Another Halfassed Guide to Frasier, PART 1: Introduction

Television is a pretty awesome thing in my mind. Growing up as an only child in an older neighborhood(read: all the other kids on my block were in high school while I was starting elementary school in 1991... or was it 90?) in my small southern suburban town, our TV was kinda like the sibling/friend that wasn't there. You see, when I was very young, I got stung by this wasp at the wave pool in Nashville, and it was totally unprovoked, so I developed this totally irrational fear of bees and wasps. I mean, in my mind, these insects were malevolent enemies of man, and would kill me if i wasn't  careful. This meant not going outside too much and immediately returning to the safety of the house. Also at work was fear that cars would run me over(as they had done to my labrador puppy when I was three)  that drug pushers and street gangs lurked around every corner and would murder me if I wasn't careful. 

That last one was of course fed by all the TV I would watch while avoiding the bees in the declining neighborhood of 1930's homes and low rent shotgun houses a few blocks from downtown Murfreesboro and the downtown Murfreesboro housing project(please do not mistake this as me saying I am 'Hard' or 'From the Streets' as my folks beat a hasty retreat from the area when I was 4 and its not like I was witnessing drive bys, though I was always sure I would just taken out when I would take the trash out later in child hood), as I had been seeing probably unhealthy amounts Reagan era anti-drug propaganda on the. So what I'm trying to say is that me and TV and cinema are all tight bros from way back.

While most of my friends first memories of going to the movies are of late 1990 offerings(Rocketeer, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) my first trip to the movies was to see Ghostbusters II in 1989. This is a big deal because lets face it, when you're only 3 or 4, six months is a pretty big jump on your homies when it comes to movies. It meant I was watching The Little Mermaid in its first theater run while those suckers had to wait a whole year for the VHS to drop, and when they were watching in awe at their first sight of the silver screen at the Rocketeer, I already knew what was up. I have a pretty keen memory for the movies and TV I watched at this young age. Commercials, TV shows, a Bush press conference that was the first time my shows ever got preempted– all clear as yesterday. I also recall the moments leading up to my drinking a whole bottle of amoxicillin right down to the shuffle step I had to do to get it out of the fridge with out my mom seeing me. I don't recall the subsequent phonecall to poison control. 

That said, I remember first run episodes of Cheers, too. This was after we moved across town to the house I did the bulk of my growing up in. The house where my mom planted a garden that attracted more bees and led to me spending more time inside(I didn't hate being outside, I loved it. I just hated bees more. I eventually got the hell over it though!). Cheers was a show I watched with my dad. usually in the small bedroom in our new house that he had turned into an odd sort of office/room full of hunting/shooting/reloading gear. So at night, mom would be grading her student's papers in the living room and dad and I would sit in the big arm chair and the bean bag chair at his feet and watch Cheers. Or the Flash(for its one season, with Mark Hamill as The Trickster). Or The Simpsons until mom would yell at me for watching such things(except for The Flash. That one was ok for me to watch). My favorites were Norm and Cliff, likely because I got more of their goofy humor, like getting tattoos on their butts, but getting them swapped so Norm has Cliff's tattoo (an eagle with the words "god bless the US Postal Service) and vis versa. That's classic comedy right there. Totally unnoticed for the most part was one Dr. Frasier Crane. 

Fast forward to around 1994, and I began watching this show about a snobby Seattle radio show host and his equally snobby brother and their salt of the earth Dad. It never registered that this was a Cheers spin off to me, as i had forgotten Frasier's character totally. This was likely due to the fact that towards the end of Cheers, Frasier grew a beard (which I did recall: the smart beardy guy on Cheers) Over the next ten years, Frasier would become my favorite TV show. Dad and I would tune in to NBC every week (typically thursday night) and would watch the reruns on Fox.

Including watching it on TV as kid, I would say I've seen the whole series all the way through about three times. 

I wanted to watch the show a fourth time through, but i knew i needed something different to keep me engaged and thinking and to keep the show from getting stale. Perhapse I could write an episode guide? I put the idea on the back burner until at a thanksgiving party in 2013, an acquaintance and I were discussing 90s sitcoms which of course turned to Frasier. She'd never been a fan because she couldn't stand Frasier's character. While disussing this, the question came up about what exactly was Frasier's true character? Is it the face he puts on for the public he is constantly trying to impress and one up? Is it the crabby fuddyduddy with tinges of asshole-ism he displays to his family and inner circle, or was were those faces merely masks the real Frasier was putting up to hide his insecurities and failures? It was something I hadn't really thought much about myself.

This guide aims to help lead folks through the eleven season of the show. Its gonna try and do a lot. We'll look at some memorable quotes, count catch phases and tropes, talk about some behind the scenes stuff, and more. But the heart of this guide will be seeking to discover just who is the "real" Frasier Crane and what makes him tick. Moreover, why did so many of us come to love the "Loveably Pompous" Psychiatrist.