Critic’s Rating: 3 / 5.0
3
I always thought that Olivia, Frasier’s relationship-obsessed boss at Harvard, was meant to be a Boston stand-in for his former Seattle radio show producer, Roz Doyle.
That is, at least I did until Roz actually showed up in Frasier Season 2 Episode 3.
I was almost as surprised as Frasier was when the “student” waiting in his office turned out to be Roz.
Back So Soon?
I felt like we’d just seen Roz in the Season 1 finale, and enough time hadn’t yet passed for another visit of hers to make sense. But I’m not complaining!
It’s hard to believe that Roz’s daughter Alice is now a graduate student in Rhode Island. Where does the time go, and why don’t we see her in Boston more often??
No matter how flimsy the excuse (Alice stood her mom up for a date, blah-blah-blah), it was a joy to see Roz back in Boston and in the same room with Frasier.
Unfortunately, one thing that hasn’t changed about her old boss is his stodgy taste in evening events.
Roz was ready to bail all the way back to Seattle but instead grabbed the chance to play Mother Hen to fellow single mom Eve and take her on a Girls’ Night Out.
Roz clearly overestimated Frasier, Alan, and Freddy’s ability to care for Eve’s baby John.
It was also kind of weird that Roz didn’t immediately invite Olivia along for Girls’ Night, but maybe she was just trying to get Eve out the door before the men could give the baby back.
The men’s ineptness with the baby was bizarre. I mean, I get that the episode was going for a Three Men and a Baby vibe. But Frasier’s a dad, and Freddy used to help Eve with her baby all the time last season.
So why were they now looking at John like he was radioactive?
Not being prepared to take a baby along to your art gallery event is understandable, but even so, the men’s whole clueless attitude was odd.
They also used the baby to meet women at a bar, which was even odder. That storyline might’ve worked if the men were either much older or much younger, but as it stood, it fell flat.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how many hours they’d been out with the baby yet had not needed to change his diaper. I actually expected that to be the next part of the bit and was very relieved when it didn’t happen.
Yes, It’s Ladies’ Night
The women fared somewhat better on their pub crawl, even as Eve grew despondent that some of her favorite bars and theaters had closed down since she’d had a night out.
She finally pushed back on Roz’s insistence that she get a phone number from a guy — ANY guy! — and rightfully called her out for displacing her need to feel needed by her daughter onto Eve.
In the middle of this, the episode’s funniest moment came courtesy of Terry, the affable, flannel-clad purveyor of above-ground pool heaters.
His okey-dokey breeziness and dimpled smile were a great counterpoint to the three women arguing while they alternately asked for and refused his number.
Later, in a fantastic callback to Roz’s OG Frasier days, she was the one who made a date with Terry at the episode’s end. It was a nice reminder of her wide-ranging, non-judgmental dating tastes and history.
One thing that jumped out during the Girls’ Night scenes was how high-strung Olivia seemed next to the other single women.
I can’t decide if the show wants Olivia’s singleness to be her entire personality or if the joke is that the chair of Harvard’s psychology department could use some therapy herself.
Either way, she seemed out of place in the trio in a way that wasn’t fully explained by her being used to hanging out with stuffy older guys like Frasier and Alan.
Olivia is an underused asset that the show would be wise to pay more attention to in terms of characterization. We already have Frasier as a dating world disaster.
Olivia’s university position would rightfully keep her from discussing the kind of cheerfully promiscuous adventures that Roz did back in the day.
Why not explore some different narrative avenues through Olivia’s character instead of falling back (and not very inventively, either) on the tired, dating-obsessed single gal trope?
The two groups finally converged at the art gallery opening, where the men were busy pretending to be the baby’s relative to different women.
Eve’s blow-up at them was well-earned, but I’m not sure it will make a huge difference in how the men treat her going forward.
But that didn’t appear to be the real point of that scene.
Rather, it was a segue to a rare “serious” moment where Frasier played bartender-slash-psychiatrist and learned that Alan is estranged from his adult daughter, who is pregnant.
While it was good to get a better picture of Alan’s pathology, this revelation seemed like a shoehorned attempt to mimic the more nimble balance of pathos and farce demonstrated by the OG series.
The scene at the Girls’ Night bar with Eve calling out Roz’s motivations was a bit like this, too.
It’s good news that the show is moving away from pure slapstick and perhaps recognizing that it could use more depth.
The execution of that was a little off in this episode, but at least it provides some hope for the rest of the season.
One assumes that Roz returned to Seattle after her date with Terry, so that might be the end of her Boston visits for a while — unless Terry becomes a recurring character, which I kind of wish he would!
Once again, it’s a warning sign for this show when its guest stars — and in Terry’s case, random bit players! — are more engaging than members of the main cast.
It doesn’t bode well for any series if I constantly wish that its guest stars had their own show.
The Past Should Maybe Stay There
One thing the revival could have left in the past is the insulting dating games like Freddy chatting up the art gallery bartender solely for her baseball box seats.
These kinds of one-note, sexist storylines didn’t play well in the ’90s and are even more glaringly out of place in the new show.
There must be a way to portray Frasier as a hapless singleton looking for love that isn’t completely terrible to everyone involved.
And Freddy really needs to figure out which century he’s living in.
Where’s David?
Question: Is David Crane being written out of the show?
We rarely see him anymore, as if the show doesn’t know what to do with him.
Just like Olivia’s character, David needs an overhaul. It seems that the show abandoned having him as a stand-in for Niles but didn’t have a plan B.
Well, I predict that David will be the one who’s on babysitting duty in the future instead of Frasier, Alan, and Freddy.
What did you think of this episode, TV fanatics? Is Frasier’s second season coming into focus or going off the rails?
Hit the comments and let us know!