Which Israel Will Emerge After the Hamas Attack?

On August 12^th I published an article in TIME, “The Good Israel Will Prevail.” I wrote: “True, many of the pilots, the hard core of the Israeli Air Force, intelligence analysts, cyber experts, members of Israel Defense Force’s elite units, warn that they would not serve a dictatorial regime of Netanyahu and his extremist coalition partners, and some are acting on their warnings. But if Israel is attacked, they will all rush to their units ready to serve in devotion and excellence.”

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On the morning of October 7, Israel was taken by a surprise attack. What I predicted about the officers who joined and, in some cases, led the pro-democracy protests happened. The most notable examples were that three retired major generals—Yair Golan, Noam Tibon and Israel Ziv, armed and in battle uniform, separately drove on their own to the besieged villages on the Gaza border that morning, bravely fought the Hamas terrorists and rescued captured civilians. All the three are prominent participants of the civil anti-government protest. Thus, as I wrote, the “good Israel will prevail.”

This attack by Hamas on Israel was almost certainly directed by Iran. For years, Iran has been arming, equipping, financing, and supporting Hamas, as well as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Both terror organizations are Iran’s proxies. The Iranian regime has recently grown over self-confidant. Its alliance with Russia, its China-mediated rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, the gradual withdrawal of U.S. from the Middle East, it total misinterpretation of the pro-democracy mass demonstrations in Israel, combined to give the Ayatollahs a feeling of strength. They became more daring, all over the region.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accountable and to be blamed for the unfolding disaster—and not only because the intelligence failure and the swift success of Hamas happened on his shift.

Throughout all his 13 years in power Netanyahu enabled and encouraged the build-up of Hamas’ terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. The idea behind it was to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah by strengthening its rival the Hamas in Gaza. Qatar was allowed to funnel many millions of dollars to the Hamas government, while more and more financial punitive measures were taken against Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority. No serious military measures were taken to destroy Hamas militarily. Since August 2014 not a single Hamas senior commander has been killed by Israel. Since last Saturday we Israelis are paying the price for the policy of the Netanyahu-led governments that have done everything to avoid seeking a solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.

So what needs to be done now is the total destruction of Hamas’ military force. As a political movement Hamas can’t be erased. But it must be deprived of any military capacity and any chance of its revival must be totally prevented. This should serve as a lesson to the Iranian regime. It operates Hamas-like proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Tehran should be deterred from using them. The Palestinian people will thereby learn a lesson that the way of Hamas brings misery and destruction, not freedom and redemption. The plan of Hamas to take over the Palestinian society in all territories must be thwarted.

If the Israeli military action is decisive enough, then the road to an economic-political reconstruction plan for Gaza will be open. Cooperation between Egypt, Gulf states, the Palestinian Authority and Israel is essential for the feasibility of such a plan. The 2.2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip deserve lives of peace and dignity. Hamas rule since June 2007 has brought them terrible misery and poverty.

The current government of Israel is not a partner for any constructive plan in the region. It is overwhelmed by ultra-nationalistic and messianic ideas, lack of experience, and inferior intellectual capacity.

As I said previously “the good Israel will prevail” and the Israeli people will have a government they deserve.

source https://time.com/6322046/israel-after-hamas-attack/

Workers at Mack Trucks Go on Strike, Joining Thousands of UAW Picketers

DETROIT — Union workers at Mack Trucks went on strike Monday after voting down a five-year contract agreement that negotiators had reached with the company.

The United Auto Workers said 4,000 unionized workers walked out at 7 a.m., adding to labor turmoil in the industry that has ensnared all three big Detroit automakers.

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With those workers joining picket lines, the total number of UAW members that are on strike now exceeds 30,000 across 22 states, the union said Monday.

Union President Shawn Fain said in a letter to Mack parent company Volvo Trucks that 73% of workers voted against the deal in results counted on Sunday.

The UAW represents Mack workers in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Florida. Union leaders had reached a tentative agreement on the deal on Oct. 1.

UAW Locals 171, 677, 1247, 2301, and 2420 in UAW Region 8 and Region 9 represent workers at Mack Trucks in Macungie and Middletown, Pennsylvania; Hagerstown and Baltimore, Maryland; and Jacksonville, Florida.

The deal negotiators had reached with Mack just over a week ago included a 19% pay raise over the life of the contract with 10% upon ratification. There also was a $3,500 ratification bonus, no increase in weekly health care contributions, increased annual lump sum payments for retirees and a $1,000 annual 401(k) lump sum to offset health care costs for employees who don’t get health insurance after retirement.

Fain said in his letter to Volvo Trucks’ head of labor relations that employees working early Monday would exit the factories after performing tasks needed to prevent damage to company equipment.

Fain wrote that UAW members and workers across the country are seeking their fair share in wages and benefits.

The company and union are still apart on work schedules, health and safety, pensions, health care, prescription drug coverage, overtime and other issues, he wrote.

The contract may have been sunk by high expectations Fain has set in bargaining with Detroit’s three automakers. In those talks, the UAW has asked for 36% raises over four years, while Ford has offered 23% and the other two firms are at 20%.

“I’m inspired to see UAW members at Mack Trucks holding out for a better deal, and ready to stand up and walk off the job to win it,” Fain said in a prepared statement. “The members have the final say, and it’s their solidarity and organization that will win a fair contract at Mack.”

Mack Trucks President Stephen Roy said in a statement Sunday night that the company is “surprised and disappointed” that the union chose to strike. The union, he wrote, called the tentative agreement a record for the heavy truck industry. “We trust that other stakeholders also appreciate that our market, business and competitive set are very different from those of the passenger car makers,” the statement said.

Mack, he wrote, is part of the only heavy truck manufacturing group that assembles all of its vehicles and engines for North America in the U.S., competing against trucks built in lower-cost countries.

The company is committed to collective bargaining and is confident both sides will reach a deal that delivers competitive wages and benefits while safeguarding the company’s future, the statement said.

The UAW went on strike at selected factories run by automakers General Motors, Ford and Jeep maker Stellantis on Sept. 15. It started with one assembly plant for each company, then spread to 38 GM and Stellantis parts warehouses. Two additional assembly plants at Ford and GM were added later.

On Friday, the union decided not to expand the strikes to any more plants for the time being after GM agreed to bring its electric vehicle battery factories into the UAW’s national contract, assuring that they’ll be unionized. The union also reported progress with all three automakers.

source https://time.com/6322030/mack-trucks-uaw-strike/

‘I Was Saved by a Miracle.’ A Survivor Recounts the Horror of the Hamas Attack on Israel’s Supernova Festival

Arbel Ashkenazy attended the Supernova festival on Friday night, a desert rave that coincided with the start of the week-long Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which celebrates the fall harvest and commemorates the Old Testament story of the Jewish people wandering in the desert for 40 years after escaping slavery in Egypt. The festival featured Brazilian psy trance music and focused on free love, spirit, and environmental preservation.

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But in the early hours of Saturday morning, Hamas militants paraglided into the outdoor festival and began shooting indiscriminately at partygoers. At the same time, Hamas also launched thousands of rockets from Gaza into Israel and sent fighters to other border towns in the south of the country. Hamas says that they have taken over 100 Israeli hostages so far. Over 700 hundred Israelis were killed, with the death toll soaring over 1,200 on both sides on Monday.

The Supernova festival had one of the highest concentrations of casualties. More than 260 bodies have been found from the festival so far.

Below is Arbel’s account of the events that unfolded at the festival.

Read More: Pres. Isaac Herzog: Israel Needs Support

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We arrived at the party Friday night, and at around 6 in the morning on Saturday they stopped the music and sirens started to sound. We heard the sound of rockets over our heads in huge numbers. During this time we weren’t that stressed, we just stayed put at the party and lied down on the floor. Slowly, slowly we started to see many people leave and head to their cars despite the fact that we were supposed to stay.

During this time, I started looking for my friend Eden. Even though we didn’t arrive at the party together, she is my best friend so I immediately started to look for her. Me and my friend found her and we left and started heading for the direction of the cars at around 7 a.m. At this point, we were getting more stressed but we still didn’t totally understand exactly what was happening. There also wasn’t any reporting on it in the news or internet yet. 

We started to leave the party and get into vehicles, but because everyone was leaving at the same time—there were 3,000 people at the party—there was a crazy amount of traffic in the street. We ended up making a left turn and we immediately saw all these cars with shattered windows from the gunshots. We heard a lot of people screaming that they needed an ambulance. We didn’t know what to do so we stayed in our vehicles.

By that time, I had lost contact with my friend Eden, because she was in a different car and hid there when the gunshots started. Then, we heard somebody screaming, “get out of the cars,” so we left the cars, and just started running. There was an area with an empty field since it was a nature party. It was very bare with no trees or anything and we started to run toward it. At that same time, we also started to hear gunshots from every direction and voices shouting Allahu Akbar. While we were running in that open field, we could see in the distance some of the Hamas people. They were wearing all black with black masks and had these huge guns.

For some time, we hid in these bushes before we started to run further east. But as we started running east, we saw other people from the party running toward us and they told us, run to the other side because there are terrorists on this side. They had just circled all around us from every direction. We kept running when suddenly I saw a person—an angel—that had a big white van. He picked up a bunch of people into the van and me and my friend climbed onto the van.

It was a miracle that even though he was driving in this open field, and there were gunshots all over the place, we were able to get to a police station in the city of Netivot at around 10:30 a.m. We stayed there until the evening until things calmed down, if you can even say “calmed down,” because it didn’t really calm down. In our area, they captured some of the perpetrators. 

I heard that my friend Eden, who had hidden in the car during the gunshots, was on the phone the entire time with her mother for four hours straight. At some point she made it to the bushes as well, but then suddenly, four hours into the phone call, they heard her say on the phone, “they caught me.” You can hear for a moment in the recording the voices of the Hamas people and then the phone disconnects. We have been looking for her but have not heard from her since. 

The hardest part is to see all the bodies of young kids our age with blood laid out on the floor. We were in an environment of pure chaos. I was saved by a miracle and was left in peace, but many of my friends including my best friend Eden are still there and I just want everyone to return safely and in peace. I just want this horrible story to end because it doesn’t feel real. It’s not normal, in any country, any place, nobody should have to go through something like this. It didn’t make any sense. We ran like crazy people in the middle of an open field while they were shooting at us, there was no place to run, no place to hide. I’m grateful to be alive but I just want Eden back.

source https://time.com/6321984/escaping-hamas-supernova-festival-diary/

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Run for President as an Independent, Drop Democratic Primary Bid

(PHILADELPHIA) — Longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday he will run for president as an independent and drop his Democratic primary bid, adding a wrinkle to a 2024 race heading toward a likely rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Kennedy, a member of one of the most famous Democratic families in politics, was running a long-shot primary bid and has better favorability ratings among Republicans than Democrats. It’s unclear whether GOP support would translate to a general election when Kennedy would also be running against Trump. Allies of both Biden and Trump have at times questioned whether Kennedy would be a spoiler against their candidate.

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Read More: Column: The Conspirituality of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Biden’s allies so far have dismissed Kennedy’s primary campaign as unserious. Asked for comment on his potential independent run, a Democratic National Committee spokesman responded with an eye roll emoji.

Awaiting Kennedy’s remarks Monday, hundreds of supporters gathered at Philadelphia’s Independence Mall, an apt location for the launch. Campaign signs teased a potential new slogan: “Declare your independence.”

Among Kennedy’s fans in the crowd were several voters who said they don’t identify as Democratic or Republican and view Kennedy as a truth teller and a breath of fresh air.

“He tells it how it is,” said Julia Hill, a 23-year-old student from New Jersey. “He doesn’t sound like a politician.”

Other supporters, such as Brent Snyder, a disabled veteran from south Philadelphia, said they had voted for Trump in the past but were looking for a change.

“The last couple years I’ve been noticing the Republican Party’s been going a way I didn’t like,” Snyder said. “Not that I agree with everything that’s happening to Trump, but I think right now he has more baggage than his country needs. The division right now is just terrible. We need someone to bring both sides together to make us work.”

Monday’s announcement comes less than a week after the progressive activist Cornel West abandoned his Green Party bid in favor of an independent White House run. Meanwhile, the centrist group No Labels is actively securing ballot access for a yet-to-be-named candidate.

Kennedy has spent weeks accusing the DNC of “rigging” the party’s primary against him and threatening that he might need to consider alternatives.

Read More: Column: Two Visions of Bobby Kennedy Jr.

In campaign emails and videos, he blasted the DNC’s decision not to host debates between Biden and other candidates and railed against the committee’s plan to give South Carolina rather than Iowa or New Hampshire the leadoff spot on the primary calendar this election cycle.

“If they jam me, I’m going to look at every option,” he said in September at a New Hampshire barbecue held by Republican former Sen. Scott Brown.

Far-right and anti-vaccine influencers close to Kennedy also have sent strong signals on social media suggesting he should or will leave the Democratic Party. Last month, Joseph Mercola, an influential anti-vaccine doctor who is allied with Kennedy, ran a poll on X, formerly known as Twitter, asking if Kennedy should quit the party.

While Kennedy has long identified as a Democrat and frequently invokes his late father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle President John F. Kennedy on the campaign trail, he has built close relationships with far-right figures in recent years. He appeared on a channel run by the Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and headlined a stop on the ReAwaken America Tour, the Christian nationalist road show put together by Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Read More: Inside the Very Online Campaign of RFK Jr.

Polls show far more Republicans than Democrats have a favorable opinion of Kennedy. He also has gained support from some far-right conservatives for his fringe views, including his vocal distrust of COVID-19 vaccines, which studies have shown are safe and effective against severe disease and death.

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

—Associated Press writers Michelle Smith and Will Weissert contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/6321987/robert-f-kennedy-independent-2024/

Flag Football Could Become an Olympic Sport in 2028

First, Taylor Swift. Next, the Olympics.

The NFL’s ongoing push for worldwide exposure got another boost Monday when organizers for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics delivered a proposal to put flag football on the program when the Summer Games return to the United States for the first time in 32 years.

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The International Olympic Committee will vote on the proposal at meetings in Mumbai, India, that begin later this week. Also on the L.A. proposal were baseball and softball, which have been bouncing on and off the program for decades; lacrosse; squash; and cricket—a fitting contrast to flag football in that it is virtually unknown in the United States but immensely popular over wide swaths of the globe.

L.A. chairman Casey Wasserman said the new sports are “relevant, innovative and community-based, played in backyards, schoolyards, community centers, stadiums and parks across the U.S. and the globe.”

Though participation numbers have been declining, there is no bigger spectator sport in the U.S. than football. Bringing its less-violent cousin into the Olympics would mark a huge victory for the NFL, which has been staging games in Europe for more than a decade now and is always looking for ways to grow both its participation and its audience. One of this season’s biggest stories has been pop megastar Swift’s trips to two Chiefs games to watch her friend, tight end Travis Kelce.

“Things have been going at a whipping pace for football,” said Bettina Cornwell, a sports business expert at the University of Oregon. “It’s a very smart idea to introduce a football-type game on a larger scale with more limelight that will perhaps persuade people that we can do something other than” stick to the violent game as it is currently played.

Flag football, in which “tackles” are made by pulling a flag off a belt worn by each player, would be a 5-on-5 affair played on a 50-yard field. There aren’t offensive and defensive linemen. At the World Games last year, the U.S. men won the gold medal while the women fell to Mexico in the final.

While flag football will feel familiar to the home fans, cricket will be a steep learning curve. Hugely popular in, among other places, India, Britain and Australia, which hosts the Summer Games in Brisbane in 2032, it is virtually unknown in the United States. A game called Twenty20—a shorter version of the original game—is proposed for the schedule in Los Angeles. Cricket was played once before at the Olympics—in Paris in 1900.

Not included in the L.A. program is breakdancing, which will be a one-and-done after its debut in Paris next year. Others not making the cut: motorsports, kickboxing and karate.

Unclear is whether other sports will have to trim the number of disciplines to help the IOC adhere to the limit it set of 10,500 athletes at a Summer Olympics. The addition of five team sports will inflate the number of participants.

How a new version of football will play five years from now in an already crowded 17-day sports schedule is anybody’s guess. The Olympics, like the NFL, have been working hard to entice a younger audience. In recent years, the IOC has added skateboarding, climbing and 3-on-3 basketball to its schedule. Flag football fits into that mold, said Cornwell, the Oregon professor.

“There are going to be hardcore NFL gridiron consumers who are not going to accept it,” she said. “But you have to recognize the fact that the danger of gridiron play is a talking point. It’s not popular. If there’s a play that could change things, this is it. Give them kudos for trying.”

source https://time.com/6321997/flag-football-olympic-sport-2028/

Israel’s President: Our Darkest Hour Casts a Shadow on the Entire World

Not since the Holocaust have more Jews been murdered on one day. The numbers of dead in the Simchat Torah Massacre are still rising as Israel’s soldiers and rescue services discover more and more families murdered in their homes.

Not since the Holocaust have we seen such images of innocent Jewish mothers and children, teenagers and old women loaded into trucks and taken away into captivity.

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Not since the vile crimes of ISIS, have we witnessed such barbarity. Indeed, this is what Hamas have done: imported, adopted, and replicated the savagery of ISIS. Whole families have been wiped out. Mothers and fathers, with babes in arms, murdered in cold blood. Young people at a party. Old people—even Holocaust survivors themselves. Massacred. Their bodies burned and abused. Along with dozens of Israelis taken away are other nationalities.

Many have labelled this Israel’s 9/11—a national catastrophe inflicted by bloodthirsty terrorists. Indeed, in terms of proportion for a nation of 9.3 million, the fatalities number more than seven times those of the Twin Towers.

So as President of Israel, what do I say to you, readers around the world? Do I tell you of some of the personal stories? Of the young couple Tamar and Yonatan, murdered in their home along with their 6-year-old twin daughters Shachar and Arbel, and 4-year-old son Omer? Do I tell you of the wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivor in her 80s who was taken into captivity by Hamas terrorists? Do I tell you of the young women at a dance party rounded up by terrorists from Gaza to be murdered and their bodies violated?

I can tell you that from the depths, the light is clearest. From our darkest moments can arise Israel’s finest hour. Israel will remain united and strong. Israel will act firmly and with full force to defend its people and eliminate this threat. This is our solemn duty, and we will not rest day or night in the defense of our people.

However, the international community also has a duty to fulfill here. For too long, when Israel has faced incursions or rockets from Gaza, elements of the international community have called for restraint or sought to justify Hamas’s actions, swallowing their lies as they killed their own people and blamed Israel, while hiding rockets in hospitals, schools, and mosques.

The world can no longer turn a blind eye. Any justification or attempts to rationalize this terrible attack will only encourage them further.

It is important to remember that Israel has no presence in Gaza. For months the border has been ostensibly peaceful. Instead of seeking a brighter future, Hamas has brought havoc on its own people. Tens of thousands of Gazans would cross each day into Israel to work and support their families, working alongside peace-loving Israelis—many of whom I knew well, and sadly have been murdered in this onslaught.

Over the past days, I have spoken with leaders from around the world. I appreciate their support for Israel’s right to defend its people in the face of this abhorrent evil. I appreciate the outpouring of good will we have seen around the world with national landmarks and monuments illuminated with Israeli flags in solidarity with our people.

But platitudes and sympathies must translate into tangible support. Over the next days and weeks, Israel will be doing all it can to secure its borders, to remove the threat posed by Hamas, and to return its captive civilians and soldiers. I am under no illusion that this will be a swift or easy process—but one thing is for sure, it will demand the support of the international community.

History will judge Hamas for its crimes against humanity, along with all those who fail to stand against them. I urge all the international community, those who have always stood by us, and those who have traditionally taken a different stance. Now is the time to speak out. Now is the time to take action in support of Israel by word and deed—at home and in the international institutions. To our Muslim neighbors and friends in the region who represent a different face of Islam—I say now is the time to show that we all share an inalienable and mutual respect for human life.

The days ahead are certainly shadowed with cloudy skies, as Israel embarks on a difficult and painful mission to secure its borders, to eliminate the threat to its people, and to return the hostages to their families. However, just like in the past, even in the face of the most difficult times, Israel will overcome, the Israeli spirit will overcome, and we will emerge stronger, more resilient, and above all, united.

source https://time.com/6321967/israel-president-isaac-herzog-hamas-attack/

The Frasier Revival Serves Up Wilted Salads and Expired Eggs

“Life’s callin’ again,” Kelsey Grammer croons in the updated version of “Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs” that plays over each episode’s closing credits in Paramount+’s Frasier revival. Life, in this case, must be short for television executives thirsty for a nostalgia-driven hit, because it’s hard to believe anyone else was clamoring for more of an 11-season sitcom that was itself a Cheers spin-off. When you figure in the absence of virtually every original cast member besides Grammer, as well as new leadership behind the scenes, writer-showrunners Chris Harris (How I Met Your Mother) and Joe Cristalli (Life in Pieces), the project starts to sound especially dire. And it is.

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Premiering Oct. 12, Frasier 2.0 picks up about two decades after its predecessor’s 2004 finale—an episode that found Seattle’s favorite pretentious radio shrink at a crossroads, as his widower father remarried, his brother and employee-turned-sister-in-law had a baby, and Frasier decided to forsake a job opportunity in San Francisco for a chance at love with Laura Linney’s Charlotte, who lived in Chicago. In the first few minutes of the revival we learn that he’s been there ever since, amassing fame and fortune as the Windy City’s favorite pretentious TV shrink. But now the show and the relationship are over. His parting words to the network: “Get off your knees, stop begging, I’m already out the door.” Charlotte, meanwhile, “told me the same thing.”

Now, in the wake of his dad Martin’s funeral (John Mahoney, who played the elder Crane, died in 2018), he’s in his former home city of Boston for what is supposed to be a quick visit. Apparently he no longer keeps in touch with anyone from Cheers, because the face that greets him at their airport is an unfamiliar one: Frasier’s best friend since his Oxford days, Alan (Nicholas Lyndhurst), making his first-ever appearance in Dr. Crane’s four decades of existence as a TV character. Though his real passion is alcohol, Alan is a psychology professor at Harvard, where Frasier’s high-strung nephew David (Anders Keith) happens to be an undergrad. Practically the moment he arrives, Alan’s ambitious department head Olivia (Toks Olagundoye) offers Frasier a faculty job. (The sound you hear is a nation’s worth of unemployed PhDs groaning.) Of course he takes it. If nothing else, the move promises to give him a chance to reconnect with his semi-estranged, 33-year-old son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), a Harvard dropout turned Boston firefighter. (The word Harvard comes up often in this show.)

With this multigenerational ensemble, Harris and Cristall seem intent on replicating the dynamics of the canonical Frasier cast without actually bringing back Grammer’s old co-stars. (Peri Gilpin is slated to guest star at some point in the season as Frasier’s producer Roz, but she wasn’t in any of the five episodes sent for review.) Once again, there are the effete snobs and the salt-of-the-earth people who tolerate them. Freddy is the show’s answer to Martin, a retired cop. The actress he lives with, Jess Salgueiro’s Eve—a character whose backstory I’ve been asked to avoid discussing, not that it makes for an especially exciting reveal—is the Daphne-like ingénue. Olivia drives the status-conscious Harvard plots, like a Type A Roz, restoring the original show’s balance of family and workplace comedy. David, a delicate soul prone to fits of anxiety, and Alan, a sometimes rival who’s quick with bon mots, fill in for Niles.

But let’s be real. There’s no replacing Frasier and Niles’ frenemy (bronemy?) rapport, which fueled endless sibling-oneupmanship story arcs rendered gently hilarious by the narcissism of two very similar narcissists’ small differences. And there’s certainly no replacing David Hyde Pierce’s performance as Niles, whose feline mannerisms and puppy-dog panting after Jane Leeves’ Daphne made him the show’s breakout character. (In case you were wondering, the market for extremely specific Niles Crane tribute merch is booming.) Grammer disappears back into his signature role, but without his one true sparring partner, Frasier feels adrift.

It’s not that the supporting cast is a complete bust. Lyndhurst can be pretty funny as a glib, dissipated British academic of a certain age. Salgueiro adds some much-needed effervescence and charm to a relatively low-energy milieu. But the show strains to find reasons to throw these characters together in humorous situations. Harris and Cristall invent a third-space pub whose clientele appears to consist solely of firefighters and Harvard faculty; Eve is the bartender. For a college student living on campus, David—who comes across as a collection of neuroses more than a fleshed-out character—spends an alarming amount of time with his uncle and cousin. 

The writing, in other words, disappoints. Gone is the fizzy dialogue of Frasier’s heyday, replaced by dated “Baby Shark” gags and broad exchanges like the one in which Freddy notes that a new (spoiler-y) development in his life is “not exactly catnip for ladies” and David—who is, again, studying at America’s most prestigious institution of higher learning—marvels: “There’s catnip for ladies?” One early episode recycles a plot the original series did at least once, as Frasier, Alan, and Olivia all vie for two open membership slots at an exclusive faculty club. 

The tone feels off, too. It’s nice that the new episodes were filmed in front of a live audience, but their laughter, which reads as artificial in 2023, makes the revival feel too much like a kitschy throwback. Frasier’s quest to prove, after a couple of decades as an overeducated talk-show host, that he’s got more substance than, say, Dr. Phil makes for a decent premise. But his guilt over passing his daddy issues onto the next generation is more of a bummer than a light comedy can support. The show needs more jokes and less earnest emoting, at the very least. Still, I’m not convinced that any amount of tweaking would be enough to justify its existence. 

The new Frasier presumably exists to capitalize on the new audience that the NBC original, a ’90s Must See TV staple, has found on streaming platforms. In 2017, the critic Lili Loofbourow made the case that it was the ideal show to fall asleep watching; a few months later, The Ringer went so far as to dub the languorous Friday after Thanksgiving Frasier Day. And just last year, a roundtable of Atlantic writers pronounced Frasier the ultimate comfort show. The consensus is, essentially, that we still love Frasier because, in this age of struggle and strife, it feels uniquely luxurious to sink into a warm bath of Clinton-era rich-people problems. Who wouldn’t want to take a 22-minute virtual vacation to a time when conflicts between white-collar snobs and blue-collar populists ended in a shared chuckle rather than, I don’t know, an insurrection?

It’s impossible to recreate the same soothing atmosphere today, although Harris and Cristall do wisely avoid political hot topics. (Among other groan-worthy possibilities, this spares us from hearing Dr. Crane crack jokes about nonbinary pronouns, like every other nonplussed baby boomer in a multi-cam comedy since 2016.) Not even the return of Niles, Daphne, and the rest could have compensated for the loss of the show’s original context. Frasier—all 264 infinitely rewatchable episodes of it—will always be a comforting place to visit. But central to its appeal, which only increases with age, is our awareness that we could never live there in the present.

source https://time.com/6320681/frasier-reboot-review/