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By
NICK ZEGARAC
"Frasier: The Complete
Second Season" is the companion DVD box set to
season one. It stars Kelsey Grammer as the eminent
psychiatrist and radio personality Dr. Frasier
Crane, David Hyde Pierce as his even more neurotic
and insecure younger brother Niles, John Mahoney
as their curmudgeonly father Martin, Jane Leeves
as scatterbrain physical therapist Daphne Moon,
and Peri Gilpin as Frasier's calculating
hard-knock radio programmer Roz.
If you thought season one was a riot, just wait
till you get a load of season two: It is an
inspired potpourri of hilarity, beginning with a
tell-all book about Frasier's secret affair with
his piano teacher while he was still a teenager.
Also highlighted in this bunch of episodes is
Eddie getting fixed, Martin's favorite bar,
Duke's, gets demolished by an investment that
Frasier and Niles make, Niles attempts to bond
with a bag of flour in order to discover whether
or not he's ready to be a father, and, a
governor's candidate that Frasier endorses turns
out to be a nut job who believes that aliens
abducted him in the past. Inspired and gifted
performances, shoot-from-the-hip writing and
hilarious cameos make season two one of the great
television highlights of any series ever put on
the small screen.
Paramount's DVD aptly delivers all 24 episodes of
this trendsetting comedy in a deluxe four disc box
set. Unfortunately, Paramount's DVD quality seems
to be lagging behind "First Season." Though colors
are accurately presented with a subtle muted
palette and good contrast levels, and blacks are
deep and solid, there is an excessive amount of
edge enhancement and shimmering of fine details
throughout many of the episodes (more than half)
that is distracting, to say the least. Fine
details become hard-edged and highly unstable.
Many of the vertical and horizontal lines in
Frasier's apartment are in a constant state of
mobility, flickering in and out of each frame and
thoroughly distracting from the performances. As
with the "First Season" discs, certain episodes
continue to have a slightly hazy look to them.
Several episodes suffer from color imbalance in
which tonal quality and brightness seem to shift
-- not only from scene to scene, but shot to shot.
Overall, these imperfections are inexcusable. The
audio is stereo and very nicely balanced. Extras
include a brief but succinct featurette on the
inspiration for season two, a benign "Roz's Dating
Tips" sort of game that one has to access by
toggling on the remote, short snippets that
illustrate all the guest star cameo voiceovers
used as call-in guests and audio commentaries on
selected episodes. If you're a fan of this
television series, you may want to snag this box
set. But the image quality is far below par for a
series of this vintage! |
