Rooms with a View

Felt like watching community theater, or catharsis for a writer who went through a loved one's heart surgery, kept a journal, and spit it out as a script, hoping the episode would write itself. Wasn't this show funny? Whatever it traded jokes for didn't pan out in this episode-maybe just director Kelsey Grammer trying his hand a little too hard at a multi-camera one-act.

This episode is so, so un-Frasier like-I'd never show it to anyone I wanted to get watching the show.

I love this episode and I might literally cry my eyes out.

This episode is not so Frasier-style but still brilliant. The drama, emotions, hilariousness, they just merge with each other in the perfect way. There are some sad memories for sure, but there's a bright future as well. And this is life. This is our life.

People either seem to either love or hate this episode. I'm on the side that, while I'm not in love with it, don't mind one bit. It's not really a "very special episode" per se, as there isn't much doubt at all about Niles' fate, it's more of how the rest of his family is worried nonetheless, and how the hospital "remembers" past visits from all of them. Nothing tremendously deep, just quietly reflective.

The last scene seems to give a little creedence to Daphne's psychic abilities. After we've seen past glimpses of characters' previous visits, we see Daphne stop, compose herself, then walk past a room where we see her and Niles in the near future welcoming a second child. One could say she composed herself then and there because she "saw" that future, and knew beyond all doubts things would be just fine. At least that's how I saw it.

People can hate this episode all they'd like. Fair enough. If you hate it, don't ever watch it again, and don't keep complaining about it's existence. There's about 300 or so other episodes of humour for you, if one dramatic one drives you up the wall, pleasantly avoid it.

In a show that is often goofy and filled with witty humor, this is one of the episodes that illustrates how well the people behind this show could properly weave drama together with that same comedic timing. The writing is ingenious with the story revolving around four people coping with the same heart-wrenching scenario in their own individual ways while simultaneously showing us some glimpses into their personal history with hospitals. And the acting of the entire cast is both heart warming and tear jerking with even the most silent moments such as Martin, played by the late/great John Mahoney, thinking back to getting the diagnosis of his wife years earlier.

Frasier fans seem to consist of two types; those that enjoy the slapstick goofiness that made it a smash hit, and those (like myself) that reveled in the fine line it tread between comedy and drama in the first season or two, but quietly abandoned in favor of (albeit often well done) farce and one-liners. While the story line all but forces the drama (rather than being introduced more naturally in more typical situations as in the early years), the cast takes good advantage of the opportunity of a well-written and well-directed episode. Those who lament Frasier's turn to straight-up comedy fairly early on in its impressive run, and rarely revisit the later seasons, should make an exception for this episode.