tanman

No...no...no...the most unbelievable thing about Paw Patrol is the corruption of Mayor Humdinger. I mean he's an elected official and he's raised his own group of followers to counteract the efforts of the civil servants and his community in general by perpetrating and encouraging lawless behavior? Unthinkable. Total fiction.

Michael Corvin

I take a bigger issue with Frasier being a totally different character than he was on Cheers. Frasier in Boston is a normal guy who thinks he's more highbrow than he really is (and Diane feeds into that) and hangs at a bar with other everyday guys.

Frasier in Seattle is the fantasy version that Frasier in Boston thought he was. Seattle Frasier also wouldn't be caught dead hanging in a place like Cheers with guys the likes of Norm & Cliff and a "Neanderthal" like Sam.

Completely changing the character is the plot hole.

And yes, I know I stand alone in this view.

Decker

Yeah I disagree with that. Besides his family, he spends most of his time with Roz who would fit right in with the Cheers crowd. And Frasier married Lilith who was every bit as upper class and sophisticated and aloof on Cheers as Niles was on Frasier.

tanman

I agree with Decker. It's not that Frasier, changed he just never found a place like Cheers again. And he was hanging out with Niles more so of course his proclivities would trend towards the highbrow more then when he was in Boston. Plus Cheers wasn't about Frasier so we didn't see him outside of Cheers that often.

Also Frasier has to be the best sitcom spinoff series ever.

milo bloom

Yeah, that last part doesn't get talked about enough. I can rewatch Frasier pretty much anytime but I haven't had the urge to re-watch Cheers in almost never.

Why So Blu?

I have never watched an episode of Frazier.

I remember the commercials for it and there was a funny clip of Niles at a ballgame and the peanut guy throws a bag at him and he throws it back and says "I beg your pardon!" That always made me laugh.

Paff

Obviously Martin Crane was re-imagined for the spinoff series, because on Cheers Frasier mentioned his father was a research scientist who had more time for his experiments than his children (Frasier also says he was an only child, and that both his parents were dead, and the three inconsistencies were ret-conned in the episode where Sam Malone pays a visit to Seattle). That certainly seems more likely, but when Martin had to become a regular on-screen character some changes were made.

milo bloom

Yeah, I was a little surprised that hadn't come up before, how the details about his dad and such were changed, but since they lampshaded it in the show, I let it go.

tanman

Oh man you're really missing out. There are so many lines and moments like that. You should definitely check it out.

GoldenJCJ

I haven’t seen Frasier since it originally aired but I wonder if I would be bothered by Niles’ constant adulterous behavior with my more modern eye.

I also remember the TV ads for the show doing a huge disservice to it by constantly playing up the “will they or won’t they” angle for Niles and Daphne.

Coral

I don't remember him saying that BOTH his parents were dead... just his father, the scientist. But I may have forgotten that episode/scene.
I do remember when Frasier's mom visited him and was a total bitch to Diane and threatened to kill her if she didn't stop seeing him... which is a totally different personality than how she's talked about in the spin-off.

Sitcoms are always re-adjusting the show and rewriting character backstories, etc. Like characters who disappeared in Happy Days, The King of Queens, Family Matters, etc.
Even in Seinfeld, Jerry had a sister and George had a brother - both of which we've never seen... and then they were both only children.

tanman

That's a weird take. I would think that a more modern eye would be more tolerant to adulterous behavior as much as it's portrayed in media now.

Also he never did anything adulterous. Lustful sure but Niles never crossed that line. His honor is intact in my view.

GoldenJCJ

Perhaps. But like I said, I haven’t seen the show since it originally aired. I was 13 when the show started and in my early 20s and still single when it ended. I would imagine that now that I’m in my 40s and married, I might view Niles a little different.

”adulterous” may not be the right word to use but I got the sense that Niles would have cheated if given the opportunity. Seeing a married dude fall all over himself lusting after someone else seems a bit in the creeper side.

Who knows, maybe it won’t seem weird to me but maybe it would.

Count Dooku

In that way, the show was very smart. By never showing Maris on screen, it was impossible for the audience to relate to her. All we knew were all the descriptions of her, which made her sound like a terrible person to be married to, and so we accepted that Niles would lust after Daphne.

GoldenJCJ

Good point. I wonder how intentional that was. I always assumed Maris was just the Frasier version of Vera on Cheers.

cultshock

Holy crap, how did I miss (or forget) those references over the past three decades that I've endlessly re-watched the show.

Paff

The episode where Kevin McHale played a ringer for the Cheers basketball team. They were planning to donate the money won to an orphanage, at which point Frasier said "You know, since both of my parents are dead, technically that makes me an orphan..."

Josh-da-man

Niles married an heiress and had more money than Frasier, so it wouldn't surprise me if that brought Frasier's snobbery to the forefront. He was compensating for having a younger brother be more successful in life than him.

Going further, you could say that having a father like Martin made Frasier comfortable in a place like Cheers. He could swing between the highbrow and lowbrow worlds.

Paff

Beer and pretzels that's our game, C-H-E-R-S

Michael Corvin

I like both of these points.

I still maintain that the character is different enough that if the show was named something else, early on it would have been said that Grammer is playing a more highbrow successor to Frasier and that would be that. No one would have batted an eye..