Line #3 Headscratchers/TheNanny


1	[[WMG: General]]
2
3	* Shouldn't kids who grew up in a house with a British father and a British butler have developed something of an accent? Even if Max was rather distant and Niles didn't spend much time with them, you would think that they would have been around enough for the kids to hear them speak and learned something through sheer osmosis.
4	** Not necessarily. The other children at school don't necessarily have British accents, and all the kids are old enough that they now spend the majority of their time at school. Kids eventually become more concerned about fitting in with their peers than their parents.
5	** A person learns to speak long before they start school, so the above point doesn’t make any sense. Maxwell, Sarah & Niles all being English balanced against American child care workers & the school environment means that the children should have at least some British inflections.
6	* In Season 1's "Christmas Episode", Max is going to DC to produce a benefit concert at the Kennedy Center on Christmas Day. Aren't Christmas concerts and similar events typically held ''before'' Christmas?
7	** Not necessarily. Christmas is an all-day affair, and after opening presents in the morning and having dinner in the afternoon, it's common to watch a holiday special at night with your family. The concert is probably taking place that evening, which is why Maxwell has to travel during the day itself.
8	* What is Max's citizenship situation? In one episode, he mentions being taken to the British embassy while he was abroad. Then again, he is a Republican.
9	** Presumably he has dual citizenship in the United Kingdom and the United States. He was at the very least born to British parents and began life as a British citizen; he probably became an American citizen when he emigrated, but given that the Sheffield family is an old and titled one, he likely held onto his British legal status as well.
10
11	[[WMG: "The Nanny Behind the Man"]]
12
13	* How Maxwell treats Fran in this episode. A brief summary of the episode: Max wants to get a playwright under contract before Creator/AndrewLloydWebber gets him. To do that Fran, at Max's request, gets Yetta to wine and dine him. The plan works but it turns out that he's had writer's block for years and only Act 1 is done. So Fran, again at Max's request, gets Yetta to dump him, causing him to lose the contract to Weber. Problem is, that his relationship (specifically the dumping) enables the playwright to get over his block and finish the play - making Weber a lot of money. Despite the fact that everything Fran does is with Max's approval and in order to help him, he blames Fran for everything going wrong and the audience is supposed to agree with him. I realize the show runs on RuleOfFunny, but it just wasn't [[DudeNotFunny funny]]. All it did was make Max look like an [[{{Jerkass}} asshole]].
14	** It's the same problem that happens on ''Series/{{Frasier}}'' a lot. Fran's a ButtMonkey so to some extent we're supposed to find her suffering funny. (And, admit it, sometimes we do.) It's just that in some cases, you wind up empathizing more than laughing, so it winds up as DudeNotFunny. It's basically a subjective reaction to the humor of the show.
15
16	[[WMG: "Honeymoon's Overboard", and possibly the whole Sixth Season]]
17
18	I really hated C.C.'s callous nature about Fran's well-being after Fran and Maxwell get lost on their honeymoon. The previous episode, which had [[OfficialCouple Fran and Maxwell]] finally tie the knot, showed C.C. finally relenting in her pursuit of Maxwell's affection, even amicably turning to Niles for a romantic relationship. But she somehow turns back into the jealous RichBitch she was throughout the series in this episode. She's shocked to discover Maxwell's disappeared, but she's totally uncaring that Fran disappeared with him. It makes the entire sixth season feel like a PostScriptSeason.
19	** Yeah, but after C.C. relented, she then grabbed a piece of the decorations to use as a veil, and started to walk down the aisle until Niles had to forcibly remove her. She never really gave up on Max.
20	*** Or at least she didn't give up on Max until Niles and C.C. had their big blowout fight in Season 6 after [[spoiler: Niles proposed to her and she shot him down; Niles points out to her that she's pining for a man who will never love her romantically, and that Max and Fran are now married and about to have kids together. He then brings up the possibility that [[{{FutureLoser}} C.C. will end up being a bitter alcoholic in rehab]] if she doesn't get a grip. C.C. realizes Niles is right, and the next thing we know, Fran and Max are walking on on Niles and C.C. in bed]]
21
22	[[WMG: The episode with the tabloid cover]]
23
24	In the episode where the trashy tabloid falsely alleges that Max was cheating on his first wife with Fran, why oh why did Maggie instantly believe it? The paper was a ''tabloid'' for crying out loud! The same tabloid was also printing a story about late funnyman Redd Foxx's ghost being trapped in an apple later in that episode. Maggie got into Columbia University, so she was supposed to be intelligent right? So why did she coming storming in completely convinced that the story was true?
25	* Personal guilt over being so happy at getting a new mom. She was the only one that really remembered her mom and it was bothering her deep down.
26	* It's was (rather pathetically) explained in the episode by Maggie to Fran. She said it was because the UST between Fran and Max was so strong and so obvious, what else was she supposed to believe. She also mentions that this helps her understand why A) her father hired a door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman to raise his children and B) she was still their Nanny despite the fact that Maggie was in college, Brighton was old enough to drive, and Gracie was somewhere around Age 12-14 and, possibly being the smartest person in the family, more than capable of taking care of herself. Not the most solid explanation in the world, but at least they did try.
27	* It also fits into her personality. Maggie is incredibly bland and her characterization consists of just getting involved with some random thing to cause conflict for the episode.
28
29	[[WMG: Maxwell turning down Cats, Hair, and Tommy]]
30	* Are we supposed to think he's an idiot for turning down Hair, Tommy, and Cats. First off, if you'd never heard of it and didn't know what a big deal it would be would you produce Cats? No, no you wouldn't. Also, Hair has a song titled Sodomy. Yeah I think Maxwell's first glance reaction of it being a dog was accurate. And as for Tommy... it involves a religion that uses pinball for worship. At first glances all three sound stupid but they were big hits... and how would Maxwell know that? Also, timeline issues. Hair was put on in the late sixties, Tommy in the seventies, and Cats in the eighties. So how old is Maxwell and how long has he been doing this?
31	** ''Tommy'' didn't actually make it as a Broadway musical until 1994; it's conceivable that he passed on it because the movie version is notoriously awkwardly regarded even by people who enjoy the original album and its concert stagings. ''Cats'' was first produced in 1981; if he's in his 40s or so (his hair's starting to gray, it's plausible), he could have been in the business ten to fifteen years before the show's timeline with no trouble at all. As for ''Hair'', I can only assume it was referring to a revival- and there was, in fact, a nationally touring revival in the US in 1994. Considering ''Hair'' is such a product of the 60s, and the 90s were more nostalgic for the 70s, it's possible that he didn't want to get attached to what he saw as a dated, sure-fail rehash- and then instead the tour sparked new interest in the musical.
32	*** What's really puzzling is his constant rivalry with Andrew Lloyd Webber, who at the time was mainly a ''composer'' who needed producers himself to get his musicals put on (though he was so successful that there wasn't too much of a gambit going on). To the best of my knowledge, Lloyd Webber wasn't in the producing game (except for concept albums of his own shows) until he funded the A.R. Rahman musical ''BombayDreams'' in the 2000s.
33	** Hindsight is 20/20. This applies not only to people claiming that they would have known what to do in just such a situation, but to thinking other people are idiots for not doing exactly that. (See: ''every single other Headscratchers page on the'' '''''entire flipping wiki'''''.) Max's justifications for not taking it are exactly the same as yours: he thought they sounded stupid at the time and who could have known they'd be huge hits. The reason we're supposed to laugh at this is the same reason he's been around long enough to pass on all those shows and why he has a rivalry with an extremely well-known Broadway creator and not some producer that 99.9% of the world has never heard of: [[RuleOfFunny it's a comedy show]], not a documentary about Broadway.
34	** It's strongly implied that Maxwell started producing at an extremely young age (no doubt helped by his wealthy father) so it's possible he was given the opportunity to produce ''Hair'' early in his career. Assuming a birth date of 1949, he would have been a 18 year-old wunderkind in 1967 when the play opened.
35	** Or a 19 year-old wunderkind in 1968 when it opened in the West End. May be a false memory, but he mentioned that his first transatlantic crossing was on the [=QE2=], which didn't make its maiden voyage until 1969; Max probably started in the West End before crossing over.
36
37	How does it come to pass that in several episodes, Sylvia refers to herself, Fran, and Yetta as "Fine women." Wouldn't Fine be her married name? Yetta's last name is Rosenberg so wouldn't they be Rosenberg women?

Context Headscratchers / TheNanny