Grammer Lesson: The Courage of Conviction

We are pleased to present this guest essay from Ann Bauer, co-founder of Storyalīz. We present guest essays on occasion to further debate and discourse on important topics. As always, the opinions expressed by the guest author do not necessarily represent those of Hot Air or Townhall Media.  

I’ve been thinking about Kelsey Grammer a lot, since well before the latest firestorm over his friendship with Donald Trump. It started on a hot, oversold, delayed Delta flight where the only thing that kept me breathing evenly was “Frasier” on the seat-back TV.

I’m not a person who rewatches shows — or re-reads novels — as a rule. The hours allotted to me are finite, and there are so many wonderful works of art. It seems like a waste to spend time on a second dampened experience. Once I’ve had the thrill of a story, I tend to move on.

There are exceptions, of course. Doris Lessing’s “The Fifth Child,” which I revisit yearly, and “Angle of Repose,” which is more a once-a-decade book. I recently read Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and am already thinking of going back.

But a television show has to be truly spectacular for me to sit through it twice. “The Americans” qualifies. The first few seasons of “The X-Files,” before it went off the rails. And “Frasier.” 

Sitting in that cramped airplane seat, I loved it all over again.

What I find remarkable is the warmth I feel for this dude, who is everything I once aspired to be but now understand is a sham.  A liberal, enlightened city dweller with a name people recognized and advanced degrees on the wall. A wine expert who sleeps in silk pajamas yet is surrounded by wise, mordant working-class people who “keep him real.” 

That’s what we were sold in the 1980s and ‘90s. It was such a nice dream. 

Watching Grammer now, I think he knew what he was peddling, and his own politics were at play. “Frasier” remains appealing because without ever being mean, its title character keeps reminding you the show’s premise is a beautiful lie.

I was 18 when Frasier Crane first appeared on “Cheers,” which was my generation’s show. Or at least, it was my demographic’s show.

    Cheers took the black box theater concept of a single set peopled by a broad swath of characters and brought it to television. It mixed class, age, and race easily, binding everyone together with their proximity to alcohol. Notably, there were almost no children in the thing, ever, except for frequent stereotyping references to foul-mouthed Italian single mother Carla’s enormous criminal brood.

    Diane — the weakest link in the show, as played by Shelley Long — was the blueblood, the uppity educated girl who descended and well-meaningly tried to tame the hourly workers and drunkards. 

    Over and over, the writers went back to the theme that the reverse was happening: She was actually being educated by the postman and the athlete. Cheers was celebrating the value of the marginalized. Except…

    Looking back, the circumstances enjoyed by these characters were awfully posh. The bar was brassy and meticulous. Everyone (but Cliff, whose white socks were a running joke) dressed nicely. They were in Boston during the Big Dig where parking was outrageously expensive and impossible to access. Yet they all lived well: the waitress with her eleventeen kids, the mail carrier, the elderly assistant bartender. Never did anyone have a problem getting to the bar.

    Cheers was one big showcase of the myth that compassionate liberalism — often the theme of the show, which won a GLAAD media award in ‘83  – led to equity and comfort for all. Even better, it brought the classes together, in harmony, and they loved one another. There were small, occasional crises of circumstance (Norm’s bar bill grew and grew) but calamities never happened. 

    I’ve tried going back and watching old Cheers episodes and it makes me frustrated, the way they glossed over the realities to present a sanitized version of the class war and a completely unrealistic view of life.

    But the show got better when Frasier Crane appeared, because he — mostly due to Grammer’s deft performance — kept outing the urbane hypocrisies of the progressive set.

    Whereas Diane was shrill and overbearing, so the hoi polloi had an advantage, Frasier was kind of doofy and sweet. Like many of us, he’d fallen for the promise that more education and fine habits would somehow make him a better man. He was never cruel but he did consistently arrogant things. And every single time, he’d get set back.

But here’s the difference: Unlike Diane, he’d recognize his mistakes with humor and gentility. And then he’d try to change.

There was a major tone shift in 1993 when Frasier left Boston-based Cheers universe and moved to Seattle with his own eponymous show. 

Now instead of being set in the supposed everyman environs of a grotto bar, the action occurred largely in the doctor’s penthouse apartment and bougie local coffeeshop. There are entire episodes devoted to the lengths he must go to in order to keep his nice life. The gentleman’s bribes and professional log rolling, the falsehoods and self-aggrandizement. The price of everything is front and center.
   It’s honest, for once.

Again, there are working-class folks teaching lessons — including Frasier’s father Martin, an ex-cop, and Daphne, a sexy physiotherapist from Manchester — but instead of cardboard characters, we get interplay. Sometimes they school Frasier and other times it happens the other way around. The foibles and outcomes are played for character development instead of simply for laughs.

Over and over the errors in Frasier’s high-brow fantasies are dismantled. He’ll fail to achieve a seat on the opera board or a reservation at the hottest restaurant in town. Then he learns the lessons, responds with dignity, and moves on. He lives with his father’s ugly duct-taped easy chair in the living room; he encourages his brother to ditch a wealthy doctor for the penniless Daphne, whom Niles loves. 

Frasier the character, as played by Grammer the actor, changes. He grows.

Reading now about Grammer’s own position in the political ecosphere, I wonder if this is the secret to what made Frasier work.

Much has been made of the fact that unlike most of Hollywood, Kelsey Grammer supports President Donald Trump. That’s a fetish of mainstream media — to distill every ideology down to Trumpism.

The thing I find more interesting is that Grammer is and always has been a Republican who expresses traditionally small-c conservative views. 

“When I was a little boy I just thought, you know, there’s a right and a wrong. This grey area thing doesn’t have a lot of value,” he told a reporter for “The Independent.” “I get you can have feelings about certain things, and I want to respect everybody’s feelings. But, you know, you learn in AA that feelings are not facts. And that’s where I think we get confused a lot these days.” 

It’s not unusual for actors to portray people with whom they disagree on fundamental issues. Meryl Streep and Richard Dreyfuss are marvelous progressive actors who have played sharply conservative roles. Both did so with nuance. But the projects were clearly disapproving. That’s a lay-up, to play the other side and expose their faults.

What Grammer achieved, from 1984 until the two-season Frasier re-boot in 2023, was a character that didn’t reflect his values or politics but whom he embodied with affection and ease. He made me love the hapless elitist Dr. Crane, in perpetuity. He revealed the pitfalls of Frasier’s take on life but also the liberal man’s genuine goodwill.

In this way, he resembles characters like Charles Bingley from “Pride & Prejudice,” Wooster from “My Man Jeeves,” and Pierre Bezukhov from “War and Peace.” They present a view of man that’s flawed but human — never a caricature. It’s one of the many great things art can do.

I went from a Frasier Crane-style worldview in my 20s, 30s, and 40s to one that more closely aligns with a kind of center-right libertarianism today. And Kelsey Grammer’s Frasier Crane helps me tolerate and integrate my progressive past self. It lives on as one of the most watchable — and rewatchable — comedic performances I know. 

I suspect we see less of Grammer today than we should. The “Frasier” update was a legitimately weak show, but his Starz drama, “Boss,” was masterful and underrated. I suspect he’s absent from marquee streaming largely because he’s been honest about his opinions. 

“To be anything else would be a problem,” he said, when asked.

He’s certainly invited a different set of problems by speaking out. And I truly admire him for facing that hysteria, even — or perhaps especially — on points where we diverge.
So while the press ignores actual news and hounds Grammer for Trump takes, I may just fire up Frasier viewing number three.

Ann Bauer is the co-founder of Storyalīz, a breakthrough serialized classic literature app.

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