Frasier Has Left The Building

After 20 Years On Two Of Tv's Greatest Sitcoms, Kelsey Grammer's Fussy Psychiatrist Takes His Last Bow Tonight.

This attitude manifested itself in little ways outsiders saw but might not have appreciated, such as the title cards between scenes. "That came out of a question about why [scene shifts] always have to have jazzy music and a scene outside an apartment building," Lee said, "like you're not smart enough to figure out these people are actually in a building. This led to the cards, which led to us having no music. It's the only sitcom still on TV that has no internal score.

Where Frasier ranks in the TV pecking order -- it has won 31 Emmys, a feat unmatched by any other show -- can be debated forever. But it would be tough to mount an argument that there has ever been a more literate comedy.

Kelsey Grammer, who wraps 20 consecutive years as Frasier Crane, equaling James Arness' run in Gunsmoke, wouldn't allow it. Not that the writers would attempt it. That would be disrespectful to the audience. If there's a hallmark of Frasier, it's the unwavering high regard it has maintained for those who watch. From day one, co-creator and executive producer David Lee said, there was a rule: "No stupid jokes and no stupid characters."

So Frasier will end tonight, after 264 episodes, with Kelsey Grammer's character picking up his head from the bar at Cheers, shaking off the cobwebs while simultaneously trying to pry himself loose from a vicious hangover, a product of a night of drink-till-you-drop carousing. He'll look around, see the other barflies and begin to tell them of this strange dream he had about moving to Seattle, becoming a radio talk host and sharing a great pad with his cantankerous father and fastidious brother, who dumped his shrewish waif of a wife to pursue his father's physical therapist, a Brit who also was a psychic.

The staff also refused to write down to the audience. "The attention span of America was being catered to and it was getting shorter and shorter," Lee said. "It's like you see the outside of a building. You pop in. You hear a jaunty tune. You have two jokes. Then you're off to the exterior of another building and another jaunty tune.

"We specifically tried not to do that. We said, `We're going to write longer, longer, longer scenes.' And if there was a joke that we felt was genuinely funny that we thought a lot of people might not understand, we just went, `Well, then, they don't understand it.'"

"I just thought the ones who did get it would explain to the ones who didn't," Grammer interjected.

It's interesting to speculate whether a sitcom as high-minded and uncompromising as Frasier would have gotten past a pitch meeting if the title character wasn't a pre-sold commodity after nine seasons on Cheers.

"I've always wondered," said executive producer Joe Keenan, "how interested [NBC] would have been in doing a show about this very smart, fussy psychiatrist and his even fussier psychiatrist brother if it was not already a character beloved by America."

Frasier not only borrowed on Cheers' good will, it kept much of the Cheers crew and shot on the same soundstage. Peri Gilpin, who was cast as Roz after Lisa Kudrow didn't work out, had appeared in the fourth-to-last Cheers. However, everyone was determined that this was as far as they wanted to take the association out of fear they wouldn't measure up, said executive producer and co-creator Peter Casey. (A third creator, David Angell, was aboard one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.)

"The most important thing when we started," Casey said, "was, `Let's try to make this as different from Cheers as we can, so we can set ourselves apart.' We were, frankly, terrified of being compared to Cheers, because it was the most popular show in America."

"I believe NBC called it the greatest comedy ever at that time," Grammer quipped, clearly rankled by NBC's recent promos designating Friends as the best ever. "I also believe Seinfeld was," Grammer went on, relishing the roll he was on.

Seattle was chosen as the setting because it was just about the farthest major city from Boston, Casey said. He didn't want the network constantly asking for episodes that would have the gang from Cheers dropping in. "We felt that would only continue to have people remember Cheers and loathe us."

Through the years, almost everyone from Cheers has made at least one guest appearance, but at the convenience of Frasier's producers, not network prodding. Bebe Neuwirth has appeared several times as Frasier's icy former wife, Lilith.