Reviewer Rating: 3/5.0
3
How about the Spanish ham on TV right now?
We just saw the “before” and “after” versions of this Iberian delicacy on the new season of Murder in the Building, and now we’re seeing pigs in the season 2 premiere of Fun and Fun action.
It’s a bold move to call an episode “Ham” and then fully live up to its name by filling in subplots that could have been trimmed.
Harvard sophomore
The first season of the revival was surprisingly good, especially considering how perfect the original Happy Family series was.
Frasier 2.0 fleshes out Dr. Crane’s return to Boston, joining his previous “new” role in Boston’s academic life as opposed to his Cheers days.
This strategy works very well, especially when playing the character of Daphne and Niles’ son, David Crane, who is now a freshman at Harvard University. The character played by Anders Keith is a revelation, his weird old-fashionedness perfectly blended with his parents’ eccentricities.
Now that all the scenes have been completed, the challenge for Season 2 of “Fantasy” is how to create and maintain narrative tension.
Perhaps the show was too relaxed in the wake of its success, as this episode felt like mid-season filler rather than a high-stakes premiere.
On the one hand, the second season of the show is refreshing start There is no review dump. On the other hand, it goes right into the severity of the visual impact This episode felt completely disconnected from the previous season.
Screaming through customs
Frazier and Professor Alan Cornwall purchased expensive Spanish ham (and planned a party), which was exactly the kind of highbrow escapades the Klein brothers often engaged in when they were in Seattle.
Here it’s explained as a way for Fraser and his old friends to commemorate their long-ago trip to Spain while at Oxford, but it’s actually more of a case of Fraser coining the unofficial “Ham Festival” Holidays and throwing out excuses.
The original show had many beloved episodes of pure slapstick, such as “The Ski Lodge” and “The Seal Who Came to Dinner.” While they were never my favorites, they at least featured superb physical comedy and timing.
But when the hapless David Crane is put in charge of preparations for the ham party, he lacks surprise or creativity in the expected chaos of the job.
This highlights how different David’s character is now compared to last season. He’s an accident-prone goofball, but there’s a confident elegance to his movements, timing, and delivery of his lines that was missing from the premiere, and that’s exactly where it needed to be.
The secondary storyline here isn’t much better.
Not making the best use of time
When Frasier learns that Freddie asked Allen instead of him for advice about dropping out of Harvard, he becomes furious with his old best friend and son.
When Olivia and Freddy discover that the life-changing advice Alan gave them years ago came not from the professor’s own experience and wisdom, but from the magic snooker ball he kept in his desk drawer (i.e. the Magic 8 ball), things got worse.
Olivia’s huge reaction after learning her life might involve marriage to a tech billionaire was mostly designed to elicit widespread laughter. Still, Freddie shrugs off the literal sense of how his fate is decided, which seems low-key even for him.
The character of Freddy has been a tricky balancing act in the revival so far. He doesn’t seem entirely believable, either as a mainstay firefighter or as a brilliant Harvard dropout.
However, I’m all for him being the unapologetic firefighter if it means we get to see more of the Scout group visiting the firehouse.
The best part of the episode is a bunch of kids sitting around a table. Somehow, unexpectedly, they dominated the action.
They asked Freddy every relevant question he should have been asking about his role in Frasier and Alan’s situation, and they did so with perfect timing and delivery.
These Scout kids were shocked, even DalmatIan the puppy in the corner is like, “Hey, I am This is the one who should focus his attention here!
factual issues
in a childson In the episode, Eve is insulted when Frasier laughs at Eve’s suggestion to bring sangria to a ham party. When she arrived she found he was offering his own fancy version of the drink and she was furious.
However, Frazier and Allen’s account of their “ham origin story” presents a deeper Hispanic-themed mystery.
old friends explain Separated from the Oxford tour bus group, they wandered around lost, bought canvas shoes, and fought wild goats until they came to an out-of-the-way tavern where they tasted delicious Spanish ham for the first time.
They also said their wallets were stolen before the bill came, so they ended up calling their parents to pay for dinner.
As far as Fraser canon goes, most of it seems very strange to me.
First, I had to double-check the timing of Fraser’s mother’s death. That happened in 1987, during the Cheers timeline, so she was indeed alive during her son’s Oxford-era stay.
Fraser earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University, but it is unclear whether he attended Oxford College before, during, or after Harvard Medical School. Nonetheless, he was probably in his early twenties when he visited Oxford and Spain.
I would believe their story more if they had only Calling Allen’s parents, I assume they were in the UK, not that they also called Fraser’s parents, who were several time zones away in Seattle.
More importantly, at this point in history (the early 1980s), no The norm is to pay for anything over the phone. Travelers checks are used when traveling internationally, while amounts raised by credit cards need to be carbon-copied to be legal.
Unless young Fraser and Alan’s parents actually traveled with them and were waiting by the phone at an Oxford Group hotel, there was no way they could have accomplished the feat of paying for their son’s dinner from abroad in the space of a week.
Before you ask, there are actually no This is a show more for the picky than Family , both in its original and crispy versions.
I’m not fact-checking all the vintages of wine and sherry featured on both shows over the years (at least not here!); I just noticed a few differences in this particular episode, which for long-time viewers Empty indeed.
Looking to the future
In the end, Fraser and Alan become friends again, Freddie apologizes to everyone for his ignorance, and Eve, David, and Olivia remain comic relief.
Still, everything about this episode raises red flags for next season. The quality of writing, directing, scene blocking and camera movement has dropped significantly from the first season.
It’s heartbreaking to see these long-beloved characters in sub-par condition. The first season of the “Funny Days” revival was a quiet miracle of ingenuity, but if the first episode of “Funny Days” season 2 is any indication, this could be the true end of an era.
TV fans, what did you think of the premiere?
Do you think the second season of “Funny Family” has any hope of reaching the quality of the first season?
Let us know what you think in the comments!
