The Paramount+ reboot of “Frasier” twists one of the most beloved shows of the ‘90s into an excruciatingly painful caricature of itself.
Bloated with shoddily written jokes that would feel more at home in children’s sitcoms like “iCarly” or “Hannah Montana,” “Frasier” completely disregards every single aspect of the original series that made it great.
The meticulously crafted farcical screwball storylines are replaced with lazy, hackish plots that are so uninspired, it feels as though the writers must have written them in their sleep. Where the original “Frasier” defied typical sitcom tropes and opted for a more unique brand of humor, the reboot embraces everything its predecessor fought to avoid: cheap cliches, one-dimensional characters and nauseating one-liners.
While the storylines of the original series were filled with endlessly hilarious misunderstandings and sophisticated, meticulously written jokes, the reboot’s attempts to replicate this style are lackluster and void of any real comedic value.
In the series premiere, Frasier’s son Frederick goes to great lengths to hide the fact that his female roommate has a baby. While the writers were clearly attempting to set up the same screwball hijinks that viewers loved in the original series, this particular set-up makes no sense.
While the original series thrived on absurdity that was grounded in reality, the new series finds itself stuck in a bland, mundane reality with moments of forced absurdity peppered in.
Kelsey Grammer’s faithful revival of the titular character is a minor relief but is not enough to save the show from its overwhelming mediocrity.
Frasier’s son, who was portrayed in the original series as a gifted young boy with a passion for math and science, has become a firefighter. The driving force behind the new series is Frasier’s inability to respect his son’s unexpected choice in career, making the once-beloved character more insufferable and unlikeable than ever before.
The sheer delusion that the creators, as well as Grammer, who pushed harder than anyone else for the revival, must have had to think that a reboot with only one returning character would work is baffling.
As memorable as the character of Frasier Crane is, the original series would have been nothing without characters like Niles, Daphne, Martin and Roz. As a character who has been a hyperbolic caricature of himself ever since he first appeared on “Cheers” in the ‘80s, the other characters in the original series helped mute Frasier’s pompous grandiosity and bring him down to earth.
Now, without the original cast supporting him, the annoyingness and overall unlikeability of Frasier Crane has been unleashed; and this time, there’s no one to stop him. The new characters are brutally bland and underdeveloped, and Frasier’s dynamics with them are cold and uninteresting.
Watching the reboot, I felt like Malcolm McDowell during the infamous scene in “A Clockwork Orange” where his character was strapped into a chair and his eyelids were pried open with hooks, forcing him to watch unimaginably horrifying videos. The show was truly a test of my patience; the fact that I survived through all four episodes is nothing short of a miracle.
After finally making it through the episodes that are currently available, I have just one question for Kelsey Grammer and the show’s creators: why?
“Frasier” is streaming on Paramount+.
