CRANE — The return of Frasier
This is a pitch document for a revival of the sitcom Frasier, which ran on NBC between 1994 and 2004.
This new iteration is entitled Crane, and it is not a sitcom. The reason for the new name will soon become apparent.
What follows below is a brief outline for an eight-episode series, some initial casting suggestions, and a breakdown of the major themes of the show.
EPISODE ONE:
It is 2016. Headlights illuminate a black highway. On the radio: “Rumors of War” by High on Fire.
FREDERICK CRANE (Trevor Einhorn) — 28, bearded, eyes red — sways between lines, occasionally drinking out of a flask he leaves at his side. He reaches a deserted truck stop by the side of the road. Rain teems down. He staggers to a pay phone…
We cut to a psychiatrist’s office, panning up to a framed degree from Yale, the name of NILES CRANE in cursive. But glass smashes off screen, and the shadow of sinister figure enters via a kicked-in door…
North Creek, Washington, the outskirts of Seattle. The offices of Wittler, Hennessy & Brown; low-level lawyers, mostly workers-comp crooks. We follow DAPHNE CRANE (Jane Leeves) placing drinks on a conference table.
One of the cups goes in front of her boss, JEFFREY WITTLER (Christopher Guest). He brushes a gross, flirtatious hand against her lower back while she cringes and smiles back uncomfortably.
Her job done, Daphne leaves the conference room and goes back to her desk. We see her smile at a photo of her 13 year old son: DAVID CRANE (Oakes Fegley). But Daphne’s phone loudspeaker rings to life, and Wittler calls her back into the conference room with another crude remark, embarrassing her further in the process.
We cut to a Mercedes being driven in the Seattle rain. NILES CRANE (David Hyde Pierce) has aged. He wears a full beard, but stress has turned it snow-white. He answers a call, and his secretary tells him there’s been another break-in at his office. He hangs his head and says he’s on his way.
Niles arrives at his office and meets two police officers there: DETECTIVE HUGO PASCAL (John Reynolds) and DETECTIVE JAYNE DUNHAM (Saoirse Ronan). He shows them the damage; a broken window, some books thrown to the ground, a stolen laptop. The cops are bored. They have better things to do, real police work.
“My father was a policeman,” Niles tells the officers. “But he retired years ago.” Niles leaves to take a call, and his secretary sidles up to them, gossipy and nasty: “That father died in Katrina. They never found his body.”
Pascal and Dunham look at each other, unsure how to answer that.
Niles calls Daphne on the phone in his office. He tells her about the break-in. She asks if it was David that did it. He says yes, but there’s nothing more to say. They hang up, both of them sad, both of them wishing they could say more.
On the way back to the police station, Pascal and Dunham discuss the case, or lack thereof. Pascal asks Dunham if she remembers Frasier Crane. She tells him the name rings a bell. “That was his brother,” he says. “I wonder what ever happened to him.”
New Orleans, Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina was 12 years ago. FRASIER CRANE (Kelsey Grammer) sits in a dirty, run-down bar, and talks to a fellow patron about a place he used to frequent in Boston, years and years ago. They have a conversation about their favourite colours. Then the man asks him why he’s in town. Frasier points across the road.
“At five o’clock, I’m meeting the man that owns that building. My father used to live there. His belongings are still in the storage rooms in the basement.”
“What are you looking for?”
“It’s a chair, actually. An old, pea-coloured behemoth.”
As Frasier leaves, he asks the man what his favourite colour is, and the man answers: black.
Back in Seattle, Pascal digs through a box in his garage. He pulls out old photographs, yearbooks and newspaper clippings, and finally finds what he’s looking for: a cardboard placard, about 12 inches by 12 inches, for Frasier Crane Day, held back in 1997. He leaves his garage and heads back into the house, but he sees A MAN (Ben Sinclair) walking by his house, hands in pockets, with a long ponytail and John Lennon-style glasses on .
“Hey, Frasier Crane, right?” Pascal stops, shocked, but smiles. “I called into that guy’s show back in the day,” the man continues. “Didn’t help, but he sure had a nice voice…”
The man walks off, and Pascal watches him leave with curiosity.
Niles Crane sits alone in his office, lit by a single desk lamp, swigging a glass of sherry. His phone rings, and rings, and rings, but Niles does not pick up.
Across the country, in a drab motel room, Frasier sits lit by a single desk lamp, swigging a glass of sherry. He’s speaking into a handheld Dictaphone, reading from “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” by Charles Dickens. He reaches the end of a chapter and puts the book and the Dictaphone down.
As we fade to black, we hear the sound of a radio twisting and turning through the dial, through static and talk-radio. We hear the sound of a woman SCREAM, of glass breaking, of a life being snuffed out, as the credits roll on our first episode.
CRANE is not a sitcom. It is not a comedy. It is a single camera drama. It is primarily inspired, in both tone and style, by the 2017 Showtime program TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, and THE KILLING, a police procedural which aired on AMC and Netflix between 2011 and 2014.
There is no laugh track, no studio audience. It is a story about bruised and battered people trying to recapture their past glory, attempting to return (or resist a return) to the golden days, to a time when their problems could be solved in 22 minutes. These are also characters desperate not to return to cycles of depression, addiction, abuse, and anger.
EPISODE TWO:
ROZ DOYLE (Peri Gilpin) is still the station manager at KACL-AM Talk Radio. Disappointed by the station’s reactionary turn towards right-wing politics, ostensibly in response to a dwindling listener base, Roz no longer feels any passion for her job, and dreams of different pastures. We find her in a conference room staring at an empty legal pad, drawing circle after circle.
After the meeting is over, she returns to her office, where a picture of her daughter, ALICE DOYLE (Elle Fanning), hangs on the wall. She picks her phone up and dials a number: “Wanna come over tonight?”
Detective Pascal sits at his desk looking at crime scene photos when Detective Dunham comes past and says they’re wanted in their captain’s office.
In New Orleans, Frasier knocks on a door out the back of the building we saw last time. NATHAN BUCKHORN (Marc Maron) opens it and they have a friendly but tense interaction. This is Martin’s old apartment, but in the course of the conversation, the man reveals that Martin left nothing behind: “He had a storage locker here, but it was empty. When he died, his wife sold everything that was in the apartment. We tried to get in contact with you…Haven’t you spoken to his wife?” Frasier nods, sadly and regretfully. He shows him a picture of the couch, from the 90's, a photo taken in Frasier’s old apartment in Seattle. “That chair wasn’t here. I’d remember that chair.”
Freddie Crane sits in a cheap, anonymous hotel room with music (“Take Me” by Bobby Womack) playing off a Bluetooth speaker. We watch as he stares, unblinking, at a silent television.
Niles sits in session with a patient, discussing parents. “What your parents do can affect you,” he says. “Even if you don’t feel it happening, even if you don’t realise. Their actions create ripples, but they don’t just spread outwards and disappear. Sometimes they don’t even appear at all until years and years later.” But Niles breaks down, and the session ends with his patient basically counselling him.
Back in New Orleans, Frasier tells Buckhorn that in the months after Katrina, he said a lot of things to his step-mother, Ronee, that he wishes he could take back. He looks at the walls of the building. “Did you get much water here?” Buckhorn looks at him queerly. “We didn’t get any water here…you know your father didn’t die here, right?”
Truthfully, Frasier has no idea how his father died.
Pascal and Dunham enter their Captain’s office. THE CAPTAIN (Jennifer Grey) hands them files: “Another one last night. Local police tried to keep it to themselves, but it’s been transferred here by state. Same M.O. Any second now the press are going to get wind.”
She details the crime, but they’ve heard it all before: a woman beaten and strangled in her home, the victim’s taps and oven left on, fridge left open, front door left wide open, etc. Another officer comes in: DR. MO JENSON (Alexis Bledel), a forensic psychologist. The Captain explains that Dr. Jenson will be putting together a profile for the suspect, to try to figure out what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Coming out of the office, Pascal and Dunham share a bemused look; Dunham says they’d be able to catch The Killer if they stopped wasting time listening to psychologists, but Pascal isn’t so sure.
Roz and BOB ‘BULLDOG’ BRISCOE (Dan Butler) are sitting up in bed together, sharing a joint. Bulldog has an unexplained cast on his arm. They’re both sleepy, content, happy in each other’s company…but Bulldog has to leave. He has to get home to his son and relieve a babysitter. Wishing he could stay, Roz picks a fight and kicks him out instead, heartbroken.
Freddie Crane continues to drive on through the night. He switches between radio stations and eventually settles on a piece of classical music — Bach’s “Violin Concerto in A Minor”. As we close in on his eyes, we see a flashback:
Freddie — a year younger, without the beard, without the bloodshot eyes —is at a party with some friends in New York City. They’re listening to the same piece of music, sitting around a coffee table with a Ouija board on it. Freddie’s holding the planchette. A friend, TONI (Sonequa Martin-Green) nudges him, asks what he wants to find out from the spirits. He takes a deep breath and…
Daphne sits on a park bench eating lunch. A mother comes past, a toddler holding her hand, but the kid stops and looks up at Daphne. She smiles back at it, but when they leave, her smile falters. She pulls her phone out and tries to ring David. He doesn’t answer. She rings Niles instead. He answers, and they talk — but we don’t listen, we just watch from afar…
Frasier sits alone in his hotel room, lit by a single desk lamp, swigging a glass of sherry, reading from “Edwin Drood” again. His phone rings, he answers; it’s VERONICA “RONEE” LAWRENCE (Wendy Malick). They exchange pleasantries; there’s still a kind of love between them, even if it’s awkward now. “Nathan says you called, looking for your father’s things?” Frasier says he did. Ronee tells him that she has his things. That she always has. Frasier’s gobsmacked: “Why didn’t you tell me?” Ronee doesn’t understand. “I told Niles. He said you didn’t want anything.”
Pascal and Dunham are sitting in front of a whiteboard in the command room, clearly at a loss but with nowhere to go. They discuss the news that a psychiatrist will be getting involved in the case; the coincidence that they just responded to a call at a psychiatrist’s office. “If this shrink doesn’t work out, we should get our guy to take a run at it,” Dunham suggests. Pascal laughs, but leaves the room and comes back with the poster for Frasier Crane Day: “His brother. You really don’t remember him?”
Dunham just stares at it.
Back to the Ouija board flashback: Freddie, disbelieving, is astonished to find his hand moving. The planchette moves over the letters:
M……A……R…….
And his eyes widen, as the credits roll.
Crane is a detective story, a road story, and several love stories intertwined. It is about characters both old and new. It is also a slow burn; a story that requires patience as it unfolds. Viewers expecting to tune in and see their old favourites will be surprised by the seemingly unrelated police procedural story that arrives in its place... That is intentional. A payoff can not arrive from nowhere.
EPISODE THREE:
Dunham and Pascal are sitting in a conference room listening to Dr. Jenson’s preliminary findings: she believes the “Open Door Strangler” is a man in his mid 30's, sexually dysfunctional, &c. She suggests that his leaving the gas and the lights on is an attempt at control and power. The Captain praises Jenson, but as Dunham and Pascal leave the room they roll their eyes; everything she had said was obvious, a guess, or wildly vague, and all useless in the end. “What are we supposed to do with that?” Pascal wonders.
DAVID CRANE (Oakes Fegley) walks into a convenience store, his nose sniffing, and thinking he’s unseen, stuffs some candy bars down the front of his pants.
Daphne is in a back office at her work, filing documents into various cabinets. One of the folders slips, and files come pouring out. She picks them up, and notices that two of the files are exactly the same, except for a line of figures down the side…
David Crane sits on the curb outside of the convenience store, in handcuffs, a police officer standing over him, reading him his rights.
Frasier drives down an anonymous highway, and passes a girl of about fifteen, hitch-hiking and carrying bags. He sees her, stops, backs up until he’s next to her again. He asks her if she wants a lift, asks if she’s safe. When she gets in, he — half chastising — says it’s dangerous out there, that she shouldn’t be alone, that the streets are dangerous for kids. She tells him her name is HESTER, and he smiles. “You don’t really hear that name much these days.”
Niles and Daphne meet at the police station, both of them surprised to see the other one there. While they wait for David to be brought out, they wonder if they should bother telling the police that David did the other break-in. They decide not to. Daphne asks him if she can pick his brain about something, and Niles says sure.
Freddie Crane is in a bar (on the jukebox: “I Fall to Pieces” by Patsy Cline), talking to a drunk woman of about fifty who’s hitting on him. “You’ve never been with a woman my age?” Freddie plays along, but then she gets angry: “I’m old enough to be your mother!” The bartender walks over and patiently says “calm down, Lilith” — Freddie smiles, and the woman notices — “What are you smiling at, baby?” she asks him. He shakes his head and goes to leave, but a fight breaks out at the other end of the bar. One of the men involved smashes a bottle over the other’s head, and that man collapses, dead, his brains oozing out. Freddie watches on in horror, but the whole thing is over in five seconds. The lights come on, and everyone has to leave.
At a diner, Frasier buys Hester dinner. She scarfs the food down, like she hasn’t eaten in days. He asks her where she’s from. She says Chicago, and asks Frasier if he’s ever been there. “Once, years ago,” he begins wistfully. “I went for a woman.” She asks him what happens, and he tells her: that he and the woman — Charlotte — broke up after a year, and that he moved back to Boston afterwards to be closer to his son. But, he says, as soon as he got to Boston, his son and his ex-wife moved to New York, and after that he was too depressed to do anything but move back to Seattle and get his old apartment back. Hester tells him it’s a sad story, and Frasier says he knows it is.
Roz sits in a bar, talking to a guy. It’s a first date. She’s telling a story, a long one, all one take, about a guy she met in Paris. He was a violin maker, but because he spent all of his time making violins, he never got the chance to learn how to play, and that was his biggest regret. When she’s done, Roz makes an off-hand comment about her daughter, and the man recoils, finally speaking: “You have a kid?” Of course, she says, it says so in my Tinder profile…the guy scoffs, and says he never looks past the first two lines of a profile. As he leaves, Roz says to herself: “But that’s in the first line…”
Spinning police sirens. Dunham and Pascal — with a variety of squad cars behind them — speed through the night. They pull up out the front of a house, and more police officers meet them there. The door of the house is open, every light is on. Pascal follows an officer into the house, past the bloodied corpse of another woman, and heads to the kitchen, where the oven is on. He switches it off, waits for a beat, then hits the wall in frustration. Outside, we stay on the spinning lights of a police cruiser, as the credits roll.
What happens when the lights go out on a sitcom? The characters’ lives still continue, of course, but away from the attention and the supernatural resolution that a sitcom seems to provide them. A major theme of Crane — a major character, in fact — is that darkness; the furniture and stages we recognise, but shrouded in black.
EPISODE FOUR:
We see a marionette of sorts. A dangling body with a shock of black hair. It’s hanging in a dark room, like a prisoner being tortured. What is it? We hear radio static …
Back to the crime scene, just after we left it. Dunham is storming back outside when there’s a cry at the other end of the house. Police rush over; there’s a child — a little girl — hiding in a closet in a bedroom. Pascal picks her up and rushes her outside to an ambulance. The feeling in the air is maybe she saw something, a vital clue. Dunham asks a uniformed officer where the others are. “What others?” the officer asks. “The ones who called this in. The witness.” The officer tells her the only other civilian here is the murdered woman, and she didn’t call it in.
“Then how did we know to come?”
Frasier drops Hester off at a Greyhound station. He gives her a wad of cash and a card with his phone number on it. “Call me if you need anything. Anything.” She smiles at him, and gets onto the bus, waving at him from the window. But in the seat behind her, a woman with grey, witch-like hair emerges, and she smiles at Frasier with black teeth, and as they pull away it seems like she puts a bag over Hester’s head. Gasping in shock, he runs after it, banging on the side of the bus. But when he gets another view, Hester is fine, simply looking at him strangely. The bus pulls away, and Frasier is left in its dust.
Niles and Daphne sit in the living room of Niles’ apartment. David, exhausted, sleeps on Daphne’s lap — it’s a tender moment, betraying his age. Niles is asking Daphne to repeat what it is she’s discovered in the files at her firm. She goes over it: inconsistencies in reported income; files and invoices for people who don’t exist, or never worked for the firm. Even, she thinks, a couple of invoices for work done for dead people. As she’s talking, Niles gets misty eyed: “This is the most alive I’ve seen you in a long time.” Daphne blushes and looks away. “The only question,” Niles says, “is what are we going to do with this information?”
Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Frasier visits Ronee at her spacious new home. They catch up. Ronee says she was sorry she “wasn’t there for… you know…” and Frasier, waving her off, apologises for the way he acted when Martin died, though we never actually find out what happened, specifically. He asks her about the things Martin left behind, eventually asking about the chair. She says she sold it to a man who was driving back to Texas. Frasier hangs his head, but continues on. Frasier asks how Martin was, at the end, how he was feeling…
Pascal sits in the police station with the child that was found at the crime scene. A variety of psychologists and social workers join them, and they try to coax the (unharmed) child into telling them what she saw: “A man with long hair like mine,” she says. “And glasses like yours,” pointing to a doctor with Lennon-style glasses on. Pascal furrows his brow, trying to remember something…
At the same time, Dunham is talking to a TECHNICIAN (Alan Ruck), accompanied by the Chief. The Technician explains to her that the killer called in to 911, and that he used a burner mobile phone, and that they know the number, but won’t be able to trace it until he turns it back on. Dunham asks, rhetorically, why the killer would have called in his own crime.
Daphne, at work, is called into Jeffrey Wittler’s office by the intercom again. He says something crass and rude, humiliating her in front of the office. But she walks in to see him with a glint in her eye.
In Pine Bluff, Ronee delivers a monologue of sorts about Martin: “He wasn’t ill. He was strong. He could have had twenty more years. The weather here, it messed with his joints, but that was about it. You know how us retirees tend to move to Florida? He picked New Orleans because he wanted to be different. I kept asking him if he was sure — he loved Florida. But in that last week, just before the storm, I kept finding him…looking at something. Something not there. Like he was lost in thought. I asked him, the day before it really hit, what it was he was thinking about. And he told me he was back in 1969. But I don’t know what. He wouldn’t say. And he was dead a week later.”
Frasier looks at his hands, and then asks for the address of the man from Texas. Ronee says she’ll give it to him, but that he should know that Martin died in the chair. Frasier says that he might have died in the chair, but he lived in the chair too.
Back to the marionette dream. We see that the figure is suspended above a bed. It lowers and lowers towards the camera…Niles opens his eyes, his face covered in sweat. At the same time, across the country, Frasier opens his eyes too. Did they each have the same dream at the same time? It’s unclear…and as Niles’ bedside phone rings, our credits roll.
A key theme in Crane is the suggestion of supernatural themes, but no overt display of them. Secrets lie in the corners of frames, and in the dreams that these characters have. This is not a ghost story, but these characters are certainly haunted.
EPISODE FIVE:
Frasier knocks on another door in another town. This time, it’s HAROLD WINTER (Charles S Dutton) in Odessa, Texas. Harold tells him that he never met Martin, that he just bought a box of his things on a whim from a yard sale in New Orleans. Harold is dismissive: “It’s mostly junk, why do you want it?” Frasier can’t answer, but he circles around needing the chair. Harold asks him, “Isn’t there somewhere you should be right now, instead of here, bothering an old man about a chair?” Frasier tells him that he’s not interested in being given a speech, in having his mind changed. He just wants the chair, and he’ll pay ten thousand dollars for it. Harold tries to speak again but Frasier slams on the table in frustration: “Just give me the goddamn chair.”
David Crane comes out of his mother’s house in the middle of the night, and wanders down the street. He has a sleeping bag under his arm. He throws a pebble at a window and a girl opens it — Alice Doyle — she comes out and sits with him in a park. They talk about what’s going wrong in David’s life, and he says it’s a feeling of helplessness he can’t fix, that he feels that he can’t talk to either parent about it. “Summertime Rolls” by Jane’s Addiction plays as he cries on Alice’s shoulder, and she takes him into the house. In a spare bedroom, there’s a little picture hanging above the bed that says “David’s Room”. They lay there together, hugging, friends.
The next morning, Roz is in a meeting at KACL, listening to an insurance company pitch an ad for snake bite insurance. She stops the advertising people (Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson) halfway through their presentation, and wonders aloud why she’s there, why any of them are there. One of the executives talks back to her, and she fires them on the spot. She leaves, and calls Alice from her car. Alice says she’s still with David; Roz picks them both up, and on a whim, calls Niles and Daphne too.
The five of them get together at a park and have a midday picnic, where the mood is light and happy and festive, and they sit around laughing, picking at food, enjoying each other’s company.
But in such a happy scene, you can’t help but feel that someone is missing…
Freddie Crane is in another bar, in another town, listening to another sad song on a jukebox (“Poses” by Rufus Wainwright). He finishes a beer and wanders out to his car. Later, he speeds past a sign: SEATTLE: 50 MILES
We cut to a woman named ANGELA (Amanda Zhou) going about her business at home. There’s a knock at the door, but when she answers it there’s no-one there, just the empty frame and the blackness beyond. Confused, she heads back into her kitchen, where she’s ATTACKED by a blur. We hear a muffled scream…and nothing else.
Dunham and Pascal are sitting in the command room when another officer comes in: “We just had a call come through. It’s him.” They tear off to a bay of computers, and there’s a blinking blip on top of a map of Seattle. Pascal leans in and asks if they can be any more specific; it’s just a circle, roughly the size of a city block.
The Technician keeps trying, rolling his eyes at the hovering police officers. Pascal, swearing heavily, runs off, while Dunham stays behind to narrow in on where the call came from. The Technician asks why Pascal ran off so quickly. “I think that’s his neighbourhood,” she says. Dunham says she better get the Chief.
When she wanders off, The Technician makes a face that can really only be described as nefarious and suspicious as he looks over his shoulder…
Frasier sits silently in another hotel room, reading from “Edwin Drood” again. As we dolly slowly into him, we cut back to Pascal, speeding through the night with sirens flashing. He screams into his radio that he needs backup on 54th Avenue.
Frasier narrates: “But Neville throws him off, and pauses for an instant, in a raging passion, with the goblet yet in his uplifted hand. Then, he dashes it down under the grate, with such force that the broken splinters fly out again in a shower; and he leaves the house.”
Pascal pulls up out the front of his house, leaves the car and looks for…something. Surrounding him are quiet houses; the occasional light is on, but there’s nothing to see. He calls Dunham, who has no news.
Back to Frasier: “When he first emerges into the night air, nothing around him is still or steady; nothing around him shows like what it is; he only knows that he stands with a bare head in the midst of a blood-red whirl, waiting to be struggled with, and to struggle to the death.”
Pascal tears down a dark driveway, flashing his torch into nooks and crannies between houses. One of the houses he passes is his own. Concerned residents are starting to come out and stand on porches in robes.
Two squad cars pull up and he directs them to the other side of the road. He’s trying to find the house where the call came from, but it could be any one of them in this dark, poorly lit cul-de-sac.
Close on Frasier’s face now: “But, nothing happening, and the moon looking down upon him as if he were dead after a fit of wrath, he holds his steam-hammer beating head and heart, and staggers away. Then, he becomes half-conscious of having heard himself bolted and barred out, like a dangerous animal; and thinks what shall he do?”
Pascal senses something. Not quite movement, but something else. He arrives out the front of a house with ALL of its lights on, with the front door wide open. He radios for backup, takes a tentative step inside…the air shimmers with gas…there’s a woman lying on the floor, lifeless. It’s Angela.
Credits.
Early questions:
From whom is Freddie running from? And what was the deal with that seance?
Why is Frasier so insistent on getting his father’s chair back?
Are Niles and Daphne still together?
EPISODE SIX
This episode takes place entirely in the summer of 1969, is to be shot on 35mm film, presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio.
MARTIN CRANE (Colin Hanks) is thirty-eight years old, and a homicide detective for the Seattle Police Department. He’s sitting in a car on a stakeout, when a little girl, TAMMY, knocks on the car window. He smiles, winds the window down and accepts a bottle of Coke from her. “Are they here yet?” she asks him. Martin shakes his head and shoos the girl away. On the radio: “Everyday People” by Sly and the Family Stone.
Later that night, Martin goes home to his wife, HESTER CRANE (Anna Kendrick) and flops down on their couch, sighing, sagging. Hester asks him how the stakeout went, and Martin tells her he had no luck; that Danny, his partner, had taken over for him. She talks about her day, about how Niles and Frasier (asleep now) were fighting about who got to use her library card next. But when she looks up, he’s asleep on the couch.
We cut back to the stakeout. DANNY CASTRO (James Van Der Beek) is sitting in the same car Martin was, when there’s a knock on his window. Rolling his eyes, he begins to tell who he thinks is Tammy to go away, when a gun is shoved through the window. Four quick pops and Danny is dead. The unseen gunman walks away, and as he does, he tosses a few coins to Tammy, who is waiting, scared in the shadows of a doorway.
Days pass, and we cut to Martin in his dress uniform at Danny’s funeral, then in the car on the way home from it. We hear Niles and Frasier in the back seat, but never see them; they bicker about Rachmaninoff. Martin tries to keep a brave face, but we see tears in his eyes.
Later, at Duke’s in his plainclothes, Martin discusses Danny with a few of his cop friends. They talk about how it’s obvious “Roman” killed him, but that their hands are tied because there’s no evidence. Martin says “someone ought to do something”, and his cop buddies admonish him for it. “That sounds like something we’d say, not you.”
Martin is watching TV — a news story about the prep for the upcoming moon landing — when Hester comes in to check on him. She tells him that she’s worried about him, and he asks her what she expects, that his friend was just murdered. Hester says she understands, and that she’s here for him. As she leaves, Martin stretches out on the couch, and goes to sleep.
We see Martin sitting in his patrol car, unshaven and dishevelled, sipping beer (Ballantine’s) and watching the same door as before. A man comes out and Martin’s face goes tense. We tilt down to his lap, and see that he’s holding his pistol in the other hand. When the door shuts, Martin shakes his head, turns the car on, and drives away.
A few days later, Martin and Hester are at a dinner party together, and the talk turns to LSD. A couple of Hester’s friends — younger, cooler — hint that they might know where to get some, but it would be inappropriate to discuss it in front of a cop, hint hint. Hester tries to change the subject, but Martin latches onto the idea, and says he wants to try it. Hester protests, but Martin says that “Walt has the kids until tomorrow” and that it’s still early. She relents, if only to see him come out of his shell a little.
Martin puts a tab of acid into his mouth, holding hands with Hester. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, “Your Mother Should Know” by The Beatles scores his trip. Various wild images shoot across the screen; the walls of the apartment flip inside out and turn into the shelves of a convenience store, and every item pops like a handgun going off. He looks at his hand, and it throbs and pulses and turns to dust. He feels something touch his shoulder, and looks up to see a figure standing above him that looks a lot like an adult Frasier, but Frasier with a bag over his head. Scenes from the TV show Frasier float past him, but abstractly, and chaotically. He watches Hester having her own trip on the other side of the room, but as he sits watching her, acrid smoke pours out of every orifice.
He starts talking to the person next to him, a fellow tripper, and a monologue unfurls; he talks about mourning Danny, about feeling helpless that he was murdered, and that he knows who did it, a heroin dealer named Roman Costigan. He wishes that it was a hundred years ago, that he could just walk up to Roman and shoot him on the street, and take the revenge he’s owed. He says he wants nothing more than to shoot Roman in the middle of the chest and spit on his grave. But he knows that he won’t, because he has children, and he has to follow the rules and provide for them. When Martin finishes, and turns to the person next to him, they’ve been replaced by moving psychedelic wallpaper, and they say something unintelligible to him.
Later, outside, the party lay on the grass watching the moon, talking about the upcoming landing a few weeks away; there’s a smash cut to the moon on a different night, and we see Martin and ten other police officers scoping out an apartment. A torch flashes an all-clear from across the street and the team of police officers CHARGE a doorway, kicking it down and arresting the people inside. One of the men in there is greeted by the police; an undercover officer. Martin comes in when the chaos dies down and looks in the eyes of several dealers, all looking back at him with scorn. They know what they’ve done; they ask him where his partner is, how the funeral was.
Martin leans down to one of them, ROMAN COSTIGAN (Jonathan Groff). There’s a stand-off, and Costigan flinches a little, looks away. Martin smiles: “I could end you right now. No-one cares about a cop-killer. I’d shoot you in cold blood — the coldest — and get a pat on the back from the Mayor. But I have a wife at home, and two sons, and I love them. I love them more than I hate you.”
They take him away, and Martin walks back outside. He looks up at the moon again, and it seems as if something has moved on within him, good or bad.
Time passes. We return to the living room, and Hester is leading Martin in, with her hands over his eyes. She finally takes them away, and reveals her surprise: a chair in the living room. The chair, but brand new; a lighter shade of pea-soup green than what we’re used to.
“What’s this?” he asks her. She tells him she hated seeing him fall asleep on the uncomfortable couch; she shows him how the legs come out, how comfortable it is. He smiles, but with a slightly pained expression, and rubs his hands over the design… “it’s quite a colour, isn’t it?” She blanches, and says “you hate it, don’t you?” Martin goes to reassure her, “No, no. I love it.”
To end, we see a montage, set to “It Never Entered My Mind” by Miles Davis; the family watching the Moon Landing, with Martin in his chair, the back of Frasier and Niles’ heads visible; Martin shaking hands with a man who must be his new partner; Martin asleep on the chair, comfortable, as Hester kisses him softly on the cheek.
Our credits roll, and as we watch Martin sleep, Colin Hanks’ face slowly merges with John Mahoney’s…
Episode Six of Crane is an outlier; something unexpected, akin to the famous Part 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return. It is a stand-alone film, an origin story, and a love story. It isn’t necessarily an essential part of the rest of the story, but it connects the Martin of Frasier with the unseen Martin of Crane.
However, to finish this story, we must return to the present.
EPISODE SEVEN:
Frasier, at last, drives on a highway with his father’s chair strapped on the roof of his car. He’s listening to Janáček’s “Sinfonietta” and driving with real purpose. He gets a call from Niles; after the initial hellos, Frasier interrupts him to talk, at length, about a meal they had in Vienna in 2010. On the side of the road, he sees another little girl trying to hitchhike, but this time he drives straight past her.
Frasier tells Niles he’ll be back in Seattle that night. Niles asks if he’s heard from Freddie lately. Frasier says he hasn’t, and that he probably never will again. Niles tries to console him a little, but Frasier tells him not to start: “I’ve made my peace with that.”
What could that mean?
In Seattle, Daphne is waiting in Jeffrey Wittler’s office when he comes in, somewhat surprised to see her. They begin to talk, and it’s a conversation full of tension. Daphne begins to blackmail him, telling him what she’s found, what she knows, that she has evidence that he’s been defrauding the company, and that she’ll cover it up for twenty grand. He smirks his whole way through her threat, then starts to belittle her, admits to it all, and dares her to do something about it. He tells her to get out, and she stands up in sadness…But before she leaves, she points out that his phone — via her phone — has been broadcasting every word he’s said to the rest of the office.
We cut to the crime scene from last night, now mid-morning. Morticians are carrying out Angela’s body, and Dunham watches on in frustration and tiredness. As the van drives away, she moves over to Pascal, and they watch The Chief arrive in a squad car. The Chief asks to be filled in.
“I think I know this guy, the killer.” Pascal says, “I live just there,” he points to a house across the street, “and I think I watched him scope this victim out a week or so ago.” The Chief mulls this over. “What can you tell me about him?”
Freddie pulls up out the front of an apartment building in the pouring rain. He pulls a set of bags out of the back, but as he’s walking back to the front, a car sideswipes him. He’s thrown high in the air and hits his head hard on the sidewalk.
Niles and Daphne clink some champagne glasses together, cheering Daphne’s escapade. Niles asks for the full details, and she tell shim that when she left that day, lawyers had been called, and Wittler had gone home in shame. They begin to talk about what she’s going to do next, and she shrugs it off. Niles’s phone rings. On the other end of the line is Pascal, asking if he can come into the Police Station. “Is this about David?” he asks. Pascal says “No, it’s about your brother. Frasier.”
An ambulance tears through rainy streets, and Freddie lies in the back, his head covered in blood, a breathing tube down his throat.
Niles returns to Daphne. “They want Frasier to help stop a murder. Supposedly the man doing all that Open Door Strangling horror… it’s an old listener of his radio show…” Niles and Daphne continue to talk; he remembers that Frasier never used to be called upon by the police for profiling, but he used to get it all the time; that their father used to direct work his way, a fact he was always proud of.
At night, as the rain pours, Roz is sitting in her living room sipping wine and listening to “Love Letters” by Diana Krall, when David comes in. Roz asks him if Alice is asleep, and he says yes. He hesitates, then sits down. They talk, and Roz answers David’s questions about his parent’s separation. He tells her he feels like he’s responsible because he was such a disappointment. Roz consoles him, says it wasn’t his fault, that relationships are difficult, and that they still love each other. David says he knows they still love each other, but wonders if they still love him.
Trying to lighten the mood, she needles him about the crush she thinks he has on Alice. He goes bright red and stammers, tries to leave, and winds up crying. Roz gives up and sits there patting his back.
We see Freddie in a hospital bed, and as we zoom on his face we’re transported somewhere else. A black room with torrents of water cascading down the walls endlessly. A marionette hanging above his golden bed. Then, faintly, Frasier’s voice…
Freddie’s eyes open, and he sees his father staring at him. He’s lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by flowers and cards. His father isn’t surprised to see him with his eyes open, because he knows there’s nothing behind those eyes. But Frasier talks to him anyway: he’s holding the Dictaphone that he’s been recording the Dickens book into. The recording was for Freddie.
He tells him that he’s back in town with his grandfather’s chair, adding proudly that when he leaves the hospital today, he’s going to the police, because they need his help with a case. He stands up, kisses Freddie on the forehead and goes to leave, leaving the Dictaphone on the side table.
Just as he’s reaching the door, he turns back, and wonders aloud if his mother has visited lately. A voice comes from behind; “Actually, she was just about to.” It’s LILITH STERNIN (Bebe Neuwirth). They embrace and talk about their son, who, it’s revealed, has been in a coma for a full year now. As they talk, we focus back in on Freddie’s eyes.
We flicker back to that strange room. The water keeps falling down the sides of the walls. The marionette comes closer and closer and closer to Freddie’s open lips…
Back to the hospital room. Frasier asks if he can buy Lilith a cup of coffee — “I’ve had quite an adventure,” he says. As they walk out of earshot, Freddie’s eyes open, and he whispers a single word.
“Maris.”
Roz pulls up out the front of Daphne’s apartment with David. She watches him get out and go to the door, but is surprised to see Niles open the door instead. Roz smiles coyly, but when Niles and David are gone her face falls again. She takes her phone out and dials Bulldog’s number. They talk; Roz apologises for kicking him out the other night, but says she won’t be seeing him again. Bulldog says he wishes he had held on to Roz when he had the chance.
They agree to meet again that night.
The credits roll as Niles sits watching Mozart’s Mitridate in a darkened opera house, crying silently, tears streaming down his face. But as the credits end… we notice that he’s crying happy tears, not sad ones. And at the very end, we pan across, to the seat next to Niles, and see that Daphne is there too.
There is the shock reveal in this episode that Freddie is in a coma, and that he has been in one for the entire duration of the show; his “present” scenes take place a year before the rest of the action.
But there are more unanswered questions. Are those dreams of the marionette that Niles and Frasier are having related to the vision Freddie is seeing? Is Maris, perhaps, haunting Freddie?
These strange questions may never be answered…but there are clues sprinkled throughout the story that might enlighten curious viewers.
EPISODE EIGHT:
We open on Frasier, in a room in the police station, with Dunham and Pascal showing him files from the case. He seems conflicted, confronted, and nervous. “How can I possibly help?” he asks. Pascal says they have nothing else; a simple sketch of the man, and his phone number, which is useless unless the phone is turned on. They don’t know where he will strike next. Pascal says that the killer might have recognised Frasier when he had seen his picture on the sign, that he told Pascal he had called into the show back in the day.
“What we want to do,” Dunham says, “is send your picture to him. See if he’s still checking the phone. If he is, he might give us a call. We could prompt something.”
Frasier says it’s an absurd idea; Dunham and Pascal agree. Frasier has his photo taken with a copy of The Seattle Times, looking like a hostage, and they send the photo to the Killer’s number with a message:
Would you like to speak again?
“Now we wait,” Pascal says…
Niles and Daphne are walking through a park holding hands when a small Jack Russel terrier comes bounding past them, its owner in hot pursuit. They watch the commotion and smile. Daphne looks upwards, to the sky, and Niles asks what she’s looking at. She says that whenever she sees a dog that looks “like Eddie” she says hello to him. She asks Niles if he ever speaks to his father like that, and he says he doesn’t… he hesitates a little, and she prods him:
“Sometimes, I think about Maris like that. I try to keep her in my mind. I’m still not over her death, how it was so… well, suicide is never an easy thing to process… I’m still having those dreams.” As Niles finishes talking, we see that they’re about to enter a police station.
A computer beeps. The signal from the killer is live. “It’s only the general Seattle area,” The Technician says, “but if we can get him on the line for a few minutes, we might be able to track him properly.”
Frasier gets put in front of a phone on speaker. He’s sitting in a small room; on the other side of a window are several police officers watching the action. Dunham tells him through the intercom that they think he’ll call in a few minutes, if he calls at all. They ask Frasier if he needs anything. Before he can answer the phone rings. He picks it up. “This is Frasier Crane… I’m listening.”
Frasier and The Killer begin their conversation, but it gets heated quickly. The Killer tells him he called into his show back in September 2001, but that Frasier told him to speak to a real therapist about his problems; he seemed obviously bored by the call.
In the other room, there’s a knock, and Niles and Daphne are ushered in. Frasier smiles at them and waves. Still talking, Frasier tries his best to apologise, but says he couldn’t possibly remember what happened almost twenty years previous, and that he took hundreds of calls every month.
In the adjacent room, in a scene reminiscent of Roz looking to Frasier through the glass at KACL, they try to track the call. Dunham and Pascal pace nervously while The Technician types and types, but he can’t quite get a hold on the signal.
The Killer continues to berate Frasier: “You think you read one book and you can get a hold on people entirely. I’m an enigma, okay? I’m more than a book. I’m more than an idea.” Frasier asks him why he’s killing women. “Boring. Next question.” Frasier thinks for a while, then asks: “Why are you calling in your own crimes? Do you want to be caught?” The Killer laughs, and says, “I don’t want to be caught. I want them to be found. I need the validation. I don’t want to wait around all week for the mailman to call it in because he thinks he smells something.”
As they talk, we cut back to The Technician’s computer screen. A command-line asks him if he wants to trace signal: Y/N? Then we see what he’s really doing; mashing the keys and hitting N every time. He’s letting the killer get away. Dunham edges her eye across and looks on suspiciously…unsure, but not trusting what she thinks she sees.
Frasier disagrees that asking why he’s killing people is boring. “You’re choosing to end a life. It’s perhaps the most serious decision someone can make. You don’t think that’s worth discussing?” But The Killer just makes a snoring sound… he’s enjoying this, knowing he can’t be caught, hamming it up. Frasier asks The Killer if he has anyone other victims lined up. “Of course I do,” he replies. “I have several. I’m always working.” Frasier then asks if he’s considered talking to anyone about his feelings or his compulsions.
As soon as he says this, everyone in the other room cringes. Frasier doesn’t realise what the problem is. “Again!” The Killer screams. “That’s all you ever want to do. Push off your problems onto someone else. You don’t ever want to fix anything; it’s all a three minute conversation and then onto the next call. I thought you were supposed to be a psychiatrist.” Frasier stammers, tries to backtrack…
“You know what, fuck you, Frasier Crane.” The line goes dead. The Technician keeps typing and typing, but gives up. “He’s gone.”
Everyone exhales, disappointed. Pascal’s phone pings with a message: he opens it, then cringes and flings the phone across the table, swearing. Dunham picks it up: it’s a photo of another corpse, with a caption.
“I won’t call this one in.”
Frasier comes back out of the room, shell-shocked. “I don’t know what happened…” The police are disappointed, but they knew it was a long shot. Pascal pats Frasier on the back and thanks him for trying.
As they exit, Dunham keeps her eye on The Technician... who is making crass jokes.
Later, Niles and Daphne are driving Frasier back home. Frasier seems to be in a relatively good mood for what just happened. In fact, he doesn’t address it at all. As they pull in, he asks them to come upstairs with him; he says he needs help with something.
They park in the underground garage at Eliot Bay Towers, right next to Frasier’s truck, which still has Martin’s chair strapped to the top of it. Niles and Daphne look on in awe. “I can’t believe you got it back,” Daphne says. “I haven’t seen this in… a decade?” Niles agrees; Frasier just smiles.
“Help me get it upstairs, will you?”
As “By The Sleepy Lagoon” by Eric Coates plays, we watch a montage of Frasier, Niles, and Daphne getting the chair off the roof of the car, onto a trolley, and into an elevator. We watch as they come out into a familiar looking hallway, and as Frasier opens the front door of his apartment, we cross through the threshold…and something in the show changes.
We’re back in sitcom mode. Back on the set of Frasier — and his apartment looks exactly the way it did the last time we saw it. With the chair back, things are finally back to normal. The laugh-track is back, too.
Frasier and Niles put the chair back where it belongs. They inspect it, wait for a beat, and Niles says: “Well, it’s garish, ugly, and completely out of place. Dad would be so happy.”
“Sherry, Niles?” Frasier asks. Niles says yes. “I must tell you about the latest niaiserie at Le Cigare Volant.”
Frasier raises an eyebrow, “Do tell.”
Niles continues, and it’s like we’re watching a lost episode of Frasier:
“Well, a certain Dutch sommeliere I loathe to mention was apparently offering stuffed artichokes with a Pay D’Oc Merlot…” Frasier scoffs, and as they continue in their old ways, Daphne wanders off to the kitchen and takes out her phone. She rings Roz: “Hi, have you still got David with you? We’re at Dr. Crane’s apartment, and we thought we’d make a night of it.”
We cut to a dark, rain-soaked alleyway. A car pulls up to one already waiting. Out of it comes The Technician… and waiting for him is The Killer. They’re not surprised to see each other.
“You bring it?” The Technician asks. The Killer hands him a bag and says, “It’s all there. Twenty grand.” The Technician smirks, nods, and turns to go. “Wait up,” The Killer says. “I have to ask. Why’d you help me?” The Technician stops, turns, and says “Why’d you kill all those women?” The Killer laughs. “Fair enough.” But suddenly, the entire alley is flooded in white. Someone shouts FREEZE and ten squad cars pull up. Dunham and Pascal get out of the car at the front. The Killer, and his accomplice, are caught.
As the credits roll, and “Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs” plays, we watch as Frasier, Niles, Daphne, Roz, and Lilith eat dinner at the table, while Alice and David sit on the couch watching TV. Frasier gets up and walks away from the table to pick up the ringing phone, and when he does, his face drops. He puts his hand over his mouth, almost drops the phone, and has to balance himself on the bookshelf.
We watch him say the words “Oh dear God…”
And then we fade to black.
The End.
Crane can be seen as many things; a stand-alone miniseries, an eight-hour film, or a starting-off point for a whole new series of the original Frasier. It does not negate the experience of watching the original run of Frasier; indeed, it creates an intriguing post-script for these characters.
Much like how Frasier adapted and continued the story established by its predecessor Cheers, Crane is also a continuation. However, it’s not just a spin-off, with familiar faces in similar situations. It is a new direction. This is an (almost) entirely unrecognisable show from the one of old.
Where could it go next? What happens now that Freddie has woken up? What kind of life will Frasier lead now that he has completely regressed to his old ways? Are Daphne and Niles together, or not? Will Frasier suffer any kind of repercussion for his failed therapy session with The Killer? How, exactly, did Martin die?
Who knows if these questions will be answered. More importantly — do they need to be? This is but a small sample of the life of the Crane family.
Certain intentional choices have been made, certain expectations subverted. The lack of names for several characters; or the avoidance of classic sitcom filming styles and tropes until the last few minutes of the show. These may be controversial, but they are intentional. This is not Frasier. That show ended in 2004. This is something different altogether.
There are also a variety of new characters; Detectives Dunham and Pascal, the Police Chief, the Killer, and the Technician. All archetypes in their own way, but what are they doing in a story about Frasier Crane? They are enforced others; ways to differentiate this story from what has come before.
Crane is intended to be ruminated on, both devoured in one go, and taken in small doses. There are Easter Eggs for hardcore fans, and enough exposition for casual viewers. It is a mostly quiet show that is punctuated by moments of stunning loudness and heartbreaking beauty. It can be seen as a continuation of Frasier, a stand-alone piece of work, or it can be ignored entirely.
The End.
