The ‘Frasier’ Reboot Is Finally Bringing Back the Character Everybody Wants to See
As part of their continuing effort to tether the terrible Frasier reboot to the classic show everyone loves, the creative team behind the Paramount+ show are bringing back a number of familiar characters for the second season.
Peri Gilpin’s Roz will reportedly have a larger role going forward, and her old KACL co-workers, Bulldog and Gil Chesterton, will turn up for an episode as well. Although they’re clearly leaving money on the table by not having the ghost of Eddie the dog return to haunt Frasier.
Now we’re getting word that another beloved character from the original show is coming back for Frasier 2.0: Frasier’s relentlessly unscrupulous agent Bebe Glazer, played by Harriet Sansom Harris.
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Other than Niles and Daphne, Bebe is probably the character fans will be most excited to see come back. While she only showed up a total of 11 episodes over the course of Frasier, Harris’ wild-eyed performance was an important fixture, appearing at least once in all but two seasons.
Bebe’s character was so important to the overall show because she always tested a fundamental conflict within Frasier himself. Her disregard for common decency consistently violated Frasier’s code of ethics as a psychiatrist, but she was also a good agent, serving his desire for success in the entertainment industry.
Bebe was arguably not so well-served in later seasons of the show. While she did have a role in the series finale, attempting to persuade Frasier to take a new TV job in San Francisco, the last Bebe-centric episode was Season 10’s “The Devil and Dr. Phil.” If you didn’t see it, or have actively repressed it from your memory, that’s the episode in which we learned that Frasier is old buddies with Dr. Phil, who played himself.
It was probably the worst episode of Frasier, but very far from the worst episode of television that Dr. Phil has been involved with.
So the Frasier reboot could conceivably serve as a redemption of sorts for the Bebe Glazer character. Why a West Coast talent agent would be meeting with a Harvard professor remains to be seen, but we do know that Bebe’s daughter, Phoebe Glazer, will be played by Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom. Which makes sense since Bloom has previously extolled the therapeutic virtues of the original Frasier.
While the show certainly never implied that Bebe had a daughter, the finale did reveal that she had a son: a middle-aged balding man. This was just a one-off joke, implying that Bebe is way older than she seems, and inspiring Frasier to change his mind and accept a recommendation for her plastic surgeon.
But even ignoring this guy, the idea of Bebe having a daughter is a little weird. Like, if Phoebe is roughly the same age as Bloom, that means that in the episode where Bebe spent the weekend at Frasier’s trying to kick her smoking habit purely to marry an elderly Texan millionaire, she had a 9-year-old at home?
Then again, likely nobody cares too much about the airtight fidelity of the Frasier canon, hence why nobody has a problem with the fact that Martin Crane once showed up on Cheers as a hacky musician.
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