Frasier Crane is KACL’s lovable snobby psychiatrist and his love for all things decadent and high-brow is certainly one of his most definitive features. But while it’s an important part of the man’s over-the-top character, his pride often comes before every one of his comedic falls, which is why audiences keep streaming reruns to this day.
Described by Kate Costas as having “an ego the size of Seattle,” Frasier’s enormous sense of pride and self-importance has often been the source of his greatest flaws and his funniest misadventures. While he’s not a dangerous egomaniac on the best days, he often hangs by his own rope and injures himself largely at the cost of his own self-esteem.
The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t
In many of Frasier’s funniest episodes, Frasier’s ego and sense of self often act as the catalyst for the misadventures that follow. Case in point, season nine’s episode, “Frasier Grinch.”
As hilarious quoted by Martin Crane, Frasier has the habit of buying gifts he thinks people should want rather than would want, and it’s this lapse in judgment that sets him on a manic shopping spree to find replacement gifts for his son when the ones he ordered get lost in the mail. It’s only by the end does he learn what his boy really wants, along with the joy of real gift-giving.
Iced Out By Honey Snow
Frasier’s ego has also played a part in his many wrecked relationships but when his pride clashes with his lust, things get all the more treacherous. The illustrious Dr. Crane has a very vocal distaste for pop psychology and he makes no effort to hide his opinions. That is until a batch of new-wave psychology comes packaged with a pretty face.
Season two’s episode, “You Scratch My Book,” has Frasier encounter Dr. Honey Snow, a beautiful blonde psychiatrist with a saccharine approach to her field. While Frasier stomachs her techniques to maintain a relationship with her, his honest opinion of her and her work soon comes out and ultimately becomes his undoing when she asks him to write the forward for her newest book.
His Relationship With Kate
She might not have been Fraiser’s most favored or successful relationship, but Frasier’s romantic escapades with Kate Costas throughout season three is what happens when two thunderheads clash in a battle of passions and pride. Kate says so herself, she’s just as smart and successful as he is, and sometimes Frasier’s ego finds it threatening.
It’s this battle of personalities that leads to their eventual on-air scandal, which almost costs Frasier his job, and things only grow more complicated after Kate moves to Chicago. Had they let things cool down, the series might have taken a different direction.
Mutual Sabotage
To call Frasier and Niles comically elitist wouldn’t be an inaccurate descriptor, especially when one of their various high-society clubs, associations, or other outlets is thrown into the mix. In season two’s episode, “The Club,” Frasier and Niles are both in consideration for an extremely inclusive club consisting of Seattle’s stuffiest socialites. However, when only one brother can receive membership, they start sabotaging one another in hopes to gain that coveted spot.
In the end, it’s a case of mistaken identity that wins Frasier a seat in the club, but ultimately his egotistical feuding with his brother leads to both getting dismissed. Still, it’s an entertaining display nevertheless.
Cranes In Court
It’s essentially understood that Frasier and Niles have a continuous sibling rivalry going on, and that’s only amplified when one has something the other one wants. In the case of season three’s episode, “Crane Vs. Crane,” it’s a public appearance on CourtTV when an eccentric elderly millionaire has his sanity called into question.
Niles is called in to give psychiatric testimony to try to get the man committed, but when Frasier allows the opposition to call on him for his own analysis, it soon becomes a battle of the brothers once again. Soon, both Cranes realize that publicity is not all it’s cracked up to be.
At The Nightmare Inn
Though he’d never admit it, Frasier can often be an obsessive control freak. There is perhaps no finer example of his ego taking full control than when he plops his way into the director’s chair to put on a radio drama in celebration of KACL’s 50th anniversary. Despite his artistic efforts, a production of “Nightmare Inn” soon turns into a comedy of errors.
In season four’s “Ham Radio,” Fraiser’s production is plagued by one disaster after another. With Roz on novocaine, Niles having to cover six different characters, and Gil’s monologue repeatedly cut short, Frasier still doesn’t know when to throw up the flag and admit he’s in over his head.
The Caviar Caper
Frasier and his brother Niles both have a taste for the finer things in life, but sometimes their elaborate and expensive tastes can cause quite an avalanche of trouble. In season 10’s episode “Roe To Perdition,” the Cranes meet a caviar-smuggler who sets them up with a steady supply of their favorite brand at a cheaper price.
When the brothers start selling the excess product like caviar dealers, they begin exchanging servings of the delicacy for favors and social status. It works for a while, but when the smugglers eventually get caught, all good things eventually come to a rather fishy end.
His Feuds With Cam Winston
Frasier’s pride has caused him several different breeds of problems, but when he meets an equally peacockish personality in Cam Winston, things only escalate to hilarious proportions. In various episodes with Cam’s involvement, the two are gunning for each other like a pair of school children on the playground.
Beginning with something as minor as a parking space but evolving into a building-wide dispute over a gigantic flag on a balcony window, both parties involved continuously butt heads and grind each other’s gears to the point of absurdity in several episodes. It’s only when they’re forced to cast both their enormous egos aside do they finally draw up a truce.
The Platinum Door
It’s previously been stated that the Crane brothers have notoriously expensive tastes, so when they manage to scheme their way into an exclusive day spa in season 10’s episode, “Door Jam,” they want the best of the best. So when it’s revealed that the spa has a gold-level status for its members, Frasier and Niles try to find what lies on the other side of the fence.
Ignoring Roz’s quote on Frasier about never being satisfied, the episode sees them get what they want for better and for worse. Once behind the gold door, they see another door barring what they assume to be the epitome of luxury, only to learn all that glitters is not platinum.
A Fling With His First Wife
Frasier’s pride and libido are often two very toxic allies that never fail to do him in, and there is perhaps no more uncomfortable example than in season eleven’s aptly named episode, “Caught in the Act.” When Frasier’s first wife, a children’s entertainer, comes to Seattle, she tries to rekindle the flames of passion with her ex-husband. Not only is she insatiably hot for Frasier, but she pursues him while also married to her producer.
Any logical person would see the red flags in this scenario immediately, but Frasier ends up sampling some forbidden fruit and later pays karma’s price. His pride leads him to believe there’s no way he’d be caught, but it eventually leads him to an ill-fated backstage hook-up that puts him in a compromising, and later embarrassing, position.
