Category: 1999
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“Frasier” has had some excellent season finales, but Shutout in Seattle might be the best so far. Definitely when taking into account it’s an hour-long and because it addresses previous plot lines. And because it has an elaborate set-piece conclusion, which director Pamela Fryman sublimely realizes. The episode opens with David Hyde Pierce and Peri…
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I was zoning and missed both the writing and directing credits, which turned out to be good. The first distinctive joke in the episode is John Mahoney talking about spying on a woman’s cleavage through security cameras. Rape culture Martin Crane continues. And the opening scene was more amusing than jokey. Peri Gilpin’s getting David…
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Credited writers Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck wrote the shittiest episode of “Frasier” ever (thus far) earlier this season, and so I was dreading this one. Especially since the logline seems primed for a bad episode—Kelsey Grammer hooks up with not one but two women (consecutively, not concurrently) and has to pick the one he…
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There’s a lot of hilarious stuff in this episode and some great performances from the regular cast, especially the guests, but wow, it does not age well. Christine Baranski guest stars as a Dr. Laura analog who calls women sinners and sluts, with a set of conservative values people like John Mahoney have been missing.…
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What I can’t figure out with episode director David Lee, whose name I’ve come to dread this season, is the obviously uneven enthusiasm. This episode’s got a couple literal set pieces—there’s an auction scene and a restaurant scene (in addition to the apartment)—and there’s a lot of detail during those sequences but the blandest three-camera…
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Sometimes marathoning “hurts” a traditional broadcast show. They were meant to be watched weeks or months apart, with commercial breaks distracting and obfuscating tropes. They’re not meant to be strung together. But even with those caveats, it’s kind of weird “Frasier” did an episode about a dinner party right after doing an episode called The…
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Turns out I’ve been bullish episodes where Jeffrey Richman gets the script credit. I thought his name was on my unenumerated list of problematic “Frasier” writers. And this episode certainly has a bunch of problematic elements. Lots of misogynistic jokes, some fat-shaming, and I think some other ableism. It’s also a “sitcom as continuous” play…
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This episode starts as a Crane boys outing—David Hyde Pierce has just found out he’s gotten a lake house in his divorce and is taking brother Kelsey Grammer and dad John Mahoney up for the weekend—and ends up being a light screwball comedy of errors. Hyde Pierce has brought Peri Gilpin up in hopes of…
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In terms of "Frasier"'s concept, To Tell the Truth is the most significant episode they've ever done. They've irrevocably changed something about one of the characters. When you watch the show in reruns, there's before and after this episode, six and a half years into the show's run, and resolving a story arc starting in…
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Kelsey Grammer’s garbage politics were well-known when “Frasier” aired, which always made rooting for the show awkward. But Three Valentines, the fifth episode of the series he directed, is so good I thought about how it was too bad he never broke into movies. Though he’d just have made right-wing crap. This episode is a…
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For an obligatory Woody Harrelson finally guest stars on “Frasier” episode, they do all right. There’s a good mix of Harrelson with the regular cast–including some of the regular supporting cast—and there’s a little bit of an unrelated B plot. Station engineer Noel (Patrick Kerr) is trying to woo Peri Gilpin while everyone drops “Star…
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Okay, I’d forgotten whether or not Janis Hirsch was a distinct new writer on the show. Or a distinct new writer to get an episode credit. She’s not. She’s new (Our Parents, Ourselves is her second credited episode), but she’s not distinct, which is kind of better. The episode’s not bad. I mean, it wastes…
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This episode is transphobic garbage and shouldn’t be aired with a content warning, it should be shoved into a hole and only pulled out for academics trying to catalog nineties transphobia as it intersects with classism and general misogyny. Or for writers Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck to figure out how to attempt to atone…
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The Green Mile takes place in a world where racism wasn’t really a big problem in 1930s Mississippi—not even grieving father Nicholas Sadler is going to say something racist to the Black convicted murderer of his daughters, Michael Clarke Duncan—but it also takes place in a world where the Christian God is real so… I…
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This episode has a really strong guest star performance from Marjorie Monaghan. She’s an old model friend of Terry Farrell’s, in town for a few days, wants to hang out. Except Farrell’s trying to get her greasy spoon’s freezer fixed and she’s got to deal with people in New Jersey, which is what passes for…
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I’ve had some trepidation about “Becker” season two. Season one did not impress as I remember it (eventually) doing—worse, it made me worry the only reason I liked it the first time I watched it was because I was able to go with all the blind jokes and white guy doctor Ted Danson punching down…
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I’ve been dreading the “Becker” season finale. I was initially enthusiastic about this rewatch but the first season’s been a slog. I’m not sure why exactly I was dreading this episode—other than the Regarding Reggie title being a little ominous—but it was the appropriate expectation. If this episode, which is about Ted Danson daydreaming about…
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What’s so incredible about Boondock Saints is how David Della Rocco’s atrocious performance distracts from lots of other terrible things going on in the film. At least when Della Rocco is onscreen. When he’s off… well, then the omnipresent deficiencies proudly scream their presences. Della Rocco gets all of the film’s racist jokes and I…
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Earl Pomerantz did not write any “Becker” episodes previous to this one, which surprised me. His name seemed familiar—he worked on sitcoms for forty years, so no doubt I’ve seen it before—and the way he wrote “Becker” felt, sadly, familiar too. He does the “Becker whines” approach. So the episode is Ted Danson bitching non-stop…
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There’s a disconnect during the opening titles; it says, “Written by David Isaacs and Ken Levine” (or however they do it), but it’s not a particularly good scene. Jonathan Nichols is a patient who stiffs Becker (Ted Danson) on his bills so Danson is mean to him. Beating up on the patient… kind of weird.…
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Marsha Myers wrote this episode and Myers has been one of the only reliable writers this season. So high hopes for it. And strange disappointment because Truth and Consequences does succeed but it doesn’t have much to do with Myers’s script. It succeeds because it’s got Richard Schiff in a sitcom guest spot. He’s Ted…
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The episode plays like writer Eric Cohen really likes “Becker.” Everyone in the cast gets something to do; even if it’s a little subplot, it’s a complete one. The main plot has Becker (Ted Danson) reluctantly caring for a sick stray cat, including some really obvious stuff when he takes it to the vet and…
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No one in The 13th Warrior seems particularly thrilled to be participating in The 13th Warrior. Some people carry it better than others—Omar Sharif’s cameo is the only “good” acting in the film, as he translates and interprets events for lead Antonio Banderas, who can’t speak the common language with the Vikings they’ve come across.…
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Even though I know I don’t remember this episode—the first in the series directed by Ken Levine, whose blog convinced me to give “Becker” another shot back in the day and was seemingly correct since I watched the whole show even though it’s a slog to get to through the opening fumbles—it feels like I…
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Limits & Boundaries refers to Ted Danson’s uninformed parenting philosophies. The episode opens with him yelling at a woman in the diner (Victoria Kelleher), who is sitting reading a book while her baby cries. Now, she’s not doing anything to get the baby to be quiet, which either is a nineties parenting in public practice…
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David Isaacs wrote this episode, which brings some immediate pluses. The jokes are funnier. Sometimes they’re a lot cheaper, but they’re always funny. And Saverio Guerra’s in the episode. Isaacs doesn’t give him much to do except be hilariously annoying, but it’s basically enough. If only they’d cast someone better to play Ted Danson’s ex-wife,…
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This episode of “Becker” has Steven Wright guest starring, so even though it’s not the best writing for Steven Wright, it’s still at least great whenever Wright is on screen. Wright’s a new patient of Ted Danson’s who hears God. God’s name is Larry and Larry tells Steven Wright to repaint his apartment all the…
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Whenever an episode of “Becker” starts, I hold my breath until the writing credit comes up. This one’s from series creator Dave Hackel, who likes doing the Ted Danson is a master doctor and basically right bastard; the episode opens with him ranting about little people. And even though it’s 1998 or whatever, they know…
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Deep Blue Sea is ten years too late. I knew the movie was about genetically modified sharks gone wild but the people are also stranded at the bottom of the ocean in a habitat thing. Deep Blue Sea isn’t just an amped-up Jaws movie with terrible CGI and a lousy cast, it’s a postscript in…
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Either I made the comment you knew “Becker” was troubled when not even a solid sitcom director like Andy Ackerman could make an episode work or I meant to make that comment. This episode has Ackerman back and, this time, he’s able to compensate for some of writer Michael Markowitz’s stumbles. Not the misogynist stuff…
The Stop Button 