Catching Up with Old Friends (Streaming media series)

   I haven't done any blogging posts on current and streaming media since November 3rd, which broke a streak of weekly ones that had been going since September of 2019 - albeit as part of a different, group, blog. As with many such inactions, it wasn't intended as a formal stoppage, just a momentary delay, but here it is five weeks later. This post's linking theme is the return of fondly-remembered characters. It really should include the recent arrival to streaming of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny over on Disney+, but I haven't really mustered my reactions to that. Instead, I'll stick with two other nostalgic items that arrived this week. 

    Yesterday saw the arrival of the season finale, episode ten, of Kelsey Grammar's return of Frasier Crane in the 2023 iteration of Frasier, over on Paramount+.
    The series picked up on the titular character in the present, whom we haven't seen since his 11-season first series wrapped in mid-May of 2004. As with that series, this new one starts with a transition, with Frasier Crane on the move, leaving one life behind and moving on to a new phase. Aside from any guest appearances (one or more, I'm not going to deal in specifics because that's how they handled it for us over the ten weeks of the series, and I think that worked to our general, mutual advantage) the only cast member carrying over from the earlier series is Frasier himself. The recent death of his father, Martin, we found was a major catalyst in getting him to uproot himself from a tv career that happened in the interim, and travel to Boston for what was intended to be a brief visit to check in with his now-adult son, Freddy, and visit an old friend and colleague at Harvard.
    The new series is, understandably, an attempt to riff on the themes of the highly-successful earlier series. It mines the history of that series - along with roots that stretch back to Frasier's even earlier ones during his years on Cheers - and otherwise gives us a microcosm centered on the always well-intentioned but serially self- and status-obsessed main character. In the '93-'04 series he was the adult son dealing with and trying to forge a bond with an aging, largely estranged and emotionally walled-off father, recently retired from a successful career, who was a very different sort from Frasier. In the new series, Frasier's the elder, seeking to make a connection with an adult son who seems to more things in common with his grandfather than his father. To put some of this out on their sleeves, the first episode of the '93 series was titled "The Good Son", while the '23 series' debut was "The Good Father."
    Over the course of this season they tried to recapture the beats of the earlier series by playing on the inverted father/son dynamic and giving him various foils to replace the ones gone.
    They had to aim to do this in far less time than they did back in the first season of the broadcast series, which had nearly 2.5 times as many episodes to work with. This included the universe-building of introducing the new set of characters.

    All things considered, while there are some awkward shuffles, minor stumbles, and a few heavy-handed pushes along the way, they made it work. I felt that way by the time we cleared last week's penultimate episode, and this final week's Christmas-themed episode seemed to stick the landing. A nicely-rounded episode that seemed to check all the boxes and leave us feeling good.
     Oh, anyone who is determined to be crotchety about it will definitely find plot flaws, and will see various gags coming, but the season wrapped with me interested in seeing more. As of this writing no official call's been made, but Grammer himself seems confident that it will be renewed.
    A 10-episode series of roughly half hour episodes, it's not a huge time commitment, and will mainly be a matter of access. If you don't have Paramount+, but you were a fan of the old series, just make a note to yourself that should you decide to sign up for month of this streamer this is one of the items for you to binge.

    Meanwhile, over on Peacock, today saw the arrival of the eight-season (2002'-'09) Tony Shaloub-starring phobia-obsessed, OCD-bound detective series, Monk. This is a big reunion effort, as they gradually reconnect us with as many of the mainstays from the series as they could manage.
    I just watched it this morning, and it's definitely a heart over head affair. The viewer needs to be there primarily for the characters and their interactions - with fans also very focused on catching up with what each of them have been up to since we last saw them.
     The mystery arc itself quickly reminded me of early in the series, where the plots seemed deliberately constructed so that all but the most severely-impaired viewer would have ample opportunity to see the who and the how dunnits before the master sleuth does. In the case of Mr. Monk's Last Case: A Monk Movie (2023 90m) this is painfully true, qhich is likely good foreknowledge to have if such things get to you. They do get to me, but I still like the lead character and several of the supporting ones, so it was nice to visit again.
     To add to the deficits, the villainous elements make some seriously dim moves, few characters seem to be particularly concerned with the legality of potentially-retrieved evidence, and there are a couple of full-on cringe scenes (one an embarrassingly-dim, prop-assisted explanation of the crime proffered by Randy, the other a lower-than-Lucy undercover move by Monk that defied all reason) that I'm sure someone found wildly funny, but which were arguably the lowest points.
    But, we like Adrian Monk, and we like the devotion between him and those who both care for him deeply and protectively, while also occasionally needing to tap him as a resource. So, we're inclined to overlook and forgive irrational moves and poorly-implemented schemes... even though this is a detective crime drama where one would expect such things to be matters of the first order.

    Most indications going into this were that the players involved were game for this "last case" being a gateway to additional movies, and this story's ending definitely sets that up. I'm game for it, too, but I'm hoping that the next attempt takes us above the level of a stupid person's idea of smart people. We've gotten way too much of that out in the real world in the past decade.