Chambers and Malone

“The show where Sam shows up”

Hey,

I’ve seen you made some comments on “The show where Diane comes back” from Frasier, I was wondering what your thoughts were on the same idea but with Sam. Personally I was a bit disappointed that he turns up thinking of marrying someone else as though he has totally forgotten about Diane. I also feel it was a great shame they never brought Diane and Sam back together on Frasier as I think that could have made an excellent story. What do you think?

Thanks for your great tumblr and blog, I really enjoy reading them every day.

First of all, thanks, Laurel! I really appreciate the kind feedback.  :)

It was odd, especially as a Sam/Diane shipper, to see Sam engaged to someone else.  I suppose he had to move on after all that time, but… Anyway, I guess I wasn’t terribly upset because 1. Sam wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to marry this woman, 2. He didn’t seem to know her well at all— she slept with Cliff (and apparently everyone else in Boston) and he had no idea? and 3. He didn’t seem too upset about the breakup.  I wasn’t hearing Gershwin when it was all said and done, to say the least.  It all makes me think that Sam wasn’t in a much better emotional place than Diane was at that point in time, so yeah, a Frasier/Sam/Diane reunion was a huge missed opportunity.  I mean, can you imagine?

I also felt the episode itself was a missed opportunity, as Sam felt more like a plot device than a fully realized character with an inner life of his own.  I mean Frasier and Sam are in a room discussing marriage and Diane doesn’t come up once?  The elephant in the room is tap dancing and belting out showtunes at this point.  I didn’t expect it to be all about her, but when you bring back a character, you bring back their history, and for Sam and Frasier, a huge part of their shared history (especially in the context of an impending wedding) is Diane Chambers.  Even beyond Diane, it felt as though Sam was not fleshed out in his own right, but I guess it was Frasier’s show and they had other things they were trying to do.  Again, missed opportunity for sure.

With regard to the Frasier canon, my inner OTP angst-eating drama queen writes both Sam and Diane as lost souls, incomplete and wandering, searching endlessly for what they had in each other, too proud to admit they won’t find it with anyone else.  Le sigh.  But again, that’s just my darker Frasier canon take.  My Cheers canon Sam and Diane get a far happier ending.  I keep these two “world”views separate.  Oh yeah, I’ve fangirled this all out six ways to Sunday.  LOL