Scott Kimball

Frasier - The Complete Sixth Season

Studio: Paramount Year: 1998 - 1999 Rated: NR Length: 8 hours 48 minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Audio: Dolby Digital English Stereo Closed Captioned Special Features: None Suggested Retail Price: $39.99 USD

Release Date: September 13, 2005

Season 6 is where Frasier reached its peak. The season stars with “Good Grief,” finding Frasier where we left him in season five - out of a job. This moderately funny episode has Frasier navigating the stages of grief.

Next up is “Frasier’s Curse.” In this episode, jobless Frasier frets about attending a class reunion and seeing more successful classmates.

A favorite of mine is “The Seal Who Came to Dinner.” Here, competitive Niles hosts a dinner party at Maris’ beach house, striving to one-up recent parties hosted by others. An unfortunate seal has other plans for Niles.

In “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Moscowitz,” Frasier must pretend to be Jewish when his girlfriend’s mother comes for a visit. This is Farce at Frasier’s finest, with some kitschy dialog not to be missed.

Woody, from Cheers, shows up in “The Show Where Woody Shows Up.”

“Three Valentines” has one of the funniest sequences of the series, as Niles prepares for a date. He draws blood, ruins his pants, messes up dinner, and catches the couch on fire. Classic stuff.

“Decoys” is another fine example of farce, as Niles plays cupid to Donny and Roz, so that he might have a chance with Daphne. Got that?

“Dinner Party” takes place entirely in Frasier’s apartment, as Frasier and Niles attempt to organize a dinner party. Only Frasier and Niles could make that funny.

The above episodes are merely some high points. The entire season is loaded with the farcical humor and sardonic wit that I love Frasier for.

The Transfers
The Video for Frasier season six is much like the previous seasons - quite good. Contrast is good, with good definition in the whites as well as in the shadows. The picture is adequately sharp and detailed. Color saturation is good. There were no compression artifacts of note in the random episodes that I screened for this review.

The audio is Dolby Digital 2.0. Frequency response is good. Dialog sounds great - clean, clear and broad in range. Music sounds excellent, with good bass response. This sounds as good as one would expect a TV sitcom to sound.

I feel like a broken record, here - but since season two, I’ve seen no change in the A/V quality of these sets... it’s all good.

Special Features
There are no special features.

Final Thoughts
Season six is Frasier at its best. We’ll be seeing a slide in episode quality in future seasons (in my opinion)... so grab this one and enjoy. Good transfers, no extras, nice price.

Sam Davatchi

Just bought the set today. Frasier has become my number 1 must see sitcom on DVD. When I have several unseen sitcoms on DVD and a new Frasier comes, I always put all the other ones on hold! Can't wait to see this.

David Rain

I'm hoping that the future lower-quality seasons will continue to sell so we can see this series through. But we are over halfway there so things are looking good.

Sam Davatchi

Well that’s quite a contradiction. You call them lower-quality to slam them but say you hope they sell well so you can get them?!!!!!

David Rain

Lower quality Frasier is still better than just about anything else on television. The fact that the show is known to have gone down in quality may cause more casual fans to avoid the later seasons. My fear is that a drop in sales will halt the rest of the sets being released.

Sam Davatchi

From the later seasons I have seen the entire last season only. I saw it right after (or before) season 4 when it was released and frankly I didn’t see any drop in quality or difference in the humor. I remember enjoying it as much as the previous seasons and it had golden episodes like before.

There are other sitcoms where in their later seasons there is never a golden episode again. For example as much as I love Friends, I really can’t pick an episode in the later seasons as an exceptional episode that stands out.

Andrew Radke

I agree entirely. Season 11 was funny throughout. I believe I breezed through that set in about a day and a half. Everyone has their own opinion though. What may be funny to some, may be drab for others. For me, "Frasier" sort of jumped the shark around season 10, but redeemed itself the following year.

Anyway, I'm falling behind on these sets. I've still yet to purchase season 5, let alone 6.

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Sean.S

Just got the set yesterday. It was these episodes in Syndication when I started to really become a fan of the show. Already watched two favorites, "I.Q." and "The Seal Who Came To Dinner."

I think that all of the upcoming seasons had some quality episodes (if you ignore the utterly-boring "serious" three parter from Season 10) and I look forward to owning this entire series.

Wezzo

I sincerely doubt Paramount would abandon Frasier now. I'm betting seasons 8-10 will be released next year, completing our collections.

Scott, nice review. I have to disagree about S6 being the peak of Frasier though - I'd say it's a step (albeit small) down from seasons 1 to 5. Of course, it's still better than the best season of pretty much any other sitcom so that's not much to complain about.. even seasons 7-10, IMO the weakest, are on par with most other show's 'good' seasons.

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Jaime_Weinman

I thought the show weakened a little in season 5 but really started to falter in season 6. That was the season when NBC moved it to Seinfeld's old slot on Thursdays at 9 (hence the in-joke that season 6 begins with Frasier talking about filling the shoes of his predecessor: it's a reference to the shows that occupied that slot before, Seinfeld and Cheers), and it seemed, rightly or wrongly, like they weren't sure how to handle the bigger audience, going overboard with wacky storylines, obvious jokes, and cheap laughs like Frasier going to an interview with his fly open. And I think some of the most acclaimed bits from the season, like the Niles sequence in "Three Valentines," are more silly than funny.

Seasons 1-4 are the peak years for Frasier as far as I'm concerned, seasons 5-7 are the "faltering" years, seasons 8-10 are the outright weak years, and season 11 was an improvement but still not at the level of the first 100 or so episodes.