Frasier – The Tenth Season

Frasier was another one of those unlikely hits. Frasier started as an intended one-off character on the hugely popular Cheers. Kelsey Grammer made the most out of it, and before long he was one of the regular barflies inhabiting a stool at Sam’s. In Cheers the wit worked because Frasier was so unlike his fellow characters. He was a sophisticated, almost snobbish psychiatrist with a taste for fine art and high class entertainment. Instead of a ballgame, Frasier was more at home at the opera or an art opening. The humor was to be found in his attempts to blend in with his crass companions or even make a run at enriching their lives with his cultured tastes. My favorite Frasier moment will always be his plan to expose the bar patrons to Charles Dickens, but instead of his changing them they eventually had him reinventing the brilliant author in his reading of David And The Coppers In The Field. Soon Cheers had run its course, and everyone was expecting a spin-off. There was too much rich material to be found here to let it just die with the closing of Sam’s bar. While Norm or Cliff were the natural choices, it was Frasier who would move on. While most fans were a little confused by the move, the show would go on for 11 seasons that were arguably far funnier than Cheers ever was.

Frasier is finally divorced from equally snobbish Lilith and moves back to his home town of Seattle. There he moves in with his father, who is more like his buddies at Cheers than anything else. What made Frasier work was that the show was brilliantly cast. Every character fit his role to perfection. John Mahoney was a wonderful choice as Frasier’s everyman father. David Hyde Pierce was also so believable as Frasier’s equally highbrow brother Niles. It seems the boys got their tastes from their dearly departed mother. Jane Leeves played Daphne, Dad’s live-in physical therapist. While the actress and character were both a great fit, the show’s weakest link was the romantic interludes between Niles and Daphne. Frasier took on the role of a radio psychiatrist at a local talk station where yet another collection of characters added balance to the show. Peri Gilpin was Frasier’s faithful assistant, Roz. While her love life also tended to bog down the laughs a little, she was an energetic counter to the sometimes dry wit of the brothers.  Dan Butler was the sports talk member of the staff who went by the on air name of The Bulldog. Finally there was Eddie, the dog who took endless delight in sitting and staring at Frasier, much to his annoyance. The plots were the expected thin situations, always there merely to serve as a framework for the comedy. When the show got too serious it just wasn’t that interesting. There are comedies that have been able to pull off the serious subjects, but Frasier was never one of them.

By season ten the show had pretty much played out its possible scenarios and situations, and it really was time to go. It ran just one season longer and left while still in good stead with its audience. What is a little awkward was the DVD release schedule. While we are just now getting the tenth season, the eleventh and final season was released back in 2004 to coincide with the end of the series. Paramount then went back and continued to release the remaining seasons in order. So now three years after getting the eleventh year, we finally complete the series on DVD with the tenth.

The season began with the long drawn out wedding plans between Niles and Daphne. Talk about a sleep aid. There are a couple of brighter moments in the year. Tales From The Crypt contains a humorous ongoing practical joke feud between Frasier and Bulldog. This was the Halloween episode. Bebe Neuwirth returns in Star Mitzvah as Frasier’s ex from Cheers, Lilith. These Lilith episodes always seemed forced, and this one is no exception; however Frasier’s exposure to the world of Star Trek conventions is priceless as he agrees to get an autograph in exchange for some help with his Hebrew for the ceremony. There is a three part episode arc dealing with Niles having heart surgery that again pushes the envelope into the serious. Still, these shows do have a lot of heart and are perhaps appropriate for a series nearing the end of its run. There are some great moments in The Devil And Dr. Phil. Frasier thinks the sappy Oprah invention cheated him out of $200, and the feud might ruin Phil’s visit in Seattle. Grammer directed the final episode of the season, A New Position For Roz.

 
Video

Each episode of Frasier is presented in its original full frame broadcast format.  The show isn’t as smooth and slick as it should be. Color and detail are impressive, but the discs are packed too tightly, and the result is some bad compression artifact. I think this is a pretty poor presentation for such a recently broadcast series.

Audio

The Dolby Digital 2.0 track is pretty bland. Of course, dialog is what’s important, and the presentation does deliver the goods here. You really notice how flat it is in the show’s Grammer sung blues number that ends each episode. Granted, the broadcast likely didn’t sound any better, but this isn’t broadcast television, it’s DVD. While that doesn’t mean I expect brilliant new 5.1 mixes, I would hope for a little oomph in my sound even in a sit-com.

Special Features

Nothing.

Final Thoughts

I watched Frasier pretty regularly in the beginning and found it quite funny. Somewhere along the road the show got less funny and I sort of lost track of it. While it was indeed refreshing to catch these late series episodes I never watched in broadcast, it was mostly a sad reminder of how a once grand show got bogged down in its own story and ultimately stopped being funny. The final years still might be better than so many of today’s horridly bad comedies. I still mourn for the loss of great comedic moments with a rather nicely assembled cast. Frasier, we’ll miss the glory days. Perhaps “we’ll have a fundraiser for your sense of humor.”