The Angel of Death

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Norman (James Earl Jones): Are you here visiting somebody?

Frasier (Kelsey Grammer): Oh, no. I'm just here with a friend of mine, Roz. She's here doing some community service.

Norman: Ah, the Angel of Death. Nice girl.

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It isn't easy to pick a single favorite episode from the Frasier series.

That is the way it is with any really good TV series, isn't it? If you can only think of one truly good episode during a series' run, my guess is that would be the exception, not the rule.

But, almost by definition, a truly good series must have generated several episodes that could qualify as the series' best. In such a case, usually the series' average episodes are better than most.

Frasier was such a series, and I can name several episodes that I would consider worthy of being the series' best. But ultimately I think I would always pick the episode that aired on this night in 1997 — "Roz's Krantz and Gouldenstein Are Dead" — as the cream of the crop.

When the episode began, Roz (Peri Gilpin) was performing some community service picking up trash along the road. She had been stopped for speeding and her options for punishment were to pay a fine or perform community service. She chose the latter but didn't like gathering trash along the road.

It just wasn't right for her so Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) recommended that she perform her community service at a retirement home. Roz was reluctant — like many people she had a fear of aging — but she did it, anyway.

What happened next didn't help.

Roz had the misfortune of being with a couple of the residents when they died. She was playing checkers with one and reading to another. As a result, the other residents started calling her "the Angel of Death." When they encountered Roz in hallways, they would turn around and go the other way.

Roz didn't want to go back, but Frasier insisted, and he went with her to provide moral support.

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Roz went into a room where an elderly woman named Moira (Lois Smith) was sitting up in her bed. She told Roz to come in.

"How do you feel?" Roz asked.

"Fine," Moira replied. "Now hand me those cigarettes."

Roz did so but couldn't resist saying, "These things do come with a warning."

"So do you, darlin'," Moira replied. "I let you in."

The two went on to have a heart–to–heart conversation about growing old.

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"Nobody likes to get older, but it doesn't mean you can't enjoy yourself."

Moira (Lois Smith)

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Meanwhile, Frasier met a blind resident played by James Earl Jones, who knew Roz by reputation. They had a nice conversation, too, about how Frasier's advice to a caller had helped him. It was at a time when Jones' character had lost his wife and had been experiencing some problems. The caller had been having similar trouble adjusting to life after his wife died, and Frasier suggested that the caller keep pictures of his wife all over the house to help him through the transition.

Pictures, obviously, would be of no use to a blind man, but Jones explained that, when he and his wife were dating, she had made a life mask of herself for art class. He asked his daughter to look for it and she found it. He told Frasier that every night before he went to sleep he ran his fingers over the mask and was reminded of the old days.

"You really helped me," he told Frasier and showed him the mask.

Then while Jones was in the bathroom to take some medication, Frasier ran his fingers over the mask and lost his grip. The mask fell to the floor, and the nose was broken off. Unfortunately the last few minutes of the show were about Frasier trying to mend the mask without Jones finding out what had happened.

The rest of the episode was a bit slapstick, to be honest. In general, though, it was a nice commentary on aging.

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That's not a bad cue to turn our attention to Smith, who probably isn't familiar to most people but has had an extensive career in movies and television and on the stage.

Among her movie credits are "East of Eden," "Five Easy Pieces" and "Fatal Attraction." There have been many others in more than 60 years — although you might not recognize her in her earlier movies if all you have seen are her later ones, like "Twister," for example, in which she played Helen Hunt's aunt.

Her television credits include, in addition to Frasier, appearances on ER and Route 66 as well as several made–for–TV movies.

Now 86, Smith is still active. She will appear in a documentary on the Gettysburg Address later this year.

Now that is how one should grow old.

Diamond Dreams

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"If you build it, he will come."

The Voice in "Field of Dreams"

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I know men of all ages who get emotional over the ending of "Field of Dreams." Even today, 25 years after its premiere — and after countless viewings.

I agree it's a good movie, but I guess I'm an exception because I have never become teary–eyed about it.

The performances are great. I especially liked Burt Lancaster, in one of his last movie appearances, as Doc Moonlight Graham.

While I'm on the subject, there really was a Moonlight Graham, and, apparently, relatively few liberties were taken with the facts of his life. The most noteworthy liberty was that the real Moonlight Graham made his only major–league appearance nearly two decades earlier than the one in the movie — and it came in the middle of the season rather than the final day of the season.

Moonlight Graham really did go into medicine, really did live in Chisholm, Minn., really did all those selfless things of which they spoke in the movie. I don't think the movie ever mentioned it, but Graham was born in North Carolina. Most viewers probably assumed he was a native of Minnesota.

So ...

Maybe Graham should have spoken in a more pronounced Southern accent when he was portrayed as a younger man, but Lancaster's accent was not a problem for me. After all, he was portraying Moonlight Graham after he had lived in Minnesota for half a century. His speech patterns had to have been affected by what he heard every day.

(I grew up in the South, but I have been told by many people that I don't have much of an accent. I'm really not sure how to account for that — except that my parents lived many places, including overseas, and I never really thought they had much of an accent, either, other than their use of the second–person y'all. I always assumed that was because of their exposure to other accents, and I picked up their speech patterns.)

In real life, Graham died in 1965. The shift in the timeline made it necessary for his death to be in 1972 in the movie.

Otherwise, it seems to have been true to the facts.

Doc Graham was a minor character in "Field of Dreams," though. Audiences discovered that the story really was about Kevin Costner's character, the one through whom the audience first heard the cryptic murmur, "If you build it, he will come."

It turned out to be about Costner and his father, but, for awhile there, most first–time viewers probably thought Doc Graham would be the mysterious he.

After all, Costner was the one who built the baseball field in the middle of his cornfield (and, really, I had to wonder just how many spouses would have been as easygoing about that as Amy Madigan). Costner went on an inexplicable trip to the East where he hijacked a reclusive writer (James Earl Jones) in an apparently vain attempt to make sense of the Voice's one–liners.

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The hints that the perplexing comment would turn out to be about Costner and his relationship with his father were all around, and some viewers probably picked up on it, but I didn't.

So the finish came as a surprise to me — but I don't get all blubbery about it whenever I see it.

Maybe I should. After all, the finish is about the symbolic ritual of the son (Costner) playing catch with his father, the bonding experience between father and son. I think many men get emotional because it reminds them of their experiences of bonding with their own fathers.

Not me.

When I was a child, my father was a college professor, and he spent most of the daylight hours on campus. Usually, I was still in bed when he left in the morning, and I was back in bed when he came home at night. When he wasn't in the classroom, he was in his office or the library.

Anyway, we never played catch, as far as I can recall. Maybe once or twice, but it wasn't a big bonding experience. My father preferred to play chess.

Maybe if we had played catch more, the ending of "Field of Dreams" would have had more relevance for me.

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But, you know, if bonding really is the point of "Field of Dreams," then it isn't just about a ritual, but it's also about the links that live on from one generation to the next.

Costner's character had a falling out with his father when he was a teenager, but they shared a love of baseball that survived his father's death.

My father and I bonded over other things.

He even taught me how to play chess.

Luke, I Am Your Fuhrer

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I have a modest proposal for some enterprising broadcaster — for which I will be willing to accept any residual payment.

All it will require is someone with the resources to make it happen so, if you've got the money, honey ...

Recently, while I was channel surfing, I discovered that my cable provider has added The Military Channel to my lineup.

I say I "discovered" that because my cable provider has an infuriating habit of dropping/adding channels without notifying me. Unless it is a channel I watch regularly, I won't miss it right away if it is dropped.

Consequently, when I become aware that I have access to a channel to which I didn't realize I had access — or when I discover that I no longer have access to a certain channel — I wonder how long that has been so.

Not that it would change anything. It wouldn't alter the reality. My channel lineup would still be what it is.

But it makes me wish there was a little more honesty in the world.

Just a little, though. A lot probably would be too much.

Take The Military Channel, for example. It's supposed to be about all kinds of things — weapons, vehicles, wars. Perhaps it is. But every time I've landed there during my surfing, it's been showing something about World War II in general or the Nazis in particular.

I used to run into this with the History Channel. It has grown and evolved and is showing more original programming now (like Ice Road Truckers and the Thanksgiving night competition Chunkin' Punkins, in which contestants apparently flung pumpkins as far as possible using a catapult), but there was a time when I couldn't switch on the History Channel without seeing something on World War II or the Nazis.

Coincidentally, I guess, I stumbled onto the attached clip on YouTube, and I started musing.

TV producers have been tap dancing around this for years, and I think it's time for someone to simply be honest with us. They have figured out that TV viewers have some kind of infatuation with Hitler and the Nazis — they must have reached that conclusion because there are so many programs on TV that explore the Nazis and Hitler and World War II. From every conceivable angle — and some that are so far out in left field they're out of the ball park.

Anyway, the point is that they're giving us what they think we want. With so much money on the line in broadcasting these days — far more than ever before — the proliferation of these programs makes it unlikely, in my view, that this is a gamble.

It's a premeditated strategy.

And that brings me to my proposal. I have concluded that, at some point, someone will launch an All Nazi Channel or an All Hitler Channel. There will be some negative publicity initially, sure, but that doesn't mean it won't be a hit. Nearly 20 years ago, NYPD Blue survived negative publicity and enjoyed a 12–year run.

And a whole network is bound to have the potential to make more money than a single series.

I have a few ideas for this network so if someone wants to have something ready to go ...

First, it needs a logo. A black swastika in a white circle against a red background always got the message across in the past, and I think it will serve the purpose in the 21st century.

Then, you need a theme song. I think it's already written. Take a look at the attached video. Isn't Darth Vader's theme perfect for this?

The swastika might be in the public domain, but you'll need to acquire the rights to the Star Wars music. That might be a little tricky unless you can show some consumer research that demonstrates the size of the network's likely audience and the relevant demographic breakdowns (disposable income, age, etc.) so you might want to get started on that right now.

If we clear all the legal hurdles and acquire the rights to use Vader's theme, it only makes sense to pursue James Earl Jones (or someone who sounds a lot like him) to do a voiceover like the one that Jones does for CNN.

He could say, "Luke, I am your fuhrer."

Well, it's a starting point, anyway.