Welcome to the newest gem in our popular "Briefly" series. On the heels of "Arts, Briefly" and "McNeil, Briefly" comes "Frasier, Briefly," where we plan to talk about the TV show FRASIER, briefly, whenever the occasion arises. Ironically, our first "Frasier, Briefly" will not be brief, I think. That's the way we do it at the "blog"! We're like, "Who cares?" Today's "Frasier, Briefly" consists of two celebrity FRASIER assessments. First comes Kelly Hogan, the "blog's" appointed FRASIER expert, who has been recently called "a torch singer" by both the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times but they don't know what they're talking about because she's so much more. A FRASIER expert, for example. "It turns out that that's one episode that I've never seen," Hogan writes of our recent reflections on the episode in which the eponymous Frasier hires a butler, "and, relating to what you said about the implied needlessness/redundancy of dvr-ing Frasier, how is it possible that I've missed one? I don't rightly know. It's at this point that I must confess (as I have to only a few close, trusted associates... and now all of your 'blogdom') that I am currently working my way through ALL seasons of Frasier from Netflix, and just finished season 7 where Daphne leaves Donnie at the altar and jumps in the camper with Niles at her wedding. I watched this episode a few weeks ago, on tour and in Amsterdam for the first time ever, in bed in a hotel room, with all of Amsterdam outside at my disposal, but too tired to even move - much less go looking for Dutch trouble. Anyhow - in looking for info about the 'butler' episode of Frasier, I found an 'all things Frasier' website that made me feel a little better about my chronological Frasier Netflix obsession." (Here Hogan provides a "link" to an episode summary from the site in question.) "Yes, it's from season 8," she continues, "which explains why I haven't seen it yet. But it's only four episodes away! ...and yes I cried that night in Amsterdam when Daphne and Niles finally made out..." [note: Hogan goes on to give a list of reasons why she might have been unduly emotional that evening and asks us to cut her some slack on that account. But those reasons are none of your business! The "blog" has its limits after all. - ed.] Thanks, Hogan! Next up, the official word on novelist Tom Franklin's "fave" FRASIER episode, straight from novelist Tom Franklin himself: "My favorite Frasier," writes Tom, "is when Sam Malone from Cheers visits and both Daphne and Roz are all gaga over Sam. See, we forgot Sam's sex appeal in the later Cheerses when the writers made him a parody of himself, but when we see how he's viewed outside Cheers - where even Carla began to mock him - well, we see he was one of TV's great characters. God Bless Sam Malone," Tom concludes patriotically. I don't know. It struck me as patriotic.
