Written by: Joe Keenan

Directed by: David Lee

Original US airdate: 17th September 1996

Original UK airdate: 11th July 1997

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An overrated, uneven episode, Aug 25, 2009

Reviewer: Sitcom Fan from U.K

Very highly regarded by many, Joe Keenan’s second farce is in fact an uneven mix of the inspired and the embarrassing. Taking ‘The Matchmaker’ as its template, Keenan utilises a 2 act structure, the first act setting up the situation which will then unravel with increasingly complexity in real time in act 2.

A step up in complexity from ‘The Matchmaker’, 'The 2 Mrs Cranes' does an excellent job of gradually increasing the level of complication and providing the twists and turns necessary to sustain the comedy, without which a farce can easily become dull, the form relying heavily on plotting rather than character, dialogue or traditional storytelling to sustain interest. Instead of the 1 misunderstanding of 'The Matchmaker', we have 5 characters assuming false identities or relationships. Each character is involved in, and responding to, the charade in different ways and for different reasons. For Daphne, it is all very serious, and a chore, she is dreading something will go wrong. Niles cannot believe his luck. For Martin, it is all a big joke, and he is enjoying getting back at his sons for suggesting he cannot handle the complicated situation by enjoying making everyone's lives more complicated, (Martin’s attitude to the whole thing is one of the joys of the episode, his pretence of being an astronaut surely thought up after the writers thought of Niles and Daphne’s hypothetical hyphenated surname!) And in some ways funniest of all, Frasier is reluctantly going along with it, growing increasingly quietly exasperated until by the end he really doesn’t care anymore ( see his reaction to Niles’ gleeful suggestion that he is impotent!). Grammer, given less to do than usual, excels in this more subtle progression of his attitude in this episode. All of this is very well performed.

Keenan expertly twists the situation when Clive reveals he is now a successful businessman. This livens up the latter half of the episode as Daphne changes her tune and now tries to win Clive rather than repel him, thus changing the dynamic of the episode for Roz and Niles too.

That’s the good news. However, 'The 2 Mrs Cranes' is also a frustrating episode in a number of ways. In 'The Matchmaker', the situation may have been simpler, but that was one of its strengths. It was 1 misunderstadning, which was so inherently funny in itself it sustained the episode beautifully. 'The 2 Mrs Cranes' does not have quite as funny a premise and thus needs more complexity to make up for this. 'The Ski Lodge’ arguably gets the balance between complexity and an inherently funny situation better than this one.

'The 2 Mrs Cranes' also takes longer to get going than 'The Matchmaker'. That episode was funny right from the start, whereas the early scenes here have some flat moments (the pointless ‘tweezing muffin’ moment, the silly and unsophisticated references to ‘Stinky’, the lazy ‘narcoleptic applying for air-traffic controller’ joke, Gil's unnecessary appearance, the silly joke about Clive’s ‘butt’ - Keenan was never the most subtle of writers, was he?).

The episode also ends too abruptly, the final fade-out always seeming incomplete somehow. In fact, as with 'The Matchmaker', a further final scene was written, which features Daphne, Niles and Frasier discussing the events of the episode. This cut scene is excellent, giving the episode some warmth and depth which it doesn’t have, and providing the sense of closure that it lacks as it stands, and its inclusion would have improved the episode no end. This scene could have been fitted by cutting some of the earlier, less funny material in act 1.

And finally, we come to the most glaring flaw of this episode – Scott Atkinson’s performance as Clive. For me, this is the single worst performance in any of the 264 eps of 'Frasier'. No matter how many times I watch this episode, Clive – who is a central player and has a lot of screen time – produces a constant wince. This flaw alone makes the episode uneven enough to prevent it from being a classic, even without the other flaws I have mentioned. Atkinson not only has an English accent to make Dick Van Dyke seem like a master of dialects, he also acts appallingly. Every line is delivered with a strange, unnatural bizarre intonation, he has terrible timing, and the whole performance is just so awful it distracts me, it prevents me from supending my disbelief, and virtually ruins the episode. I often wonder if they added Niles' line about him ‘having all the charm of a cricket bat’ during rehearsals – it does seem to be an attempt at an apology for this ghastly performance.

With another actor playing Clive, a stronger first few scenes, and the insertion of the cut final scene, this could have been a classic. As it is, it is an episode that combines the brilliant with the cringe-inducing , making it a frustrating watch for me and actually one of the most uneven episodes of season 4.

Rating: 69%