Tag Archives: Kelsey Grammer

Fall 2011 Review: Boss

10 Dec

Boss wastes no time in its pilot.  Its first scene is a doctor letting the titular “Boss,” Kelsey Grammer’s Tom Kane, current mayor of Chicago, know that he has a degenerative brain disease, which will slowly deteriorate his higher and then lower mental functions.  Eventually he will barely be able to function and will need full time care.  He takes the news, reminds the doctor that the report is confidential and moves on with his day.  He makes a speech on behalf of the current gorvernor, but we soon learn that even though he’s nothing but kind in person, he’s looking to unseat the governor with a young state treasurer.  He offers to put his support behind the treasurer in exchange for favors later.  A find of Indian artifacts in a graveyard throws off his big legacy project, an expansion to O’Hare and Kane engages in a variety of different hardcore old-style political maneuvering to get his airport expansion back on track.  This includes paying off the Indians with building contracts, tacking on an amendment to give him all decisions over the Indian artifacts to a necessary trash bill, and violently assaulting the alderman responsible for the contractor who discovered the Indian artifacts and talked about the discovery on TV.  The airport expansion seems like his most important legacy and he’s willing to do absolutely whatever it takes to get it done.  That of course entails telling no one about his medical condition and more than that having an associate of his associate violently threaten the doctor about not revealing any confidential information.

We see a little bit of his family as well.  His wife is seen at a school dressing down a contractor who was supposed to bring the schools up to some minimum condition.  It’s clear that she’s a veteran of playing old-school political games as well.  At home, it seems like things are strained between them but there’s obviously some respect.  We meet Kane’s daughter as well who has the strangest plot of the episode.  She is working as a medical clinic and after helping a young African-American and his uncle, tracks down the kid for some drugs which she then throws away.  Also, she appears to not be so close with her father; they talk briefly, but he doesn’t have her cell number.

There was also a gratuitous stairway sex scene between the state treasurer and Kane’s advisor that I don’t exactly understand the purpose for, but okay.

Overall, Boss used its first episode fairly wisely and ended up being a much more interesting pilot than I expected.  It helped us learn a fair amount about our main character, and enough to make some bigger guesses at character relationships while setting several plot strands into motion.  These strands seem likely to crash into one another at one point in the future.

Kane has the making of a fascinating character, struggling to do good both for himself but also for his city, while willing to cross many lines to do it.  Like Walter White in Breaking Bad, this is all complicated by a premise of a disease which is a ticking clock, limited his time to get things done.  The political arena is ripe for a character drama.  Kane is old school and hard and certainly no Jeb Bartlett from The West Wing, nor Tommy Carcetti from The Wire, though maybe he’d be more similar to Carcetti’s predecessor Clarence Royce if we ever saw a drama about him.  The first episode was a chance to see Kane display the full range of his political tactics and watch them work so we can understand why he’s both a respected and feared mayor and so we have a baseline for when situations inevitably go less smoothly as the season goes on.  There’s a host of relationships to be explored, between Kane and his wife and daughter as well as between Kane and his long time staff members.  He’s going to have to continue to maneuver to keep his airport project on track as well as push his favored candidate for governor from behind the scenes.  Honestly, I think the show sounds intriguing even without the looming medical condition.

Will I watch again?  I’m not sure why I expected to not like the show at all, but I didn’t, and I was pleasantly surprised.  It’s earned at least a couple more episodes.

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Power Rankings: Cheers

5 Sep

(Power Rankings sum up:  Each week, we’ll pick a television show and rank the actors/actresses/contestants/correspondents/etc. based on what they’ve done after the series ended (unless we’re ranking a current series, in which case we’ll have to bend the rules).  Preference will be given to more recent work, but if the work was a long time ago, but much more important/relevant, that will be factored in as well)

RIP Nicholas Colasanto.  That said, let’s go.

9. George Wendt (as Norm Peterson) – Wendt, along with Rhea Pearlman and Ted Danson, was one of the only three actors to appear in every single episode of Cheers.  It’s a good thing, because it’s been a pretty brutal stretch afterwards.  He got his own starring vehicle in the George Wendt Show in 1995 where he was a mechanic with a radio show, but after its failure, he didn’t get much else, except occasional TV movies and guest appearances.  He showed up in a couple of episodes of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.

8.  Rhea Pearlman (as Carla Tortelli) – she appeared in the film adaptation of Matilda, a 1996 short-lived sitcom called Pearl where she starred a middle-aged woman going back to college, and another failed series called Kate Brasher, starring Mary Stuart Masterson in 2001.  She most recently appeared in a few episodes of Hung and an episode of Wilfred.

7.    Shelley Long (as Diane Chambers) – after leaving almost halfway through Cheers’ run, Long didn’t really take full advantage.  She appeared in Troop Beverly Hills, Frozen Assets, and a couple of Brady Bunch movies.  She showed up in Dr. T and the Women, and most recently featured as Ed O’Neill’s ex-wife in Modern Family.

6.  Bebe Neuwirth (as Lilith Sternin) – Neuwirth, outside of Cheers, may best be known for her theater work, most notably Chicago, where she originated the role of Velma Kelly in the mid-90s revival, and won a Tony (with a couple of Emmys for Cheers, she’s halfway to the EGOT).  She co-starred in Oliver Platt one season series Deadline in 2001, and showed up in a few episodes of David Morse series Hack.  She also starred in attempted Law & Order spin-off Trial by Jury, which lasted a season, and appeared in a dozen episodes of Frasier.  Amusingly, her wikipedia also contains the sentence, “ She is not easy in groups, and the thought of a cocktail party where she must meet a lot of new people strikes terror in her soul.” which is clearly a case of “citation needed”.

5.  John Ratzenberger (as Cliff Clavin) – Ratzenberger’s main claim to fame post-Cheers is his appearance in every single Pixar film, sometimes in bigger roles than others.  His bigger roles include Hamm, the piggy bank, in the Toy Story films, and Mack the Truck in the Cars movies.  He appeared in Dancing with the Stars, Season 4.  He also appeared in a few episodes of 8 Simple Rules.

4.  Kirstie Alley (as Rebecca Howe) – Alley had the unenviable task of replacing Shelley Long in Cheers, but performed admirably for six seasons, winning an Emmy.  In the mid-90s, she appeared in some lackluster movies, including Village of the Damned, It Takes Two, and For Richer or Poorer, along with being part of the ensemble in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry.  In 1997, she started the first of three seasons as the star of Veronica’s Closet, in which she portrayed the head of a lingerie company.  The series met with middling reviews and ratings, but earned her an Emmy nomination.  She appeared in one season of sitcom Fat Actress in 2005, and now is starring in her own reality show, Kirstie Alley’s Big Life, about her attempts at weight loss.  She also appeared in Season 12 of Dancing With the Stars in 2011.

3.  Kelsey Grammar (as Frasier Crane) – this is mostly predicated on one role, in fact, the same role that he played for 9 seasons on Cheers, that of Frasier Crane.  Frasier, his spin-off, in which his character moved back to Seattle, lasted for 11 seasons and was a critical and commercial success, earning Grammer four Lead Actor in a Comedy Emmys for his work.  Since Frasier, his career has suffered a bit, as his two attempts at new sitcoms, 2007’s Back to You with Patricia Heaton and 2009’s Hank both failed quite miserably.  His second most famous role is probably an animated one – the villainous Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons. Grammer has appeared 12 times as Sideshow Bob in such classic episodes as Cape Feare and Sideshow Bob Roberts and he won an Emmy for the role in 2006.  He also appeared as Beast in X-Men: The Last Stand, and as himself in a 30 Rock.

2.  Woody Harrelson (as “Woody” Boyd) – the only Cheers cast member to become a bona fide film star, Harrselson is continuing to bank major film roles.  Immediately after Cheers, he starred in White Men Can’t Jump, Indecent Proposal and Natural Born Killers, cementing his status as a movie lead.  He followed these with Money Train, Farrelly brothers comedy Kingpin, and The People vs. Larry Flynt, for which he gained serious critical acclaim, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.  He played supporting roles in Wag the Dog and EDtv, closing out a very successful 1990s.  The first half of the ‘00s was a bit slow for Harerlson, as he took no films roles until 2003, though he appeared in a few episodes of Will & Grace.  After taking these couple of years off, he had supporting roles in Anger Management and After the Sunset.  In 2007, he had a small but important role in No Country for Old Men, and in 2009, he earned another Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Supporting Actor for The Messenger.  He most recently starred in Zombieland, and appeared in Friends with Benefits.  He’ll be in a Zombieland sequel and in teen book adaptation Hunger Games.

1.  Ten Danson (as Sam Malone) – His first attempt at a sitcom after Cheers was the unsuccessful Ink with his wife Mary Steenburgen.  He then starred in an acclaimed adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels, in minseries form.  For a remarkable six seasons, he starred in Becker, featuring him as a pain-in-the-ass doctor who cares deep down inside.  After another failed sitcom called Help Me Help You, Ted Danson began a string of successes which hasn’t abated yet.  He started appearing in Curb Your Enthusiasm as himself, and has appeared in a number of episodes.  He became a regular in the first season of Damages, playing the villainous Ken Lay clone Arthur Frobisher, who appeared in several episodes of the second and third seasons as well.  In addition to that, he appears  in HBO’s Bored to Death as magazine editor George Christopher, a serial womanizer and pot-smoker.  Although the entire show is great, Danson may be the highlight.  If all this weren’t enough, Danson will be starring in CBS procedural giant CSI in this upcoming season.

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