To me, The Bob Newhart Show was one of the absolute funniest in TV history. Frasier was an often funny show that had many, many episodes that just were not funny.
While the careers of the two stars, three if you include Niles, were in the field of psychology, other than brief advice on his radio show, Frasier was never really involved in providing therapy, nor was Niles, while Bob spent lots of time with his patients, individually or in groups. There was a lot more emphasis on his work than there ever was on Frasier.
What you wrote about the Frasier characters living just to score is part of why it wasn't funny. It seems most of them were not portrayed as having the desire of developing a relationship with someone as much as they wanted to have sex sometime BEFORE the first date with that person.
It always seemed weird that they kept making jokes about Roz sleeping with any male who had a pulse, including people like Bulldog, who she otherwise hated, but they didn't joke about the other characters doing much the same thing. It was boring because we knew there wasn't going to be any long-lasting relationship and seeing how quickly they jumped into bed just wasn't that interesting.
When the Crane brothers were working together on something, they had some wonderful episodes. One of my favorites was when they worked to get into a really exclusive health spa and thought it fabulous--until they learned about the "Gold" room that was at that point denied them. They wormed their way into it and then believed there was a "Platinum" room even more exclusive and suddenly hated the "Gold" room only because it didn't seem to be the best.
While Frasier had some great episodes, it had more clunkers than hits. Bob Newhart had very few clunkers and lots of fabulous episodes.
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NotASpookyGhost
11 years ago
I feel that same way that you do about The Bob Newhart Show. I thought Bob and Emily had a wonderful marriage and they are one of my favorite TV couples. They didn't rely on the usual things to cause conflict that you see in husband/wife sitcoms today. I loved that when a woman would flirt with Bob, Emily didn't lose her mind or blame Bob, she was even a little amused by it.
Jerry was always trying to "score" but he was a minor character. I think that works better in a minor character.
I can't think of a character that I didn't like on this show.
With Frasier, those were the same episodes I enjoyed. When Frasier refused to pay $2 to get out of a parking garage, whenever they threw a party, and time they were playing off of each other it was great. When it revolved around Frasier's attempt at a love life it fell flat for me.
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