Frasier Learns About a Snooty Elitist Club, and He Wants In — Read Recap
If we know anything about Frasier, we know that he needs acceptance into elite high society like he needs oxygen.
Thursday’s episode finds Frasier feeling left out when he’s not included in an office birthday party — and again when Alan and Olivia both receive a Golden Plume, aka an invitation to a mixer for Harvard’s very prestigious and very exclusive club the Founders Society. Frasier rails against the elitism on display… until he secures his own invite, of course. All three of them are eager to land an permanent spot in the club, and they agree to an alliance where they’ll talk each other up to the members to help their chances. At the mixer, it works like a charm — despite the fact that Alan gets his hand stuck inside an antique metal glove — but their alliance quickly dissolves once they overhear that the club only has room for two new members. Gasp!
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Back at home, David wonders why nothing’s going on between Freddy and Eve, and since there isn’t, he decides to shoot his shot with her. The poor guy gets laughed off by Eve, but she enlists Freddy to teach David how to talk to women. (“How many girls have you kissed?” David asks Eve. She replies, “More than you, babe.”) David’s practice round goes horribly, with pick-up lines like “Who’s your favorite magician?” and “Can I smell your hair?” So Freddy shows him how it’s done, engaging in flirty faux banter with Eve… and we’re kind of sensing a spark here, right? Is it inevitable that Freddy and Eve end up together at some point? And are we rooting for that?
At the mixer, Frasier and Alan plot to ditch Olivia right in front of her by speaking entirely in Latin. (How delightfully pretentious of them!) She points them towards an influential dean, and they rush over to chat him up — while Olivia sidles up to the real dean and proves she knows Latin, too. The guy she pointed them towards is just a dopey waiter, and Frasier and Alan fall all over themselves trying to impress him until Olivia breaks the bad news to them: She’s just secured one of the open slots and can only recommend one of them for the other. They race to outdo each other in offering her bribes, but then Frasier implores Alan to drop out after all the havoc he wreaked in their old days together: “Could you please not ruin this one thing for me?” Alan is hurt and agrees to bow out, but first, he needs Frasier’s help in finding an exceedingly rare bottle of Scotch in the basement — because that’s the thing Alan needs like he needs oxygen.
They locate the bottle of Scotch, but Alan realizes that they’re now locked in the basement. And hey, they might as well drink the Scotch while they’re down there! A furious Frasier demands to know: “Does anything actually matter to you?” Alan admits that he cares about his cat… and about Frasier. He apologizes for being so flippant, and Frasier apologizes for being so desperate to fit in. To top things off, the old Scotch is terrible. (Frasier: “Why am I chewing?”) Now that they’ve mended fences, Alan tells Frasier that they were never actually locked in down there. In fact, there wasn’t even a door to lock! Frasier decides he doesn’t need the club after all, but when the dean comes downstairs to offer him the last open spot, he only hesitates for a few moments before happily accepting. Well, at least he paused.
Plus, Freddy and Eve take David to the bar to try out his new pick-up techniques, but he ends up stumbling into a nerdy girl who’s just as anxious as he is. They bond over their nervous tics and the smell of old books, and they head out to a bookstore together — with David apologizing to Freddy and Eve on his way out for not picking anyone up.
How are you liking this season of Frasier so far, now that we’ve hit the midway point? Hit the comments below to share your thoughts.
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