TVSquad

Let me give you a quick inside look at how things operate here in online entertainment journalism land: ABC sent us an invite to talk to Kelsey Grammer (and his co-star Melinda McGraw) during the same whirlwind "defending Hank" tour that Bob mentioned in his post yesterday. As much as I wanted to talk to Grammer, the conditions just didn't seem to be right.

For one, we would have had maybe ten minutes to talk to him. For another, he'd be defending a show that is a) terrible and b) on the verge of being cancelled. I want to talk to Grammer about comedy, Frasier, Cheers, his heart attack, and lots of other stuff. I wasn't particularly interested in him telling me how good he thinks Hank is for the whole interview.

But, when he told The TV Addict that last night's episode was going to be funny, it got me curious; maybe they had figured things out and made a leap in quality. So I tuned into last night's episode. I wish I hadn't.

The whole episode made me cringe. I really thought we had gotten past silly and contrived high-concept plots, even in multi-camera shows, but I guess Tucker Cawley and his crew haven't gotten the memo. "Let's have Hank work in an ice cream shop with his daughter!" You would think that, when this idea came up in the writers' room, Cawley, who was an executive producer of Everybody Loves Raymond and consulted on the ever-improving Parks and Recreation, would have shot that idea down. But it actually made it to the shooting stage, even though I haven't seen a plot that dopey since the days of Family Matters.

Of course, the dumb plot led itself to dumb jokes. "Have you been eating the rum raisin?" Hank's daughter asks him after he comes to work with an upbeat attitude. Heh, get it? Because he's drunk from the rum! That line had more dust on it than the baseboard behind my couch.

But the thing that set my teeth on edge the most about the episode was Grammer himself. He plays the role like he's still Frasier Crane. It's the same problem I had with his previous show, Back To You; since Frasier ended, he's played every role with the same pompous bluster as his signature character. It's like when every role Helen Hunt did in the nineties was a variation of Jamie Buchman (yes, even the role in As Good As It Gets that won her an Oscar; it was Jamie Buchman as a waitress); she never played her roles differently enough to make you forget about the one for which she was best known.

In real life, Grammer seems to be a down-to-earth kind of a guy. I'm not sure why he's not playing Hank Pryor, who made his own fortune as a sporting goods magnate before he was removed from his company, that way. It would have given people an opportunity to see a different side of Grammer, but yet he chooses to keep to the same old bluster. It's too bad.

If you're still curious, last night's episode is on SlashControl. But you're better off watching the rest of the ABC comedy line-up there instead.