Frasier Crane
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| Dr. Frasier Crane | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | Rebound Part 1 (Cheers) |
| Last appearance | Goodnight, Seattle (Frasier) |
| Portrayed by | Kelsey Grammer |
| Information | |
| Occupation | Psychiatrist (1984-1993)
Radio psychiatrist (1993-2004) T.V. show presenter (2004-?) |
| Family | Martin Crane (father) Hester Crane (mother, deceased) Niles Crane (brother) Daphne Moon (sister-in-law) |
| Spouse(s) | Nanette Guzman (wife, divorced) Lilith Sternin (wife, divorced) |
| Children | Frederick Crane |
Dr. Frasier Winslow Crane (b.March 10, 1952) is a fictional character on American television sitcoms Frasier and Cheers. He was played by Kelsey Grammer for twenty years, tying the record for the longest-running character on prime-time American television, which was set by James Arness, who played Marshal Matt Dillon on the show Gunsmoke. Grammer received Emmy Award nominations for portraying Crane on three different NBC shows, including a 1992 guest appearance on Wings.
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[edit] Biography
Many of the details of his early life are introduced and elaborated on in the Cheers spinoff, Frasier.
[edit] Early life
It is established in Frasier that Frasier Crane was born in Seattle in March 1952 to Hester Rose Crane (nee Palmer) (a psychiatrist) and Martin Crane (a police detective). The Crane family background is Russian and British.
In the episode "Back Talk" it is revealed that Frasier shares a birthday with one of Queen Elizabeth's children. As Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex (born 10 March 1964) is the only one of Queen Elizabeth's children born in March, Frasier's birthday is March 10, 1952. However the episode "The Fight Before Christmas" takes place a few days after "Back Talk" (according to the storyline) which contradicts a March birthday. In the episode "Are You Being Served?" it is revealed that he was named after one of his mother's lab rats. Frasier has one younger brother named Niles, whom, like Frasier, was also named after one of his deceased mother's lab rats.
As a child, Frasier was unusually sensitive, and as such was a frequent target for bullies, frequently the Kriezel siblings. His closest companion when growing up was his even more sensitive brother, with whom he was intensely close yet fiercely competitive. He attended a private high school, Bryce Academy, where he earned the unfortunate nickname "The Bryce Academy Crier". He played the Pirate King in his school's production of Pirates of Penzance. In the episode "Juvenilia", it is revealed through a conversation with his teenage inverviewers that Frasier graduated as the Salutatorian of his high school. Following his secondary schooling, Frasier travelled to Cambridge, Massachusetts to attend Harvard University.
While the rest of the family stayed in Seattle, Frasier settled in Boston, Massachusetts, because of his attendance at Harvard. He also studied at Oxford University sometime before his first appearance on Cheers. In the tenth season episode "One Hugs, the Other Doesn't", it is shown that Frasier's first wife, whom he married while a freshman medical student, was Nannette Guzman, a popular children's entertainer, who was played by Emma Thompson on Cheers and by two actresses on Frasier (Laurie Metcalf and Dina Spybey). The marriage lasted nine months.
Soon after Frasier's first appearance on Cheers it is revealed that he is dating Diane. They ultimately get engaged, but this relationship ends when Diane abandons him at the altar. Frasier nevertheless becomes a regular fixture at the bar, and would eventually marry again, this time to Lilith Sternin, a fellow psychiatrist. Together, they have a son, Frederick, but this marriage too ends in heartbreak when Lilith cheats on Frasier with a colleague. Frasier and Lilith reconcile briefly, but sometime between the end of Cheers and the start of Frasier, they separate permanently and divorce. Following this, Lilith gains primary custody of Frederick. At one point during the divorce he considered suicide, but the thought of his son stopped him from completing the act.
[edit] Life on Frasier
The strained relationship with his father and brother continues on Frasier's return to Seattle. In the episode "You Can Go Home Again," which depicts Frasier's recent arrival in Seattle, his father bitterly comments that his son's visits became remarkably infrequent following his mother's death, and neither Martin nor Niles seem particularly welcoming to him. Frasier gets a job at KACL Radio as a radio psychiatrist.
Soon after his return to Seattle, Frasier invites his father, who has become unable to live alone, to live with him. To help out, he hires his father a physical therapist, Daphne Moon. Although frequently at loggerheads and retaining drastically different personalities, the next eleven years see the two men's relationship growing stronger and closer. Frasier also develops a much closer relationship with his brother, as well as with Daphne and with the producer of his radio show, Roz Doyle.
During this period, although Frasier's radio career, intellectual pursuits and reputation are quite strong, his romantic life is frequently disastrous. The final episode ends with Frasier flying to Chicago to pursue a relationship with Charlotte, which had ended prematurely when circumstances forced Charlotte to move back to Chicago.
Frasier, when driving or in scenes with his vehicle, has had three BMWs - a BMW E34 5-Series, a later version of the 5-Series, the E39 which was black with grey leather interior and possibly with the M Sports Package, and then later in the series a BMW 7 Series pre-update which was dark blue.
Frasier's relationship with his pre-teenage son Frederick, who infrequently visits Seattle, is not well developed in the second series (a conscious decision of the show's creative staff to focus on adult characters). However, Frasier and his Seattle family's relationship with Frederick is portrayed as loving and close, with involvement in Frederick's schooling, youthful romances, and attempts at rebellion. They also participate in his bar mitzvah, and support his "gift" at spelling bee competition.
[edit] Character changes
Frasier's lifestyle as depicted on Cheers differs, sometimes greatly, from what is seen of him on Frasier. While on the former he is a member of the upper middle class and sees no issue with brushing shoulders with the blue collar patrons of Cheers, on the latter he is shown to be an upper class snob. However, his (and his brother's) aspirations to join the elite of Seattle society consistently meet with disaster. On Cheers Frasier often watches professional sports and drinks beer, activities he often looks down upon on his own series. (Frasier, however, does get emotionally involved with pro hockey, to the point at which he is jailed for fighting with other fans and starts callously mocking hard fouls as "ticky tack".) On the reverse, on Frasier the character has many stereotypically upper class interests, such as wine collecting and opera, he almost never shows such inclinations on the former series. Even his abodes are vastly different: in Boston he lived in a rather plain, sparsely decorated brownstone while in Seattle he has a lavishly decorated condominium filled with pricey art and furniture. All of this can be attributed to his interests and views changing with age.
Indeed, the changes in his character may not be so big as is sometimes perceived. In the few Cheers episodes that focus on his life outside of Cheers, he is shown to have tastes and interests (opera for instance) that are the same as on his own show. A good example is "I Kid You Not" when Frasier and Lilith take Carla's son Ludlow to the opera and teach him about art. Frasier may simply be skilled at adapting to circumstances, watching sports and drinking beer at Cheers mostly as a way of fitting in. He also drinks beer when he's invited to his father's bar, "McGinty's," in Frasier and when old Cheers pal Woody visits him. In fact, Frasier was shown to loathe sports in season 3 and early season 4 of Cheers, before he became "one of the gang". It should also be noted that he befriends Roz Doyle on his own show, an ordinary and down to earth woman. Many Frasier episodes also center on Frasier's inability to make new friends like the ones he had in Boston, an inability that sometimes seems to trouble him.
In addition to this, the Frasier episode "You Can Go Home Again" from season 3 attempts (rather successfully) to bridge any remaining differences. The episode follows Frasier having recently returned to Seattle and portrays him closer to his Cheers persona than he usually is on Frasier.
[edit] Personality
Crane is well-to-do, with upper class, intellectual tastes and a snobbish, uptight demeanor. He is something of an epicure, and enjoys the finer things in life, such as wine, good food, and expensive tailoring. He is very well versed in the realm of literature, frequently alluding to legends such as Edmund Burke, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, O Henry, and Lord Tennyson, among others. He is also an aficionado of the arts, including opera, classical music, theatre, and antiquities, and possesses some esoteric and obscure interests, such as Mongolian throat singing and African artifacts. His large ego, coupled with his Harvard and Oxford education, make him extremely confident in the advice he gives on his radio show. He is also somewhat self-absorbed and narcissistic, a consequence of his lonely childhood. He is extremely pompous and verbose, prone to making grand, melodramatic declarations regarding his intentions and making the most of every opportunity to make a speech. Frequently, his pomposity and snobbery is undercut and belittled by the other characters he encounters, and is often the cause of many of the misfortunes and crises that occur in his life. Although he shares many traits with Niles, he does not have as many allergies, is more realistic and easy going, and appears somewhat more athletic.
Frasier is passionate about psychiatry. A staunch Freudian, he strongly believes that "there are no accidents" and that every action (and dream) carries with it a meaningful and unconscious subtext. This frequently leads him to obsessively overanalyze and fret about minor details regarding his life and relationships, which frequently creates problems in his life. When obsessing so, he is frequently prone to ignore the (usually wise and appropriate) advice given to him by his family and friends (in particular his father, Martin) and pursue his own course of action, which more often than not leads to disaster. His habit to overanalyze is so severe, that he once spent an entire episode fretting about a dream with homo-erotic implications, only later realizing (with Martin's help) that the dream did not possess any significant implications regarding his life; it was merely a consequence of his subconscious attempting to give himself a challenging patient (himself) following a dearth of them on his show.
Whilst rarely heeding the advice given to him by others, Frasier himself is full of advice to impart, and offers the benefit of his counsel to the extent that he frequently meddles in the affairs and relationships of others, much to the chagrin of his family and friends. Although this approach can be beneficial (such as his influence in bringing together his brother Niles and Daphne Moon) and forms the basis of his successful career, his advice and plans can frequently backfire on him, and can frequently lead to complicated, tangled, embarrassing scenarios. For example, in the above situation of bringing Niles and Daphne together, he is targeted by Daphne's fiancé for a lawsuit because of his actions. Frasier's meddling - and the adverse consequences it frequently leads to - is not intended maliciously, however; he is extremely well-meaning and eager to please, and desires nothing more than to be liked and popular. On the whole, as a psychiatrist, he genuinely does desire to help people and is a fundamentally good and kindhearted person.Frasier becomes much more grounded and down to earth as the series progresses and he seems to desire little more than happiness for his himself and friends and family.
[edit] Intellectual pursuits: Education and Career
During his school years, Frasier developed interests in - and frequently excelled at - the fine arts, cooking, and other intellectual pursuits. He was keen on and drawn to the theatre, appearing in several amateur school productions, and seems to have considered acting as a future vocation, but inspired by his mother, he developed a fascination for psychiatry. This may also have been partially inspired by his father being a police detective. Frasier stated he became a student of human behavior when at age 8 he was tormented by bullies. His mother explained to him why the children were acting that way, thus leading to his distancing himself from the pain of rejection by analyzing others rather than reacting to them on an emotional level. He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also graduated from Harvard Medical School, where he obtained both his M.D. and Ph.D. in psychiatry. He also completed additional study as a postdoctoral fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in Oxford, England. He speaks French[1], German[2], Italian, and Spanish,[citation needed] though he apparently learned German and French after the first two seasons; for example, in one early episode, Frasier could not speak German, and had to use Niles' maid Marta to translate. In another early episode a caller with a French accent is misunderstood by Frasier even though she uses a common French word for "mister." In a later episode both Frasier and Niles, despite being wine lovers and able to speak French, fail to pronounce the name of Chateau Petrus, often considered the world's best wine, using the common American English pronunciation. Frasier's hobbies and talents include playing the piano, composing music, singing, gourmet cooking, chess, collecting fine art, antiquing, home decorating, reading, writing short stories and plays, enjoying fine dining, and his wine club.
[edit] Politics
Although his political views are not a main focus of the show, Frasier appears to lean more on the liberal side. In the episode "The Candidate", Frasier expresses his distaste for a conservative Congressional candidate named Holden Thorpe, for whom Martin appears in a TV ad for. In response, Frasier supports Thorpe's opponent, Phil Patterson, who is described by Martin as a "bleeding heart", a common criticism of liberal leaning politicians.
In Cheers, Frasier also expresses cynicism for the political process. The eleventh season episode "Woody Gets an Election" describes Frasier's insistence that politics in general is a superficial popularity contest, full of insincere candidates who only care about re-election, rather than the promises they make to attain their positions. He makes a bet with Sam that even Woody, a man completely oblivious of the workings of politics could receive 10% of the vote in the upcoming Boston City Council election through utilization of standard campaigning procedure. "Just get up there and say the word 'change' a lot", is a sample of some of the advice Frasier gives Woody. In an unlikely twist, a scandal mars Woody's opponent, and leads to a shocking victory for the dark horse candidate, which causes Frasier some anxiety about the consequences of his experiment (he visualizes Woody giving the go-ahead for full scale nuclear war).
[edit] Romance
In both series, Frasier experiences constant difficulties in his relationships with women. In Cheers, he is left at the altar by Diane Chambers, and later is cheated on and left by his wife Lilith Sternin-Crane. In Frasier, he endures eleven years of heartbreak on the Seattle dating scene. Frasier's lack of success with romance in the second series was a core plot device, and the closing scene of the final episode left his character hopefully seeking happiness with a new romantic interest.
The first girl Frasier kissed apparently punched him, as he later told Freddy the kiss was worth it as he was, "smiling all the way to the nurse's office." During high school Frasier had a crush on Lana Lenley, a cheerleader. He meets up with her years later and they dated for a short while. His first serious girlfriend was his music teacher, and much older woman, Clarisse, whom he left to go off to college. A former drinking buddy of Frasier’s writes about the experience, naming his book Slow Tango in South Seattle. In "Momma Mia", Frasier dates a woman who is identical to his mother, and in another series of episodes Frasier dates a career woman. In that relationship Frasier takes the less than dominant role, as he is lavished with gifts and pouts when he is not given enough attention. In the episodes "'Don Juan in Hell I" and "II"', Frasier is confronted by all his past female relationships including that of his ex-wives, his mother and Diane. He realizes that he is pushing women away, and decides to commit to a lasting relationship.
[edit] Crossovers
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Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (February 2008) |
In the third season of the TV show Wings, Frasier and Lilith visit Nantucket so Frasier can host a seminar. Frasier also had a small cameo on "The John Larroquette Show" It was only a few seconds.
[edit] References
- ^ Episode "Motor Skills" of "Frasier" (Towards the end of the episode, Niles and Frasier write notes to each other in French, and both raise their hand when asked if anyone speaks French)
- ^ Episode "Semi-Decent Proposal" of "Frasier" (At the beginning of the episode Frasier tells Claire he speaks German)
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