I was a fan of Frasier because of the smart writing and the deft depiction of the relationship between a working-class father and his more sophisticated offspring – a situation many people can relate to but rarely see presented in popular media. Also, it was the only TV show I ever saw that quoted Peter De Vries. Frasier and Miles are eating in a museum cafeteria and one asks the other: “Who was it who said ‘The food in museums is usually on a par with the murals in restaurants’?”
So of course last night I watched the first two episodes of the new Frasier. The first was silly and slapsticky, but the second seemed to get back to the old show’s strengths, this time with a sophisticated father and his Everyman son, who dropped out of Harvard and became a fireman. Per the old formula, they end up living together and there are predictable disagreements over home decoration. The son wants to display his glass cube containing dirt from Fenway Park. The father says it clashes with the piano. Relenting in the end, Frasier places it above the keyboard. “Fenway,” he says, “meet Steinway.”
As long as there are lines like that, I’ll keep watching.
