Mess of an episode, Jun 23, 2013

Reviewer: Luke Gray from Oxfordshire, UK

Mess of an episode. The problem is the episode never decides what it wants to do, is it about growing up, is it about taking chances, is it about getting out and experiencing the world? It flirts with all these themes and doesn't deliver any of them.

Kenny, imo, is the weakest and less developed recurring character in the show (not including Gertrude) and he's just not very interesting. For some reason we're supposed to believe a girl twenty years his junior, is going to find him attractive simply because he thinks she's cool?

It's ridiculously lazy writing and simply pointless. What did it add to the story? Why did it happen? In fact why did most of this episode happen?

The episode where Frasier contemplates dating the shop assistant in the clothes shop from Season 1 was a much better attempt to focus the show on age. This was a car crash and i'm purposely lowering my score on this episode because other people have given this a 100 and 95, making the average too respectable.

People may say 'it's their opinion', but i'd like to sit down these people and say was this really the most perfect episode of a tv show you could ever imagine? Because giving 100 to this suggests you laughed at every gag, and found every moment to be absolute perfection. Which i'm not sure any living creature could say.

Rating: 20%

You're not our slave any more., May 25, 2013

Reviewer: Sammy J from Melbourne, Australia

While I think "Kissing Cousin" is the weakest installment of season 10 thus far, I still think it gets an unfair rap from some quarters.

The character of Jen, like Kirby before her, is in no way an attempt to lure in a younger audience. In fact, quite the opposite. What the series is realising as Frasier - and Roz, and Kenny - ages is that the differences between generations are as great as the series' early conflict between pompous Frasier and relaxed Martin. What I take away from Jen as a character is a challenge to Frasier's authority and world view, and of course Roz's gradual acceptance of where life has taken her. She's come a long way from the 29-year-old we met back at the series' opening, and I highly appreciate that. This is not where Roz envisaged her life being perhaps (and that's in part due to the meta idea that she's a character in a sitcom, so is unlikely to get married and move to a new job or city... at least until the finale), and Jen helps bring that out. Long-running series face the challenge of whether or not to age with their audience. After all, you can keep doing the same thing over again and hope that either your original audience are braindead or a younger audience will come along. Or you can perhaps admit that your core audience are a decade older now. For me, a decade after I first watched "Frasier", I feel even more attuned to these characters and the way they're dealing with their lives. All of which, in short, is to say that I admire the episode's aims.

It's far from perfect, true. Some lines seem a little more sitcom standards than character lines (Kenny's odd comments about washing his hands after going to the bathroom) and the final scene puts a new spin on a regular character that isn't born out by later episodes. Still, Zooey Deschanel puts in a dynamic performance, definitely something we don't see every week on "Frasier", putting together a character who believably combines Roz's small-town pluckiness and Frasier's world-weariness - yet revealing neither of those characters are quite who they thought they were! Tom McGowan, meanwhile, is a very good actor who rarely gets to prove that on this show. (He's usually very good at seeming average, which is also a skill!) While I think the episode ultimately wastes the opportunity to send Kenny off into the sunset (possibly with an idea to bringing him back later, a changed man), it's still a great showcase for McGowan and Deschanel, ably backed up by Freud-enthusing Kelsey Grammer and nightclub-destroyed Peri Gilpin. Ultimately, this is a script that is funnier in character interaction than it is actual specific laughs, and it suffers for this. Still, it's 22 minutes of character interactions rarely seen on this show, so I can't complain.

Over in the Chez Crane subplot, season 10 continues to have fun altering its template, as Martin and Frasier cope with being bachelors together. The reveal that they've been brainwashing Daphne into doing their chores is hysterical, as is the general atmosphere cultivated by the two of them together. It's always good fun when Frasier gets to be as stubborn as his dad. There's a look in Kelsey Grammer's eyes at one point, as Frasier watches Martin be cheeky and awesome that suggests both the horror of what will happen if these two live together for any length of time but also the idiosyncratic bond they have developed since the series began. And of course, the final twist - that Niles gets suckered into making them dinner! - gets me every time.

Rating: 79%

Fantastic Episode!, Apr 13, 2011

Reviewer: Justin Adams from Dallas, TX USA

Roz's speech at the end of the episode says it all. And it's a treasure
to see a young Zooey Deschanel at her droll best. I'm in my twenties
and I must say, her character is indeed the perfect caricature.

Rating: 100%

Youth vs Maturity, Dec 10, 2010

Reviewer: Gareth from Canberra, Australia.

I can't agree at all with some of the other reviews that say this episode is weak. I like the way that younger characters such as Jen and Kirby were introduced into the series and I enjoyed watching how Frasier interacted with them. In this episode, Frasier's outburst when Jen had asked if he read any of Freud's books is as funny as any Frasier outburst I've seen. There are some great lines in this episode. Also, I didn't think that the ending 'fell flat' at all. I found it to be one of the more poignant moments in Frasier, particularly when Kenny realises he's made a goose of himself . It had something to say about our desires to be young again and the need to come to grips with your own age.

Rating: 95%

kenny character, Sep 23, 2010

Reviewer: sc from Malaysia

True, I agree with other reviews that the character of Roz's cousin was irritating in the extreme, however, it is notable for me as a viewer for the maturing of Roz's character, a point that many women, such as myself , experience at some point in their lives. I found the scenes where Martin manipulated both Daphne and Niles into doing housework hilarious, when will Frasier learn that Martin is an old fox? The ending was awkward and I imagine, was trying to make another point about accepting your age and circumstances

Rating: 75%

Underrated?, Aug 09, 2007

Reviewer: Streetworker from Manchester, UK

Yes, the ending is weak and unconvincing, but I found much to enjoy in this episode. I recall that when series 8,9 and 10 were first shown in the UK, I was amongst those who thought the show had declined in quality. Well, maybe it had, maybe it hadn't. But seeing those supposed weaker episodes again now, several years later, I'm amazed by how I'm finding some are nothing like as bad as I recalled - or their reputation suggests. This one, albeit something of a filler it must be said, is a case in point.

Rating: 85%

KISSING COUSIN, Nov 06, 2005

Reviewer: Cake for Brains from Manchester, UK

Unfortunately ‘Kissing Cousin’ has very little to enjoy about it, and seems very weak on laughs in my opinion. Its definitely the weakest episode of Season 10 so far; and I am sorry to report that this episode barely made me raise a smile and there are no genuinely funny or stand out moments. Its not the first clunker that writer Eric Zicklin has delivered, and this one fits in nicely with his lacklustre efforts. It seems more and more evident that Frasier was trying to seek the approval of a younger demographic (which was probably the reason for Kirby during Season 9), and by introducing us to Roz’s hip cousin Jen, it seemed as though that was a road that Frasier still wanted to embark upon. I think this was a bad idea.

The character of Jen, was in my opinion very annoying indeed and the contrast between Frasier and Roz’s cousin was too blatant to be considered funny in the slightest. I found that Jen was too opinionated and full of herself, and the way in which she spoke (the voice of an American teenager attempting to be cool) drove me mad, so much so I was hoping the episode would end sooner than it did. I found it odd that Kenny, who has always appeared to me to be somewhat hapless and rather bumbling (a bit like a less intelligent version of Frasier) should find solace and compatibility in the presence of Roz’s cousin. Kenny has also been a character I’ve reasonably enjoyed watching, and I was hoping that by thrusting him more into the main focus of this episode we would find out some more about Kenny as a character, but I was disappointed and the most this storyline produced was a pretty banal scene between Jen and the station manager that seemed to lead nowhere in particular. I also thought it was seemed a bit unlikely that Kenny hadn’t unpacked yet.

Meanwhile however this episode recovered slightly by producing a rather engaging and fun little subplot between Frasier, Martin, Niles and Daphne. I found it funny how Martin was exploiting Daphne and Niles; and the biggest laughs came when he bet Frasier he couldn’t make Niles cook him dinner, which he achieved successfully by threatening to season a sea bass with ketchup! Although not hilarious this plot made for entertaining viewing, and saved this episode from total obscurity.

The conclusion of this episode was rather terrible though, and showed a rather inevitable disagreement between Frasier and Jen, regarding her thoughts of Frasier’s hero Sigmund Freud. Roz also admits live on the airwaves that she enjoys being an adult, and Kenny bids farewell to Roz’s cousin Jen in a scene that fell flat on its face, because it was neither funny, as I imagine it was intended to be, neither poignant, which I also imagine it was intended to be. I blame the failure of this episode on the rather muted writing and also on the persona of the irritatingly ‘hip’ Jen. Not a very impressive episode here unfortunately.

Rating: 65%

'Kissing Cousin' review, Oct 01, 2005

Reviewer: Jocelyn from London, UK

Zooey Deschanel makes a guest appearance in this episode as Roz's younger cousin, Jen, in what feels like another doomed attempt to inject a 'cool' younger character into the show. While Frasier and Niles' reactions to Jen's various opinions are quite amusing, the main theme of Roz struggling to act her age is neither very interesting or funny, while the scenes featuring Jen's brief romantic involvement with Kenny don't really work and pushing these two characters into the foreground means that for much of the time this hardly feels like an episode of 'Frasier' at all. The only real amusement here is provided by the subplot of Frasier and Martin struggling to keep the apartment clean. I loved the moment where Niles discovers that they've brainwashed Daphne into doing all their chores only for Martin to then persuade Niles to cook his dinner, but this is an all too brief highlight in an otherwise very dull episode indeed.

Rating: 63%