Viewers Have A Lot of Surprisingly Nice Things to Say About the ‘Frasier’ Reboot
The Kelsey Grammer-helmed Frasier reboot has earned little more than muted praise from critics, many of whom considers the Niles-less, Daphne-lacking revival project to be a callous cash-in that retained even less of the charm from the original series than it did the talent. The fans, however, don’t care about what critics have to say — they’re still savoring their tossed salad and scrambled eggs.
Three episodes into Frasier (2023), the sequel series to the acclaimed sitcom by the same name sits at a rotten rating of 58 percent on RottenTomatoes based on 65 reviews from TV critics. At the same time, 83 percent of its 250-plus user reviews have been positive, and the online reaction across the internet has been a general sense of relief that the return of Frasier, sans all the creative talent besides Grammer, has not been nearly as bad as expected. In fact, dare I say, most Frasier fans actually… kind of… like the new Frasier?
Though no one is arguing that the sequel series has hit the heights of the original show — let alone exceeded them — Frasier fans have expressed their surprised pleasure at the punchlines and plotlines of the revival after three episodes.
One fan wrote in their five-star review on RottenTomatoes, “Has same kind of intellectual humor that the first version of the show was known for. I will always watch this as long as they keep putting out new episodes, I really love the nostalgia and the new cast is pretty good so far.” However, they did add the caveat, “It would be great if they could bring Niles and Daphne back, too.” Others on the review aggregation site noted that, while the reboot may not be quite as sharp as its predecessor, its strength lies in the fact that it doesn’t dwell on what came before and can be enjoyed on its own merits.
The Frasier subreddit has, thus far, rated the reboot as “good” on a scale from “excellent” to “awful,” with much of the measured praise going toward Grammer’s performance. However, fans in the forum have repeatedly voiced their problems with the character David Crane, son of the off-screen Niles and Daphne, played by Anders Keith. “I can’t get passed how cartoonish David is. He isn’t human,” one redditor wrote in the discussion thread for the most recent episode. “Yes, he’s trying to have Nile’s quirk, but Niles also had normal conversations, while David is just 100 percent one liners and gags. It’s very distracting.”
Overall, the fan impression of Frasier (2023) has been that, though this isn’t the same Frasier with which they fell in love in the late 1990s, Grammer and his writers have elevated the reboot above the level of “soulless nostalgia factory” for a perfectly passable sitcom experience that scratches the itch for snobbery and sarcasm that fans have been missing for nearly 20 years.
Basically, it’s no Frasier (1994), but it ain’t Fuller House either.
