Chris Haston/Paramount+
There’s a joke in the fourth episode of Paramount+’s revival of Frasier that isn’t the worst to be found in this new version of Kelsey Grammer’s famous psychiatrist Frasier Crane, because unfortunately there are a lot of bad ones to choose from can. But it embodies the new show’s biggest problem.
Frasier has spent an evening of bar trivia with his new Harvard colleagues Alan (Nicholas Lyndhurst) and Olivia (Toks Olagundoye), competing against a fire team led by Frasier’s son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott). At one point, Frasier is confused as to why everyone mispronounces “Celtics” when talking about Boston’s popular NBA franchise. It’s a stupid punch line – but there are plenty of those here too. Worse, it ignores the fact that after being introduced in the third season of Cheers, Frasier Crane spent a decade of his life hanging around a Boston sports bar. Celtics legend Kevin McHale once bartended there so he could play on the Cheers basketball team against Gary’s Olde Towne Tavern! In a game Frasier took part in! Woody Boyd always complained about how much he hated Larry Bird because their respective Indiana cities were rivals! For years, Frasier’s best friend in the world was former Boston Red Sox pitcher Sam Malone. So he understands why Bostonians view the Sawx as a religion, but the good doctor is completely amazed that one of Freddy’s most prized possessions is a Lucite suitcase full of Fenway Park dirt!
This might seem like I’m fixating too much on a few gags. Except these jokes are representative of the way this new Frasier struggles to deal with the detailed and familiar story of a man who has previously appeared in 20 seasons of television. It’s a mess that doesn’t exist because Grammer and new executive producers Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli have something interesting to say about what Frasier will look like in 2023. It exists because the title is a well-known IP and will be available on the same streaming service that includes both Cheers and the original Frasier run.
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When we Dr. Last we saw Crane, he was moving from his hometown of Seattle to Chicago to follow his new girlfriend Charlotte. We’re told the relationship didn’t last, but Frasier found a new level of fame in the Windy City, becoming the longtime daytime talk show host on Dr. Phil style. However, he has now become deeply estranged from Freddy. The once nerdy boy has become a blue-collar first responder just like Grandpa Martin and no longer has anything in common with his snobbish, effeminate father. During a stopover in Boston on the way to Europe, Olivia offers Frasier a teaching position at his alma mater, which he accepts in order to reconcile with Freddy.
It’s a clear attempt to flip the dynamic of the original Frasier premise, with Freddy as a son who can’t identify with his old man. But it doesn’t work for several reasons. The first is that Jack Cutmore-Scott is incredibly dull in the role and looks nothing like the character we last saw 20 years ago. Played at the time by Trevor Einhorn – who still works as an actor (Mad Men, The Magicians) and is far more knowledgeable about comedy than Cutmore-Scott – young Frederick Crane was an anxious nerd with a lot of allergies. It’s not that he couldn’t eventually grow into that person, but the new episodes never acknowledge what Freddy once was, how big the transformation is, or what aspects of his old self he still retains, even when he wants to not that anyone finds out about it.
There is also a story in one episode where Freddy admits that he told the other firefighters that his father was dead. In theory, this seems to be a callback to the Frasier episode where Sam visited Seattle and discovered that Frasier had told everyone at Cheers that Martin was long dead. It’s an obvious way to connect father and son and the past show to the present, but it doesn’t come to fruition. To use a basketball metaphor that Frasier should understand but this incarnation of him doesn’t: It’s a simple thing that the new series doesn’t even think to attempt.
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There are a lot of them. With David Hyde Pierce absent
, the revival attempts to fill the Niles-shaped void with both Alan and David, Niles and Daphne’s socially awkward son who studies in Frasier’s class. (As David, Anders Keith borrows heavily from Pierce’s impression, with inconsistent results that can make him either the most engaging part of an episode or the most annoying.) Alan is portrayed as Frasier’s oldest and dearest friend, the Frasier in “Cheers.” was such a lonely man that he spent all his time with Sam and a lot of other people he could barely relate to. Where was Alan during those miserable years? Incidentally, here Frasier talks about his Cheers days as a pretty embarrassing episode, but when Sam, Woody, Carla, Norm and Cliff guested on Frasier in various episodes, it was clear that he still had deep affection for them all . (Well, maybe not Cliff.) Why didn’t Frasier hang out with Alan in the ’80s, when the gang at Cheers seemed to be the only people who wanted him? And why doesn’t he even mention the idea of having Sam on this show? (Even if Ted Danson didn’t want to reprise the role, there could be a hint that Sam is retiring, leaving Frasier with one less connection to his adopted homeland.)
This applies to the entire original supporting cast. John Mahoney died in 2018 and, like Pierce, Jane Leeves did not return. Peri Gilpin will guest star in one episode as Roz, but she does not appear in any of the five episodes sent to critics.
Jack Cutmore-Scott and Kelsey Grammer in Frasier. Paramount+
The whole endeavor feels like a very superficial reading of what makes the character tick and what made the ’90s version of Frasier work. There are a lot of crazy misunderstandings, especially surrounding Eve (Jess Salgueiro), the woman who lived with Freddy at the start of the series. And sir, there are a lot of puns. As Frasier considers furniture options for his new apartment, he says, “It’s the right choice for a sofa.” At one point, Olivia complains about her sister being named principal at Yale and loudly repeats the name of Harvard’s Ivy League several times. League rival, prompting Frasier to retort, “Don’t let me be Yale!”
The original series had a lot of groaners and a lot of storylines that wouldn’t exist if someone just asked one extra question in a given conversation. But it worked because Grammer was flanked by an all-time great ensemble, because the relationships felt real and detailed, and because there was a Hall of Fame writing team (including future Modern Family creators Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd), The jokes, however cheesy, were the best possible versions of themselves. The revival is based almost entirely on the inherent affection we have for the title character and for Grammer’s performance in the role.
There are occasions that remind one of Grammer’s genius, such as a secretly tormented Frasier struggling to decide whether to remain loyal to Alan or join an elite club in Boston. There just isn’t enough of it to compensate for everything else, especially when the series takes such a picky approach to all the things we know about Frasier.
“The thing about me,” Frasier tells Alan in one episode, “I’ve always wanted to fit in somewhere, you know?” Even when I was back in Boston, I was a regular at a bar, and yet…”
“Nobody knew your name?” Alan suggests.
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“Well, not quite,” says Frasier. It’s more of a meta-joke than intended, as this Frasier doesn’t feel quite like the one we knew so well from his previous two series. The first two Frasier episodes are now streaming on Paramount+, with additional episodes released weekly. I saw the first five.