What's Wrong With The Frasier Apartment, According To Interior Designers
As a media-obsessed culture of TV kids, many of us relocated more times than we could count while growing up. At the same time, our beloved TV families stayed in one cozy and familiar environment from one season to the next over the years. And in a very real way, their homes became ours, too.
Fans of "I Love Lucy" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show" know exactly how most of the major set pieces were arranged — and they'd know if something was out of place. But for all the comfort these celebrity homes provided, not a single one of them was actually a truly livable space. If you can imagine the entire Brady Bunch (including Mike, Carol, and Alice) all sharing the only bathroom ever shown on the series you know that's been painfully true. They never even showed the toilet on television, per Yahoo!. Still, some can't resist weighing in on the aesthetics of a particular set, and when it comes to "Frasier," finding fault with a notorious fussbudget is just, well ... fun.
Furniture selection and placement
Famously finicky and neurotic, TV's Frasier Crane left "Cheers" in 1993 to take a job in his native Seattle as a radio talk show host. He also bought a condo at the fictitious Elliot Bay Towers to live in the lap of modern luxury. So if he's as smart as a whip and has taste no one can beat ... how come he turned the back of a Coco Chanel-replica couch to his fireplace?
That's just one of the irritants that give interior designers a bone to pick with the beloved sitcom, even years after it's disappeared into reruns. According to Insider, TV pundit and New York interior designer Alec Holland wondered the same thing about that couch. "Why would anyone have their furniture facing away from that fireplace?" he mused. "I'd turn everything around, and open the living space up."
Holland also took issue with the oft-used coffee table that was always perched before the couch. "If you replaced that horrible coffee table with something more modern and square, stacked some picture books on it, and added a few [art objects], it would up the elegant vibe," he continued. Given that Frasier was a renowned collector of these object, that makes sense.
What's wrong with the color palette?
In fact, there's not much interior designers seem to like about the condo's design at all, according to Insider. For one, designer Katie Stix turns up her nose at the color scheme of the apartment. "A little color would be welcome in this room, it is just so vanilla and beige," she explained. All of which begs the question: If the people who design sets for TV homes are professionals, how can they get so much wrong according to their peers in the interior design business?
The answer is a simple one. They're not designing homes to be real-life residences; they're designing spaces to be filmed, where cameras and crews must trudge back and forth, day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. And because every moment a crew is on the clock means tons of production money is being spent, those people need to move quickly and efficiently.
And similarly, neutral palates help characters' clothes and faces appear more vibrant on the small screen, especially in the days before high-definition TV. As for the popular colors of the time? For men, it was khakis and olives, subdued blues and browns. The range for women was similarly muted, too, as noted by Onyx Creative.
What's right in the Frasier apartment
Conversely, the tastemakers at Screen Rant counter that there's plenty to like about Frasier's digs. They suggest the condo illustrates his eclectic sense of style, his passion for antiques, and his famous flair for the dramatic.
Additionally, fans who have spent countless hours researching the condo on "Frasier" say now that the view from his patio is simply not geometrically possible. They claim the condo is somewhere between 700 and 1,150 feet from the Space Needle, the spire-like structure at ground zero of the Seattle Center. Therefore, Frasier's fictitious skyscraper ought to be located between the International Fountain and the Seattle Repertory Theater. And, as every true "Frasier" binge-watcher knows, the apartment's address is 1901 — a single floor below the roof. With all those particulars in play, the Space Needle wouldn't have been outside his window.
There's also a certain quiet giggle that "Frasier" fans (who can be just as dryly snarky as the show they adore) share over Dr. Crane's love of primitive art, and that there's a particular fertility statue that might have slipped past the NBC censors. Good luck finding it.