The New ‘Frasier’ Has No Time for Anyone But Frasier

The sitcom Frasier, starring Kelsey Grammer in the titular role, was a critical, ratings and awards success during its run from 1993 through 2004. It continued to pick up new fans when it was syndicated, and later when it became a fixture on streaming platforms. When any property becomes an across-the-board hit like this one, there’s going to be talk of reviving it in some form, even if most series regulars have declined to reprise their roles and one of them has died. Thus did a new season of a new Frasier reach Paramount+ subscribers last fall. 

Even positive reviews were notably qualified. Liz Shannon Miller wrote that “it feels like something’s missing” and cited a lack of “purpose”; Laura Bradley complained that Nicholas Lyndhurst’s Alan (supposedly a lifelong friend of Frasier’s despite our never having heard of him before this era of Frasier’s story) is “one-note.” Negative reviews (including mine) were more savage. James Poniewozik called it “purgatorial,” Alan Sepinwall “superficial,” Pat Stacey “a bin fire of bad choices.” 

Since streaming platforms know exactly how much their shows are watched or sampled (not for nothing do we get Netflix press releases bragging about how many minutes of a given title were viewed), I figured the new Frasier would either get renewed the week its premiere dropped, or canceled seconds after its finale. Neither of those things happened: It wasn’t until nearly three months after the first season ended that we found out there would be a second, suggesting that no one inside Paramount felt its success was undeniable (although to be fair, they have other concerns right now). Now that Frasier (2023) has hung on for a second season, premiering its first two episodes on Paramount+ September 19th, it’s more obvious than ever what a Kelsey Grammer vanity project this is, and how much it’s wasting its supporting cast. 

I realize that this judgment may seem unnecessarily mean for a show that, in its beloved original iteration, also centered its protagonist in every respect, including its title — unless you watched it, in which case you know that Frasier was about as true an ensemble piece as a show named after one character can be. Frasier’s various misadventures generally drove the plot, but that would have never have been enough to sustain a show for 11 seasons. The true magic came from the supporting characters’ talent for challenging Frasier on his BS — brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) by matching Frasier’s verbal gymnastics, father Martin (the late John Mahoney) with laconic wit, housekeeper-turned-sister-in-law Daphne (Jane Leeves) by attacking him on class grounds or baffling him with non sequiturs and producer Roz (Peri Gilpin) with withering put-downs.

Since Frasier’s move, in the sequel, back to Boston, he’s been surrounded by new supporting characters who bear some resemblance to the ones they replaced, but who can’t really confront Frasier in the ways we’re accustomed to seeing him strain against. Alan lacks Niles’ status, and Niles’ son David (Anders Keith) is too submissive to treat Frasier with anything but obsequiousness; son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott) retains some of a child’s deference to his father; neighbor Eve (Jess Salgueiro) isn’t going to imperil her rent-free apartment to step to Frasier on anything of consequence; and Harvard psychology department head Olivia (Toks Olagundoye), having aggressively AND improbably recruited Frasier to the faculty for his celebrity, can’t really risk annoying her wealthy and powerful hire so much that he remembers he doesn’t actually need a job. 

This was, of course, never going to be a true continuation of the old show, but this great a power imbalance among the new characters means Frasier just gets to drift through it almost entirely unchecked. An essential element of what has made him a great comic character since his introduction back on Cheers, therefore, is missing here.

In last fall’s premiere, Frasier had two reasons to give up his plans to move to France to write a literary biography and, instead, return to Boston: to start teaching psychology at Harvard, his alma mater; and to try to heal his relationship with Freddy, whose decision to drop out of Harvard more than a decade ago and (also improbably) become a firefighter has been a source of friction between father and son. 

The first season built comedy around both those plot threads: the inexperienced Frasier has a hard time trying to lecture students who know him as a former TV celebrity; Frasier, having forced Freddy to move in with him so they can get to know each other as adults, finds out months later that Freddy hasn’t told his mother Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth) about his new living arrangements. In the second season, even these feeble attempts at character development have fallen away. None of the first five episodes provided to critics depicts Frasier in a classroom or even near a student; we do find out he’s been writing his memoirs, which an independently wealthy former daytime TV star could have been doing this whole time without implicating Harvard at all. 

But no one ever really cared that much about Frasier’s teaching career anyway. The greater shame by far is that Frasier and Freddy’s relationship has somehow grown more distant after they spent a whole TV season as roommates. In the second-season premiere, Frasier finds out for the first time that Freddy decided to drop out of Harvard thanks to Alan’s advice. Though Frasier is initially incensed that Freddy wouldn’t have sought Frasier’s counsel on this momentous decision, he’s decided not to hold it against Alan — until he happens to find Alan’s fortune-telling “Enchanted Snooker Ball,” a whimsical British take on the Magic 8-Ball, and realizes that’s what Alan actually based his advice on. Freddy himself is barely bothered about how reckless Alan was with his whole future, other than his concern that Alan and Frasier might end their friendship over it, but the fact that he’s a supporting character in this pivotal story of his life, far in the background behind Frasier and his fulminations, is typical of this show’s construction problems.

An even more egregious example comes with the fourth episode. “The Dedication” starts with the titular event. It’s been a year since Eve’s fiancé Adam — also Freddy’s friend and fellow firefighter — died in a fire (before the events of the series), and a memorial is being dedicated at the firehouse. The first problem is that Freddy gives a speech instead of, for instance, Eve. The second is that no one is apparently supporting Eve at the dedication for the man she was planning to spend her life with, and whose son she is now raising alone, except Freddy and Frasier. I said in my Season One review that I didn’t know if Eve had a last name, and I still don’t, but now I also don’t know if she has even one parent, sibling, or non-credits-cast friend. Third: Frasier sees Freddy speaking to a woman (Amy Sedaris) after the ceremony and finds out from Freddy’s colleagues that she’s Dr. Stathos, the department’s psychiatrist, who’s been treating Freddy. 

This sends Frasier into a tailspin about Freddy seeking help from someone other than Frasier himself, as though Frasier doesn’t know how unethical it would be for him to treat a family member. He then steals Freddy’s file from Dr. Stathos’s office. In the B plot, Eve and Freddy try to tag-team the last box of Adam’s belongings to decide what to keep, both ultimately unable to toss anything Adam touched, but Frasier’s determination to pump Freddy’s therapist for information about his treatment is very much the A plot. Again, Freddy isn’t even a main character when the subject is his own brain. 

Keith, Olagundoye, and Lyndhurst get even less to do. David had a girlfriend in the first season who’s not so much as mentioned in the second. He’s replaced needing to learn to ride a bike with needing to learn to swim, as though a father as neurotic as Niles wouldn’t have made sure he at least had the skills to avoid drowning as soon as he was old enough to float. Olivia’s biggest moment is going on a very dopey Valentine’s Day date with Moose (Jimmy Dunn) that’s entirely facilitated by Frasier’s intervention, as the episode title “Cyrano, Cyrano” suggests. A pivotal moment involves Frasier feeding lines to Olivia and Moose in turn, but the set is so small and chintzy that only extremely tight framing around the plant Frasier’s hiding behind even approaches selling the illusion that they wouldn’t both know what’s happening. Alan makes several mentions in the first five episodes to an estranged daughter who refuses to see him even though she’s pregnant now. 

One presumes this will somehow pay off in the last half of the season, but who knows — maybe they’ll need to save that screen time for Frasier to buy new shoes or make a sandwich.

Considering how much coverage they got, the guest stars we do see in the first half of the season aren’t really used to much effect. The exceptions come in the fifth episode, bringing back Harriet Sansom Harris as Bebe Glazer, Frasier’s longtime agent, and Rachel Bloom as her daughter Phoebe. Since theirs may be the only episode I feel at all concerned about spoiling, I’ll just say Bloom is perfectly cast, and that despite the many times over the course of the first season that I used this space to complain about the writers’ apparent ignorance of Frasier lore, they have definitely studied up on Bebe. 

Flat as the rest of the season is, this one at least gestures toward what the show could be if the people who made it were more consistently willing to make Frasier the butt of the joke. Since they’re not, the second season is just as inessential as the first one was.