Why Frasier wasn't influential like Seinfeld and Friends?

I think you missed the point. Comedically, having Frasier marry again and have a stable home life would have destroyed the show. The same pattern happened in Seinfeld where the Jerry character went through as many women, rejecting them or being bothered for the most trivial reasons. That was one of the comedic aspects of the show and one of the very few similarities between the two shows. Only using Seinfeld as an example of the reason why this was done.

Then I invite you to rewatch it as there were plenty of times this was explored with more than a couple of lines. For instance, the last scene on the 6th season's finale lasted about 5 whole minutes of the 2 boys and their father talking at length about their failures at relationships. Another one I'm forgetting the season right now, explored this via another lengthy scene on Frasier's balcony. The episode ends on a downbeat shot of the three boys looking out in the city, hoping the right woman is out there for them.

Plenty more episodes where this is explored in different ways.

One is where Frasier is attracted to a store clerk who is much younger than she is. His dad makes him realize his loneliness is clouding his judgment. Plenty of other ones where Frasier assumes there is or should be an attraction, then other times, juggling more than one woman simultaneously only to mess both potential relationships up because he's always chasing and is of the "grass is always greener" type.

Another one where he is attracted to a woman who is the spitting image of his mother, something he inexplicably doesn't realize. At the end of the episode when both Frasier and the woman realize the relationship won't work, the three boys are watching home movies, all realizing how lonely they are and what's missing in their lives ; not just mother's presence. Another downbeat ending.

One could in fact argue that the character of Frasier is one which has grown and has been explored much more than most in the history of TV, partly due to the amount of episodes but there have been plenty of opportunities to delve deep into his psyche and to witness what makes him tick. Even one episode that deals almost exclusively with that when he visits his mentor in season 8.

The actress playing that character had a real tough time with the tight deadlines and constant rewrites of the script up until the cameras were running and even in between takes. She left the show because her way of working was incompatible with sitcoms, or at least that show's way of doing things.

Up to the viewer to decide but there was an arc for a reason. He accepts her flaws and she accepts his. They grow closer together with each date, had that episode where they were stranded in some weird family's house for most of its scenes, etc. Personally, I thought the actors had good chemistry and considering Kelsey Grammer had ultimately more or less the last say on casting even going back to the pilot, he wouldn't have OK'ed somebody he felt he had no chemistry with. Aside from some obvious misses (Kirby, for one), I think casting was spot-on and terrific. Great actress playing Charlotte, IMHO.

I've watched it many times. I love terrific scripts, acting, and especially great comedic timing. That show (among others) has all of that in spades. Through the years, I must've seen most episodes 10x so it's all mental notes but I can assure you that everyone has been analyzed deeply, even Daphne, Roz,... Even peripheral characters had scenes and episodes that dealt with them in a serious tone like Bulldog, Kenny, etc. Maybe you're just remembering the jokes more, who knows?

The characters are flawed in order to make them interesting. Depending on the writers of the episode, the characters would lean in one direction or the other. For instance, Ken Levine specifically talks about one episode (Room Service) where he and his writing partner watched the last handful of episodes before starting to write. They found the character had strayed from the one they had written for before in that he was using more flowery language but they ultimately decided to stick with the character they knew so they wrote him in the flavor they preferred. In that episode, Frasier isn't some la-dee-da type and is more down to earth, as much as he can be anyway.

If you wrote any show respecting each character perfectly in a static fashion, there'd be a dozen episodes and not many more. Everybody does or says something that is out of character for them. Comedy is borne out of conflict, misunderstandings, and escalations.

As for which show was executed better is up to the viewer to decide. I have no love whatsoever for Seinfeld or its characters, all of whom I ind intolerable and shallow from a character's depth basis. The plots are simple, the same jokes are repeated a million times per episode with no nuance whatsoever, and the acting is exaggerated to an insane degree. I'll never understand what charmed millions to adore it and be fascinated with it to this day but regardless of my opinion, no one can take the impression it made on TV.

If I take one of my favorite Frasier episodes, Ham Radio, I can't think of any show which would have executed something like that so brilliantly. It's masterfully done farce to a degree only some British shows could match, again all IMHO. Even Cheers, one of all-time favorites, which has done dozens of comedic things brilliantly could not have pulled this one.

One thing that sets Frasier apart is the depth of the characters and the ability to explore each one seriously when all the laughs are over. Jerry never had a serious 5-minute "What if I don't find the woman of my life?" scene, for instance. None of the characters were anything but relentlessly neurotic. Conan O'Brien has little time for sentimentality in comedy, his mantra simply being "Funny man, be funny!" which I agree with to an extent. But in the case of Frasier, what makes me come back to it more than any other sitcom is the depth of the characters which is something that can't be said of most any US sitcom. It allowed, for example, some closure when the character of Diane Chambers was brought back for an episode.

James Avery, the man playing Uncle Phil in Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air was another fantastic actor who had gravitas and the writers thankfully gave him a lot of leeway to explore things in a dramatic and not entirely exclusively comedic way. Few had the acting chops to pull it off but you'll quickly grasp that the character most adored out of that show isn't Will Smith ; it's Uncle Phil. IMHO, for the same reasons. Depth. Being a caricature is good for a quick laugh but if there's nothing more to the character, it'll be forgotten quickly once the show stops airing.

I'll disagree with the "usually that" part. I dare say it was actually in the minority. It differed from one episode to the other. One episode had Frasier's father make a political ad supporting a candidate whose stances Frasier opposes sternly. He then decides to open his condo to the opposing candidate so they can shoot an ad of their own only to find during an improvised counselling session that Frasier's candidate of choice believes to have once been abducted by aliens. The script for the ad is then run a second time where it now, in context, has a completely different meaning. And it's hilarious... and has nothing to do whatsoever with being snobs or hypocrites. Too many examples to name but that is a clear-cut easy one to air out.

Oh, it definitely did. Thankfully, the flaws had to do with certain characters or storylines I ignore or skip when I watch the series. The character of Kirby, his mom,... those episodes, I quickly skip over. It's as if Kelsey Grammer owed them favors or liked them as people so much that he wanted them to somehow be in the show no matter what. The writers tried to give them more depth but it was artificial because the characters were such caricatures. You can see a pattern of me disliking shallow caricatured characters. Seems most agree with me online in regards to those characters as they are largely detested by fans.

The good news is all of the annoying characters didn't typically stay for that long. If you disliked Frasier's boss with whom he had a tryst, you could skip over these handful of episodes, for instance.

 

Good for her. She looks great regardless of what she had done.

 

It resonates hugely with millennials. I have never gotten the Friends thing personally and find both Senfield and Frasier superior in pretty every way.

 

lol just now on the pit/bal game they quoted seinfeld

 

Was this Tony Romo? I love when he busts out the pop culture references.

 

it was not. they used "these pretzels are making me thirsty"

 

Dec 31 - Sacrilege !!

 

Nah, didn't miss the point. It's why my very next line was: "As a viewer it was like, WTF, but of course him getting married wasn't where they wanted to take the show."

My point is, I thought this character trait fit Jerry's character. It didn't fit Frasier's. But they had to do that to take the show where it needed to go. Which is a fair point I suppose, but it's still not true to the character, which is a pretty large flaw, IMO.

You make good points. I remember all of those episodes. I'm probably just fixated on what irked me most about the show.

Until he finds a reason to dump her (or vice versa due to something stupid he does). Seriously, I don't know why we should expect any other outcome this time, though I suppose we are supposed to think he has come to the realization that he's needed to by that point. Finally, after 11 seasons and many lessons supposedly learned over those years.

The chemistry wasn't any more special than the chemistry he had with other actresses on the show. And certainly not like the chemistry that Sam had with Diane/Rebecca.

Agreed, it had those things. Those are reasons why I've always enjoyed the show.

You can't stray too out of character though. It's a balancing act.

Seinfeld was never about character depth. I found a lot of the plots to be quite intricate though. Not really simple at all, the way they would intertwine what happened with various characters, and how something early on in an episode comes back later on to be a key part of the show. Those were some of the best parts about Seinfeld. And I think the characters are actually more like real people than we'd want to admit (selfish, neurotic, etc.). But above all, it was just a funny show, and they definitely achieved funny.

Yeah, I liked that one. It shows Frasier's need to control in a hilarious way. Only I'm kind of sitting there thinking why he doesn't just give in a little as his need to control does nothing but hurt him, and he needs everyone else to help him in order to pull this off. Frasier should be smart enough to see that.

One of my favorite episodes was the one where Frasier's gay boss (I think it was his boss) comes over and Frasier thinks he's straight and so he's trying to set him up with Daphne, but the boss has his sights set on Frasier, unbeknownst to him. I thought they pulled off that episode perfectly, with a degree of subtlety that they didn't achieve all the time.

 

I think it skewed slightly older.

 

Didn’t it air on Nick before streaming? That would explain a lot. The ages of the characters also played a role as well. Me, I love Fraiser. I wasn’t a fan of Friends.

 

I actually think it makes more sense that Frasier had relationship problems than Jerry. When you consider his experiences on Cheers, Frasier had two major heartbreaks from the woman in his life leaving him, either when about to be married, or after being together for years, married, and parents. That has to take a major psychological toll, and its telling/darkly-comedic that Frasier himself could never really recognize that. The episode where his first wife, Lilith, Diane, and his mother all confront him in his mind is where he finally kind of breaks through, and I think that's from season 6, 7, or 8, so it took him a while. He also nearly committed suicide in the last season of Cheers, and I can imagine getting to that point can be a good sign that someone isn't fit for a real, lasting, relationship. It makes sense that he finally would be eleven-twelve years later.

On the other hand, we really never see any reason why Jerry has such bad relationship problems. Unlike George, he doesn't have any serious mom issues, and we don't know of any tragic past relationships. His ability to remain friends with Elaine is a sign that he can be mature in regards to relationships, but he largely comes across as stunted in that arena. I guess it's hinted at a few times that Elaine and Jerry still love each other, and maybe that's why they are so picky with everyone else, but I don't think it's brought up enough to be a character trait that explains the rest of his frequent breakups.

 

I'm not sure that the Seinfeld characters are meant to be analyzed in any serious way. But I think Jerry's behavior fits his character because it's clear none of those characters really cared about relationships or even each other. One gets the feeling watching that show that each one of them would drop the others like a hot potato if it benefited them. And in fact, there were episodes where they did just that, or at the very least there were episodes where they all showed a complete disregard for the others in their group. So it's easy to see why Jerry would behave the same way towards girlfriends. It's just who he was, down to his core. All of this was part of the show's humor.

You are correct about Frasier though. I'm not sure if that explains his choices every time, but that history would definitely have a negative impact on him. It may be interesting for me to watch the show again looking at it from this perspective (character development and the way they handled serious topics). It's a sitcom and I don't ever watch sitcoms from this angle.

 

I'll say!

 

Sherry: Oh, I love making people laugh. To me, humor is like medicine!

Niles: I guess we're in the placebo group.

 

Niles: I can see how parents can be obsessed with worry. Last night, I actually had a dream my flour sack was abducted and the kidnapper started sending me muffins in the mail.

 

I think at one point, they did try to do some kind of "Newman" show with Cam Winston character as a rival, who lived in the penthouse above him. It had a few good jokes, but they didn't pursue it beyond 2-3 episodes.

 

A weakness of the show IMHO is the women characters.

They are very one-dimensional, either intellectual and cold (Lileth and Maris) or warm but simple and irrational (Daphne and Roz).

It's almost as if the writers were misogynists, from a different time than the Seinfeld writers. Elaine is just as versatile as the male characters, as far as emotions and attitude goes.

 

That's true about Elaine.

 

I have only seen one episode of "Friends", it was on a flight from New Jersey to Florida. It DID influence me to open the door and jump.

 

I never thought Roz and Daphne were one dimensional especially as the seasons went on. No more than the guys.

 

A large number of the jokes on Frasier were variations on the following structure :

Frasier : "Niles, my date cancelled on me, so would you like to come to the opera with me tonight?"

Niles: "Do you seriously think that I am so pathetic and lonely that I will accept this offensive invitation that you only extend to me because somebody better cancelled at the last minute?"

Frasier: "So pick you up at seven?"

Niles: "Perfect."

Also most of the supporting cast were one-joke characters. Like, Bulldog would ALWAYS show up to deliver the same joke about how macho he was. Frasier's agent would always do something to show she was machiavelical, etc.

 

I didn't think it was all that complex with Jerry- he is a superficial guy, looking to date attractive women but never be committed. I have a friend like that from high school, has a face that would make most Hollywood A-listers look average by comparison and he only dates really beautiful women and has never had a relationship last past a year. From what my sister tells me in NYC many of the finance guys are like this as well, usually only getting married in their mid/late 40s.

I also think we were supposed to believe Jerry was a really handsome guy on the show.

 

I took a lot of Seinfeld as an inside New York joke. It is relatively easy to play the field there, so to speak. Manhattan is loaded with bars, restaurants, etc. And given that there is a huge supply, people tend to move through different people. Also, New York is one of the few places where age does not really kick in as a factor.

 

There is no logic whatsoever to your post. You're disregarding all of the characters which are mostly unidimensional only so your narrative can work. How about Bulldog, Noel, Kenny, Gil, etc? Aside from very few (if any) scenes where they're explored in a more serious way, they're pretty much a one-trick pony, only there when there is a joke they can deliver, same with some female characters.

Daphne wasn't unidimensional and neither was Roz. These actresses were given great lines, good scenes, and plenty of room to stretch, with a whole bunch of episodes which catered to their characters. Getting pretty tiresome to read about invented misogyny on this forum.