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Frasier
1993 · TV series · 24 min episodes · 11 seasons
Created by David Angell, Peter Casey, David Clark Lee
After many years spent at the “Cheers” bar, Frasier moves back home to Seattle to work as a radio psychiatrist after his policeman father gets shot in the hip on duty.
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78 comments on Hacker News
- Exercise, exercise, exercise! I am quite willing to bet that a lot of people with sleep issues don't really exercise properly. Exhaust yourself here.
I do at least an hour of cardio a day just for that. I'm in great shape but still have terrible sleep lol
- Magnesium and melatonin while trying to get the sleep habit started.
I've been thinking about trying melatonin. I'm always afraid of becoming dependent on anything related to sleep. I should really give it a go, though.
- Audiobooks. Not podcasts. An actual story, like someone is reading you to sleep when you were young (if you sleep next to someone, you might need particular band headphones, or lower the volume and put a slim tablet under your pillow).
I do exactly the tablet-under-the-pillow trick but for sitcom reruns, e.g., Frasier, 30 Rock, Cheers, Parks and Rec, etc. I'll give audio books another try. I found they can be distracting instead of relaxing.
Consider just fast-forwarding past a scene you can't handle. Like many shows, it takes a few episodes before the actors truly understand their characters.
The feeling you're experiencing has a name: it's called "cringe". I can't watch Frasier for more than about half an episode because of it. Or I Love Lucy... same problem. But Seinfeld, which has plenty of the same humour mechanic, always seems to manage to stay just below the threshold for me.
Halt and Catch Fire is really, really good. Please trust us. Give it another shot. Skip forward a bit when you feel the need to. Skip the first episode entirely and just read a synopsis if you need to.
Why do they even have these? Like, Frasier has been available on various streaming platforms for probably 15 years. Some human has already written presumably correct episode/season summaries.
Apparently they didn't forget. Lionsgate did all the necessary work, then someone sent the "wrong file" to HBO Max, and it seems nobody checked it properly before uploading it!
Given the volume of material these streamers are handling, I expect QA is minimal. I remember when I was watching Frasier on Amazon Prime, a bunch of the episodes had been configured to play in the wrong aspect ratio. Clearly nobody had ever bothered to check them.
Isn't this just Pluto TV? Like, https://pluto.tv/us/live-tv/633354b63df9700007f6a1b7 is the sitcom channel, https://pluto.tv/us/live-tv/66ba495ffe11e5000881f049/details is the channel of just Cheers and Frasier, etc. Just playing non-stop through one episode after another on a schedule as quasi-"live" TV.
There is a similar episode of Frasier where he and his brother Niles keep trying to get into ever more exclusive tiers of the “Empire Club” in Seattle. One of my faves. https://frasier.fandom.com/wiki/The_Club
They just don't produce very good tv shows anymore. There is nothing to watch.
In the 90s we had Seinfeld, X-Files, King Of Queens, Frasier, Star Trek TNG, Macguyver and so on.
Then onto 1990s movies, which by the time they reached TV syndication were still good! Will I watch Lethal Weapon or Die Hard even though I've seen it before? Heck yes!
> What happens if the thing thinks the speed limit on a 65 MPH highway is 30 MPH?
A couple thoughts on that.
1. I would expect that they won't be developing their own system for finding out speed limits and monitoring for changes. They will most likely use the same commercial sources that are used by many mapping and navigation apps and built-in car navigation systems.
Those sources do occasionally have errors, but the only roads with speed limits above 55 mph there are interstates and some major divided highways. Those are all high traffic roads with plenty of drivers using navigation apps on them, so a speed limit being too low in the data is going to get quickly noticed by a lot of people and reported.
Less frequently traveled roads might have data errors that last longer, which would be annoying, but the limiter does let you go 10 mph over what it thinks is the posted limit. I expect that the most common error will be missing when the type of zone changes. For example you have a 40 mph road and the data mistakenly says it goes through a business zone when actually it goes around that business zone. Business zones typically have a 25 mph limit, so you'd be stuck going 35 mph (25 mph it thinks is the limit plus 10 mph) instead of 40 mph until you get past what it thinks is the business zone.
That's annoying but it is not so slow compared to the real limit that you'll be a danger to other drivers.
2. Route around the error if it is too annoying.
Virginia law only gives judges the authority to require someone to use this if they have been convicted of speeding over 100 mph.
That's 30 mph faster than the highest speed limit in Virginia, which is 70 mph on interstates and a few major divided highways. The limit everywhere else is 55 mph or less.
20 mph or more above the posted limit or over 85 mph in Virginia is reckless driving which is a criminal offense (a class 1 misdemeanor, which is the highest level of misdemeanor) rather than a mere infraction, with up to a year in jail and/or a $2500 fine.
There should only be a few people who are forced to get one of these limiters, and they are people who arguably should be getting their driving privileges suspended for a few months at least.
If they are given one of these limiters instead of their license being suspended and so driving will be inconvenient for a few months, I'm having trouble dredging up much sympathy for them. It's kind of like when someone in prison is paroled two years before their sentence is up, and then complains about the burden of having to check in with their parole officer periodically for the next two years.
My feelings on people with that kind of problem are nicely summed up by Frasier's response on an episode of "Frasier" when a caller named Roger on his radio show wanted advice on something completely stupid:
> Roger, at Cornell University they have an incredible piece of scientific equipment known as the tunneling electron microscope. Now, this microscope is so powerful that by firing electrons you can actually see images of the atom, the infinitesimally minute building block of our universe. Roger, if I were using that microscope right now... I still wouldn't be able to locate my interest in your problem. Thank you for your call.
Oh there are certainly some excellent American comedy shows..
Seinfeld, Curb, Arrested Development, Modern Family, The Office (US), South Park, Parks and Rec, 30 Rock, Frasier, Fresh Prince, Friends, How I Met Your Month, Futurama, Simpsons (OG) and then there's not a lot more on the bench unless you include the lesser remakes of British shows.
A lot of them aren't funny or aren't satire.. just look at the Shameless remake - they turned that into a character drama when it was a sitcom.
America has more of a stand-up culture I feel.
I wonder if it's because the news in America is pretty much fiction that they basically don't have political satire as a genre outside of the topical news shows (Daily Show / John Oliver) which are honestly more like real news shows than comedy at this point.
"Frasier", Season 5 Episode 12:
Niles: [walks in] Hello, Dad. I believe we switched videotapes on accident. Martin: Believe me, I noticed. Niles: Yes, there you go. [hands over video] At first I was dismayed. I popped in the tape, and there was Charles Bronson blowing away street trash, but I actually got into it. It was quite suspenseful. Martin: Yeah, well, that's the way Duke and I felt about "My Dinner With Andre." Talk about suspense! [fake, dramatic anticipation] Will they order dessert? Will they leave a good tip? [walks to chair and sits]
I have been threatening to do this for a while just put all of my dvd rips on a server on make channels based on genera scifi (star trek stargate etc) cartoon (loony toons popeye...) sitcoms (scrubs HowIMetYourMother Frasier Cheer) all of my kids horrible shows on another. i often find i end up flipping thorugh netflix with option paralysis when i mostly want background noise this would be nice.
Yes. Ive done exactly that. A very large number of people in the US, those under various stages of illegal/legal immigration status, are regularly told not to leave. There was even an episode of Frasier about this, about how the Daphne character was not allowed to leave the country, else she couldnt come back. (The one in the RV where they drive to canada.) It is a normal part of life for many in the US.
Time is a great filter.
Was music in the '60s and '70s better than music today? Probably not.
If you were able to time travel back to then and listen at some random time to a radio tuned to a pop station you'd hear a lot of OK songs, a smaller number of good songs and bad songs, and a few great songs. Just like if you listened to some stream of a wide selection of recent music.
Is music from the '60s and '70s that you are likely to hear today better than most recent music? Probably.
Listen to an oldies stream and it likely is to just include those songs from then that were great or good, and it will be drawing from several years.
Same thing happens with TV. Old sitcoms like "Frasier" are as good as the best being produced today. Same with even older shows like "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "I Love Lucy". But there were a heck of a lot of other sitcoms from the same times that are almost forgotten.
With sitcoms the old sitcoms we might still see are probably more likely to be great than the old music we still hear today, because old sitcoms have an additional filter to get past. You'll probably only see them today if they had enough episodes to be worth syndication.
They typically show one episode a day and they want to be able to go several months before wrapping around. Even with having more episodes per year back then than we typically have now (~32 then, ~24 now) the show would have to last at least 3 years to get enough episodes for syndication. Many a show that was great or near great and would have become great in season 2 or 3 has been killed by its network for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of the show.
(I no longer watch anything on Fox other than sports and reality shows because of that. After "Firefly", "Futurama", "Terra Nova", and "Lucifer" I learned my lesson. I don't care how great people say a Fox show is now, I will either wait until Fox cancels it and watch it on streaming if people tell me that it got a proper series finale, or I might consider watching entire seasons before that but only if those seasons ended at points that would be good stopping points. "Terra Nova" and "Lucifer" ended on huge cliff hangers).
Windows PC usability issues were already such a meme that they're a topic of a 2001 episode of the sitcom Frasier. Bill Gates appears as a guest on Frasier's radio show. Frasier has a long list of questions for his famous guest, but becomes frustrated as his callers use up the entire show's runtime to ask Gates tech support questions. Gates seems pleased to tell a caller that Windows XP installation does not in fact require a boot disk.
https://frasier.fandom.com/wiki/The_Two_Hundredth
My wife will run in from the other room to skip “Sleepytime” because she knows she’ll be bawling by the end of it if she even thinks about it. Does me the favor because I will be too.
My endorsement of the show is that it feels like one of the great sitcoms like Cheers or Frasier, Golden Girls or Roseanne. The stories are never pandering or simple. You never quite know where they’re going to go with a plot line so when it lands, you’re often delightfully surprised or floored. Most kids shows seem like a low effort afterthought full of contrived vapid nonsense. As far as I’m concerned my kids can watch as much Bluey as they like and I’ll buy the shit out of their merch if it signals to other networks to get off their asses.
Forgot to mention the animation in the show is absolutely some of the best I’ve ever seen in a cartoon. I really appreciate the way the show models real physics as things would be in the real world. One of my biggest pet peeves of kids shows is when they show something that is physically impossible (not for comedic purpose, just lazy storytelling). It’s basically just thumbing its nose at kids’ intelligence.
“Roe to perdition” is the caviar one, and it’s fantastic as well (#20 for me). Niles trying weed was #1 for me, “high holidays”. For me, #2 and #3 were “the doctor is out” (Frasier getting involved with Patrick Stewart) and “out with dad” (where Martin and Frasier go to the opera). The misunderstandings are what does it for me!
Edit: But I'd honestly say that my whole Top 50 or so is great episodes, there's not a big gap between the top and any of them. It was hard ranking them all.
Also, my list is at: https://tvsort.com/show/3452/matrix_01hjtxz2e1ewkrh44ja3mz0ss4
I’m curious what your pics for best Frasier episodes are?
Two of mine are when they become illegal caviar dealers and when Niles wants to try weed. The episodes with Lilith tend to also be very good. People love the Valentine’s Day one, but I'm never a fan of that style of episode. I can appreciate the genius in it though
I re-watched Frasier recently. As with most 90s and adjacent sitcoms, the stuff that holds up least is around changing gender norms. Frasier often comes across as a sex crazed narcissist, who we are supposed to be rooting for. That was the joke at the time too, but sometimes it doesn't age well.
Still worth rewatching, however.
Another interesting example of 90s sitcoms and evolving gender roles would be Ross from Friends. A modern expectation of how a man should act in a long-term relationship would probably consider him to be emotionally abusive. But I didn't find his conduct all that bad in the 90s. I think a few years ago it was a fad for gen-z to watch Friends, so I think I'm not the only person to note this.
I haven't watched it yet but do bare in mind that a lot of great shows took a few episodes (or even a couple of seasons) to find their stride. Frasier was no exception, the first few episodes were setting stage for the rest of the show.
But as I said, I haven't seen the new series so I cannot comment on whether there's anything there to grow from.
At first glance, I felt they were going for an entirely different show. But, at least the first two episodes seem like a direct rehash of the same story from Frasier. Freddy has taken on the salt of the earth, regular guy persona of Marty Crane, Frasier is himself and starting a new life in a new city, they are moving in together and their personalities clash. You have the free spirited and quirky friend of Freddy as a neighbor to fill the Dafney void. and then of course you have Miles' son to play the fastidious, nervous, comic relief. I'm half expecting him to fall head over heals for the neighbor.
That being said, I like it so far.
>Harmless fun? If you're able to empathize and have a bit of social anxiety Frasier is the most high stakes show ever.
I've seen and loved 99% of Frasier episodes, and never once thought of it as a high-stakes show.
Perhaps it's because I lack empathy, but I'd like to think that it's that I have always lacked the desire for pretension (despite having an educational, professional, and social background not dissimilar to the Crane brothers'), so never took personally the anxiety Frasier or Niles felt at failing to fit into some gathering of their peers.
Upon further pondering, more proof of this is that I am among those who get very anxious when I see people get embarrassed. But it has to be a situation where it feels "unfair". When Frasier or Niles make fools of themselves it's always because of their own pretensions, not anyone else's.
>Dorfman's tone lacks the subtle disdain Dr. Crane has for his radio callers.
I've seen 99% of Frasier episodes and never once got the sense that Frasier has disdain for his callers.
The show wouldn't work if he did, because Frasier is a good person. His snobbishness and pretensions are funny characteristics, but they don't define him.
Significant portion of sitcoms are formulaic yes. But Frasier was upper crust legitimate good writing.
Love everything about this, especially the chiptune renditions of the various themes. Channel 4 in the UK has a couple of episodes of Frasier every morning, and whenever it rolls over from the last series back to the first episode, everything just feels right in the world.
AI generated Frasier episodes. It is algorithmically inevitable. Mark my words. Within the decade. Seasons of the stuff. And it will be pretty good too.
Eh, Frasier is definitely a narcissist, but I wouldn't go that far. He means well, but typically only if it also benefits him. That tends to be most protagonists in sitcoms though. Frasier was a static character and didn't really grow as the show went on.
Compare that with Niles who grows throughout the show after losing everything. Niles at least realizes being rich isn't important if you're not happy.
I remain steadfast in my belief that Frasier is the peak of the sitcom genre, never to be topped.
This looks great, I'll play it when I get home for sure.
Related recent thing you might enjoy:
Our Frasier Remake - crowdsourced, collaborative art project where more than 130 animators, filmmakers, and Frasier fans from 11 different countries have remade the Seattle Psychiatrist most meta episode... one frame at a time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37918268
https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2016/03/25/where-everybody-borrows-your-name
Fun fact (or conspiracy), Cheers and by extension the character of Frasier Crane were plagiarized from a late 70s local Boston sitcom called Park Street Under.
Academy convention is to award older, more accomplished actors for previous work that was not awarded. Chalemet's age compared to Paul's is irrelevant. IRL, Chalemet is too young (compared to his competition in 2022) to be awarded an Oscar. Not technically, but in practice, Oscars are more like lifetime achievement awards. For example, Jamie Lee Curtis did not give an Oscar winning performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, but they had to give it to her for her lifetime achievement and the fact that they awarded Oscars to two other actors in the film. That movie was terrible, but Michelle Yeoh deserves an Oscar for lifetime achievement. Ke Huy Kuan, 51, was certainly adequate, but the roll was nothing special. Hong Chau, 41, should have gotten his Oscar for her work in The Whale, which was a notably amazing performance. Kuan got it because of his age, even if his lifetime achievement is limited. Someone decided Everything Everywhere would sweep the Oscars, and it had everything to do with Michelle Yeoh's and Jamie Lee Curtis' lifetime achievements. The Whale was a far better film with more difficult acting that was nailed. It was just too controversial. Frasier got the Oscar even though his supporting actor Chau out-acted him, and pretty much everyone in all other movies. Her performance there was one of the best I have ever seen, and I had never heard of her. She'll be back.
"I Love Lucy" (first few seasons), "Frasier", "Seinfeld", "Friends", "How I Met Your Mother" are some of many TV shows taking place in middle-income apartments.
"The Jeffersons" live in a "Deluxe Apartment in the Sky".
Diff'rent Strokes took place in the apartment home of a multi-millionaire.
In "Green Acres" they leave a "penthouse view" apartment to live in a run-down house.
Having dealt with some of what you are dealing with, I will share some thoughts.
There's tremendous social power in humility. Go onto LinkedIn, and start connecting with people you know from elementary, high school, college, and your master's. Reconnect with those you were closest with once upon a time. You can also simply ask for advice from some poeple by asking for informational interviews with them.
Remember that depression, anxiety and mental disease will make you lie to yourself. For example, I hear shades of those lies when I see you say something is "too late" or a "pity case" or that you "wallowed" and so let your life pass you by. These are all lies.
I think that very few people - excluding, you'll pardon the profanity, assholes - would not understand taking care of your father, then taking care of your family and grieving. In fact, many people will greatly respect you for that. Again, your depression may be lying to you there.
Again, another lie: 43 is not too late for a wife or kids.
It is difficult that you do not have mental health resources nearby you. I get the impression you are not in the U.S., and so I don't know what the state of telehealth is in your country, but here in the U.S. a large amount of therapists meet with their client via video screen, making distance less of a concern. Maybe that is happening where you are.
If not, I would recommend learning about something called "learned helplessness". It is in a book called "Learned Optimism" by Martin Seligman. It explores how we explain things to ourselves, and how people can get into the habit of explaining bad events as personal faults. I feel that's what you're doing.
Two things you might want to do that might seem childish, but could be useful. The first is to wear a rubber band on your wrist, and each time you hear yourself deriding yourself, snap it against your wrist. You'll begin to become a lot more conscious of the messages you are sending yourself.
The other suggestion is to start adding a few words to each insult you tell yourself. "Right now, my mind is telling me that ... ". "Right now, my mind is telling me that I'm worthless." The idea is to start associating the fact that these statements are a mental message, not the truth.
There are a lot of people whose lives didn't begin until their forties. I don't know if you ever watched the TV show "Frasier," but the actor who played his dad didn't start acting until his forties. There are a lot of other people who didn't begin until later in life.
And what you have done already is not throwing away your life. You got a master's and helped your father and your family. These are all hard and noble things. I am telling you as an objective stranger: it is okay for you to feel proud of yourself for these things. None of this is shameful.
> Mainstream broadcast TV, for myself in the UK, has been dead for about a decade
OK, I'm not in the UK. However, I always like to defy conventional wisdom that everyone knows, and that is certainly some of it.
Broadcast TV is digital now, in the US at least. An antenna will cost you $50-75 or so, it's tiny, and if you have line-of-sight with the tower, you get a perfect picture. It will be in 4K soon, supposedly.
What's on? Well, sports, if you like that. I watched the US v. Netherlands match yesterday on broadcast. All the big college football games were on yesterday. If you don't watch sports, then yeah, there's not much.
Still: local news, much better than you find on the web. And PBS stations. And ancient TV shows, e.g. Frasier, Taxi. It doesn't replace streaming, but it IS free.
The 90s sitcom Frasier parodied this mentality to hilarious effect. Frasier and his brother Niles got memberships to an exclusive spa and then progressively kept discovering that there were more and more exclusive membership levels to which they promptly upgraded. Then they see one last non-descript door leading from the diamond room. Niles opens it to an astonishingly bright white light, they step into the light and their eyes adjust just as the door closes and locks behind them, and they realize they are in the back alley with the smelly garbage.
> I'm not sure airing a single episode is a good measure of interest.
It's probably not in most cases.
How many decades have we heard of shows that were about to be axed because of poor ratings or apparent disinterest, then... somehow they turned out to be megashows? Even something as simple as changing the day it was aired often could make or break a show.
> personally I won't start a show like that until I can binge watch it.
Rewatching some older shows (frasier, right now), my wife and I notice some things that... just weren't an issue 30 years ago. "We just saw this story line last week!" Well... no, it was from 2 seasons earlier, which translated to 2 years earlier back in the 90s. But binging things back to back that were produced for annual serialization ... it's not how they were intended to be consumed.
Are 'shows' now being produced with the knowledge they'll all be watched within a couple of days, not dramatically played out over weeks/months? Will 'cliffhangers' continue to be a thing to get you to 'tune in next time!'?
This is going to be a disaster, Like GoT Season 8 level diaster. Mark my words. My reasoning:
1. The budget for the original LOTR trilogy was $281 million [1]. Obviously there's inflation but we're also talking film vs TV. Films tend to be much more expensive to produce to the point where only theatrical releases tend to make films economical;
2. The showrunners are JD Vance and Patrick McKay. If you check their IMDB profiles they have almost no credits. How on Earth did they get this job? To put this in context: films are run by directors. Producers work for the director. TV shows are run by showrunners, which are really producers. Directors work for the producers. There's good reason for this. The showrunners need to maintain consistency across the entire season while individual episode directors will manage the schedule for their own episode.
Producers are writers and you'd expect that any producer has a long list of writing credits and a premium TV showrunner will have lots of producer and writer credits.
3. No name recognition in the actors that I can see. There's nothing wrong with eelvating talented no name actors but you need to pepper in some name recognition. It builds hype and recognized actors tend to be recognized for a reason. GoT had Sean Bean and Peter Dinklage. There were also seasoned actors who just weren't well known (eg Lena Headley);
4. A lot of shows go downhill when they run out of original material. It happened to GoT in apsectacular fashion. It happened to the Handmaid's Tale (the book only covered Season 1). It takes a strong writing team to generate good original material. Being in Middle Earth is both a blessing and a curse. There is source material like the Silmarillion but that can also hamstring you in a way that greenfield writing isn't.
5. Statements made suggest the showrunners and Amazon just don't get the tone of Middle Earth, like they were trying to make GoT in Middle Earth. Not everything has to be GoT. Jackson understood LOTR. It's why his vision was so good.
6. Spinoffs are hard. The most successful spinoffs are organic. Frasier (from Cheers) and Better Caul Saul (from Breaking Bad) spring to mind. Both came from a successfully developed character that was proven to audiences and thus also had inbuilt interest. HBO is busy throwing mud at the wall to see if any GoT spinoff will stick. Even now I'm not sure HBO has any idea of how badly D&D shit the bed with GoT season 8. It undermined the interest in earlier seasons and nobody talks about GoT now. In seasons 3-5 they were actually showing episodes in theaters (even IMAX theaters). Think about that. Nobody cares about these spinoffs and D&D are a big part of why. But they're also not organic.
If you want to see what happens without strong leadership and understanding the source material, look at the Hobbit (yes Jackson was involved but he came in very late).
Amazon has committed $1 billion to this and I believe they are obligated to produce at least 5 seasons. I predict we'll see 2 or even 3 different showrunners in that time and the whole thing will likely be incoherent. Look at American Gods Season 1 to 2 or the downfall of The Walking Dead for just how much this can doom a project.
[1]: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/04/elijah-wood-lord-of-the-rings-amazon-1-billion-1202127879/
Almost all the shows i watch over and over and again are ones with 7+ seasons,
90's star trek (tng ds9 voy) all 7 seasons, MAS*H 12 seasons, Frasier 11 season, Scrubs 8 season (I skip season 9 and refuse to acknowledge its existance), Red Dwarf 8 season (+ more after the revival decades later), X-Files 11 seasons, How I Met Your Mother 9 seasons, Freinds 10 seasons, Stargate SG1 10 seasons, three seasons is to little to grow a fallowing and not enough for you to rewatch
> I feel there are plenty of good shows on Netflix.
Not sure who else feels this but for me:
There's a lack of "regular tv shows". I knew it was over when they got rid of The Office, that was pretty much the only reason I kept Netflix.
HBO Max, Disney Plus, Prime Video, AMC (temporary) all have the shows we regularly go to. Sopranos/Frasier, Simpsons/Star Wars/National Geography, The Office/Friends, Breaking Bad/Better call Saul (just need to see how it all ends).
Heck even Prime managed to bag many of the shows that used to be on Netflix. Aliens, Tora Tora Tora and even Independence Day is on Disney Plus. Lot of movies outside Netflix.
Netflix just has these one off good shows that frankly doesn't attract across the demographic. Sure there's something for everyone but its lacking those "must have and easy to access binge reruns".
There was a doula on a 2004 episode of "Frasier" [1] which is probably where I learned the word.
[1] http://www.kacl780.net/frasier/transcripts/season_11/episode_18/match_game.html
Putting a show on your own streaming network only means forgoing the extra income that could be earned by selling non-exclusive broadcast rights to someone else. There are hundreds if not thousands of cable TV channels around the world, and they all need to purchase programming from someone.
Take the sitcom Frasier (1993-2004). It is streaming exclusively on Peacock in the US, but they can still sell the broadcast rights to networks around the world. So in the UK, Frasier episodes are shown daily on Channel 4 in the mornings. That's an extra revenue stream right there, and it doesn't cannibalize Peacock as it doesn't operate in the UK.
They have "Grace and Frankie", which is their longest running show at 7 seasons.
Netflix IMO tries to make shows that are very zeitgeist-y, instead of evergreen, like Friends and The Office. I think that will come back to bite them in the future because I don't see anybody wanting to license one-offs like Tiger King or Squid Game for syndication down the line.
Meanwhile, decades-old shows like Law and Order, Frasier and Two and a Half Men are still making bank because they have tons of episodes and are generalist enough to be popular across pretty much any cable network globally.
I'm not a native english speaker. First time I encountered the word ecumenical in a tv show (Frasier) and understood it in the same way it was used by gp.
Maybe it's specific to american english.
I checked cambridge dictionary and it confirms that definition : tending to support and encourage unity among different religions
Merriam-webster has a similar definition : Worldwide or general in extent, influence, or application
Also collins dictionary : interreligious or interdenominational
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ecumenical#cacd-1
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ecumenical
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/ecumenical#ecumenical__4
Link to the Frasier clip :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfrFkxDzpLU
Plus many shows only have interior shots, with maybe an occasional establishing shot. Worst case they might have to send someone to where the show is set to film the establishing shots, which is likely a one time thing. Everything else can be filmed anywhere.
A good example was "Frasier". I don't think it even had establishing shots, so all we saw was interiors [1]. Even those of us who lived in Seattle when it was on couldn't tell it was filmed in Vancouver.
[1] Except for one episode where they did have significant outdoor action set at various well known Seattle locations, which they did come to Seattle to shoot.
Seinfeld, NewsRadio, and Frasier
I'm not familiar with NewsRadio, but both Seinfeld and Frasier are simply named after the main character. This inherently gives the show some latitude.
But, say, Three's Company was based on the premise that this guy was pretending to be gay in order to justify living with two women because they all were pretty poor and he couldn't find another place. That's pretty constraining as to what you can do with the plot line.
It means that any episode that was at the beginning holding out hope that one of the characters would suddenly start making more money and be able to afford to move or something was an episode where the viewer could confidently predict that this would fall through because if it didn't you no longer had a show with the premise that some guy needs to pretend he's gay in order to have an affordable housing situation where he lives platonically with two women.
What's funny there is the tension of, no, they aren't having a threesome. No, he's not sleeping with either of the women. No, he's not really gay, but most people would never believe he's honest to god just living with two women to split the rent if he weren't pretending to be gay.
It's funny because it casts some light on a lot of serious social issues in a way that's socially acceptable to poke fun at, but it's extremely contrived and you can't otherwise try to address those kinds of topics. They are too hot button.
So you can't do it humorously without an extremely contrived situation and you can't do it in earnest without it being terrible drama.
Humor is one of the ways society processes hot button topics and works through them without it turning into terrible real life conflict.
There’s an episode of Frasier where he wins a prestigious award for his work and he has a breakdown on stage: “I just wish I knew what the hell i was supposed to do now.” I believe it cold-ends right there.
Indeed. There is an episode of the sitcom Frasier (set in Seattle) featuring Bill Gates, that aired in Nov 2001. Gates appears on Frasier's call-in radio show, but all the calls end up being tech support related. Gates comments on whether Windows XP needs a boot disk or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpRiDl48ERA
There's an entire Frasier episode based on this exact scenario.
I don't watch GoT, but that price for an 8-season series with ~10 episodes/season (I"m guessing), is about $2/episode, which I think is pretty reasonable.
I have a box set of the old NBC sitcom Frasier. 11 seasons, 264 (!) episodes, probably $200 total. I've had it for over a decade, and it's been a great thing to have while traveling, or moving to a new home where I won't have Internet set up for a week.
I'm happy to pay a one-time fee for content I'll own forever and can watch in whatever delivery method I want, be it Plex, Kodi or ripped to my phone's SD card. Netflix, Amazon etc can pull these shows off their catalog whenever they want, and shove some unrelated show in my face when their search results don't show what I'm looking for.
I just went to download a movie - legally. I have streaming access, but apparently I can't download it for offline viewing (not even within Netflix's DRM'd app).
To me, that's unreasonable, especially since the movie in question is >14 years old - at the time of the founders it would be in the public domain by now!
That being said, Netflix currently has enough content I find it useful - a lot of older shows I never caught on the air like Frasier or Star Trek. But longer term I may ditch it and stick to Prime Video.
I think this goes to show how much of an impact HBO had on television.
There isn't an argument quite like this outside of maybe NBC's 90s sitcoms, arguing about Seinfeld/Friends/Frasier or AMC's late-aughts Mad Men/Breaking Bad/Walking Dead.
I really wish you could remap Roku remotes. I'd love a "random episode of Frasier" button.
That episode has one of my favorite lines:
Frasier: What cuisines are being fused?
Niles: Polynesian and Scandinavian. It's called Mahalo Valhalla.
This reminds me of an episode of the '90s sitcom Frasier. In S05E24, "Sweet Dreams", Frasier (a psychiatrist who has a call-in counseling radio show) gets fired after refusing to voice a radio ad for a tea that guarantees happy dreams as it veers too closely towards medical advice.
That's TV though, and Frasier was written as a character with high professional integrity. Real life isn't so cut and dry. Some Doctors already have a shady relationship with pharma companies.
Given everything we know about how FB makes it easy to advertise to targeted populations (in this case, desperate people and the extremely naive), I can see this becoming a problem 5 years down the line when these students have completed residencies and are full-fledged doctors.
The biggest problem with the Netflix content discovery algorithm is that it's in total conflict with Netflix's brand management, and brand management will always win.
By far their most prominent platform for brand impressions is what the user sees when they first log in and view their home page. So what displays on that screen is of vital importance to their brand management team, and what kind of content they associate with that brand is everything.
Which is the reason why when I log into Netflix as a middle-aged software developer who watches war documentaries, true crime series, and old episodes of Frasier, I see a wall of hot focus-grouped twenty-somethings pulling their hair out and trying to fuck each other.
Because Netflix is young and cool and I just need to get with it, and if I can't get with it then that's my problem. Because Netflix is fierce. Netflix is the pulse of a new generation.
Frasier. There are scenes and episodes I have seen tens of times and stil laugh out loud at.
I don't know about any courses, but watching a lot of tv shows especially situational comedies such as Frasier, Seinfeld etc. helped me immensely on reading people.
The facial expressions usually give away the situation. The downside is that you need to constantly read the other parties expressions, and that can get noticed if you're not subtle enough.
It required some energy, but over time you get proficient at it.
Another thing that will help is to find safe topics. Talking about music, girls, sports are the easiest to learn.
My advice would be not to shy away from social interactions. Practice makes perfect.
Some people may inherently be born with an intuition to handle social interactions, but that doesn't mean that you cannot learn it by observing and mimicking.
I guess this is what the article calls as masking. But masking doesn't have to be that painful. i believe people can grow and chance. If you put an honest effort you'll eventually fit into the society.
> I really can’t think of anything that lasted 10 plus season and wasn’t effectively a different show from s1.
How about "Frasier"?
It was remarkably consistent throughout all 11 seasons, after the first handful of episodes established the characters.
> If we didn't do that, we'd be completely inundated with American shows flogged off on the cheap
Absolutely. I deleted it from my post, but I was going to mention that on non-primary Australian TV stations that don't have the same content restrictions, we get 2 hours of non-stop Big Bang Theory reruns, or endless repeats of Frasier, Sex And The City, Charmed & Becker.
> What kind of tv show do you consider 'culturally significant'?
Glitch is my favorite recent Australian TV show, started on ABC but apparently Season 2 has been sold as a Netflix exclusive. Back in the 90s it would have been shows like Seachange, Frontline, Kath & Kim. Maybe Offspring & Packed To The Rafters are recent equivalents.
(Outside Australia, I'd think of shows like The Bridge, Springfloden, The Killing & Occupied, that have exported Scandinavian culture onto Australian TV.)
I couldn't believe they actually got him. Those last couple of seasons had some really quality guest appearances.
(Also, all episodes of Frasier are great...)
He was great in one episode of Frasier.
In the spirit of the aforementioned sitcom's titular character, and with no ill sentiment intended toward the parent, I must hasten to point out that it is spelled 'Frasier'.
Yes, as a British person I'd say an example of a middle class sitcom is something like Frasier, not Roseanne.
Plus, with the new "websites visited" retention rules - extendable at whim, there will be a permanent record, for example of that episode of Frasier that you downloaded from a Torrent site. A permanent record that is, of you "stealing something".
0600 - Arise 0605 - Do some exercise, in my house because I don't like the gym anymore. 0650 - Have a shower 0700 - Wake up girlfriend 0705 - Start coffee, moka pot 0710 - Start breakfast stuff. Toast, grapefruit, croissant - one of those, not all! 0720 - Get the TV on. Sitcoms in the morning. Formerly Frasier, finished that so now it's Seinfeld. 0820 - Quick cup of OJ 0825 - Start getting dressed 0845 - Set off for work 0900 - Get to work 0930 - Wake up
Frasier is a television show, I was trying to draw out the story. I know literally nothing about wine having had maybe 6 sips in my lifetime.
A similar argument can be made about confusing two types of potato vs a potato and a parsnip. Yes pleasure is subjective, and taste is to some extent. In general there are limits to this effect.
Yes, I could effectively overcook the taste out of both things, mush them into a texture-less paste, and then stuff them full of enough herbs and spices to mask any semblance of their original flavour. At that point perhaps I've won - but then I'm not sure it meets the claim.
> Many people have essentially lost touch with their manual abilities
For many of us, using our manual abilities turns out like this:
https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=316356132437
We haven't so much lost touch as came to an understanding with the universe. Niles and Frasier said it well on the episode "Seat of Power" on the TV series "Frasier", after their attempt to fix a running toilet went very wrong:
Niles: When you think about it, our only mistake today was trying to fix that toilet ourselves.
Frasier: Yes, we tampered with the natural order of things.
Niles: But now, order has been restored. By hiring a plumber, that plumber can now afford, say, a Dolly Parton album. Miss Parton can then finance a national tour which will, of course, come to Seattle, allowing some local promoter to make enough money to send his cross-dressing teenaged son to us for $150-an-hour therapy.
Frasier: [raises his glass] To the circle of life.
> Can we at least agree that laugh tracks are awful, even on otherwise-phenomenal shows (Seinfeld)?
No. Multi-camera sitcoms with live audiences are very, very different in writing, tone, and end product to single camera comedies. They both serve different purposes.
Shooting a sitcom in front of a studio audience radically alters the pacing, the way jokes are told, and the setup (you're inherently constrained to fewer sets).
I think there is still a space today for comedies with live audiences (and the ratings seem to back this up). I love Arrested Development. I also love Frasier. AD would obviously never have worked with a live audience, Frasier would have been a far worse show without the laugh track.
Now, I'm not talking about canned laughter. I think I can agree that adding laughter in post is bad. And Big Bang Theory is particularly guilty of 'sweetening' live audience reaction, meaning jokes that shouldn't be that funny often have huge waves of laughter. I don't appreciate that.
In my experience the larger the apartment building you live in, the less likely that your neighbors will acknowledge you. Unless its a condo/coop where there are association meetings, and then everyone is in your face all the time.
The most social place I've ever lived was a fenced community of detached 1BR bungalows in Los Angeles. Most likely because it housed primarily unemployed actors who spent most of their day hanging out in communal spaces chatting. I think this has a lot to do with the perception of life in TV shows, they write from what they know, and what they know is living in LA. Seinfeld and Frasier have much more in common with life in small Hollywood low-rise apartments than they do with life in the type of high-density high-rise that you find in NYC...
There was an episode of _Frasier_ where they did this. I think it was near the end of season 6.
Visit any thread on reddit that mentions BBT. It'll be full of highly-upvoted hate comments. It's a a close third hate object after Justin Bieber and "Twilight".
I wonder if the psychology student message boards also raged same way about "Frasier" (also an award-winning comedy with a live studio audience).
To me, BBT is great and I've just finished a second run through its 5 first episodes on Blueray. That Jim Parson is in no way a true geek makes his performance even more hilarious.
Amusingly the reddit snobbery over BBT can be found within BBT itself: the way Sheldon absolutely despises "Babylon 5" while fawning over "Star Trek" etc.
Hell yes I would.
What about your average romantic comedy, especially those horrible ones with Hugh Grant - They have little more production value than a Frasier episode.
I would definitely pay to go see Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce in a Frasier movie.
But, would you go and see Frasier in the theater? I didn't think so.
Theater movies must look impressive, in every detail, so you'd want to go and see it on a big screen.
I'm pretty sure budget considerations were part of the equation. Why take a gamble by committing to two or more big-budget movies at once? If the Pirates sequels had been filmed separately, they would've cost even more to make.
As for the sets in TV shows, yes, exactly. And though perhaps not to the same extent as it's done in TV, they do reuse sets in films.
Edit: In answer to your question about Frasier vs. Michael Bay films, it's because not everyone has taste as good as yours. ;)
Umm, no, the business model is fundamentally sound, it's just they need to reduce unnecessary costs which they've increased themselves.
In the case of the LOTR and Pirates sequels being filmed back to back, that was a situation consisting of continuity more than anything because the story is an ongoing saga.
If you look at that list of most expensive films ever made, the Pirates sequels come in at number 1 and 4... I don't think budget considerations were part of the equation.
(Also take note, Lord of the Rings isn't on there anywhere, because Pete Jackson reduced costs by setting up Weta Digital to do lots of their special effects inhouse. The cost of the entire trilogy was $285 million, less than the cost of the third Pirates movie)
Last I heard, Disney were considering making a 4th "Pirates" film, and given the subject matter (probably the fountain of youth as was suggested at the end of At Worlds End) - it might be another extravagant budget as well.
Also, in your argument of pilots vs ongoing costs, have you ever wondered how much of that is due to cost of sets?
With TV, generally they're re-using sets over and over, so of course the cost goes down, because the cost per episode is reduced.
With Film, the medium calls for lots of "throwaway" shots, which means lots and lots of sets.
Consider your average Michael Bay film, they might have explosions that cost several hundred thousand dollars each, yet are only 1 or 2 seconds of onscreen action and they might film them several times if there are any major faults.
But at the end of the day, it's all time wasting entertainment. I'd watch 6 episodes of Frasier (which were relatively cheap to produce) over a generic Michael Bay film any day - so why should the latter cost orders of magnitude more to produce? It's the same amount of entertainment for the viewer.
If they had developed a way for 12 animators to make a feature of that could compete with the features being made by 100-200 animators then sure
Aah, I think we have some wires crossed here - I'm not trying to make films to start out with, we're going to be building episodic content, basically webisodes to start with.
One of the inspirations has been, very roughly, the sitcom model. Artificially limiting your sets, characters and creating story week after week. Also, since a lot of things will be set up in advance, the pipeline changes considerably to something that Disney/Pixar or Dreamworks would do.
The cost of production for episodes after the initial artifact production is, for all intensive purposes, the cost of the animators + voice talent, so it is a scalable model in that sense.
Think about it like the TV show Frasier. They essentially used 4 sets, 5 main characters, several occasional characters, one fictional character and a slew of extras to create 6 seasons of content.
If you keep the voice talent inhouse (utilise people around you) then the numbers of employees required goes down and so does essentially your cost of production, which is the limiting factor really for why stuff doesn't get made for the web.
3D animation is a totally different beast to 2D (unless you go with a cutout style) in that it is essentially a form of puppetry with digital characters. If that makes sense?
The purpose of this thread was (for me) to get some intelligent feedback on the Zombie genre and a rough estimation if I'm in the right ballpark or not. The genre itself lends itself well to being something that can be produced with a small outlay in human capital which is why I'm investigating it.
Are you saying that you can produce 6 seasons of Frasier with the cost of 1 minute of Pixar animation? Sounds doubtful.
Not cost - number of artifacts within a that timeframe over several shots.
Then again, Let's run some numbers to talk about cost.
WALL-E cost $120 million for 98 minutes, Ratatouille cost $150 million for 111 minutes, so you could infer that Pixar animation costs about $1.3 million per minute (roughly) and each production takes around 3-4 years to make.
The Blender "peach" team produced 10 minutes of animation (Big Buck Bunny) in 3 months with 9 people from concept to delivery using all open source software. (There were only 6 people primarily involved in the production of the animation itself, 2 were actively developing Blender as software and 1 did the music)
Big Buck Bunny - http://www.vimeo.com/1084537
Once all the meshes, sets etc are initially created, it all boils down to production of scripts, storyboarding and then animating more content based off artifacts you've already produced.
Remember, I'm talking a sitcom format, that is you artificially limit yourself with numbers of characters and locations (which includes lighting etc) which allows you to spend more time on animation instead of producing more sets/figures.
In fact, once everything is set up, animation is one of the shortest segments of any film animation project (dont believe me? check Dreamworks Animation's general timeline breakdown from their most recent annual report, page 21, link follows)
http://ir.dreamworksanimation.com/dwa/export/system/modules/com.dreamworks.framfab/resources/downloads/2007_DreamWorks_AR.pdf
So while no, you might not get a full 6 seasons, you could probably do several seasons for the cost of 1 minute of Pixar production.
You seem to be talking about growing an animation studio from the ground up.
Thats exactly what I'm talking about.
The model I've been more or less discussing throughout this thread is for a startup I'll be working on soon, maybe even applying to YC with in the next round of funding.
PG says, make something people want - this year is turning out to be the biggest year on record for Hollywood in terms of ticket sales, people spend more time in front of their TV's now than 5 years ago and now they also spend more time online (and TV/film piracy is on the rise)
Fact is - people want to be entertained...
That's about 6 seasons of entertainment there for a sitcom, or about < 1 minute of Pixar animation.
Are you saying that you can produce 6 seasons of Frasier with the cost of 1 minute of Pixar animation? Sounds doubtful.
You seem to be talking about growing an animation studio from the ground up.
Everything has to start somewhere, but the kind of content you could put out with minimal costs might not attract many viewers, which would make it difficult to grow.
Except that I'm not talking about producing films. Yes, Pixar films are expensive because they are swinging for the fences.
That means they have many, many models, sets, textures etc that go into the production of any film, which of course increase your cost of production considerably. That's just a matter of fact.
What I have been saying is that if you take a different view, don't start out by trying to swing for the fences (you can always scale up later), essentially limit some of these choices you could probably get away with a smaller team in the beginning.
For example, lets move away from films for a second and talk about sitcoms. One of my favourite is Frasier.
Frasier has (for the most part) a very limited series of sets and characters. You have your 5 main characters, your 6 occasional supporting characters and for the most part these back and forths take place in 4 locations...
That's about 6 seasons of entertainment there for a sitcom, or about < 1 minute of Pixar animation.
That's really the kind of difference we're talking about in terms of cost of production.