Frasier: skip the first season, start at 'The Matchmaker'
A farce engine built on a standing set, and the single best door-slamming episode American television produced.
Frasier is the last great American farce, and farce is a technical genre — it needs a fixed set, a stable cast, and a misunderstanding that compounds. The show had all three.
Why start there
The first season is fine and the show has not yet worked out what it is. “The Matchmaker”, in season two, is where everything clicks: a misunderstanding established in the first two minutes, escalating for twenty, with every character operating on different information, and no one lying.
That last part is the mark of good farce. Nobody deceives anybody. Everyone is being honest, and the situation is a catastrophe anyway.
The engine
The show runs on a simple opposition — two brothers who are snobs, a father who is not — and it never resolves it, because resolving it would end the series. Eleven seasons of the same joke, and it keeps working because the writing finds new pressure to apply.
What has dated
Some of the romantic plotting is laboured, and the long-running will-they-won’t-they runs several seasons past its useful life. The farce episodes hold up completely.
Start on
Season 2, episode 3 — “The Matchmaker”. If it lands, go back to the beginning. If it does not, the show is not for you and you have lost twenty-two minutes.
Newsletter
Twenty-two minutes, well spent
Get Sitcom Circle in your inbox. No spam, and one click to leave.
Weekly, on Thursdays · Unsubscribe any time. We never sell or rent your address; read the privacy policy.