Yahoo News Frasier Recap: To B or Not to B
Frasier made a fool of himself this week jockeying for a professorship, while David made a fool of himself trying to improve a disappointing grade. Yep, they’re definitely related.
As Thursday’s episode opens, David is bragging about how he always gets straight A’s… until Frasier slaps him with a B on his latest psychology paper. (He’s devastated, of course.) Frasier’s stint as a guest lecturer is going well enough, but he wants to be promoted to full professor, even though Olivia tells him he needs years of lecturing to attain that. He insists there must be an express “Crane lane” to the title, so Olivia lets him know she’s meeting with an influential Harvard provost tonight, if he wants to stop by and butter him up.
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At the bar, a very drunk Freddy is holding court talking about Kierkegaard and Finding Nemo. It seems he gets very nerdy when he drinks, and Frasier loves seeing him use big words and speak French. Eve tries to complain to her landlord Frasier about some apartment issues — there’s a beehive in their hallway — but Frasier puts her off, asking her to serve him expensive whiskey while he sweet-talks the provost. Frasier manages to charm him, but the provost doesn’t like hanging out in a bar. He’s put off by his professors drinking, and Eve bringing Frasier that glass of whiskey doesn’t help. (Neither does Freddy drunkenly butting in.) Olivia hustles the provost out, while David insists on confronting Frasier about his unacceptable grade. Frasier tells him he can write another paper to bring his average up, and Freddy is drunk enough to ramble on about B.F. Skinner, so David decides to take advantage of his cousin’s newfound psychology expertise, pulling an all-nighter to write a new paper with Freddy’s help.
Frasier manages to convince the provost to see him in action during one of his lectures, and they all meet back at Frasier’s office for some coffee — only Alan has spiked one of the coffee cups, and the provost grabs one, completely unaware. Frasier panics, and since he has terrible luck, of course the coffee cup the provost picked up is the spiked one, and after taking a sip, he walks out in disgust. So Frasier frantically bakes him some pastries to win him back while David complains that Frasier gave his new paper a B-minus. (Freddy is offended now, too.) Frasier gets stung by one of the bees in the hallway, and he’s slightly allergic, so he asks for David’s EpiPen — which David strategically withholds. (“So it would seem I’m not the only one of us who’s been… stung by a B.”)
David demands a chance to defend his paper in exchange for the EpiPen and launches into an impassioned argument about the psychological tenets of human behavior. It’s quite a speech, but Frasier will only offer him a B-plus. (Tough grader!) Frasier takes the EpiPen shot, and though Freddy tells him he needs to go to the hospital, he insists on meeting the provost — and thanks to the shot’s effects, he stumbles into the classroom slurring his words like a classic drunk. (“My son took my keys away, but that didn’t stop me!”) A guilt-ridden Freddy decides to drop out of Harvard and become a firefighter, just like Freddy did. But Freddy points out that he was miserable at Harvard, and David is really happy there, so he shouldn’t give that up. They agree they’re both afflicted by “the Crane curse” of striving for perfection, and they hug it out… and Freddy even offers to help David write his next paper on Proust.
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