Niles and Daphne Take Center Stage in Frasier's Seventh Season

Back when Cheers was still on the air, I used to catch an episode now and then, but I was too young to really appreciate it, and I mostly just liked the theme song. Of the characters, my least favorite was Dr. Frasier Crane, a smug psychiatrist, so it seems a little odd that, years later, I started watching Frasier, but around the time I was in college, I was pretty caught up in it.

I suppose it helped that the erudite psychiatrist and his equally effete brother Niles were always making allusions to works of literature I studied in my college English classes, and I loved the clever wordplay of the titles that preceded each scene. It was one of the quirky touches that made the show so distinct. Additionally, when I was a freshman, I went through a particularly powerful obsession with the music of Art Garfunkel, which I’d always loved but hadn’t really listened to in years. When I read that he once had a voice-only guest spot as a man who calls into Frasier’s radio program, I began watching the re-runs as often as I could in hopes that I would see that episode. I still haven’t. But I did see a lot of other good ones.

As the series begins, Frasier has relocated from Boston to Seattle, where his crusty dad, Martin (John Mahoney), a retired cop, and his younger brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce), a psychiatrist with a private practice, reside. Niles and Frasier are two peas in a pod, and they love taking in fine culture and talking about it over complicated coffees at their favorite shop, Café Nervosa. While they are very much in sync with each other, they also frequently find themselves in competition.

Martin is much more down-to-earth, which causes some friction. He moves in with Frasier, and he insists upon filling his son’s condo with such distasteful elements as his ratty old chair and his shrewd Jack Russell Terrier, Eddie (Moose / Enzo). He swills beer and watches sports. He tires of his sons’ constant high-falutin’ talk. His kind but tough live-in physical therapist, an Englishwoman named Daphne Moon (Jane Leeves), has much more in common with the father than the sons, but Niles adores her, first for her beauty, then for her sweetness. Meanwhile, Frasier must daily deal with Roz Doyle (Peri Gilpin), the street-smart, promiscuous producer of his radio show. These six characters form the core of the show.

I mostly watched Frasier in syndication, but season seven was when I really became a fan, and as I watched all those older episodes in which timid Niles sighed over Daphne, I became anxious to see whether he would ever let her in on his feelings, and I found myself watching more current episodes. At first, Niles is merely infatuated with her. In fact, he is a married man, so his appreciation for Daphne’s finer features hardly is something to encourage. But as the seasons wear on, and Niles is still pining for Daphne years after his marriage to a deranged socialite dissolves, rooting for the two of them to give it a shot feels more inevitable. By the seventh season, it had become the central question of the series.

Thus, I tend to think of season seven as Frasier’s most pivotal. Pierce is a brilliant actor, and just as Brad Garrett so often steals the show on Everybody Loves Raymond as Ray’s lumbering, resentful brother Robert, so Pierce gets most of the biggest laughs with his fidgety bundle of insecurities and compulsions. Yet by this point in the show, he is also the most compelling dramatic character. I ached for him in the many moments when he nearly gets up the nerve to tell Daphne just how much he cares about her, only to lose heart at the last minute or have something come along and interrupt him.

Pierce embodies that angst perfectly, and show creators David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee drag out the tension as long as they possibly can. Daphne is always entirely congenial with Niles, but the writers go out of their way to leave her feelings toward him ambiguous as long as possible. Particularly with her role as an employee of the family, it seemed that it was up to Niles to bare his soul even if she shared his regard, and I know I shouted at the TV for him to do so on more than one occasion, even as I thought, Well, would I have the guts to do it? No, probably not. And if I tried, I’d probably just end up sticking my foot in my mouth. So I could sympathize with his plight. But I knew I was going to be pretty aggravated if all of this anticipation was not rewarded.

This season finds Daphne engaged to lawyer Donny Douglas (Saul Rubinek), which means plenty of agitation involving her overbearing relatives, especially her mother (Millicent Martin) and her destructively boorish brother Simon (Anthony LaPaglia). Niles, bemoaning all his missed chances to declare his feelings for Daphne, embarks upon a series of whirlwind relationships that leads him to Dr. Mel Karnofsky (Jane Adams), a woman as icy and abrasive as Daphne is warm and compassionate. No one can stand her, and it’s pretty plain that Niles can’t either; he’s just getting married in an effort to get over losing Daphne, which always struck me as an absurdly stupid thing to do. Far better to remain single than get hitched to someone who makes you miserable. She does provide some funny moments, but she’s so hard to take that I mostly just cringed whenever she showed up.

Aside from all the complications of these two impending marriages, which are set for the same week, the season does have some individual episodes that aren’t quite so wrapped up in the romantic drama. My favorite of these is A Tsar Is Born, in which Frasier and Martin are startled to learn that they are both fans of Antiques Roadshow, though for different reasons. When the PBS series comes to town looking for treasures culled from Seattle attics, Martin brings along a kitschy old clock and is astonished to discover that it once belonged to the Romanov family. Frasier decides to do some digging, figuring this must mean that the Cranes are descended from Russian royalty, but his findings are not quite what he had anticipated. Another great one is The Late Dr. Crane, in which a case of mistaken identity leaves most of Seattle believing that Frasier is dead.

Frasier was an unusual sit-com that was equal parts family and workplace comedy, with plenty of pathos and romance mixed in. I would say that I probably fall about halfway between the Crane brothers’ intellectual elitism and their father’s salt-of-the-earth kick-back style, so I found plenty to identify with on both ends, and I was more invested in the seventh season than any other. Of course, it’s that much better with the first six seasons behind it, so I highly recommend this season, but I wouldn’t start here. It’s worth it to really get to know these characters first.

Osmosis Jones Can't Decide What Its Audience Is

Over the past few decades, Bill Murray has played a lot of schlubby fellas, but never have I seen him less attractive than in Osmosis Jones, the 2001 Farrelly Brothers movie about the quest of a white blood cell and a cold pill to defeat the virus ravaging Frank, the grungy guy in whom they reside.

Murray portrays Frank, a zookeeper and widower with astonishingly poor eating habits and hygiene. His young daughter Shane (Elena Franklin) is alarmed about both, but her concerns fall upon deaf ears, and after an especially disgusting scene involving an ill-advised implementation of the 10-second rule, he pays the price for his lack of standards as to what he puts into his mouth. A malevolent virus makes its way into his system, and the micro-organisms inside of him must work overtime to counteract the damage.

This is an odd movie because it seems geared toward two different audiences. The live-action portion is stilted and absurdly over-the-top, with all the finesse of a film created for the express purpose of encouraging elementary school students to eat their veggies and wash their hands before dinner. Pouty Shane tries not to condescend too much, but she still comes across as an insufferable know-it-all; she may be just a tween, but she seems to spend her life lecturing her father. Then again, his immaturity level is off the charts. His gross-out antics may amuse a certain subset of youngsters, but most adults are likely to find these scenes tedious and B-movie-ish.

While the live-action portion is clearly aimed at a young audience, the animated part is slick-looking, filled with familiar voice talent and hip commentary on contemporary culture. Health lessons abound here as well, but they are much more technical, and the writing in general is far more sophisticated. There’s also some innuendo, and several moments involving uber-villain The Red Death (Laurence Fishburne) are quite terrifying, so not only will a lot of the animated stuff go over the heads of kids, some of it is pretty inappropriate.

The most enjoyable elements of the film are the maneuvers of the campy mayor of Frank’s body, voiced by William Shatner, and the friendship that develops between loose cannon cop Osmosis (Chris Rock) and distinguished but heroic cold pill Drix (David Hyde Pierce). These two characters initially clash, but they bond as they become two of the only organisms in the body who understand what they are truly up against with this virus. Frasier turned me into an ardent fan of Pierce, and as always, his voice work is fantastic here. Rock is almost a little too spastic for my tastes, but he’s likable nonetheless.

Osmosis Jones is a mixed bag of a movie that is worth a watch, but most people will probably find at least one part of the movie frustrating. Parents of kids under twelve should be aware of the adult themes in the animated portion, while adults in general should know that the live segments are very juvenile indeed. Still, the movie’s message about the importance of a healthy diet and proper cleanliness, heavy-handed as it may be, is a worthwhile one, and Drix and Osmosis make an entertaining and visually appealing team.

It's Not Toy Story, But A Bug's Life Doesn't Bug Me

Reading Janell Cannon's Crickwing, a marvelous picture book involving a cockroach and two very different groups of ants, I was reminded of A Bug's Life, the Disney-Pixar follow-up to the hugely successful Toy Story. I was surprised to realize that I'd never reviewed it. Upon reflection, however, I think of all the films that pairing has produced, A Bug's Life is the least memorable because bugs just aren't as versatile and rich with creative possibilities as toys, monsters, cars or even fish. Especially when the vast majority of the characters are the same type of insect.

Flik (Dave Foley) is a clumsy inventor with a dream. He wants to make a difference to his fellow ants, and to make an impression on beautiful, feisty Atta (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss), princess of his colony. But no one seems to appreciate him except her little sister Dot (Hayden Panattiere), and he only manages to alienate the others further when his attempts to speed up production go hopelessly awry. When he goes off to find warriors who will help defend his kind from the vicious grasshoppers who will be coming to collect the ants' regular offering of food, he thinks he's on a noble mission, but Atta just wants him out of the way. Little does she know that he will actually succeed in his quest - well, after a fashion...

The ants in this movie are quite cute, and though I find it odd that they boast shiny blue or purple bodies, I'm not complaining. The grasshoppers are big, mean-looking brutes, though without Hopper (Kevin Spacey) they probably wouldn't bother terrorizing the ants; his dopey brother Molt (Richard Kind) is especially unintimidating. What really livens the movie up is the arrival of the group of circus bugs Flik finds on his trip to town. This motley crew is good for a lot of comic relief thanks to their varied and unusual appearances and personality quirks and the lauded actors providing them with voices.

There's Heimlich (Joe Ranft), the jolly, ludicrously chubby caterpillar with a German accent; tough-talking (male) ladybug Francis (Denis Leary); classy couple Manny (Jonathan Harris), a praying mantis, and Gypsy Moth (Madeline Kahn), who are past their prime; black widow spider Rosie (Bonnie Hunt); good-natured and wimpy rhino beetle Dim (Brad Garrett); twin pills bugs Tuck and Roll (Michael McShane), who don't speak English; and my favorite, long-suffering fussbudget Slim (David Hyde Pierce), a stick bug.

This eclectic group adds color to A Bug's Life's intricate depiction of that strange world of creatures going on unnoticed amongst the blades of grass beneath our feet; without them, I suspect the film would not have captured my fancy nearly as much as it did. As it is, while A Bug's Life doesn't quite measure up to the likes of Toy Story and Monsters, Inc., it won't bug me at all to sit down and watch it.