Frasier's Dog is Dead
Not that I care, but it made me think about this highly overrated show.
Frasier was always given respect like it was an Oscar Wilde play. Just because they threw in a few references to opera or Greek Mythology, people acted as if the comedy on this show was sophisticated. The erudite Frasier Crane meant "intelligent" comedy (and, in turn, the audience felt "intelligent" because they watched). The show won 37 Emmys.
It was all a sham.
You will certainly remember a show called Three's Company. In every episode of this show, some version of the following happened:
Janet got up early, and went into the kitchen to make an omlette. She went to the refrigerator to get the eggs. She opened up the fridge, but there were no eggs. She would then say out loud: "Oh my, no eggs! I am completely out of eggs! What will I do?" As this was happening, Jack was just ready to enter the swinging door to the kitchen, but Janet's loud voice made him stop. He heard what she said, but instead of entering the kitchen and addressing the matter at hand, he turned around and ran into Chrissy's/Cindy's/Terri's bedroom. He annouced to whatever blonde that was on the show at the time: "I just heard Janet say she's infertile! She can never have children! And she doesn't know I know!" Then everyone would jump around on pins and needles for the next 20 minutes, and do a lot of over-the-top stuff to avoid revealing the "secret", until finally the secret was revealed, everyone realized it was all a big "misunderstanding" and they all hugged.
Three's Company is not considered "sophisticated" for many reasons, but mainly for this reliance on contrivance to set the show in motion.
Yet no one ever seemed to notice that sophisticated Frasier relied on the same contrivance. The wellspring for comedy on that show was that someone misunderstood someone else, and it all went from there. I remember one terrible episode where something like 4 of the characters went away to a mountain chalet, and they all somehow got the idea that one person in the group wanted to screw a different person in the group, so they spent the episode misunderstanding every comment made. The chalet managed to have 4 bedroom doors that could fit into one shot, so we were "treated" to characters running in and out of doors like this was some 1930's picture.
Three's Company uses this device, and it gets ridiculed. Frasier uses the device, throws in a joke about "The Ring Cycle", so Niles can compare his latest visit with Mavis to Gotterdammerung, and the audience (and critics) think Frasier is genius.
Frasier was always given respect like it was an Oscar Wilde play. Just because they threw in a few references to opera or Greek Mythology, people acted as if the comedy on this show was sophisticated. The erudite Frasier Crane meant "intelligent" comedy (and, in turn, the audience felt "intelligent" because they watched). The show won 37 Emmys.
It was all a sham.
You will certainly remember a show called Three's Company. In every episode of this show, some version of the following happened:
Janet got up early, and went into the kitchen to make an omlette. She went to the refrigerator to get the eggs. She opened up the fridge, but there were no eggs. She would then say out loud: "Oh my, no eggs! I am completely out of eggs! What will I do?" As this was happening, Jack was just ready to enter the swinging door to the kitchen, but Janet's loud voice made him stop. He heard what she said, but instead of entering the kitchen and addressing the matter at hand, he turned around and ran into Chrissy's/Cindy's/Terri's bedroom. He annouced to whatever blonde that was on the show at the time: "I just heard Janet say she's infertile! She can never have children! And she doesn't know I know!" Then everyone would jump around on pins and needles for the next 20 minutes, and do a lot of over-the-top stuff to avoid revealing the "secret", until finally the secret was revealed, everyone realized it was all a big "misunderstanding" and they all hugged.
Three's Company is not considered "sophisticated" for many reasons, but mainly for this reliance on contrivance to set the show in motion.
Yet no one ever seemed to notice that sophisticated Frasier relied on the same contrivance. The wellspring for comedy on that show was that someone misunderstood someone else, and it all went from there. I remember one terrible episode where something like 4 of the characters went away to a mountain chalet, and they all somehow got the idea that one person in the group wanted to screw a different person in the group, so they spent the episode misunderstanding every comment made. The chalet managed to have 4 bedroom doors that could fit into one shot, so we were "treated" to characters running in and out of doors like this was some 1930's picture.
Three's Company uses this device, and it gets ridiculed. Frasier uses the device, throws in a joke about "The Ring Cycle", so Niles can compare his latest visit with Mavis to Gotterdammerung, and the audience (and critics) think Frasier is genius.
posted by Beukey @ 4:30 AM
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