Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Frasier’ Season 2 On Paramount+, A New Season Of The Kelsey Grammer Revival That’s Slightly Better Than The First

The revival of Frasier got off to a really rough start last fall, but got better in the second half of its initial season, mainly because the showrunners managed to figure out some things about the characters that surround Kelsey Grammer’s Frasier Crane in his return to Boston. It still wasn’t close to the 1993-2004 original, but at least those last five episodes were watchable. Does the second revival season continue that momentum?

FRASIER SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: At his current watering hole, we see Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) talking with his Harvard colleague and buddy Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst) about an impending arrival.

The Gist: When Eve (Jess Salgueiro) asks them if they sponsored a kid, Frasier replies that it’s a ham. But not just any ham: “An 18-pound, acorn-fed jamón ibérico from España!” says Frasier. “It cost more than a laptop!” exclaims Alan. The friends are celebrating “Ham Day,” something they’ve been doing on and off for forty years.

The duo see Frasier’s nephew David (Anders Keith), who tells his uncle that Alan recommended he do a semester in Cameroon, something that David is completely incapable of. So when Frasier’s son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott) comes in, the conversation turns to what pushed him to leave Harvard fifteen years earlier to become a firefighter. Turns out that Alan gave Freddy the response of “Indubitably” when he asked whether he should drop out. Frasier gets angry that Alan didn’t say anything to him, putting Ham Day in jeopardy.

It seems like Alan has been giving a lot of advice over the years, including telling psych department head Olivia Finch (Toks Olagundoye) to not follow a guy named Christopher to California. When Olivia explains that, it makes Frasier feel a little better, and Freddy tells his dad to give his friend a break; after all, it was still Freddy’s decision to leave Harvard to begin with.

Frasier is ready to forgive and forget, and break ham with his friend. But when he finds out what Alan used to determine those responses, Ham Day is off all over again.

In the meantime, David vows to protect the ham when it shows up at Frasier’s apartment. But that predictably ends up in disaster, even when he gets some help from Eve.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The original Frasier… sort of.

Our Take: Is the second season of the Frasier revival better than the first? Slightly; it certainly is more along the lines of what we saw in the second half of Season 1 established, when showrunners Joe Cristalli and Chris Harris got a better hold on characters like David and Freddy and allowed them to not simply be substitutes for characters from the classic series (Niles and Martin, respectively). But is the show good? Not really, at least not yet.

It is really hard to review this revival on its own merits, given the fact that Grammer is there as a more casually-clad, much wealthier Frasier Crane than the one we left on the original series in 2004. And this season, we’re going to see more of the original series’ actors reprise their old characters. Peri Gilpin will be back, recurring as Roz, and we’ll likely see Bebe Neuwirth back again as Lilith. But we’ll also see some of the old KACL gang — Dan Butler’s Bulldog and Edward Hibbert as Gil Chesterton — and Harriet Samson Harris as Frasier’s crazy agent Bebe Glazer. Given all the callbacks to the original series, it’s hard to not compare the two, but we’re going to try.

There is just something about what we saw in the first episode of Season 2 that feels like a retread, and we’re not necessarily talking about a retread of the original show. For instance, the topic of Freddy leaving Harvard may not be the proverbial dead horse yet, but let’s just say it’s limping. The slapsticky b-plot with David and Eve wrangling the ham wasn’t really all that funny.

Cristalli and Harris also continue to not give supporting characters enough to do. Olagundoye is still underused as Olivia; she should be a character who has a lot more going on than just being desperately lovelorn, but that seems to be all she gets to do in each episode. Eve is there to give smart-ass lines and little else. And David… well, the less we say about his character, the better.

Hopefully, some of the other second season episodes will build up these supporting characters a bit more; right now, Alan is really the only one who has any sort of multi-dimensional personality. And, yes, here is where we compare this Frasier to the original: The original had supporting characters that had depth and layers, even ones that were only on screen for a couple of minutes per episode. It’s one of the big contributing factors to making the original the classic series it is. If all they’re doing is projecting the same personality quirk over and over and/or just playing straight man to Frasier, that’s bad news.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Over the credits, David picks out glass out of pieces of ham so Frasier and Alan can taste their expensive Ham Day purchase.

Sleeper Star: Besides the original series returnees we cited above, some of the guest stars in the second season will be Amy Sedaris, Patricia Heaton, Yvette Nicole Brown, John DiMaggio and Rachel Bloom. Kelsey’s daughter Greer Grammer will also guest.

Most Pilot-y Line: Frasier and Freddy go into the office Frasier shares with Alan, and Freddy says, “This is ridiculous.” Frasier thinks he’s talking about his apology to Alan, but Freddy says, “No, the photo of me on your desk; I had frosted tips for like one week.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. The new Frasier isn’t as awful at the beginning of its second season as it was at the beginning of its first. But it’s not great, either. The recommendation is because of all the guest stars that we’re going to see this season and a hope that the first episode of the season won’t be an indicator of what the rest of the season is like.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.