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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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I don’t know that I’d list Frazier as one of the all time amazing shows. That’s something I’d reserve for shows like Schitt’s Creek, Good Place, and The Wire. A show like MASH. All in the Family, which surfaced so much of what was happening in society at the time. The Jeffersons.
I’d rank Frasier closer to something like Friends or Dharma and Greg. Definitely below Seinfeld or 30 Rock. It was funny. It had good writers and the characters exhibited a chemistry that made the show work as a show, but beyond that it was pretty ephemeral. That’s just my opinion.
A lot of it is the idea of "seinfeld isn't funny". Seinfeld was fairly revolutionary at the time because of how it approached humor, pacing, and even character "design". It is just that it also influenced almost every single show that came after season 3 or 4 so a lot of people who didn't "grow up with it" won't really "appreciate it". But that also manifests it as being the kind of show that "ages well". Its why TBS still shows Seinfled reruns to this day and people still go for a re-watch.
And Frasier is very much in that same category. Character arcs were very much ahead of their time and the nuance that Niles, Martin, and even Frasier were allowed to have still stands up today (and puts the reboot to shame). Its "cheating", but there is a reason that Cheers, which was arguably the most popular sitcom on television during its run, is now mostly viewed as the show Frasier spun out of. Its the kind of writing and pacing that largely could be on TV today... because it was so influential.
Friends is the odd one out. And I think, ignoring all of the "Wow everyone was horrible" and "Ross is a psychopath" memes: It very much defined what shows like How I Met Your Mother would become. I don't think it holds up anywhere near as well as Frasier, but that is also because Frasier largely ended a year after their shit season and had the payoff of Niles and Daphne's child. Friends... continued for another five or six with the main thread being "Oh, I guess we are doing a will they or won't they with Ross and Rachel again?"
Like, you reference The Good Place which I also put as one of the all time greats. And that, as well as Parks and Rec before it, very much benefited from shows like Frasier that show you can truly do the multi-season emotional arcs in a sitcom where you alternatingly laugh and cry. And Chidi has a LOT of Crane DNA in him as he is simultaneously mocked for being a "hoity toity, barely functioning, intellectual" while also having so much of the show's emotional and narrative weight put on his shoulders. We laugh as he has a nervous breakdown over having the future of everything put on him but we are also right there with him and rooting for him to find The Answer. He is a goober but, bah gawd, he is OUR goober and if he needs to make a big vat of chili to function then let's go to the mother fucking store.
Sometimes you have shows like Veronica Mars. It was SPECTACULAR for what it was but... not a lot of people are going to be arguing for newbies to really watch it. But it also laid a lot of the groundwork for shows like iZombie which... look, I love that show but I am also not going to really be encouraging people to watch it at this point. Whereas Jessica Jones has a LOT of the same DNA and... Season 1 of that is spectacular and holds up.
Whereas something like MASH is arguably the genesis of a lot of "very special episodes" that everyone hates. But it very much popularized the idea of "the sad clown" dealing with horrible stress and strain (which would be the basis of shows like ER and even House) as well as a willingness to "poke fun at" some truly important contemporary issues even while giving them the respect they deserve. Which was obviously important in the 70s (hmmm) but is also a direct ancestor of shows like Boston Legal and Brooklyn 99 (and even The Good Place) that aren't afraid to acknowledge things like systemic racism while also making us laugh because... the alternative is to just shut down. And while I don't hear as many people say "you should watch MASH in 2023", its best episodes are still held up as masterpieces.
And while I think All in the Family needs a lot more credit than it deserves, it was very much more of "a very special episode" rather than blending. And The Jeffersons (and the first season or so of Family Matters) is similarly incredibly influential but suffers from being "a black show". Whereas something like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air found a way to get that to a wider audience who won't clutch their pearls if they see Tyler Perry on screen.
This is expert level TV reviewing, thanks for the insights.
Schitts Creek?? Surprised to see it next to those other names. I mean it was great, but The Good Place and The Wire were on a whole different level IMO
I'd rank it above Seinfeld and way above Dharma and Greg, but I'm curious what made it stand out so much for you
Schitt’s Creek was a pretty big deal in the LGBT community. It was among the first shows that portrayed LGBT people and relationships in a purely positive light.
The Levy’s main concept for the show was to show a town that was without prejudice - an aspirational perspective to make more palpable what it could be like if there wasn’t strong undercurrents of ideologies like racism and homophobia.
A frequent criticism of the portrayal of black Americans in American media is that there’s frequently a negative narrative that shares the storyline. While it’s important to surface those uncomfortable aspects of our culture, it doesn’t have to be everywhere. It’s the same with the LGBT community.
As a queer person who has been politically involved since the days of ACT UP, I’m very aware of how our community is portrayed in media. Homophobia was very much a part of mainstream American entertainment throughout most of my life. It was played up for laughs with either straight characters being scandalized that they were perceived as gay, or gay characters who played to uniformly campy stereotypes, or making homophobic politics and violence an integral part of the storyline. That’s not to say that shows like Queer as Folk weren’t also landmarks, but that was more of a for us by us kind of thing. Schitt’s Creek is a sitcom that’s intended to be enjoyed by everyone.
I mean, I grew up in a time when people like Elton John and Boy George felt like they couldn’t be fully out, and Rock Hudson was completely closeted. I think that shows like Schitt’s Creek help with the perception and normalization of the LGBT community and relationships.
The Levys were following an uniquely Canadian comedy tradition about not punching down people in small towns. If Schitt's Creek had been American there would be a strong chance that there would have been homophobic character who becomes the butt of the joke, who's there to make the audience go "Haha, stupid hick."
Dan Levy said in an interview with Vulture:
If the Levys had gone the way of punching down onto small town people, I don't think Schitts Creek would have been as effective in getting people to re-evaluate the beliefs.
Isaac Cabe's article As 'Schitt's Creek' Ends, Let's Appreciate Some Canadian Comedy, Eh? really highlights this uniquely Canadian comedy tradition.
I absolutely agree, and thank you for explaining it better than I did.
LMAO, I say it all the time when shitting on Disney virtue signaling, stopping a show to get up on a soapbox just makes the show worse and convinces no one of anything they don't already believe, and making them a trope doesn't really help either
If you want to actually reduce bigotry, you normalize it... And apparently they succeeded, since the only time I remember thinking about it was going "oh wait, is he bi?" When they introduced that (I remember it being slightly ambiguous for a couple scenes)
Ok, the show deserves some credit when you put it in this context... Looking back at what I remember from the show, they did it very well.
Like at first, he's stereotypical and super flamboyant, but they're all caricatures anyways. Playing into the tropes probably made his orientation less threatening for someone a bit homophobic. They just let that sit for a while without any romance on his part
Then I think brought up he had an ex gf after a season or two? Which is a nice curve ball to make people question their assumptions, and then they eased into it and made the plotline with the ridiculous sitcom love triangle, and they made it about that while having very little actual pda on screen...I remember a kiss or two, but it was pretty overshadowed by the awkward situation... An amazing way to desensitize someone (it feels weird because it's awkward sitcom nonsense, so a good person a little weirded out by seeing guys kiss doesn't feel called out, and the emotions get triggered and directed to an appropriate target)
I binge sitcoms over a few days while I work or game, so I remember less as the seasons go on... It was good on the surface, I'm going to give it a rewatch looking deeper
Thanks for sharing. My biggest passion is the way technology could shape us for the better, so I find this very cool
Hey, you like what you like. Nothing wrong with that. But Frasier set the record for most Emmys won (excluding SNL) for a TV show- it won 37 over its run. That record was only beat in 2016 by Game of Thrones. There's nothing wrong with not liking Frasier, but being the current third-most-awarded show in television history says a lot about its quality.
I get that and I agree. I’m just differentiating between shows that were transformative for their viewers and ones that were “just” popular shows. Sometimes you get a crossover, like MASH, which was a very strong voice for post-Vietnam era America in which the idea of war and military service had begun to transform. We’ve lost ground on that one, of course, post-Reagan and especially after 9/11.
Like I said in another response, I see Schitt’s Creek as transformative in how it portrays LGBT persons and relationships by deliberately crafting a world in which prejudices (like racism and homophobia) do not exist. There are a number of shows that have over time led to the greater acceptance and normalization of the LGBT community, such as Queer Eye, but even a lot of those play to high camp tropes, and shows like Drag Race target the queer-and-ally communities more than being just a straight forward (sorry, couldn’t resist) sitcom.
In just my lifetime, we went from a world where Rock Hudson was closeted, Elton John and Boy George were flamboyant but not officially out, and where Nathan Lane worried that his epic role in The Birdcage would make people realize that he’s gay. There’s a great story behind that one. Before that you had the gay-coded villains like Vincent Price and comedians like Rip Taylor. Taylor never came out. Neither did Liberace.
I cite the Jeffersons similarly because the show came out as black Americans were moving from a civil rights struggle to a feeling of acceptance for and from the white American communities. The theme song Moving On Up embodied that social dynamic, while All in the Family lampooned the alternative vision of the white blue collar racist whose excuse was that he was just an “ordinary guy.”
I’d feel differently if Fraiser were to take a similar approach to mental health issues - normalizing and humanizing them, instead of playing them for gags. In my opinion, it was mostly about class dynamics with most of the humor involving the disconnect between the egotistical educated elite versus the real world. Contrast Fraiser’s relationship with his patients with that of the psychologist Sidney Friedman on MASH. By our standards today we could look at MASH and see homophobia and rampant sexism, but for its time it was humanizing, and Arbus’ character played into that narrative in most of his appearances.
Awards are awards, and at the end of the day they represent the opinions of the industry. I’m absolutely not saying they don’t matter. But people who watch a show like The Good Place (which explores absolutely fundamental issues of ethics and philosophy while still being a brilliant sitcom) have the power to change the way people think.