The ‘Frasier’ Season Finale References Kelsey Grammer’s Career Low Point

Christmas has come early to the Frasier-verse. The reboot’s second season finale was a holiday-themed episode, one which found Dr. Crane and company attempting to reunite Frasier’s old friend Alan with his estranged daughter. Naturally, hijinks ensued.

The episode was mostly serviceable, although, as Frasier fans have pointed out, it’s a little weird that the show seems to be teeing up a romance between Frasier’s son Freddy and Alice, the character played by Kelsey Grammer’s real-life daughter Greer Grammer. 

Also, we couldn’t help but notice that the episode’s title seemingly references one of Grammer’s career low points — and keep in mind that this is a career that includes both Down Periscope and Money Plane.

The season finale is named “Father Christmas,” which makes sense, considering that it’s about a troubled dad during the holidays. But it also, perhaps not accidentally, calls to mind the “Father Christmas” film series starring Grammer. In 2021’s Father Christmas Is Back, Grammer plays the estranged patriarch of a dysfunctional family that also includes Elizabeth Hurley and John Cleese (don’t worry there’s definitely a scene in which Grammer and Cleese get into a fistfight). Oh, and their surname is literally “Christmas” because subtlety isn’t this movie’s strong suit.

Yeah, it wasn’t good. At all. Then, just a year later, we somehow got a sequel to this movie barely anybody saw: Christmas in Paradise. In part two, James Christmas (Grammer) takes off for the Caribbean in order to spend the holidays taking stock of his life and hanging out with Billy Ray Cyrus, who sings both “Silent Night” and “Achy Breaky Heart” (I wish I were joking about that part). But then his daughters track him down, thereby ensuring that every actor involved in the production got a free tropical vacation.  

Incidentally, that wasn’t the only bad Christmas movie that Grammer made that year alone. Also in 2022, Grammer starred with his daughter Greer in the Lifetime movie The 12 Days of Christmas Eve, which was a Christmasy rip-off of Groundhog Day, but with more seasons of Grammer repeatedly suffering violent deaths. 

Also, in the world of this movie, Santa Claus is in charge of the afterlife? 

Amazingly, Father Christmas Is Back might not even be the worst movie in which Grammer dresses up as Santa Claus, lest we forget Mr. St. Nick, the Hallmark release in which Grammer played Kris Kringle’s useless son. 

Come to think of it, the Frasier Christmas episodes may be the only yuletide content starring Grammer that isn’t complete and utter dogshit. 

So it could be that the Frasier writers titled the recent episode “Father Christmas” as a nod to his past (godawful) work. But then again, presumably nobody working at the show wants to remind the world of any Kelsey Grammer project where he isn’t playing Frasier Crane or Sideshow Bob.