A Frasier reboot could become a white-collar Roseanne

Slate

Kelsey Grammer and Roseanne Barr are both staunch Trump supporters who are close in age (he's about two years younger) in their 60s. So it's not hard to imagine the Frasier reboot that Grammer is said to be developing having Frasier Crane as a Trump-loving, Fox News-watching conservative, says Lili Loofbourow. "This is an unnerving idea," says Loofbourow. "Not simply because reboots are stale, but because Frasier Crane’s journey forward seems pretty predictable: that move to San Francisco, a city that makes escaping the facts of poverty and homelessness impossible no matter how much you pay, would likely have sent Frasier down a long and by now typical slide toward Fox News conservatism. (He would not have taken the Tenderloin in stride!) Plus, the new Frasier would have to be the grim story of how his son Frederick—a Millennial trapped in a society that no longer offers young generations much in the way of benefits, fair wages, or pensions—would have to move in with his Hannity-watching, Trump-supporting dad." Loofbourow says the original Frasier's set-up and tone wouldn't fit in the current climate, especially with John Mahoney's Martin Crane out of the picture. She adds: "In the ’90s, Frasier was a fairly earnest show that incidentally satirized what conservatives believed liberals to be. The joke was of course that Frasier and Niles (David Hyde Pierce) were, in practically every way that mattered, conservative. But they didn’t really know it, so part of the fun was watching their ethical aspirations clash with their bottomless self-interest. But would you really want to watch a version of this show where light and comfortable rivalries have since widened into a lacerating ideological distance?" ALSO: Here are the best Twitter proposals for a Frasier reboot.