What Should You Expect from Game of Thrones Season 5?
Some thoughts for the GoT fans on my Facebook.
The Cutprice Guignol
The Ninth Year: The Haunting of Swill House
Category: Uncategorized
February 17, 2015
Everything Wrong with This Month’s Issue of Cosmo
Ah, Cosmo. You’ve been with me since I was in my early teens. You told me that men like having their nipples licked and their testicles “jiggled like dice” during sex. You told me I should try a two-tone lip! I wrote furiously about you three years ago and I stand by everything I said. And you know what: you’ve got better in the last year. I generally buy you with a burning guilt inside, but recently you’ve stretched your boundaries a bit, with the editor’s letter this week about the importance of young women engaging with the upcoming general election, an article about LGBT issues, and a kind of glossy sense of feminism running throughout. So well done for that. But you’re not done yet. Let’s talk about what you need to really reflect that “fun, fearless women” label you’ve so generously landed yourselves with.
1. The Fashion Stuff
Look, I like fashion. Clothes are an important way of expressing who you are, and I’ve got no problem with the pages Cosmo dedicates to pictures of cool dresses or coats or boots or whatever, even if it’s not really what I buy the magazine for. But you cannot have a piece praising a woman as a “crusader” for creating clothes for larger women, and featuring size 16 women on catwalks, and then have this parade of conventionally beautiful, young, slim women on your fashion spreads. Take a look at the three female models featured in this month’s issue-
Apologies for my peering maw in the corner of these pictures.
This is something that has always baffled me- and it’s not because I think thin women shouldn’t feature in their fashion pages, but rather because it would be so damn simple to stick women with different body shapes in their at (presumably) no extra cost. They’re undermining their own positive message in a way that’s so obvious and so easy to fix. Later in the magazine, an article discusses how and why women judge each other’s bodies so often, while they eliminate anyone who isn’t youthful, skinny, and beautiful from their pages. Come on now.
2. The Other Models
I went through the rest of the magazine to look at the pictures that are used to illustrate the articles-I assume a lot of them are stock pictures, but whatever they are, they’re there to add a bit of colour to the writing. But guess what- outside of the Cosmo Promotes pages and pictures of columnists or subjects, the only pictures of people used to illustrate the pieces were of young, slim, conventionally attractive, predominately blonde, and almost entirely white women. This is another thing that’s just so bloody easy to fix, so I just don’t understand why nobody’s noticed this yet.
3. Thier Big Interview
Every month, Cosmo features a famous female on the front page of their magazine. promising an in-depth interview with her inside. Now, I often skip these sections because I find reading interviews with people I don’t know a lot about pretty dull, but this week I read it. It was with Emma Willis, who’s a pretty successful TV presenter. The hookline on the front cover was “INSIDE EMMA’S MARRIAGE: THE DAY MATT FEARED HE’D LOST TRUST IN HER” and the interview inside- which spans two full pages- has just one paragraph focused on her career. Much of the rest is focused on how she supports her husband, Matt Willis, of McBusted, A lengthy part of the interview recounts a time when her husband and his band called Emma when she was live on Radio 1 and told her they had been offered a trip to America, and she needed to make a decision about it right now. She was devastated, and hung up and burst into tears. But it’s okay because “the other lads and wives (because they have no other notable life attributes other than being married to a slightly famous person, right?) thought she was brilliant” and “it’s really cruel but that’s what makes it so good to listen to”. If Cosmo really wants to promote “fun fearless women” as it declares on the spine of every copy, the interviews should be focused on the achievements and struggles of these successful professional women they’re interviewing, not on how their husbands made a shit joke one time but it’s fine now. They do interview women about their careers in other sections of the magazine, but fail to extract any genuinely interesting insight from their celebrity guests. If I’m buying this magazine because Emma Willis is on the front cover, I want to read an interview about Emma Willis- if some of that touches on her family life, great, but there simply should be more on her substantial achievements in a highly competitive field too.
4. FUCK OFF WITH FIFTY SHADES
I hate bringing it up again, but not only does this issue feature a full-page ad for the movie, it has a two-page article about how Fifty Shades has affected our sex lives, some of which is pretty interesting, including the interpretation of BDSM from a feminist perspective, and a short space-filler about things you didn’t know about the series. But, aside from a small pull-out section which acts as a sorry excuse for lip service, they don’t touch on the problematic, abusive elements in the book that have been romanticised. Considering the number of abuse survivors- who Cosmo claims to support- who’ve spoken out about how the book romanticises abuse, you’d think they’d put some real time and effort into discussing it.
5. Sex is Only for Straight People
As someone who’s had sex with women, I had to teach myself how to do it safely (and I’m not just talking about snapping an ankle while scissoring). There’s a woeful lack of sex education for LGBT people in schools, and Cosmo would be doing some readers a service by talking about how to have safe, brilliant sex with people of your own gender. But nope, the sex tips are still basically outrightly aimed at straight people. Sort it.
Cosmo, you’re trying. And, as one of the most widely recognisable women’s magazines in the world, I appreciate it. But you’ve got a long way to go yet.
January 27, 2015
The ABCs of Death is Important. Really Important.
Look, ABCs of Death gets a bad rap. And I’m still not entirely sure as to why. A 26-section horror anthology that handed out letters of the alphabet to more than two dozen directors and told them to make a short horror film that featured a death in some way, it’s an audacious idea from the off. But there’s a certain kind of snobbery that surrounds short horror movies- I guess because they’re cheap, easy to make, and therefore attract some of the most inexperienced and lowly-budgeted directors the industry has kicking around (not the inexperience or low budget are actually an excuse- look what my best friend did with his short horror movie). So, a lot of shitty, low-concept, badly-made horror shorts are churned out and the nuanced, varied world of short horror gets a bad name once again.
But ABCs of Death is not just a bloody excellent movie. Well, of course it’s that, despite patchy segments (Ti West’s M for Miscarriage is particularly egregios, which is sad because his movies, especially The Innkeepers, are so excellent), and mixes up horror stalwarts with up-and-comers, foreign directors, animators, actors and artists alike. It’s a neat idea, but that’s not the sole reason why it’s so important.
ABCs of Death is a profoundly important movie for the horror genre- in fact, I’d wager that it’s the most important horror movie of the decade so far. Every few years or so, we get a movie that’s going to cause a big stir and spawn scores of skittering little rip-offs that will characterise the industry for the next few seasons or so. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974, Friday the 13th in 1980, Scream in 1996, The Blair With Project in 1999, Saw in 2004, Insidious in 2011….these might not be the best examples of the genre, but they’re the popular ones that stuck, and that’s what makes them important, like it or not. There’s been a modest revival of the horror anthology in the last few years of so, with The Profane Exhibit, V/H/S (and V/H/S 2) and ABCs of Death attracting respected directors and creating new genre stars in their own right. But ABCs of Death-stripped of any wraparound segments to tie the whole thing together, laid bare in it’s brutal, bloody brilliance- is the most important of the lot. Why? Because it doesn’t show off one facet of the horror genre: it shows off every single one over the course of two occasionally harrowing hours of unrestrained creativity.
You’ve got the curdling, sweaty straightforwardness of the shocking D for Dogfight (for my money, the best sequence in the bunch) matched at the other end of the film with the equally horrible but far less visceral Y for Youngbuck (complete with Hannibal-esque stag man). N for Nuptials is a pitch-black romcom, while Q for Quack presents a hyperactive meta-comedy starring the director and producer trying to kill a duck. B for Bigfoot and C for Cycle jump on overused horror tropes and give them a sharp, tantalising twist, then O for Orgasm turns up as a crisply erotic bit of abstract film-making.
I’ll say this now: I’m going to embed a few of the full shorts into the article to give those who are interested a taste, but be warned that this one is extremely violent and potentially very disturbing. Seriously, I’m only going to say this once: if violence against animals or people bothers you, give this video a miss.
Of course, there are some which just plane don’t word- K for Klutz and probably W for WTF- or are just too pointedly disgusting to get through (I’m looking at you, L for Libido). But for every miss, you’ve got the sublime weirdness of the stop-motion animation T for Toilet or the harrowing I for Ingrown. Some, like high-concept sci-fi thriller V for Vagitus or the ingenious U for Unearthed, beg for a feature-length re-imagining, juxtaposed against viscerally relatable X for XXL which tells every bit of story you’d want told. You get what I’m saying here. ABCs is a film with ups and downs, because it reflects the industry as a whole.
Have a break, have a Q for Quack.
ABCs is great and vital viewing for anyone who’s new and enthusiastic, or old and passionate, to the genre, because it proves that horror is not just about creepy kids lurking behind doors, or serial killers ripping the lungs from their victims. Horror is a fabulous, gleeful subscription to everything that makes you sick and uncomfortable, everything that makes you screw your face up and glance momentarily away from the screen.
Ben Wheatley’s U for Unearthed, told from the POV of a vampire fleeing a mob.
Horror- that feeling of disgust or fear or whatever you want to call it at the pit of your stomach- can be elicited by almost anything if you’ve got a decent enough director and idea behind it. ABCs of Death is the best example of that I’ve ever seen, because, as an anthology, it isn’t stuck to one genre but allowed to wander freely from slasher to comedy to spooky bedtime story. And that’s what makes it one of the most brilliant, entertaining and vital movies of this generation’s horror classics. Love it or hate it, this is the best example of what modern horror can, can’t, and is willing to do to get under your skin.
January 15, 2015
Mockingjay Makes a Mockery of Young Adult Tag
I reviewed Mockingjay; it was seriously good.
January 6, 2015
A Wanker’s Literary Reaction: Mozart in the Jungle
The year: 2000. A twenty-year-old Mexican actor by the name of Gael Garcia Bernal explodes onto the scene with a harrowing performance in dark thriller Amores Perros, playing a beaten-down teenager (above) who turns to dogfighting in order to prove to his uninterested crush that he can take care of her before getting involved in a horrifying, life-altering car crash.
2004. Bernal cements his burgeoning career with two important but wildly different turns. One as a con-artist transvestite dealing with the aftermath of sexual abuse in the church in Almodovar’s controversial Bad Education, the other as a young Ernesto “Che” Guevara travelling across Latin America where the seeds of his future communism are sowed.
Jump to 2012. After a series of critically-acclaimed turns in films like Babel and The King, Bernal appears in award-winning Chilean drama No, which charts his character’s grappling with political manoeuvring in Pinochet-era Chile.
Skip to 2014, and Bernal is starring in…a light American dramedy in which he plays an off-the-wall classical conductor with a passion for the silly? Yup, it’s time to talk about Mozart in the Jungle, an often baffling but occasionally entertaining venture into the world of classical music in New York.
If I haven’t made it clear enough above, one of the things that attracted me to this series was how fucking bizarre it was for Bernal to be playing such a light role. He’s an astoundingly good actor who usually sticks to the kind of roles that win him awards whether he wants them or not: brave, stark, dramatic, and intelligent roles that prove over and over again how incredible a serious actor he is. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any of his films (at least those that have gained traction across the pond) in which he’s played a consistently fun role. I spent the first half of the series waiting for him to snap and start making his orchestra fight each other for cash, but was instead met by a charming, extremely funny guy who just wanted to conduct some classical music and annotate some manuscripts, yo. Rodriguo de Souza is a childish, witty, clever, passionate character who’s brought in to breathe new life into the New York Symphony Orchestra, and the kind of person who you’d consider changing religion for (did you see those pictures I put up there? I mean, are you made of stone?).
Right, here’s the thing about this flagship Amazon original series: it’s Smash, but with classical music. Smash promised a cheeky, sordid look behind the scenes of Broadway theatre and failed to deliver: Mozart in the Jungle succeeds on all the levels Smash couldn’t. It even gives Bernadette Peters, who’s got roles in both series, a much better part to play, for Chrissake. It demolishes and embarrasses Smash by showing them just how easy and brilliant this kind of show could be. It’s packed with engaging characters, but what makes them even better is their ability to interact with each other like adults instead of the preening, shrieking, stomping ninny-children we’ve come to expect from dramedy shows. Lola Kirke’s (who I also spotted in Gone Girl, which is excellent and in which she is excellent) self-deprecating, sarcastic, up-and-coming oboist doesn’t need to have screaming matches over mantelpieces with her love interest in order to sort out their problems; they just go for a shag and a chat. Saffron Burrows as the louche, charming cellist of your dreams gets high and screws someone she regrets; they discuss it and agree not to mention it to anyone for fear of making the orchestra an awkward place to work. Instead of being constantly pitted against each other, the women are smart, ambitious, and know when to work with or against each other. Everyone deals with things in a grown-up way, which makes the drama, when it does arrive, all the more engaging and juicy, because you know it must be serious. The curtain-twitching community of the orchestra is filled out with snapshots of characters that let us fill in the blanks, but the effectiveness of giving the background cast faces cannot be overstated.
Beyond that, the series is just a metric shit-ton of compressed all-over-the-place-ness held together by a sense of game fun. One minute Malcolm Macdowell (who’s place in this series is possibly more inexplicable than Bernal’s) is drinking coconut water and wearing a Hawaiin shirt; the next Bernal’s manic violinist ex-lover is screaming at an audience to “SHUT UP!” as they try to applaud her. Jason Schwartzman in a leather gilet turns up. Roman Coppola directs. Hannah Dunne smokes dope and tattoos people. Everyone seems overqualified for this series, and it’s wild.
But it all boils down to one thing: the music. As the kind of person who was determined to learn how to play instruments but never had a natural aptitude for them (twenty combined years of bass, cello, and piano have proved that the most I can do is smugly shout “YOU’RE NOT PLAYING THAT RIGHT” at the screen occasionally), I love hearing classical music. Take a superb scene in which the orchestra plays the 1812 Overture (amusing aside: a member of my family was pulled over by the police in their car, and had an argument with them in which the police wouldn’t believe that they had this track on CD in the player. They did. Not sure how the cops took that) in a broken-into lot in New York City; packed with bravado and the utter passion that stems from brilliant classical music, the show draws it’s energy from the variety and novelty of it’s setlist. Entrenching the series so deeply in such a specific type of music was an audacious choice, but one that works entirely to give every episode a running theme and thread. It makes no odds if you like classical music or not (and if you don’t, listen to this and come back to me), because Mozart in the Jungle isn’t here to patronise; it’s not even here to educate. It’s here to fucking entertain. And by God, it does.
January 1, 2015
Here’s The Thing About Internet Feminism
Let me get this out here, right in the first sentence: I’m a feminist. I believe in the elimination of gender inequality through focusing on the negative effects that gender stereotypes project onto all genders. There are various reasons that my feminism only reared it’s #feministsareugly head within the last year or so, but that’s not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about feminism on the internet.
With the rise of sites like Twitter and Tumblr, and with the focus and debate raging over feminism that’s taken place over the last eighteen months, feminism has been forced to defend itself. BBut the problem with feminism on social media platforms is that it gets scattered; opinions are vehemently divided over almost every issue, and critics of feminism brandish this lack of unity as proof that the feminist movement may as well not exist. If we can’t even agree with each other, how are we meant to propagate any effective change in the wider world? If we can’t criticise people who openly declare their misandry (and not in the dark-toned jokes so often plucked up by the #feminismisawful hashtag, but those who actually, openly believe that men are inferior and deserve to be oppressed), how can we claim to be fighting for gender equality?
Being a feminist active on social media right now is to spend half your time dancing around a minefield of potential hypocrisy. So many issues who’s context and impact informs so much of the opinions we hold on them rise up and demand attention, while critics demand that feminists present some united front on the issue. Failing that, the front that’s attributed to us is the most controversial or the most synonymous with the misandry that many antifeminists attach to the movement. The waters become muddy with people declaring their agreement or disagreement with the most prominent opinion on the matter, and casual observers or critics are often left with a variety of vastly dissenting opinions that fail to leave any cohesive impression.
I think the size of the current feminist movement and the voracity with which people engage with feminist issues in a positive way is fantastic, heartening stuff. And eliminating those dissenting opinions entirely is surely a bad idea, as it removes the onus of debate from the movement. So here’s a New Year’s resolution for all internet feminists who feel the way I do about the movement. Next time you see an opinion that’s being attributed to feminists-whether it came from feminists or not- that you don’t believe jives with the gender equality feminism should be striving for, say so. Blog about it, tweet it, post it on Tumblr or Facebook. Say that you’re a feminist, and you don’t agree with this opinion. Give your reasons. Don’t silence voices, but try to add yours to them. Call out misandry, hypocrisy, and sexism when you see it, whether it’s within the movement or not. Forcing the feminism movement into one, single-voiced bunch is too simplistic, but providing opinions that challenge popular, seized-upon “proof” of problems in the movement can do nothing but strengthen the feminist cause.
December 12, 2014
Doctor Who Fan? Console Yourself With Sleepy Hollow
So, I’ve been watching Sleepy Hollow recently. I was determined not to like it, as that would mean the consort had been right about a show and I would therefore never trick him into watching something like Suburgatory again (which is, by the way, utter, unparalleled genius).
But Gosh darn, if I didn’t really love Sleepy Hollow. My first attraction to the series was this;
I’d rather not say how long I spent looking for a Tom Mison picture, thanks.
That’s Tom Mison, who plays co-lead Ichabod Crane, a man transported from revolutionary American to modern-day Sleepy Hollow by witchery in order to stop evil. Ridiculous? Utterly. But Tom Mison, who pitches the comic scenes about his change in time-such as soliloquising down the phone about love to a phone operative- perfectly, is perfection. He’s at some times bumbling, at some times swashbuckling, at some times a little bit terse. He also happens to be second only to Norman Reedus in the “Men On TV I Would” list.
Then there’s this;
Well-developed, witty and consequential female characters really do it for me.
This is Nicole Beharie, who plays the police lieutenant who meets Crane soon after he arrives in Sleepy Hollow. Compassionate, intelligent, selfless, brave, and driven, Abbey Mills is one of the finest female characters on TV today and her partnership with Crane- devoid of Mulder-and-Scully style sexual tension, at least so far- is all the better for it. She also happens to be second only to Lauren Cohan in the “Women on TV I Would Do” list. Walking Dead really has the monopoly on impossibly good-looking characters facing an apocalypse.
Along with a cohort of fun regular characters- Lyndie Greenwood as Abbey’s troubled, more ruthless sister Jenny is my favourite, but Orlando Jones as a sceptic-turned-believer police chief is close behind- the duo run around trying to fight off the apocalypse predicted in the Book of Revelations. Occasionally John Noble, esteemed thesp, turns up to make dinner of the scenery and smile in an ambiguous way. And it’s as brilliantly silly as it sounds- the stories are brisk and uncomplicated, with a freak-of-the-week set up featuring some gloriously underused monster (Wendigos, Golems, Green Man etc) with some sensational real effects. It’s bright, delicious, clever fun, with a lightness of touch that stops the show ever getting bogged down in it’s own mythology.
And this got me thinking: why was it I loved this show so much? Then I realised: it’s my replacement Doctor Who. After a season in which I found DW stories too convoluted, found character tension to be forced, found the series dissapearing up it’s own arse, Sleepy Hollow is the embodiment of all the things I love about Doctor Who: the out-of-time man matched with a banterous audience surrogate, fighting monsters every week and leading everything up to a neat series finale. And so, for anyone else who’s soul was troubled by this series of Doctor Who, I cannot recommend Sleepy Hollow enough. Just don’t mess with the Horseman. Any of them.
December 11, 2014
“The Old Department” and “The Early Hours” by Louise Macgregor
The Old Department
The floors are cracked and white;
No windows. Corridors are long. Dry.
I can tell, they were handsome once- strong jaws, hairlines hidden under sparks,
Grey scribbled out with dye.
The toe of my pretty leather girl’s shoe catches, and I trip-
My thoughts thrown, I try to remember where I’ve been. An old dream
Beats behind every door and leeching screen.
The Early Hours
Our backs move like fins in shadows,
Half-light growing, birds singing as if they don’t know we’re hunters,
You bite with dry teeth.
I arch against the damp air,
Garrulity unraveling to a small cry
And words to syllables and sounds.
We move to a beat like poetry,
Eyes closed, lost in your cadence, my staccato note.
Louise Macgregor is a freelance pop culture and lifestyle writer with a sideline in poetry and short fiction. She’s passionate about horror movies, late nights, and her music blog
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December 5, 2014
The Cutprice Guignol: A Year’s Review
Well, it’s time: time for the magnificent Guignol to take a look at the highs and lows in this year’s television and film. Be warned of spoilers ahead, because I get excited about stuff and want to tell everyone about everything I’d seen.
Best Movie Performance of the Year: Jake Gyllenhal in Nightcrawler. Somehow managing to scrub his beautiful, deep, expressive eyes completely free of any emotion and it actually worked. Can’t implore anyone enough to go and see this very quiet masterpiece.
Best TV Performance of the Year: There’s a lot of competition in this category as you might imagine given the amount of fucking TV I spend all day every day watching. Special commendations have to go to Gustaf Skarsgard in Vikings (and the whole rest of the leading cast in Vikings, come to think of it), Michelle Gomez (despite the pitiful amount of screentime she got as the Master), and everyone who even considered being in Hannibal, but I’m going to go ahead and throw this one to Finn Wittrock as Dandy in American Horror Story. In a patchy season, the virtual unknown has proved himself with style, claiming some of the best moments of the series as his own as well as bringing an American Psycho-esque depth and neuroses to what is essentially a totally clichéd role.
Best On-Screen Duo of the Year: Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison in Sleepy Hollow. Next.
Accent of the Year: Kathy Bates in American Horror Story with that alleged Baltimore accent. Considering how great her performance is this season, that accent is a testament to good acting overcoming all.
Biggest Film Disappointment of the Year: Godzilla. Probably just missold, if anything, but it wasn’t anything I expected it to be, in a bad way.
Biggest TV Disappointment of the Year: Doctor Who. So much so that me and the consort very nearly never spoke again after the first episode as it so shook the foundations of our relationship. If Doctor Who isn’t good, what can I believe in?
TV Moment of the Year: I’d repressed it till now, but Michael Pitt sawing off his own face under the influence of psychotropic drugs and feeding it to dogs is eternally etched onto my memory. The woozy cinematography and presence of Mads Mikklesen’s terrifying Hannibal Lecter (the only truly great one there’s ever been, in my eyes) served to make this scene the petrifying, distorted crescendo to an already brain-bending series. Ugh. Think I was just a little bit sick into my mouth.
Movie Moment of the Year: There have been a few great ones, but the closing moments of Mockingjay part 1- with Josh Hutchinson’s Peeta battling in a terrified stupor against his bindings while a doubtful, vulnerable Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) looks on- was ominous, brutal, and utterly brilliant.
Cheering-Out-Loud Moment of the Year: Anything involving Carol (Melissa McBride) in the first episode of The Walking Dead series five. Especially her tear-jerking but not sentimental reunion with Daryl. That woman can kick ass AND rock a pixie haircut: therefore, she’s my idol.
TV Show of the Year: Anyone who’s spoken to me since those manic few days where I marathoned both series will know that I’m going to say Vikings. The plotting is refreshingly simple in an era of Moffatian twists and turns, the performances are affecting, understated and well-earned, the characterisation is consistent and constantly evolving, the story is driven by logical character choices, the battle scenes as good as you’d hope, and it’s shot with audacious beauty and style for a low-budget, History channel drama. And Clive Standen punches someone off a chair! OFF A CHAIR!
Runner-Up: Logically, Hannibal, because it’s beautiful, utterly original, and will lodge itself under your skin in ways you won’t always like. And I say this as someone who’s watched and enjoyed seven Saw films: it’s really fucking brutal.
Movie of the Year: Nightcrawler. It won’t get any Oscars, but that’s probably just a statement as to how original, dark, and adult this psycho-thriller is.
Runner-Up: The Double, Richard Ayoade’s superd follow-up to Submarine. Jesse Eisenberg proved himself as a truly diverse actor taking on the two lead roles in a psychedelic, sci-fi noir thriller that was unafraid of having a sense of humour. Think Gilliam, but British.
Music Moment of the Year: Jessica Lange out-Bowieing Bowie with an entirely anachronistic performance of Life on Mars in AHS. Why not?
November 4, 2014
An Ode to Frasier: Must-See Episodes
So it’s come to this: an passionate soliloquy to my favourite show of all time. I watched Frasier over the summer of last year in a heat haze of hard work, sporadic depression, alcohol, cigarettes, and one very posh flat. I don’t hesitate in saying that this show changed my life. Underneath all that fabulously pretentious and sly humour lies a brilliantly clever, humane heart that delivers beautiful, sometimes painful truths wrapped up in twenty minutes of comic television. It’s utterly timeless, as close to flawless as makes no difference, and an absolute must-see for anyone, anywhere. Below, I’ve hunted out my favourite episodes from every season (and believe me, it was a battle of wills choosing the best), with links so you can enjoy them too. Please read, watch, and enjoy as much as I do. Forever and ever. Amen.
Season 1- My Coffee With Niles
A brilliant bottle episode that hinges around Frasier and his neurotic brother Niles talking about Frasier’s life since he moved from Boston (read: Cheers) to Seattle, My Coffee with Niles is as much a farcical, supporting-character peppered comedy of errors as it is a meditation on happiness. Co-opting on the amazing chemistry between Niles and Frasier, it’s centred, smart, and was the perfect way to end the stellar first season. A little melancholic without getting bogged down in schmaltz, this is a centrepiece for what the show is really about.
Season 2- The Innkeepers
I think Frasier gets written off as a show for uppity people, because it spends some much time lingering on the prententiousness of it’s lead characters. But it also spends a delicious amount of time undercutting and undermining everything they do. In this positively Shakesperean farce, Frasier and Niles buy a restaurant and everything goes predictably tits up in a barrage of quotable lines (“I’m not asking you to do anything that you wouldn’t do in your own home; now, Niles, kill five eels!”) and brilliant physical comedy. One of the most outrightly humourous episodes of the series’ run, this is an episode I show to anyone I want to like the show and it hasn’t failed me yet.
Season 3-Moon Dance
A long-running thread in the show is Nile’s obsession with his father’s physical therapist Daphne and in this episode, the first Kelsey Grammar (who plays Frasier) ever directed, things come to a quiet, understated head (not that I’d know anything about quiet, understated head, but still). It’s lusciously shot, terribly romantic, and gives David Hyde Pierce as Niles and Janes Leeves as Daphne a chance to really get their teeth into that taunting chemistry.
Season 4-The Unnatural
Well, I couldn’t write a list of this nature and not include a great episode for Bulldog, the mysoginstic, creepy, innapropriate, arrogant, and utterly brilliant sports newscaster from Frasier’s radio station. Played by Dan Butler (who-and let me finish- is a Shakespearean actor by profession), this isn’t just a great episode for him, but an interesting meditation on fatherhood as Frasier faces letting his son down for the first time. With lots of great bits for John Mahoney’s curmudgeonly Martin (HOW DID HE NOT GET AN EMMY? FUCKING HOW?), it’s a sweet, carefully pitched episode (excuse the pun) that’s not short on the blisteringly quick humour you’ll be used to at this point.
Season 5- The Gift Horse
This is one of my solid favourite episodes, purely because it does that fantastic ermotional bait-and-switch that Frasier has just got down better than any other sitcom ever has. What starts out as a quick-fire, throwaway episode about the rivalry between Frasier and Niles for their father’s affection ends in a poignant gut-punch that’s sold by one of John Mahoney’s most affecting performances. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’ll change your life.
Season 6- Three Valentines
The Valentine’s Day episodes on Frasier are traditionally a high point, but this remains one of their most ambitious and effective. Split into three parts- each one following the Valentine’s day of the main characters- it kicks off with a hilarious, almost-silent physicla comedy sequence that’s worth watching in and of itself thanks to David Hyde Pierce’s amazing blundering. What follows- Frasier’s panicky misinterpretation of what could or could not be a date and Martin and Daphne having what’s meant to be a nice dinner- is just as funny, proving that the show understood it’s performers and knew how to get the very best out of them, comedically speaking.
Season 7- RDWRER
A Christmas/New Year’s episode this time around, with Frasier, Niles and Martin ending up stuck in a Winnebago on a cross-country tour as the bells chime. The exploration of the father/sons relationship is one of the consistently strongest point on Frasier, and RDWRER is one of their finest episodes in that vein. Blisteringly sharp, with a warm but not soft emotional core, this is how you do family comedy on television. Take note, literally everyone ever.
Season 8- And The Dish Ran Away With the Spoon, Parts 1 and 2
Am I cheating by putting a two-parter in this list? Get used to it. In the aftermath of a Very Important Event which I won’t ruin for those who haven’t seen the series and have somehow avoided spoilers for more than twenty years, the Crane family and friends attempt to collect themselves and deal with the painful, sad, but ultimately hopeful aftermath. Can we just all give Jane Leeves a collective hug for her performance here? Frasier and Martin take a backseat in the best possible way as Niles and Daphne take centre stage, to great effect.
Season 9- Don Juan in Hell, parts 1 and 2
See, I told you you’d have to get used to it. This, the climax to a season-long arc that had Frasier questioning himself, is basically a self-indulgent excuse to climb inside the head of one of the most engaging lead characters on TV. Frasier locks himself up in a cabin, and has a chat with all the significant women from his past (including the amazing Lilith) in what has to be one of the most meta episodes ever created before meta was even a thing. Season 10-rooms with a View When one of the Crane clan has to face a life-changing operation, the rest of the family flocks down to support them, and find themselves relieving their significant hospital-related memories. Does that sound ridiculous? Good, then at least this is going to outdo your expectations. By turns heartbreaking and heartwarming, it’s an episode that refuses to wallow in it’s tragedy and fights through to a sweet and well-earned climax. John Mahoney kills it when he’s not even facing the camera in what has to be one of the saddest moments of the series run. Season 11- Goodnight, Seattle parts 1 and 2 What else could be here except the finale? It’s one of the finer TV finales to ever grace the small screen; I touched on it in my How I Met Your Mother rant, but that doesn’t do it justice. It offers no real answers, but promises that whatever these characters will do once the cameras switch off for the last time they will be happy. And that’s all you want from them at this point.
The Cutprice Guignol 