{"id":779,"date":"2006-12-11T18:19:04","date_gmt":"2006-12-11T18:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=779"},"modified":"2006-12-11T18:19:04","modified_gmt":"2006-12-11T18:19:04","slug":"the_origins_of_frasier_and_wkr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2006\/12\/11\/the_origins_of_frasier_and_wkr\/","title":{"rendered":"The Origins of Frasier, and WKRP is Coming!"},"content":{"rendered":"

There aren’t many television spin-offs that even manage to stay on the air, let alone surpass their source material in quality. Frasier<\/i> is the exception that proves the rule. I enjoyed Cheers<\/i>, but I loved Frasier<\/i>. You may recall that I gushed at length about this series when the show wrapped production<\/a>; briefly, however, I thought it was a near-perfect mixture of sophisticated wit, lowbrow farce, and genuine human emotion (as opposed to the ersatz variety displayed by the sarcasm-bots on most sitcoms), specifically the complex emotions that exist between grown men and their fathers. In the end, it was a very different series from its parent show, and that was a big part of what made it great.<\/p>\n


\nIf you’re curious about how the show came to be — and I personally find this behind-the-scenes stuff fascinating (yes, I am one of those geeks who actually watches the extras on DVDs) — then you ought to check out a series of entries over at Ken Levine’s blog<\/a>. Levine is a writer who worked on both Cheers<\/i> and Frasier<\/i>, not to mention The Simpsons<\/i>, Dharma and Greg<\/i>, and M*A*S*H<\/i>. While he’s been on vacation, his friend Peter Casey, who co-created Frasier<\/i> with David Lee and David Angell, tells the story in three parts (Part One<\/a>, Part Two<\/a>, and Part Three<\/a>). Among the various trivia points that Peter reveals: the show was nearly set in Denver, Martin’s physical therapist was conceived of as a feisty Latina (they had Rosie Perez in mind for the part), and Lisa Kudrow of Friends<\/i> fame was originaly cast as Roz.<\/p>\n

After Peter finishes his tale, Ken talks about (and reprints a substantial portion of) his favorite Frasier<\/i> script<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And in other classic TV-related news, I just ran across word<\/a> that WKRP in Cincinnati<\/i> is supposedly coming on DVD in ’07. I have to admit, I thought this would never happen because of the substantial music clearance problem (which I discussed here<\/a>) for this music-heavy show. The report I linked to above suggests that some music changes have been made — something which will inevitably offend the purists — but that efforts have been made to make sure the substitutions fit the episodes. I’m ambivalent about this whole music issue. I would prefer that we get the shows exactly as they originally aired, with no changes in editing, runtime, or music. But I’m also a pragmatist, and ultimately I think it would be preferable to have the shows available in some<\/i> form than consigned to the Memory Hole. (And yes, I know that runs counter to my stand on the original, unrevised version of Star Wars<\/i>; I’m just a ball of contradictions, aren’t I?) Hopefully, the changes will be minor ones. I’m looking forward to seeing Johnny, Venus, and Les Nessman again…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There aren’t many television spin-offs that even manage to stay on the air, let alone surpass their source material in quality. Frasier is the exception that proves the rule. I enjoyed Cheers, but I loved Frasier. You may recall that I gushed at length about this series when the show wrapped production; briefly, however, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-glass-teat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}