Series review: Frasier S1 (re-watch)

Frasier is a sitcom revolving around the radio psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane and the people close to him. His radio producer Roz Doyle, his younger brother - Dr. Niles Crane - who's also a psychiatrist, his dad - Martin Crane - who's a retired cop that has to move in with him because of an old injury, his dad's live-in physical therapist Daphne Moon and his dad's dog - Eddie.

The main cast: Roz, Niles, Daphne, Martin, Eddie and Frasier

Frasier is often hailed as one of the best written sitcoms out there, and I agree. It's very clever and witty, the stories are always interesting, none of the cast ever breaks character just to fit in a certain story line, and most important of all is that it's really funny.

Like all the best sitcoms Frasier is a very character driven show. Every conflict here derives from the characters own personalities and how they all differ from each other. And yet it never feels forced and it often manages to give us a touching conclusion to it's episodes. In the first season these conclusions belong to Martin and Frasier, but the rest of the cast all get their moments later on in the series.

The final episode of the first season is one of the best written sitcom episodes I have ever come across. It's up there with the likes of 30 Rock's "Reunion" (S03E05) and Malcolm In The Middle's series finale. Not only is it a terrific episode on it's own, but it's also a summary of the show as a whole with the story lines, conflicts, and general behavior and interactions of the main cast as they appear throughout the episode.

Frasier may be one of the best written sitcoms of all time and I relly enjoy watching it, but it's not laugh out loud funny all that often. Sure, there certainly are times when I've burst out laughing because of it, but it doesn't happen all that often. That and the fact that there a bit too many "awkward comedy" scenes in it keeps me from giving this season a full score. It's pretty damn close to it though.

Score: 8/9

Started: Supernatural

Supernatural is a TV series centering around two brothers, Sam and Dean, whose been trained to fight demonic and various other supernatural phenomenon by their father after their mother was killed by one when they were small children.

When I first heard of this series and saw the main actors I quickly shuffled it off as another bad or mediocre fantasy or sci-fi (since they usually wear the same quality brand) series. Then I caught a few episodes on TV and I was - to put it mildly - impressed. Good writing, acting, production value, entertaining and free from that lame and dorky atmosphere those type of series usually are infested with, nor is it filled to brink with juvenile melodrama like Smallville for example.
This show dark, cool, interesting, but also funny. The best part of the series is the interaction between the two brothers.

So I decided to buy the first season dvd because I have a crappy limited internet and the dvd was cheap. After seeing the first three episodes I can definitely say that it was a worthy purchase.

It was however difficult to decide whether I should have bought this or the first season of the most praised TV series since the first season of Dexter - Breaking Bad. Personally, I do think that Breaking Bad is probably the better series of the two, but I'm just not in the mood for it at the moment.