… is quite possibly the most poignant twenty minutes I’ve ever seen from any television show. The first time I saw it it played at one in the morning and I was back from a music show and not quite ready to go to sleep.
SciFi and comic book writer Peter David said that he aims to get his readers to choke on their own laughter as he tends to put the tragic and shocking scenes right after something amusing or humorous. The saying goes “I laughed, I cried…” Well, I didn’t cry. I did yell at the TV, though. And I did need a gulp of vodka to get my mind and soul to shut up about it long enough for me to go to sleep. It hit my funnybone and several nerves all at once.
It’s amazing how a show can do that… and yet only to some people. My friend Clint and my folks have seen it and while they liked it, they weren’t touched by it the same way that I was. It’s sort of like seeing a ghost that no one else in the room can see. And it reaches out and touches you while those around you go on about their daily business.
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4 Responses to The “Mixed Doubles” Episode of Frasier…
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I don’t think I’m familiar with this episode. Can you give us a brief description? I don’t mind spoilers.
I stopped watchig the show after Niles got together with Daphne. That just seemed like such a perversion of every law of the universe. An elitist intellectual Freudian psychiatrist, coupled with a maid who thinks she’s psychic.
A couple minor corrections: Daphne is a live-in physical therapist, not a maid, and Niles is a Jungian, Frasier is the Freudian. Niles points this out when subbing for Frasier on his radio show, saying something like “I want you all to understand that unlike my brother I am a Jungian and not a Freudian, so there will be no blaming mother today!”
Anyhow, I was a big fan of Niles and Daphne and was absolutely thrilled when they got together. I think Niles was the kind of guy that needed someone to break him out of his shell, like the bar Cheers did (somewhat) for Frasier. I can understand your objections, though.
A synopsis of the first half of the episode:
At the beginning of the episode Daphne is dumped by Joe, the workman she’d been dating. Niles intends to ask her out but is talked into sleeping on it by Frasier. Roz takes Daphne to the local bar and she hooks up with a guy that could be Niles’s twin (whoever they got to play the part is amazing, he got every Niles mannerism down pat!). This was in early season four, they didn’t get together until the end of season seven.
I think that episode hits me particularly hard because I’ve had two cases where I missed an opportunity to make a move and paid a steep price for it. That and I’ve been in a situation where I couldn’t just communicate how intensely I loved someone close to me because of the perceived costs of doing so (but then haven’t most of us?)
I am a big fan of Niles and Daphne too!! I loved watching Frasier and remember that episode. It is so frustrating to watch. I think most can relate to it one way or another 🙂
[…] including two examples in this post. The first is a scene from Frasier that I have actually commented before. The first time I saw it I was slightly inebriated, making the funny scenes funnier and […]