Written by: Patricia Breen

Directed by: Wil Shriner

Original US airdate: 1st April 2003

Original UK airdate: 28th April 2003

• Everybody's Gonna Fung Shui Tonight
  
  
• Blood Is Thicker Than Latte

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED, Dec 12, 2005

Reviewer: Cake for Brains from Manchester, UK

After the wonderfully funny previous episode ‘Roe to Perdition’, this episode couldn’t be more different because the contrast in quality is enormous. ‘Some Assembly Required’ plummets right down to the other end of the scale, as this episode is without doubt the weakest offering from Season 10 so far. Patricia Breen’s feeble script felt like a mismatch of half-finished ideas and incomplete situations thrown together at the last moment, and the result is abominable. Even with some of the weakest episodes of Frasier I have still found things to laugh at, and there is generally at least one scene that I find funny, but unfortunately on viewing this episode I didn’t laugh once. It felt disjointed, and seemed to drag on and on. The best episodes of Frasier have a tendency to run smoothly, but it is no exaggeration to say that this episode was one hell of a bumpy ride. All three subplots were dire – Frasier getting too close to a family whose house he ‘assisted’ to build (well, stirred the paint), Martin and then Niles giving an assembly to a class of fourth graders, and a row between Daphne and Mrs Moon resulting in the latter getting employed at Café Nervosa.

Let’s start by the looking at the central plot, which was banal and tedious at best. Generally, even when Frasier is at his most pompous, I can still find some sympathy for him and usually find that I’m on his side, but his pointless obsession with directing and influencing the Grant family on how to decorate their new house was just ridiculous and tiresome. The Grant family themselves were really irritating too – and for some reason Dale Dickey as Mrs Grant was a performance that really grated on me. I found it so childish and churlish of Frasier to keep insisting on coming round to give them advice on what décor to have; and the notion of changing Frasier’s gift of a mail box to a different ‘cow’ mailbox was so uninteresting, I felt tired watching it. The clichéd comment Frasier gives about the mail box being ‘a house’s handshake’ was cringe worthy, and not for the first time since Season 8 did I have to remind myself that this was still Frasier I was watching. Sometimes it seems hard to believe that just six years before this, Frasier was churning out classics like Ham Radio!

I’ve never been a big fan of Millicent Martin’s portrayal of the deeply annoying and quarrelsome Mrs Moon, Daphne’s mother. Martin seems to have this overwhelming need to overact constantly, and everything she says seems incredibly hammed up and over the top. I know I shouldn’t complain about her voice, but Millicent Martin has a voice that drives me crazy. It’s a shame really because I had just began to grow used to Daphne’s mothers presence on the show, and on the whole I’ve found her a lot more tolerable this season in comparison to her entrance in Season 9. However she re-inherits all of her irrational traits and qualities here – and the episode is dragged down because of it. I mean, how interesting is a plot which involved Daphne and her mother having a row, which leads to Mrs Moon taking a job in Café Nervosa; whilst all the time (very unsubtly) boasting to the customers that Daphne would be happy if she died doing the job. Yawn…

The only remotely humorous moments were derived from the scenes with Martin, Eddie and to a lesser extent Niles. Moose or Enzo (I don’t know which) did some great tricks as the lovable Jack Russell in this episode; and I particularly liked his rolling over and over when Martin asks him what he’d do if he were on fire. When Martin has to drop out of giving a talk to a group of fourth graders, Niles takes on the challenge instead. Although Officer Niles is somewhat amusing, I couldn’t help but think that Niles talk on hygiene should have been a lot funnier; which it would have been at the helm of a better writer. The scene where Niles gives his trusty handkerchief to an adoring school kid felt a bit overdramatic. Thus, this episode was a mess really, it felt very limp and seemed to crawl along at a snails pace. This won’t be an episode I’ll be watching on a regular basis; although it was great to see Eddie doing some tricks again. Poor episode on the whole though.

Rating: 61%