Welcome back! In case you did not read part 1, a) how dare you, and b) check it out for a full explanation of the premise of this five-part blog series. The Spark Notes version is, we're doing a chronological exploration of ten iconic sitcoms, focusing on the best and the worst rated episodes on IMDB. I'm excited today to move from the early to the mid-90's and discuss two shows that became culturally ubiquitous.
3. Frasier (1993 - 2004)
It was suggested that I do Cheers as it's one of the most celebrated sitcoms of all time, but I did not want to do a show I had no context for and just sound like a total idiot spewing useless content all over the internet, that's not what I am, right, right, right guys? I've never seen a single episode of Cheers and all I know about it is that I think the characters were in a bar a lot, and Family Guy often references it, mostly as a vehicle for making fat jokes about Kirstie Alley. But I also know that it spawned a spinoff called Frasier that became wildly popular in its own right, ran for 11 years, and had a crossover (of sorts) with my beloved Simpsons. (Not as much of an overt crossover as a show I'll discuss in a later entry ... we'll get there.)
I've caught a smattering of Frasier episodes over the years, and it's a gem of a show. Unlike Full House, which was a show for kids, and Seinfeld, which was a show for cynical young adults, Frasier is for everyone. There's rarely anything you'd need to cover the kids' ears for or that would scandalize the grandparents. It's a smart show, but in a very accessible way, unlike a later entry in my list that tries to beat you over the head with how smart it is ... again, we'll get there. Let's just talk about Frasier.
IMDB's Top: Ham Radio (IMDB 9.4, M 7.5)
I guess I'm doling out pretty middle-of-the-road ratings so far. Let's see if this continues. Will we see any great episodes that blow "Ham Radio" out of the water, or any episodes worse than the Full House episode "Secret Admirer?"
The premise of "Ham Radio" is that Frasier is enlisting his staff to do a live radio broadcast of an old-time murder mystery, and his overbearing directing style turns the performance into a disaster. It's a terrific standalone episode. With no context, you can immediately tell how each character is related to Frasier and get a good idea of their personalities. There's not really much to the premise - basically, Frasier's ridiculously high expectations for the unenthusiastic voice actors driving everyone crazy - but it's very funny and charming. By the time the performance goes live, Frasier has driven one of his actors to drop out of the show and forces his brother Niles to take over the part. In a hilarious sequence, Niles pops all the prop balloons available (these were used for gunshot sound effects) to indicate that he killed the entire cast and the play is over.
Is this the best episode of Frasier? I don't know. A few years ago a friend who is really into Frasier had us watch what he believed to be the best episode, "Halloween." It's also a very funny episode, doing the spiraling series-of-misunderstandings-until-the-truth-comes-out trope at least ten trillion times better than the Full House episode "Secret Admirer." But, "Ham Radio" is about as good as "Halloween." This is a consistent show. When you sit down to watch Frasier, you pretty much know what you're in for. As DJ Khaled describes Grace and Frankie in this awesome video, Frasier is "a nice show."
IMDB's Bottom: Some Assembly Required (IMDB 7.0, M 6.8)
See what I mean about consistency? The lowest episode is a 7. And I might have rated it a 7, but that score went to "The Contest" and I'm eventually going to have to rank these.
In this episode, Frasier has a hard time letting go of a house he volunteered to help building and keeps attempting to redecorate even after the new owners move in. Niles has to take over a career day speech at an elementary school when his dad gets sick. And Daphne is fighting with her mother.
Is this the worst episode of Frasier ever? I don't know. I remember the pilot being kind of uncomfortable because you get the feeling Frasier's dad and brother hate him; they haven't settled into the loving verbal sparring we'd get used to in later years. And I remember a kind of stupid episode where Niles is trying to settle on a pet name for Daphne. But even those episodes aren't awful, and neither is this one. If I were to watch "Some Assembly Required" as a one-off, I'd still return to the show. Frasier having to swallow his pride is always entertaining, Niles turning a class of third graders into germaphobes is pretty funny, and we get a lot of cuteness from Eddie, the Jack Russell terrier. The Daphne storyline is not funny, and I don't know if it was meant to be, but that's the only thing I'd ding this episode for.
So, why did it rate so much lower than "Ham Radio?" Well, it's not as good as "Ham Radio," but also it came out in a much later season, meaning it fits the pattern we've been following so far. A pattern that will be broken by my next entry ...
4. Friends (1994 - 2004)
Clap clap clap clap
Friends, for better or worse, may be the ultimate comfort watch for millennials. To say this show was huge would be an understatement.
I watched Friends occasionally in junior high, and I remember a time when my dad was recommending American TV shows to our Swedish relatives. He said, "Have you seen Seinfeld?" They hadn't. He went on to gush, "It's just the best show ever made. All the actors play their roles so, so well and are so funny."
I chimed in, "Friends is really funny, too. All of those actors play those roles really well."
My dad shut me down, to youthful M's embarrassment, "They don't even have to act on that show because all the characters are the same, they're all just idiots."
I did not revisit Friends for many a year, but not that long ago I caught an episode in a hotel room and grown-up M realized that her dad was right. These characters are aggressively stupid. The episode I watched was "The One In Vegas," and it was utterly ridiculous. Ross and Rachel are having a prank war, Joey thinks he found his identical hand twin, and dumbest of all, Monica and Chandler had some kind of stupid argument and they say that a dice roll is going to determine whether they break up or get married. (They'd been dating less than 1 season.) And this is the cliffhanger? We're supposed to be invested in this relationship? Is this how grown-up dating works? What are these people's IQs?
Is Seinfeld better than Friends? Objectively, I think you'd have to say, yes. But would a teenage girl enjoy Friends more than she would enjoy Seinfeld? Probably, yeah. The generation that watched Full House as little kids graduated to Friends. Whereas Full House teaches you that adults are just big sillies and kids are just as smart as they are, Friends introduces you to a pack of adults that preteens can identify with that are also just big sillies and just as socially incompetent as our beloved Full House dads. So, it's empowering for young viewers because they can identify with whatever stupid thing Monica and Chandler are doing right now.
And now that we're talking about Friends, I'm going to broach another overarching topic. Do shows, especially those that rely on a "will they won't they" vibe to keep the audience hooked, get worse when the characters actually get together?
This is a pretty common sitcom trope, and one that tends to annoy the **** out of me. Let's go through the shows we've covered so far. Full House doesn't really have this, Seinfeld doesn't either, that tease they did in the series finale about Elaine and Jerry does not count, but Frasier sure did. My partner claims that Frasier got worse once Niles and Daphne got together.
Friends doesn't have an overarching will-they-or-won't-they plot so much as Ross and Rachel constantly breaking up and getting back together, because they are not functional adults who know how relationships work. That "I got off the plane" series finale? If the show had kept going, they would be broken up again in the next episode. But, I think Friends did get worse after Monica and Chandler got together in a mostly stable relationship and people started settling down and having babies and stuff. Maybe we want our characters to stay young and reckless forever, like in It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Those guys will never change.
(Looking forward at the shows I have yet to cover, THREE of the remaining six are heavily based around will-they-or-won't-they plots, and from the random episodes I've caught of them, they were worse once the characters inevitably got together. I won't spoil what shows they are. Can you guess what they are???)
Anyway, enough preamble, let's not stay stuck in second gear.
IMDB's Top: The One Where Everyone Finds Out (IMDB 9.7, M 7.25)
9.7, wowza! This is the episode where everyone finds out that Monica and Chandler are hooking up. Joey already knew, Rachel already knew, but in this episode, Phoebe finds out in kind of a horrific way when she accidentally witnesses the two hooking up against a giant window for some reason (???). Rachel, Joey, and Phoebe agree that while they have no problem with their buds being a couple, they don't like that they're hiding it from them, so they decide they are going to call their bluff. The plan they come up with is for Phoebe to pretend to try to seduce Chandler, and they'll just see who cracks first.
This is a really funny episode. It's hilarious seeing the friends play mind games with each other - the characters may be idiots, but the actors have great chemistry. It's hilarious seeing Monica shut Chandler down when he says he thinks Phoebe is into him ("She knows about us! That is the ONLY possible explanation"). And the seduction scene between Phoebe and Chandler is one of the funniest scenes in the series.
Would I recommend this as the first episode someone watch, though, to initiate them to Friends? I don't know. I can't think of a better one off the top of my head, but I feel like this episode requires some familiarity with the characters and with the show thus far. You'd need to know that Monica and Chandler were having a secret fling, why this was a big deal, who already knew and who didn't, and the overall relationships between the characters - for example, that no one outside of Ross and Rachel have been romantically involved before, and that Ross is Monica's brother.
Not knowing stuff like that can skew your opinion of a show if you dive right in at the middle. This was my experience the first time I ever watched an episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. The episode I randomly watched was "Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire." Not only is this episode not really funny, there are fake kittens constantly in peril, and the diaper dance thing is really weird, but I didn't get the relationship between the characters at all. I was like ... do they work together? I didn't know Frank is Dennis and Dee's dad and Charlie's roommate, and I thought until the end of the episode that Dennis and Dee were a couple (though, finding out they were brother and sister actually made the episode weirder). I said a big no thanks and didn't return to the show until years later, and the rest is history. So, this is why we need to carefully curate the episodes we choose when introducing shows to our friends, and this blog is meant to discover how helpful IMDB ratings are in selecting those episodes.
Anyway, I should probably get back to talking about the shows I'm actually blogging about. On to what IMDB calls the least friendly episode of Friends!
IMDB's Bottom: The One with the Fake Monica (IMDB 7.6, M 3.5)
Take your victory lap, Full House! You're no longer dominating the bottom of my rankings.
This is a season 1 episode, which totally overturns my theory that earlier episodes in series are rated higher due to nostalgia etc etc. But, outside of the numerous clip shows Friends has aired, this is the lowest rated episode on IMDB. (And it's still a friggin' 7.6.)
In this episode, Monica is trying to track down the person who stole her credit card while Ross struggles with the decision to get rid of his pet monkey because it is humping everything. Monica ultimately finds the woman who has been using her credit card and decides this woman is the free spirit she always wished she could be and they start going on reckless spending binges together.
It's not a good episode. There was one joke that made me chuckle a little but then they ran it into the ground. Joey is toying with new last names, and Chandler suggests "Stalin" to which Joey replies "Joe Stalin. Yeah, that's a name you'd remember" and I lurfed, but then they just ruined it by draining every last drop out of that joke, with Chandler saying "Or how about Joseph" and continuing to egg Joey on, then Joey later making a dramatic entrance to tell the other friends that it turns out, there already is a famous person named Joseph Stalin.
I'm not an avid Friends watcher, but even I get that this episode doesn't accurately portray Monica's character. Her whole "thing" is that she's OCD, a neat freak, and extremely protective of her possessions. If her credit card were stolen, she would be busting down the doors of hell, not blithely going over her credit card receipts and musing about how this person seemed to have a really interesting life. Monica is just a blank slate in this episode. And when she's devastated to find out Fake Monica got arrested, it's a completely unearned emotional moment.
The worst thing about the episode, though, is playing animal neglect for laughs. I'm an animal lover, and one of my triggers is when people give up their pets as soon as they become an inconvenience. Which is absolutely what Ross does, and we're supposed to feel sorry for him when he makes the decision to send the monkey to a zoo. It's another hugely unearned emotional moment when he says goodbye to the monkey. At least he didn't just abandon his monkey in Germany like Justin Bieber did, but, maybe life imitates art and Justin Bieber watched this show as a kid and figured monkey abandonment was totally ok.
Anyway, if any episode rates a 5 or lower, it's safe to say that if this had been my first exposure to the show, I never would have watched the show again, and this one definitely qualifies.
Anyway, gear up for part 3! In my next post, I'll be discussing a silly, beloved family sitcom as well as a show so profane that it became simultaneously one of the most loved and one of the most hated properties in the nation. Buckle up, because TV truly is a land of contrast.
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