ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 10, 1996 TAG: 9612100078
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRAZIER MOORE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hey, couch potatoes: Let's put ``Frasier'' on the couch.
Not that this psyche-sassing sitcom displays any personality disorders. Airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC (WSLS-Channel 10), it's an almost perfectly realized comedy whose many awards and Top 10 ratings contraindicate nit-picking (if I'm down on Jane Leeves as the housekeeper, that must be MY hangup).
But if ``Frasier'' is well-nigh flawless in its fourth season, quite the opposite could be said of its title character, who is afflicted with multiple symptoms of comic vulnerability.
Radio psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane, however well-meaning, is a self-important snob, a feverishly cultivated man for whom control and enlightenment are everything - especially since he has neither.
Instead, his world is devoted to taking him down a few rungs. This includes even brother Niles, like Frasier a pompous shrink, and a kindred, if competitive, spirit.
Just one quick exchange between the brothers this week exemplifies the show's reliable deliciousness:
Niles: ``You know that party I'm throwing for my country club friends?''
Frasier: ``Oh, yes - the one I wasn't invited to, but my Waterford punch bowl was.''
Snappy repartee sparked with just the right detail, and, putting it across, supremely talented performers (star Kelsey Grammer and, as Niles, David Hyde Pierce) - Noel Coward couldn't have asked for more than ``Frasier'' delivers on any given episode.
But probing a bit more deeply into this sitcom's subconscious, there's something else, something anything but humorous, that makes ``Frasier'' (and Frasier) so watchable.
That something is the troubled background of the actor who plays Frasier. Quite apart from his talent, Grammer applies his own real-life pathologies to bring Dr. Crane to life.
Oh, sure, most actors draw on inner turmoil in playing a role. How could they do otherwise?
But Grammer's troubles are dramatic from the get-go: His father was murdered; his beloved sister was raped and murdered; he has a history of substance abuse - most recently resulting, as everybody knows, in his treatment at the Betty Ford Clinic this fall after arrest on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs.
The September car wreck and its aftermath led to Grammer's latest epiphany, described to Jay Leno last month on a ``Tonight'' show appearance: God spoke to Grammer, the actor reported, ``and I listened this time, and it's been a wonderful journey since then.''
Long before now, viewers might have gathered that Grammer, to put it bluntly, is a habitual screw-up. But as he has demonstrated since winning the role of Frasier on ``Cheers'' a dozen years ago, art, however inadvertently, imitates life. Which has been a good thing, enriching Frasier, a screw-up in his own right.
Grammer raises the issue in his recent memoir, ``So Far,'' in a foreword ``written'' by Frasier.
``No doubt you've noticed the similarities,'' Frasier ``writes.'' ``Kelsey has not always had the best luck with women. The same could be said of Frasier - does a certain Diane Chambers come to mind?''
Of course. It was Diane's relationship with Sam Malone, the ``Cheers'' bar owner, that Frasier was originally brought on to derail. But after a torrid affair, the prissy intellectual derailed Frasier. Later he married and divorced the ice-queen intellectual Lilith (played by Bebe Neuwirth, who makes occasional guest appearances on ``Frasier'').
By contrast, Grammer's history with females has included a disastrous marriage to a stripper and, three years ago, allegations of sex with a minor (no charges were brought).
In ``So Far,'' Grammer writes that he met his daughter's 15-year-old baby sitter ``at a time in my life when my opinion of myself was extremely low. Through her eyes, for the first time in my life, I could see myself as beautiful.''
There and throughout, Grammer's book betrays a man who, like Frasier, can be embarrassingly self-disclosing yet shrouded in self-delusion. He is a man whose confessionals display the same overheated style that he employs as Frasier for comic effect. (``It was hell,'' a dead-serious Grammer writes in his book. ``It was a nightmare. But I was paralyzed, trapped in a terrifying syndrome I couldn't stop.'')
In short, you've got one precarious man playing another, and milking it for laughs. No wonder ``Frasier'' is hilarious, and, thanks to Grammer, if you bother to look deep, painfully telling.
LENGTH: Medium: 86 linesby CNB