Lopez finds herself in his attempt at a fantasy world, one where he lets himself get distracted by their chemistry, then reality—Cheadle and Washington are vicious killers—crashes in. Only not because Lopez isn’t part of the movie in the third act.

It’s also never close. Like. Sight runs a nimble two hours and there’s never a moment you think it’s actually going to work out as well as it should. The third act is a disaster if anyone but Soderbergh and crew are pulling it off. They leverage Lopez and Clooney’s chemistry to get across the finish line; it’s craven.

It’s also real good. It’s a usually faultlessly executed motion picture and Lopez is phenomenal.