10 Greatest TV Bottle Episodes
4. Frasier - Dinner Party
The beauty of Frasier is that, in Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce, you have two of the funniest sitcom actors ever to grace the screen. As such, you need but the flimsiest premice, the slightest reason to stick them together, and you’re almost guaranteed a great episode of TV.
The stakes don’t get much lower than this: Frasier and Niles are co-hosting a dinner party, and they cannot agree on any of the details. The episode - played out in real time - derives its laughs from how ludicrously invested the ever-highly strung brothers become in the organisation of the bash.
That the episode manages to create a fast paced comedy about two men not throwing a dinner party and carry out a thoughtful and heartfelt interrogation of said men’s weird relationship is a testament to the economy of the script. Nothing happens, per se, but the character beats are perfect.
Couple the writing with the high octane performances of two actors who know their characters and each other so well and you get something akin to a dance, as they verbally spar for 20 minutes. At its best, Frasier elevated the sitcom to something balletic.