frasier - c/d s/d

or Matt Besser

(although I liked that scene)

Haha that's true

Only the short, understated performances are good now

watching frasier stoned and it occurs to me that the actors playing martin, niles, bulldog, and, the only one playing a gay character - gil are all gay

the guy who plays gil is also charles pahluniak's literary agent

Gil's not gay (or is at least closeted as he has a wife).

(copied from upthread a bit)

Roz: We thought Deb was your cat.

Gil Chesterson: She is not a cat! She is Mrs. Gilbert Leslie Chesterton, a Sarah Lawrence graduate, and the owner of a very successful auto body repair shop. Honestly, the conclusions people make, just because a man dresses well and knows how to use a pastry bag!
[he exits]

Frasier: Well, that's the first time I've ever seen a man "in" himself.

yeah, i seem to remember a piece back in the day remarking that the only (then-outed) gay actor on the cast was the one who played the most testosterone-heavy hetero-sex-pest. is john mahoney officially out? i know he's historically played his cards close to his chest, as far as his private life.

I'm surprised he didn't offer to help Daphne's brother with his Mancunian accent. And Daphne, for that matter.

Ailsa later in the show - seasons after the supposed revelation that he has a wife - it is heavily and unambiguously implied that Gil is actually gay.

I was shocked when I found out Jane Leeves was actually English considering how false her accent sounds.

Gil was so so gay. He even snuck into a gay bar at the end of one episode.

I thought he didn't actually go to the gay bar, it was just a comical misunderstanding to add to all the "lol Gil's so gay" thing. I mean, clearly he's gay but it's never actually stated despite all the heavy-handed pointers. I like to think there's an alternate sitcom spin-off universe in which stereotypically gay female mechanic Deb Chesterton is caught up in all these comical misunderstandings as well.

^^The Frasier fanfic guy probably has 20 seasons of that somewhere.

don't really care to speculate too much but only david hyde pierce and dan butler have come out

in the 90s there was a lot of speculation though

bear in mind that one of the high points in the show was when they were making fun of how supposedly straight men were doing the most stereotypically gay things, specifically as martin reestablished his relationship with frasier and his friends/acquaintances

the whole joke about gil is that he is the only one who feels the need to actually show he is straight and explicitly says he does things a stereotypically straight man would do but the punchlines are the small details or actions that out him as extremely feminine

roz is the male version of a "pig," probably preempting the whole bitch/new feminism culture popular years later

still on season nine of this, and it bounced back a bit. Comedy is snappier.

Seems like in its later seasons this was still good, except for anything having to do with a romantic relationship. All those plots are humorless slogs, yet the show committed more and more time to them

I'm surprised he didn't offer to help Daphne's brother with his Mancunian accent. And Daphne, for that matter.

― Punnet of the Grapes (Tom D.), Sunday, May 28, 2017 4:12 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's because he is not capable of it anymore

he said he purposely tried to lose his accent in the 80s i believe and he never spoke in it even in the 90s

apparently it was because he wanted to blend into american society. i understand that. it's a survival instinct. just like how canadians start speaking like americans when they come to the US

his is more of an extreme case but probably has to do with him being in the US military too

daphne not having a manchester accent is weird in the first few years, but later a lot of people lose a lot of the distinctive features of their original accent if they live outside their native country

xp

ya it goes through more ups and downs past season 8

i'm in s11e08 i think

so far only two really good episodes and they were much in the style of the early years

Gainsbarre

big part of the decline on this show is b/c Niles and Daphne make a horrible couple. Very little chemistry, beyond Niles repeatedly saying they have chemistry. I wonder if the writers were ever tempted to undo their coupling and just act like it never happened, like Frasier/Roz. The show invested so much in their relationship and then had so little payoff for it

it didn't help that daphne was such a shit to niles towards the end

daphne not having a manchester accent is weird in the first few years, but later a lot of people lose a lot of the distinctive features of their original accent if they live outside their native country

It's more that it's not a very good Manchester accent - though at least it sounds Northern English and not Australo-Cockernee.

off topic? but they just showed the "gay" episode of Cheers oh boy that's a good one.

I think a best subplot would have been for Niles and Frasier to construct some sort of balloon traveler and travel the world with their dad in his hilarious shitty chair

S11e12

Gil: And a duck confit that's as rich as Donald Trump and twice as greasy

It may be the gulfs will wash us down
It may be we shall touch the happy isles
And though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven
That which we are we are
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield

you reached the end of your quest?

there's no way i could make it through this series - when it was on originally i gave up around the time niles and daphne got together, which i now realise is only a little over half way into the series - which perturbs me) but ive watched the first two seasons in the last few weeks

ya

i stand by what i said but basically seasons 2-5 were really good (1 was good too but i feel like they were just getting started)

6 was good too but not as solid

7 started getting bad

there was a dramatic drop off in quality by 8

10 and 11 are pretty bad but i stuck with it, sometimes dozing off/falling asleep during a few episodes

I always felt (and have probs expressed in this thread already) that Cheers was a sharper, warmer, more nuanced show

The problem with this show imo is that the repartee is near untouchable but I can't bear the farce

I like the farce! I thought I would hate it but it always won me over. Except the camping at the cabin one.
Worst bits for me are bulldog and Daphne's family

"The Two Mrs. Cranes," the farce where Daphne is pretending to be married to Niles, is one of my favorites. Especially when Martin willfully sabotages the whole charade by claiming to be an astronaut.

OMG, Daphne's ex-boyfriend's accent.

Just started rewatching this from episode one after finishing Cheers, and it’s such a jarring, unwelcome transition. It’s impressive how quickly the show distanced itself from its predecessor, but the changes to Frasier’s character and temperament are so harsh. Weird to imagine what viewers must have thought at the time

I WAS DISAPPOINTED TBH

I grew to like it. But I think it's aged worse than Cheers - or, perhaps, it perfectly nails an unlikeable character I no longer enjoy spending time with.

Unlikeable characters. Apart from his dad.

and Roz

That's true, I loved Martin and Roz (who has had some SEVERE work done, going by her appearance in the fourth season of Broad City)

I grew to like it. But I think it's aged worse than Cheers - or, perhaps, it perfectly nails an unlikeable character I no longer enjoy spending time with.

Ha, yes! The truth of Grammer's character stains Frasier somewhat (also he reminds me of my stepdad)

for me it’s mainly grammer’s astonishing collection of bald-man mullets throughout the run which makes the show hard to watch whenever i run across an episode now

i feel i have perhaps shared this to this thread before but

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXceET3-awc

i think for me part of the reason that cheers has aged so much better than frasier is that cheers’ working-class milieu still feels eminently relatable while frasier and niles’ brittle, neurotic upwardly-mobile world seems further away than ever

in cheers, diane is forever the odd one out while in frasier it’s martin, and that feels significant

In Frasier, though, there's still the sense that Martin is down to Earth and possessed of common sense, while Diane is odd one out to the bar and also the audience.

I love that in Cheers, literally every character can be the butt of a joke and then, in a later scene, be laughing (with the audience) at another character. Woody can be the dumb hayseed but also the wise country kid seeing through Diane or Frasier's pretentions.

yeah that’s def why cheers is one of the greatest of all time - all the characters have multiple dimensions and they all play off each other in endlessly interesting ways

god i love that show

i rewatched all of frasier over the last 9 months. it was pretty heavy going at times, season 7 and after are excruciatingly bad at times, though with a little bit of an upward trend in quality in the last 2 seasons (i think they changed show-runners or something).

i understand why they changed the character of frasier so much, they wanted to give the show a completely separate identity and they succeeded. it is a little jarring though. frasier's aversion to going anywhere blue-collar with his dad after spending a decade drinking in a bar doesn't make a ton of sense for instance (although they do have an episode where nostalgic for cheers frasier starts frequenting daphne's british local).

I've started rewatching cheers. only a few episodes in so far but i imagine it will be a more enjoyable endeavor.

Cheers has a bigger cast and no redundant characters, whereas Martin and Daphne are boring, and Roz doesn't get enough good material, so it's basically Frasier and Niles and that's it. Also Frasier feels very 90s whereas Cheers feels timeless. Also fuckin' Ted Danson and Shelley Long, man.

daphne is a bit of a dud of a character but i think martin and roz are good and have plenty of good material - though the jokes about roz's promiscuity get old fairly quickly, they do thankfully move away from that a little

never really got into cheers (went on far too long too)

liked frasier better for the most part

though i love ted dansen

he's probably one of the only older actors that can still make me laugh

whereas like i never want to see anyone from frasier do anything again