{"id":5818,"date":"2023-10-26T20:26:05","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T03:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5818"},"modified":"2023-10-26T20:26:05","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T03:26:05","slug":"new-yorker-the-return-of-frasier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5818","title":{"rendered":"New Yorker: The Return of Frasier"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A new \u201cFrasier\u201d has d\u00e9buted nearly two decades after the conclusion of the original series, and it moves Kelsey Grammer\u2019s eponymous psychotherapist back to Boston, the city where he was introduced, in 1984, as a minor character on \u201cCheers.\u201d By the time that show ended, in 1993, Frasier had become a major character, present in most of its episodes; the \u201cFrasier\u201d spinoff began just four months later, and soon became its own pop-cultural phenomenon. The sophistication exuded by its look, feel, and banter was so unusual for a network sitcom that it was often described as \u201cthe smartest show on television.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrasier,\u201d in its initial iteration, took place in Seattle, Washington, whose cachet had skyrocketed in the nineteen-nineties with the rise of Microsoft, Starbucks, Nirvana, and films such as Cameron Crowe\u2019s \u201cSingles\u201d and Nora Ephron\u2019s \u201cSleepless in Seattle.\u201d Frasier Crane is a divorced, fortysomething, opera- and wine-loving protagonist who has given up his psychiatric practice to host a therapy-themed radio show, and is intent on building a new life in his home town. His efforts are often frustrated by conflicts with his brother, Niles (David Hyde Pierce), a fellow-psychotherapist who behaves even more pompously and fastidiously than Frasier, or with his father, Martin (John Mahoney), a police officer forced into retirement (and cohabitation with Frasier) by a gunshot wound. Together with Daphne (Jane Leeves), at once Martin\u2019s live-in physical therapist and Frasier\u2019s housekeeper, and Roz (Peri Gilpin), the blunt career-woman producer of Frasier\u2019s radio show, these characters constitute the close-knit ensemble at the core of all eleven seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To some extent, \u201cFrasier\u201d has been overshadowed by \u201cSeinfeld<\/a>,\u201d which, like \u201cFrasier,\u201d was also a hit for NBC, but whose comedic ambitions transformed the sitcom as a genre. \u201cFrasier\u201d perfects the format in its own way, as the descendant of theatrical farce, in which misunderstandings, miscommunications, deceptions, incidents of mistaken identity, and moments of perfectly bad timing pile upon one another until the unstable narrative edifice comes crashing down into a state of normalcy. These stories might have Frasier pretending to be Jewish on Christmas Eve in front of the mother of a girlfriend-of-the-week, or Martin pretending to be gay to avoid being set up with the mother of a woman who catches Frasier\u2019s eye at the opera, or Niles trying to host a dinner party for the neighbors in his prestigious new apartment building even after a talking bird perches immovably on his head. The show\u2019s dedication to this classic form makes it comparatively timeless\u2014apart from the occasional one-liner about subjects like Prozac, \u201cGot Milk?,\u201d Windows 95, and Dolly the sheep\u2014as does its fixation on the venerable art of social climbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the whole thing at the New Yorker<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new \u201cFrasier\u201d has d\u00e9buted nearly two decades after the conclusion of the original series, and it moves Kelsey Grammer\u2019s eponymous psychotherapist back to Boston, the city where he was introduced, in 1984, as a minor character on \u201cCheers.\u201d By the time that show ended, in 1993, Frasier had become a major character, present in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5820,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5818\/revisions\/5820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}