The Frasier writers set out to make an anti-Seinfeld sitcom

There’s so much about “Frasier” that has the calming aura of a typical ’90s sitcom. The “Frasier” sets that cost a shocking amount of money to buildAlthough designed with a distinct wood-paneled aesthetic now known as Frasurbane, the series still retained the familiar warmth of the sitcom sets of the period. The live studio audience and laugh track, the comedic rhythms, even the film grain – it’s all part of a golden age of sitcoms that should be familiar to every single ’90s kid familiar with “Frasier,” “Friends” and “Friends.” “ grew up. Seinfeld.

But “Frasier” also has something completely different. Although it shared many similarities with the other iconic sitcoms of the era, it was clearly an attempt at something new. It wasn’t just that Dr. Kelsey Grammer’s Crane and his brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) were the kind of elite social climbers not seen in other sitcoms. Nor was it that the series’ humor often dealt with more sophisticated and mysterious topics than that of its contemporaries. From the very first episode of Frasier, the writers subtly subverted many sitcom tropes that had already been established by the time the series aired in 1993. In fact, co-creator David Lee had a specific sitcom in mind as an example of what not to do when making “Frasier.”

Frasier ran for 11 seasons from 1993 to 2004, cementing its status as one of the greatest sitcoms – a legacy the neither disappointing nor remarkable “Frasier” revival Show has yet to do justice. While many ’90s kids today might view the series as a comfort show, the series was actually quite subversive in its own way, displaying a sort of anti-sitcom sentiment from the start its pilot episode – an episode that Niles actor David Hyde Pierce, by the way, initially thought was “terrible.”

David Lee once spoke to him Television Academy Foundation about writing this pilot and explained some of the guiding principles he and his writing team established. Specifically, the show’s writers sought to deconstruct and, in some cases, vehemently push back against the major sitcom themes of the time, with Lee explaining that the rise of “Seinfeld” gave them a perfect formula for subverting them. In his own words:

“At the time, ‘Seinfeld’ was on the rise and it was the beginning of what I call ‘short attention span theater,’ where the scenes and sitcoms got shorter and shorter until it was basically, ‘Here’s one Exterior of a “In the building you come in to make two or three jokes and then you move on to the next scene.” Lots of scenes, short hits, and they work great, they’re wonderful, but we decided something try something else.

Lee then explained his and his writers’ approach to making “Frasier” the anti-“short-attention-span theater” as expressed in “Seinfeld.” It started with the group writing “the longest scenes possible,” with Lee claiming the goal was ultimately “to have a whole episode that takes place in real time, or to have an act where it’s in another just there is a scene.” Words like a play. But this anti-sitcom approach to writing a sitcom went far beyond the length of normal scenes.

To be clear, “Frasier” wasn’t a complete overhaul of the sitcom format. Not only was it created by three sitcom legends in the form of David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee from Cheers, but it also used the same multi-camera shooting format that has been used on every other current sitcom. “Frasier” employed sitcom directing legend James Burrows, who also moved from “Cheers” to “Frasier” and brought his talents to pretty much every show of the genre ever made, including “Friends.” Combine that with the studio audience and the aforementioned general ’90s aura of the whole thing, and you get a sitcom that, on the surface, isn’t exactly a revolution in the genre.

But if you look closer, “Frasier” actually tried surprisingly unconventional things throughout its run. Take the black title cards that separate the file. These hallmarks of the series are another aspect that grew out of Lee and his writers’ desire to subvert sitcom standards. As Lee further explained in his Television Academy Foundation In the interview, the thinking is best summarized as: “Do we need these exterior shots of buildings? Is the audience smart enough to know that when we’re in Frasier’s apartment, he’s probably in an apartment building and there’s no need for that.” Do you see the outside of that? In fact, such establishing shots are so ingrained in the DNA of sitcoms that we barely notice when the camera pans up the side of the “Friends” apartment building in New York, accompanied by a brief musical cue that signals the start of a new episode scene, or even when we get an opening shot of Jerry’s own building in “Seinfeld.”

However, for Lee and his team, eschewing this standard sitcom feature was a necessity, leading to the creation of the black title cards between scenes. Even back then, “Frasier” went one step further by foregoing any kind of musical accompaniment. “We don’t need music,” Lee noted, “and to this day I think it’s still the only sitcom that doesn’t have interlude music cues, for what that’s worth.” In that sense, “Frasier” while certainly capable of lulling you into 90s sitcom-like coziness, it also maintains a deceptively disturbing approach, giving us all yet another reason to love the series.