After a 19-year absence, Frasier Crane is back on TV in a brand-new sitcom. The new series is still titled Frasier, but it finds Kelsey Grammer’s effete mental health professional relocating to a new city and interacting with a brand new cast of characters. But what about the previous cast of characters, the one that viewers got to know across 11 seasons of the original series? Where one character in particular is concerned, the Frasier revival stealthily built its premiere around absence. SPOILERS ahead.
The episode opens up with Frasier landing in Boston, having traveled back to his old hometown alongside his nephew David (Anders Kieth), a student at Harvard. Frasier reveals that they’re coming from his father’s funeral. Martin Crane has passed away. That mirrors real life, as actor John Mahoney passed away in 2018 at the age of 77 due to complications from throat cancer.
While it doesn’t seem obvious at first, Marty Crane’s presence is actually felt throughout the premiere episode despite Mahoney’s absence. Frasier tries to relate to his son Freddy (played in the revival by Jack Cutmore-Scott), a son who has pretty much cut his father out of his life. But Freddy is too much like his grandfather, Marty. Ultimately, Frasier keeps coming back to one thing: why didn’t Freddy come to his grandfather’s funeral?
Freddy tells Frasier that he just couldn’t get on the plane. He tells Frasier about how when his best friend, a fellow firefighter, died a little while back, Martin got on a plane and flew out to Boston to be with his grandson. Frasier didn’t know this. Martin, a former police officer, was able to understand Freddy’s pain in a way Frasier couldn’t. Then Frasier gives Freddy a final gift from his grandfather: the flag that was flown over the state capitol in Martin Crane’s memory. Frasier says that his own father was a “tough act to follow” (something the original series proved time and time again) and then Frasier promises Freddy that he will do better.
This, the penultimate scene of the episode, really hits home just how important Martin and Mahoney were to the show — and then the dedication comes. The episode ends with a dedication to Gabrielle James and Archie Lyndhurst, before dissolving to footage of John Mahoney as Martin Crane saying, “It all works out” and giving the camera a wry smile. Coming after that scene between Frasier and Freddy, it’s a real gut punch — but a cathartic one.
Gabrielle James was a script supervisor with a career stretching all the way back to Happy Days. She served as the script supervisor on all 11 seasons of Cheers and all 11 seasons of Frasier. As this New York Times profile of Grammer pointed out, Gabrielle James was responsible for helping the lead actor learn his lines at the last minute through his entire tenure as Frasier Crane. She passed away in late December 2022.
Archie Lyndhurst is the son of Nicholas Lyndhurst, the English actor who plays Frasier’s old Boston pal Alan on the new series. Archie Lyndhurst passed away on September 22, 2020 at the age of 19, a month shy of his 20th birthday. An actor himself, Lyndhurst was most known for his role as Ollie on the BBC sitcom So Awkward. Archie Lyndhurst died in his sleep from a brain hemorrhage caused by an extremely rare and rapid version of Leukaemia.
New episodes of Frasier premiere on Thursdays on Paramount+.