Paramount Plus: Fraiser sequel picked up to series

[dragonflies]

yeah according to TV GUIDE he is

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[DramatistDreamer]

Okaaay, so it is what I thought! Thanks for the confirmation @dragonflies. And naming the bar Mahoney’s is a nice touch.

Wouldn’t it be something if Niles and Daphne had a bunch of kids? I remember in the episode where Niles had to have bypass surgery, there was a flashforward to Daphne having a baby girl and Niles was there with their daughter introducing her to her baby sister. Especially since Daphne grew up in a family of siblings that she once described as “hideously large”but she loved and sometimes missed having a lot of family around in Seattle, it would have made perfect sense for them to have had four or five kids. Of course, Niles wouldn’t deny Daphne anything. I am still hoping that if the series gets a second season, that Niles will eventually show up, preferably reigniting that sibling rivalry with Frazier, after congratulating Frazier on teaching at Harvard while not-so subtly taking about his recent teaching assignment at Cambridge.

[DramatistDreamer]

Paramount+ has uploaded some episodes of classic Frasier on their YouTube channel.

[dragonflies]

The new Frasier is pretty good!

[Soapsuds]

Oh it's out already? I'll have to watch it.

[dragonflies]

Yes it was released today, first two episodes

[Soapsuds]

What's with the washed out ghostly screen? The picture looks awful. I've switched from HD to 4K and the picture is still dreadful.

[Soapsuds]

For those that don't have paramount+...CBS will be airing the first and second episode back to back tonight starting at 8:15p.m. central time right after Big Brother.

[DramatistDreamer]

Paramount+ posted the series premiere episode on their YouTube channel, so I did get the chance to see the series premiere. Some of the jokes fell flat for me but when the episode really leaned into the dramatic dialogue (e.g. Freddie and Frasier talking about his absence from his grandfather Martin’s funeral) it demonstrated how much heart and potential this series truly has.
Also, the series is well cast, all of the characters seem interesting, and I am intrigued enough to want to see more.

And there were some genuine moments of humor but those moments were scanty. Hopefully it is a result of that awkward pilot dynamic where there is often a laying out of exposition and the show will hit its stride soon.

[BetterForgotten]

Something about it just feels flat and deeply generic sitcom (which I don’t think you could ever accuse the original iteration of being) so far. 

Let’s be honest, it was the supporting cast that really enabled the original series to soar and take flight. While there are some decent actors in this iteration, the characters themselves feel stale so far and don’t have a very compelling dynamic with Frasier.

Also, sorry, I just can’t buy this everyday man interpretation of Lilith and Frasier’s son. Feels very forced/contrived to make him follow in Martin’s footsteps. 

[Khan]

Agree.  When Frederick was a child, he came off more like his parents than he did his grandfather.  I realize people can change as they grow older, but not to that extent, lol.

[DramatistDreamer]

Unless Freddy has decided to rebel to purposely grate his parents. I could be coaxed into believing that it was possible if 1.) the characterization were not so heavy-handed and 2.) if there were some revelation that explained why Freddy is more like Martin than either of his parents, other than that brief period where he was a Goth kid.

To me though, Freddy’s characterization is the least of the show’s problems because it’s easy to solve, through backstory or retcon—Frasier itself indulged in artful re-writing with the characterization of Frasier’s parents from how they were portrayed on Cheers, his mother especially. It’s really reductive that this series decided to retread the dead dad trope that was created in Cheers when Frasier claimed that his father Martin was dead, only to have to explain to Woody when he visited Frasier in the Frasier series.

The bigger problem is that the show is trying to be a retread of the original Frasier series, instead of trying to do something new. IMO, the show should have shifted to a dramedy instead of the standard sitcom with canned laughter. A lot of people complained about Bel Air being so different from the original series The Fresh Prince of Bel Air but it worked and it worked well. I am not saying to change Frasier to a drama (although it worked for Ed Asher and Lou Grant) but a dramedy would have at least given the show, writers, actors the latitude to not be compared to the original Frasier series. And the cheese factor of canned laughter and forced punchlines wouldn’t be so apparently embedded into the show.

Also a personal writer’s peeve, they don’t need to lay out so much exposition in the first three episodes. They could have actually waited until later to reveal that Frasier was on television. There could have been a comical way to reveal that he had made the leap from radio psychiatrist to “dancing bear”, as Niles would have said.

Edited October 27, 2023 by DramatistDreamer

[DramatistDreamer]

Maybe comical isn’t the right word, satisfying is more like it.

[I Am A Swede]

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  When I read that I actually heard David Hyde Pierce's voice in my head.

[DramatistDreamer]

 The arch tone of Pierce’s delivery is pretty memorable. It stayed with me.
 

You know what’s truly ironic? Just after I wrote my post, episode 3 of the new Frasier series, Frasier uses that same moniker to describe himself when he mentions his job as television psychiatrist when he hosted his own show in Chicago before relocating to Boston. It wasn’t as funny as when Niles said it, in fact, if they hadn’t mentioned it several times in the episode, I might have missed it.