Cheers, Frasier 3, and the Greatness of Sameness
CHEERS — “Sam At Eleven” Episode 4 — Air Date 10/21/1982 — Pictured: (l-r) Nicholas Colasanto as Ernie ‘Coach’ Pantusso, Shelley Long as Diane Chambers, Ted Danson as Sam Malone, Rhea Perlman as Carla Tortelli, George Wendt as Norm Peterson — Photo by: Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank
The new series of Frasier, hereafter affectionately known as Frasier 3, received mostly negative responses, at least initially. I haven’t looked at any reactions beyond the first wave. I consider them knee-jerk, the usual reaction to any attempt to capitalize on nostalgia, whether that’s twenty years later or simply a follow-up season of television. Television shows are constantly under pressure to reinvent while delivering the same material we all know and love. I suspect many fans greet new seasons of even their favorite shows with at least an initial feeling of suspicion. “This is different. It is not the same thing I binge-watched. It is not what has replayed in the background over and over again. The magic isn’t there. These new writers are awful. What are they thinking?”
The great appeal of Frasier 3’s grandfather, Cheers, was, is, in its reliability, its sameness—it really is a neighborhood bar where you go to simply hang out with the gang. A place, a mood, a comedy style you can count on, where you can rest. Interestingly, the season where you will find the most consistent laughs and fewest duds, also features the fewest of what I consider the classic episodes. Season 7 is the kind of television you would breathe a sigh of relief to find waiting for you when your favorite show returned in the Fall. Cheers during this time was a well-oiled machine of comedy, its rhythms and punchlines timed to perfection. You could set your watch by the jokes, and yet they could still surprise you.
The greatest episodes of Cheers, however, came when the writers threw wrenches into the machinery, or were forced into change by the departure of actors. It’s not that discomfort all by itself breeds greatness. Greatness comes from overcoming discomfort. Only when a wrench is thrown into a machine can the machine show what it’s truly capable of, or even improve. “Death Takes a Holiday on Ice” in Season 8 isn’t great just because they killed off Eddie leBec just as he was becoming a series regular; it’s great because of the tightrope the writers and actors proceed to walk, making an episode about a funeral for a regular character into something hilarious (and then, in the closing lines, poignant, even heartbreaking) without ever feeling inappropriate or wrong. By the end of the twenty-two minutes, we’ve grieved the character with the cast and are ready to move on, and laughed the whole way. Somehow, Cheers never stopped being Cheers as it took us to such unexpected emotional places. (Carla’s actress Rhea Perlman had actor Jay Thomas thrown off the show after he made fun of her appearance on a morning radio show.)
The character of Diane Chambers was a wrench herself, the closest thing the gang had to an antagonist. Not that she was an enemy; she was just so different, and unlike her successor, Rebecca, she never did blend in to match the others or provide comfortable comedy. She challenged not just Sam, but even the audience, made them listen, pay attention, and think or feel differently. I never feel as relaxed watching the Diane episodes as I do the Rebecca era. Her spar-and-dance with Sam was fodder for both the greatest laughs and drama of comedy television. The writing was so nuanced it was practically literature. We are brought through her to the greatest epiphanies and denouements across the entire show. Her range, depth, and gravity could take the whole cast into new territory.
I suspect Diane was modeled after someone with bipolar disorder, because as someone with bipolar, I recognize and share so many of her tendencies. She feels her emotions deeply to the point of obsession, always speaks with far more words than really necessary, pursues great artistic ambitions beyond her reach, and goes into multiple emotional tailspins over the course of her five seasons. She holds the show in her grip—if she’s going through something, so is the rest of the bar. Her tendency to overthink and overanalyze can be both irritating and illuminating. After falling to checking into a sanitarium for mental recuperation, she rises to winning an award for her writing on national television. She’s a roller coaster.
So it’s no wonder that there just weren’t as many classic episodes after she left. I personally love Rebecca, and find Kirstie Alley’s ability to go from smiling triumphantly to sobbing hysterically in two seconds flat—a range perfectly captured in her drunken night before her wedding to multi-millionaire crook Donald Trump imitation Robin Colcord—to be among the greatest female comedic performances in television history. But any drama Rebecca brought to the show, such as her relationship with Robin Colcord, was local to her. It did not shake anybody out of their stupor or make them confront themselves. Sam could be himself around her, as could everybody else. As another example, her final plotline in the series finale is a love story with a plumber that has nothing to do with any of the rest of the cast, all of whom are fixated on the return of Diane and the potential rekindling of her relationship with Sam. The most heart-wrenching moment we get from a Rebecca storyline is when she and Sam ultimately decide against their plan to have a baby together (thank goodness), and after the decision, Sam sees the vision of his grown son fade away, a meeting never to take place. But that’s more about Sam—Rebecca’s travails are all played for laughs.
That is okay! I need those seasons where things stay the same. That’s the appeal of Cheers, isn’t it? But I also can’t help noticing that the characters are slightly neutered; Sam is a caricature of the self he was when Diane was around. Funny as hell, but lacking the dimensions because the stories didn’t demand them. Once Diane left, Sam didn’t have to bend or twist anymore, so he sprang back to his center. A well-oiled machine needs parts that are solid and reliable, not elastic, and by the time Rebecca came around, the characters had all solidified. We knew who they were—again, this is good. And there were still classics to come—in fact, I might argue that the final season had the greatest episodes. But it also had a number of clunkers. (Probably because the writers were emptying out all their pockets; in final seasons, you get the best, worst, and strangest episodes. The same thing occurs in Frasier’s last season.) The unexpected appearance of Diane—like a wrench thrown in a machine—makes the finale one of the show’s all-time best episodes, and reminds the audience what she brought to the set with one last heartbreaking choice that Sam must make. One last heartbreaking goodbye.
Just as in life, it’s the people coming and going that are the wrenches. We might as well be extras on the sets of the best shows, we feel so chummy with the casts by the end. That was, perhaps, one of the great geniuses of Cheers—it managed to bring back the same old thing in ways just different enough for us to never feel bored. This, I might argue, is the sin of Frasier 3—it may be just as funny, and up to the same clever storytelling tricks as its immediate forebear, but who the hell is it to pretend to be Frasier when so many faces are different? Who the hell are you new people to think you can deliver that unique Frasierian brand of storytelling? Kirstie Alley reported that’s exactly the emotional reaction she got from people in the early days of playing Rebecca after Shelley Long left Cheers. But after that wrench, the quality of the show became better than ever. Likewise, in Season 3 of Cheers, the Frasier Crane character was hated by fans because he was a threat to Sam and Diane’s relationship—a threat to the status quo. Now he’s among the most beloved characters of all time. Wrenches. Discomfort. Greatness!
I don’t know if Frasier 3 will ever be beloved. There’s so much content churned out today, so much rehashed nostalgia, that it may be lost in the whirlwind. Quality doesn’t really seem to matter anymore. And as entertaining as I find it, I frankly don’t think it’s really done much above and beyond to earn any kind of beloved status. Frasier not only went on for eleven seasons as a veritable institution (which Frasier 3 has no time for), but the relationship between Niles and Daphne gave the show an emotional grounding that became nearly a sequel to Sam and Diane, something Frasier 3 doesn’t even try at. And that’s okay. I am personally satisfied by its recreation of the Frasierian language of storytelling. It deserves praise and fondness for that victory. But maybe that’s not what most people want—maybe they just miss the familiar faces at the bar.
