It’s Been Exactly 40 Years Since Frasier Crane First Showed Up on TV
Dr. Frasier Crane may never go away. When Cheers ended in 1993, Frasier was brought back for his very own spin-off. Nearly two decades after Frasier wrapped up in 2004, the series was rebooted. And when we’re all dead and gone, our great-grandchildren will likely be enjoying new, fully-CGI episodes of Frasier on their cyberpunk skull implants.
Frasier has even appeared in shows other than Cheers, Frasier and Frasier Redux, such as the time he held a hacky self-help seminar on Wings. Dr. Crane also offered therapy over the phone to a character in The John Larroquette Show, thanks to re-edited “stock footage” of Kelsey Grammer.
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And the less said about Frasier’s Dr. Pepper commercial, which the character of Frasier Crane would have no doubt loathed, the better.
Amazingly, today marks exactly 40 years since Frasier Crane first appeared on TV. On September 27, 1984, Frasier showed up in Cheers’ third season premiere: “Rebound.” Dr. Crane, Diane’s new psychiatrist boyfriend, offers to help Sam, who has fallen off the wagon following his breakup with Cheers’ most pretentious server.
Famously, Frasier wasn’t originally intended to be a recurring character on the show. The original idea was to bring him in for a few episodes in order to build up the tension between Sam and Diane. He wasn’t even called “Frasier Crane,” at first, he was “Frasier Nye” until Grammer complained.
Grammer was just 29 years old when he took on the role, and he’s now pushing 70. It’s amazing that this character has had so much longevity, especially considering that he began as a borderline cartoonish fuddy-duddy, the antithesis of Sam Malone.
The fact that Frasier has existed as a character for four decades isn’t just a point of curiosity, at this point it’s become a primary selling point. If the new Frasier works (which is debatable), it works because we’ve had a relationship with this character for an astonishingly long time. And so, if you’re able to get over the glaring discrepancies between the original Freddy and the current iteration of the character, it is somewhat meaningful for fans to see Frasier reconnect with the son that he barely got to see when he was too busy hosting his radio show and throwing farcically doomed dinner parties. After all, as TV viewers, we were there when Frasier witnessed his son’s first word.
If Grammer gets his way, Frasier will still be on TV when we’re celebrating the character’s fiftieth anniversary. He recently told The New York Times that the current show “could last another decade” — at which point, Frasier may be unable to hear the blues a callin’.
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