Tag: Peri Gilpin

30) The Innkeepers (Frasier)

Frasier got a heavy dose on this list, and all three episodes work for very different reasons. Up front: It’s because I loved this show in the hospital, because it usually was just stimulating enough to make me think, but funny enough to make me laugh and get more oxygen to reduce pain. It was basically part of my rehab. But, for the three episodes, I’ll stand by them as being different enough to all make it: The first, “Rooms with a View,” is a thoroughly dramatic episode that accurately portrays some of the most difficult times a family can have. The second, “Three Valentines,” contains one of the most amazing solo performances on film. This one, though, is what happens when an ensemble comedy comes together perfectly. It does everything from puns to comic misunderstandings to over-the-top slapstick, and it does it well.

FrasierComposite
Pierce. Has. Range.

Part of the premise of Frasier is that Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and his brother, Niles (David Hyde Pierce), are both very uptight and snooty while their father, Martin (John Mahoney), is an unpretentious everyman ex-cop. They often try to dream far beyond their own abilities, because they assume they are amazing at everything. It’s the hubris that makes for such entertaining falls. And this episode features one of the most common cases of hubris: Believing that you can start your own business with family. I’m not saying it always fails, but when it does, it’s a train wreck of epic proportions.

SUMMARY

The episode starts with one of Frasier’s and Niles’s favorite restaurants closing. As they go for a last meal, they manage to convince themselves that they not only can, but should, take over the restaurant and run it themselves, despite their father pointing out that they have no experience in the restaurant field, and, in fact, no desire to put in the work of running a restaurant, saying “You don’t think about the hard work or the long hours.  No, to you, owning a restaurant is just wearing fancy clothes, hobnobbing with your friends and turning your enemies away at the door.” They summarily ignore this, and decide that they will open the restaurant as “Le Freres Heureux” – The Happy Brothers.

Irony.jpeg

At first, everything goes well. The brothers find out that the head chef at another restaurant wants a change, so they secure him. They manage to get a fresh shipment of the chef’s specialty, anguille, a type of eel. And they even manage to find a place for the aging former head waiter of the restaurant as the new valet. People are packed in, and everything is going great on the opening night of the restaurant, and the brothers are bragging about how wrong their father was to doubt them. In sitcom terms, they just gave Zeus the finger.

frasierinnkeeperkitchen.png
She knows how to grab eels.

Right on cue, everything starts to go wrong. Frasier and Niles each give the head chef contradictory orders, and proceed to get angrier and snippier about him failing to, somehow, obey both of them, until the chef quits. Then, upon finding out the immigration bureau is dining in the building, the entire kitchen staff runs out the door. At which time they decide that Niles can be the head chef, right until Niles finds out that not only is everyone ordering the chef’s specialty, but that the chef preferred to kill his eels personally, so all the eels in the restaurant are currently alive. From there, it just keeps escalating. Fires, floods, explosions, electrocutions, sexual harassment, until, finally, they decide to literally drive a car through the wall and demolish most of the restaurant. And all with a ridiculous amount of clever, fast-paced, joke-filled dialogue.

frasierroz.png

The episode ends with the brothers asking their father if he’s ready to say “I told you so.” He remarks that he’s taking the high road, because he knows that they’re just going to punish themselves more than enough… and then proceeds to say “I told you so,” because he’s a father of adult children and that’s what they do.

Old3.jpg

END SUMMARY

The beauty of this episode is that it dedicates itself to just showing you the same disaster that you’ve watched on TV a thousand times before, but instead of merely inviting the audience to view the destruction, the focus is usually on the amount of effort that Frasier and Niles have to put forth to try to avoid it, making it all the more tragic and humorous when it ends up failing entirely. It’s a classic comedy formula done to the utmost.

Update: John Mahoney has sadly passed away before this article was posted. He was a huge part of all of these episodes, and he will be missed.

FrasierMahoney.jpg

https://dailymotion.com/video/x5e8pyk

PREVIOUS – 30a: Gravity Falls

NEXT – 29: Saturday Night Live

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews. 

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.

Reader Bonus: Door Jam (Frasier)

This was a reader request, which brings the total number of Frasier spots up to 4. Granted, this isn’t actually one of the 100 episodes, but it’s still solid.

FrasierDoorJam-1Cast.jpg

SUMMARY

So, this episode focuses on Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and their inability to be content with anything. It starts when Frasier gets a piece of mail that was sent to his upstairs neighbor, the equally snooty Cam Winston (Brian Stokes Mitchell). The letter is an announcement of the opening of “La Porte d’Argent.” For those of you who don’t speak French, this means “The Silver Door.”

FrasierDoorJam-2Cam.jpg
They have an 8 hour negotiation session over bath balm recipes.

The letter contains no information about what “La Porte d’Argent” is, so the pair are anxiously trying to figure out schemes to uncover the secret, until their father, Martin (John Mahoney), points out that they could just go down to the location on the letter and ask. They discover that it’s a very exclusive health spa, which they con their way into, by having Niles pretend to be Cam Winston (who, for the record, has an extremely deep Baritone voice, leading Niles to have to speak like what I imagine Barry White sounded like as a child). The pair are completely satisfied by the unbelievable level of treatment that they receive at the spa… until they see a Senator going into a Gold Door in the spa. They try to follow him, but are stopped by the staff. The Gold Door is for the Gold Level, and they are but Silver.

FrasierDoorJam-3Spa.jpg
They do get stalks of wheat for some reason.

The pair then begin to obsess over getting into the Gold Level at the spa, to the annoyance of everyone else. Finally, Roz (Peri Gilpin), confronts them about why they even care, when the Silver Level is already an unbelievable spa experience. Niles responds “Gold is better.” Roz points out that the Gold might not be the end of it. There could be even more levels beyond that, and the only reason they want them is that they can’t have them. However, she also reveals that she could get them into the Gold Level, because she had an affair with the Senator… and also saved his life from a mid-coital heart attack.

FrasierDoorJam-4Roz.jpg
Can’t imagine what gave him that…

So, Frasier and Niles get into the Gold Level. Frasier is given a color therapy, which partially color-blinds him, and Niles is coated in an orange honey-butter mask and wrapped in seaweed, which renders him both blind and mostly immobile. They are put into a luxurious grotto to relax… at which point Frasier sees a Platinum door. He tries to open it, but is stopped by the staff, making them both anxious to see inside. Together, they stumble/hop through the door into the bright sunlight… of a dumpster-filled alley. The door was for the trash, and they are chased off by a beehive.

FrasierDoorJam-5Outside.jpg
Irony is sometimes easy to get

The B plot concerns Daphne (Jane Leeves) and Martin watching old TV shows so that the English Daphne can catch up on American culture. While watching, Daphne keeps comparing Martin to the elderly characters on the shows, such as Rockford’s Dad on The Rockford Files and Colonel Potter on M*A*S*H. Eventually, she just pretends she was confused on the character names and identifies Martin as younger actors just so he’ll stop complaining.

FrasierDoorJam-6Potter.gif
Hey, it’s a compliment to be Col. Potter.

END SUMMARY

The theme for the episode is pretty straightforward. So straightforward that they have more than 3 characters in the episode comment on it directly. Niles and Frasier want what they can’t have, so they’re never happy with what they do. Each time they reach what they perceive is the pinnacle of society, they seem happy with what they’re getting. After the first spa treatment, before they find the Gold Door, they’re both commenting that they’ve never felt better. After the second in the Gold Room, they think the same thing, until they find the “Platinum Door.” It’s a pretty normal theme, and one that’s fairly universal, but it applies more to people like Niles and Frasier, who are fabulously wealthy off of dream jobs, than to normal people like Roz or Daphne. Frasier and Niles live at one of the highest rungs of society. They should be content, but instead they’re even more focused on advancement than other people. Rich people will argue that their refusal to be content is why they achieved so much, and sometimes that’s true, but Niles and Frasier didn’t really. Niles married rich, and Frasier lucked into a cushy job that he hardly works at. Ultimately, it’s just a “grass is always greener” story. Still, few things are funnier than Niles hopping in a seaweed wrap. David Hyde Pierce knows physical comedy.

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews. 

If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.