Frasier: The Matchmaker Episode Won More Awards Than Fans May Realize
Over the course of its 11-season run from 1993 to 2004, "Frasier" was an awards season juggernaut. The sitcom won 37 Emmy Awards, including an unprecedented five consecutive wins for outstanding comedy series, beating out big hitters like "Seinfeld" and "Friends" (that feat wasn't matched until 2014 by "Modern Family"). Some specific episodes received more awards season attention than others, including Season 2's "The Matchmaker."
Widely considered one of the best "Frasier" episodes of all time, "The Matchmaker" proves how adept the show's writers were at creating modern farces. When Daphne (Janes Leeves) complains to Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) about the sorry state of her love life, he pledges to find her the perfect date. Frasier strikes gold when he meets Tom (Eric Lutes), the new station manager at KACL. The only problem? Tom is gay. When Frasier invites Tom over to set him up with Daphne, Tom assumes he's on a date with Frasier. As such, Tom misinterprets nearly everything Frasier says, and farcical hilarity ensues.
The episode earned director David Lee a Directors Guild of America Award, as well as an Emmy for outstanding direction. It was writer Joe Keenan's first episode of "Frasier," and he received a Writers Guild of America Award for his trouble. Keenan would eventually work up to the role of executive producer. For its representation of queer characters, "The Matchmaker" also won a GLAAD Media Award.
The Matchmaker is a queer classic
"The Matchmaker" was more than just an awards magnet. In the years since "Frasier" went off the air, the episode has been reassessed as a centerpiece of its inherently queer sensibility. In a piece for IndieWire titled "The Gay Sensibility of 'Frasier' Was Ahead of Its Time," Wilson Chapman explored the respectful manner in which "Frasier" treated its (admittedly few) queer characters, especially compared to the now-dated jokes on its contemporary "Friends." Chapman spoke specifically to "The Matchmaker" and Season 7's "Out With Dad," in which Martin (John Mahoney) pretends to be interested in a man named Edward (Brian Bedford).
"Tom and Edward were never mocked by their respective episodes," Chapman wrote, "with the actual clowns being the straight cast members who embarrassed themselves by failing to read the room and recognize their queerness."
It helped that such episodes were helmed by David Lee and Joe Keenan, both of whom are gay. For Lee, episodes like "The Matchmaker" looked winkingly at Frasier and Niles' (David Hyde Pierce) own stereotypically feminine interests in subjects like wine and opera.
"One of the things we were really doing was trying to have fun with stereotypes and flip them on their ear," Lee told the Television Academy, "which is where you have the two most effete, stereotypically gay characters on the show were the inveterate heterosexuals." Indeed, the end of "The Matchmaker" is less about Tom being gay than it is about perceptions of queerness. Frasier, he admits, never considered that Tom might be gay. Tom replies, "Well, it never even occurred to me that you might be straight."