Frasier (1993) s07e09 – The Apparent Trap

The Apparent Trap is another episode “Frasier” can only do because it’s been running seven seasons, and there’s lots of back story. Plus, guest star kid Trevor Einhorn has aged enough he can more fully participate in the episode. He’s not quite full supporting, but he’s closer than he’s ever been before. It’s a Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth) episode and a Thanksgiving episode (the second Neuwirth Thanksgiving episode), so there are the traditional John Mahoney can’t stand Neuwirth, and she weirds Jane Leeves out material.

But it’s the first Neuwirth appearance she and David Hyde Pierce made the beasts with two backs last season, which means there is all sorts of new material for them to work through. And Kelsey Grammer, reacting to all of it. So Apparent has a lot going on before the A-plot finally reveals itself—Einhorn’s trying to get his parents back together. The title, obviously, lends itself to that story, though it also could’ve involved a previously unknown twin.

Anyway.

It’s a funny episode. The main plot’s not spectacular, but they’re able to get a lot of laughs from it. While Einhorn machinates, Neuwirth and Grammer are co-authoring an article (for The New York Times Magazine!) about single parenting when you’re rich, white, and smart. While the beginning of the episode focuses on Neuwirth as the regular cast’s cause for consternation, the second half almost plays like a backdoor pilot for a “Lilith” show. We get to see her as single parent, dealing with Einhorn’s day-to-day problems while (almost always offscreen weekends) weekend dad Grammer mainly just supports her. Despite Einhorn visiting Grammer (Neuwirth’s an unexpected guest), Grammer doesn’t spend much time with him.

Instead, Einhorn’s got a good video game subplot with Hyde Pierce, then the standard boyishly lusting after Leeves (in knowing competition with Hyde Pierce).

But the episode’s mostly Neuwirth’s. She gets a couple great showcases, which just make the opening animosity stuff with Mahoney a little tired after seven seasons.

Grammer also directs the episode, showcasing how far he’s come; when he started, Grammer didn’t appear in the episodes he directed, and now he’s second lead. Though he’s the one giving Neuwirth the showcase. He’s good about sharing the show’s spotlight, especially when directing, even when he’s around.

Leeves has only got a little bit—a funny monologue about unseen fiancé Donnie’s Thanksgiving is the highlight—while Peri Gilpin is only in the first scene, setting up Grammer’s plans, so there are some balance issues. Like Mahoney being missing for the beginning of Thanksgiving dinner like they don’t have enough chairs.

The script credit goes to Dan O’Shannon, his first “Frasier” writing credit. The script does a good job of a traditional, annual, very special episode (Neuwirth or Einhorn guesting, a holiday). It’s an easy episode, but when it’s strong, it’s bending steel bars. Neuwirth’s superb.

Frasier (1993) s06e11 – Good Samaritan

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 for putting this reprehensible trash into the world.

I usually don’t—maybe I never have—made any of the credited writers possessive of the episode because there are writers rooms and writer’s guilds, and there’s a whole thing to how sitcoms are written and so on. But Gregory and Huyck were executive story editors on the show, so if they hadn’t wanted their names on this episode, they could’ve done something about it.

The transphobia doesn’t come into the episode until about halfway through. There’s nothing significant in the first half. Still, there are the occasional promises—Kelsey Grammer is trying to be a Good Samaritan, and everyone’s taking advantage or shitting on him for it. There’s a moderately amusing radio station sequence where he has both Ron Howard and William H. Macy as callers; in the end, it just means Howard and Macy guested on this transphobic trash episode.

Also, the radio station sequence is misogynist as Grammer and the episode crap on single mom Peri Gilpin trying to save herself some time as she works at one a.m. because Grammer’s a sucker.

The reason the episode’s got promise is Trevor Einhorn is in town as Grammer’s son. After missing the Christmas episode, Einhorn’s just here to take the stakes up a notch as fair as Grammer’s eventual public disgrace. Einhorn’s function in the episode isn’t actually bad and could have at least bandaged the hemorrhaging garbage, but instead, it turns out the episode’s got one last kick of transphobia left in it, right up until the end. With, of course, a healthy sprinkling of misogyny and classism.

Grammer’s most involved in the utter trash section, which has him picking up a damsel in distress to find out she’s a sex worker (and rude to him about the misunderstanding because he thought she might want a lift at 1:30 a.m. in pouring rain), only for the further gotcha to be she’s a trans woman. As Grammer navigates the misunderstanding—he doesn’t have any panic, which almost humanizes him against the other characters’ enthusiastic transphobia—mostly David Hyde Pierce, with John Mahoney getting instead reminiscing about taking out urges on South Korean girls during the war–only to chuck Grammer’s very slim less reprehensible edge to have him get in on it too through peer pressure.

Jane Leeves’s participation is the least odious—and maybe not at all; any motion is going to fling shit—but the episode rolls its eyes at her, so it’s not like a plus.

I paid attention to the writing after seeing their names. I wondered if Peter Huyck is related to American Graffiti co-writer Willard Huyck; apparently not, thank goodness. But there’s not some subtle shift to the shit, they smack you on the cheek with the misogyny, then the transphobia’s a punch in the nose. Just when the swelling is going down—and Einhorn is confronting Grammer about whether or not one should strive for an ideal—there’s the final jab. Turns out it was all a daydream, and Grammer’s just terrified of someone thinking he might be nice to a trans woman. Then it turns out… the woman in the rain? Not a sex worker, not a trans woman. Just some fellow rich lady who lives in his building.

Gross.

Good Samaritan is mortifying and loathsome stuff and shows popular entertainment wasn’t problematic so much as often repugnant in the late 1990s.

Frasier (1993) s04e16 – The Unnatural

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

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

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

You know, Grammer would make a good Ballmer.

Anyway.

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

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

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

Frasier (1993) 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.