Frasier: The Ninth Season

After a distinguished run of Emmy-winning seasons, Frasier is, by its ninth season, in something of “a tiny lull” (as Frasier describes the state of his radio talk show career in the episode “Junior Agent”). But Frasier still shows signs of its usual brilliance in balancing farce and sparkling wit. After the hour-long season opener, in which Seattle psychological talk radio show host Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) explores his unhappy love life with the help of subconscious incarnations of Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth), Diane (Shelley Long), his mother, and a hippy to whom Frasier was briefly married (who knew?), the series shakes off the melancholia of the previous season. The world still often gets the best of Frasier, be it his neighbor nemesis, Cam Winston (Brian Stokes Mitchell) or Lilith's con artist brother (Michael Keaton), who, in “Wheel of Fortune,” arouses Frasier's suspicions when he shows up at his doorstep in a wheelchair. But Frasier at long last emerges triumphant in “Juvenilia,” in which he successfully spars with three smarmy teen radio hosts subjecting him to a fierce on-air grilling. Character developments this season include Roz (Peri Gilpin) falling in love with a garbage man (Tony Goldwyn), Niles (David Hyde Pierce) at last proposing to Daphne (Jane Leeves), Martin (John Mahoney) taking a job as a security guard, and Frasier and Roz sharing a one night stand. A series milestone, Frasier's 200th episode features Adam Arkin as Frasier's most devoted (read “obsessive”) fan. “Cheerful Goodbyes” reunites Grammer with Rhea Perlman, George Wendt, John Ratzenberger, and Paul Wilson from Cheers on the occasion of Cliff Claven's retirement. Other memorable guest star appearances include Emmy-winner Anthony LaPaglia, Tony-winner Kristin Chenoweth (as the “Junior Agent”—an inexperienced, but tenacious former assistant to Frasier's pit bull of an agent, Bebe, played by the always exquisite Harriet Sansom Harris), and Brian Cox. Frasier's ninth, unlike Beethoven's, hits some off-key notes, but when everything is in harmony, the series is still capable of a classic or two in the 23 episodes from the 2001-02 ninth season collected in this extra-less boxed set. Recommended, overall. (D. Liebenson)