Rooms with a View

'Frasier' suffered a massive dip in quality after its seventh season finale and this for me was the nadir.

The premise is a good one, offering the chance for humour and pathos. But where in the past the show might have dealt with these two elements in a balanced fashion, here it goes right over the edge and opts for schmaltz and sentimentality that is unneeded.

You can't blame the creative team I suppose. After 10 years (and the 'Frasier' character existing for a previous 9 on 'Cheers') it must have been harder to come up with new ideas and to keep giving the audience new ways to invest in the characters, but this is going too far.

The fact that it was dragged out over a two parter again shows a lack of direction and a show that had run out of steam.

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.

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.

Huge fan of fraser. I've seen every season probably a dozen times. This episode always annoys me. All of the acting feels overly dramatic and annoyingly unfunny. For instance why is Marty asking about a vending machine that he can just get up and look at?

I do have to agree with some of the critics, but it was still a chance to see a family, quirky as they are, deal with the frightening aspect of a fearsome surgery. Frasier is his usual invasive know it all being. But just about everyone has some investment or experience. I thought they did a decent job of avoiding anything maudlin.