Junior Agent

Title: Rank the Ratings Activity premise: I've compiled a list of shows from the 2001 to 2002 television season. Activity request: You will have to guess whether these shows did better or worse than Frasier in the ratings. Rules: And then you have to guess the name. First come, first serve. In this case, you just yell it out. And whoever I hear first wins. You may buzz, but I will not acknowledge your buzzing. Both of you answer for yourselves whether it did better or worse than Frasier. Scoring mechanism: So whichever one of you gets the name right, gets a point. You get a point for getting this right and Ryan gets the points for guessing the name of the show. That difference, that will be the number of points subtracted from your score. Method: Nielsen ratings Scores: Danny 0 Ryan -15

Activity request: I'm going to describe the show. And then you have to guess the name. Both of you answer for yourselves whether it did better or worse than Frasier. Interaction mode: First come, first serve. Both of you answer for yourselves whether it did better or worse than Frasier. Result type: Unresolved: [['cumulative points with initial rank error deduction', 'show identification and comparison points with game level final adjustment'], [[1379], [1380], [1790], [1793], [1797], [1811], [1825]], 'The retained game result does not uniquely determine whether the initial prediction and deduction belong to this round.']

Welcome to Reverse Psychology, the Frasier Rewatch Podcast, where we go backwards through every episode of the show. Tonight, we are covering Season 9, Episode 10, Junior Agent, which originally aired on November 27th, 2001. Is this when Frasier defies gravity? We'll find out. I'm your host, Curtis Schack. Joining me as always, it's a resident upside downer. It's Ryan San So. Here we are again. Let's talk about our favorite psychiatrist and whatever you're talking about with witches or something. I feel like you forgot the word psychiatrist and just lost all train of that one. Oh, I did air quotes because it's definitely important that he's a psychiatrist. Well, we have somebody else very special joining our show this week. Don't call Brad very special. Oh, it turns out Brad is not going to be joining us today, but instead is our good friend. It's Danielle Stevens. Hello. Hello. Thank you for having me today. Welcome to the show. Wow. Thank you. I'm very excited. The audience is in for a real treat. We'll probably never be able to get Curtis's husband, but we finally got Curtis's wife. Yes. I feel like now we have to explain that. Oh, no, definitely not. We're just going to move we don't have time. Yeah. Just let him figure it out. Let him marinate, Curt. Before we dive in, Dani, you have expressed to us, you don't have much of any relationship. You didn't really watch Frasier, but I'm curious, what is your knowledge of the show beyond this episode that you watched? What is your knowledge of Frasier? What is your understanding of it? Where are you with the show? I was aware of it when it was airing. I never watched an episode until yesterday, so I had almost no knowledge of anything about the show. But I will say after watching the one episode I watched, I may go back and watch it all. Wow. Did you have any preconceived notions on what Frasier was or what you turned around just like, this could be anything like I'm just gonna just watch? I had no idea kind of what it was. I just knew of the show. No vibe whatsoever. Nope, none. Love that. Were you excited to watch it or were you just like, this is probably gonna be horrible? Well, when I heard who the guest star was, yeah, I was excited. Fair enough. This is why we brought you on because we've got a big guest star this week. Kristen Chenoweth, this is a big get for Frasier, although at the time I'm sure it was a big get for her to get on Frasier. Yeah, yeah, at the time. Tell us about your feelings about her and about Broadway and about musicals. Was she in Broadway? Was she in musicals? Oh yeah. Ryan, you're so embarrassing. I'm gonna pray for you. I know. It's fine, Ryan. I forgive you. Um, no, actually you said this first aired in 2001. Was that correct? That's right. Sounds about right. Yeah, this would have been pre-Wicked, which was probably her biggest break. I think undoubtedly her biggest break. Ryan, are you, are you familiar with this really little known, you know, I think it was briefly on Broadway and then it kind of just disappeared and nobody talked about it ever again. A show called Wicked. Yeah, I think we had the, I think the high school put that on in our local. Really? I think so. I mean, I don't. Wicked or Wizard of Oz? I don't really read, you know, I saw Sign. It's, it seemed witchy. I don't know. One of the two. Ryan's clearly useless on this front, but I am curious, um, Danny, what is your relationship to, uh, the show Wicked and to, to Broadway? Yeah. Um, actually Wicked was one of my, um, first like big musicals that I ever saw. Um, I mean, obviously I grew up watching, you know, Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins and all those. Everyone grew up watching Wizard of Oz. I know, but like, you do know Wicked is with Wizard of Oz, right? I don't get it at all, to be honest. I haven't, like, I think, is it, I think, I think I Googled this once. I forget why. It came up for the show. Wicked is like an alternate version of Wizard of Oz. No, it's, I, I hate to say it's a prequel, but it's kind of a prequel. It's what, it's about Elphaba, which is the Wicked Witch of the West. And then you have Golinda, who's the Wicked Witch of the North. Were these the characters' names in Wizard of Oz or did they make these up later? Glinda was, Elphaba was not. Elphaba was made up for the book Wicked. So if you didn't know, Wizard of Oz was a book, then it was a movie, and then there was Wicked that was written in a book and then turned into a musical and is now a movie. So it's a book made into a movie, made into a musical, made into a, sorry, a book into a musical, into a movie. I feel like I'm in Oz right now. I'm getting lost. Exactly. Did you see it on Broadway or did you see it at like a, a traveling production? Both. So the first time I saw it was in 2009 on tour. And then I traveled to New York City in, I want to say 2013. And that's when I got to see it on Broadway. Nice. I've seen it four times now. Wow. Was Kristen in it when you saw it? No, unfortunately not. I wish. Was the person at least really short? But fun fact, I just saw her in person in November. That is a fun fact. Oh, really? Yes. In person. I was at the Wicked premiere in New York City for the movie. I'm sorry. What? What? Yes. I was outside. I was outside with the fans in the cold. What do you mean? Okay, wait. Did you say it was the premiere of the city of New York? Yeah, for the movie. Is there like a famous New York theater or what? Where were we? No. She was at like a local Regal that just happened to be showing it on day one. That's what I assumed. I was outside of MoMA. So the Museum of Modern Art. Oh. They were having like where they did all their pictures and interviews and everything. So they kind of met up all there. And then they left and watched the movie at another location. And then rumor was they were going to come back to MoMA for the after party. We did not stay for the after party. But I got to see Kristen Chenoweth, Bowen Yang, John M. Shu, Jeff Goldblum, Frankie Grande, Ariana's mom. Who else did I see? Jonathan Bailey. I'm sorry. Who is John Shu? Did you throw that one in there? The director. Okay. Yeah. The director of the movie. Jonathan Bailey came right up to us. I got a picture with him. We all know who that is. He's very famous. But if we didn't, who is he? He plays Fierro in the movie. He plays who? Fierro. Every like every fifth word you're saying is like, maybe I've heard the word. I don't know what you're talking about. By the way, real quick, you had a hard time with Elphaba, Ryan. My husband just calls her Alphabet because he can't remember the name of the character. Alphabet's fair. A lot of people, when they have like the speech to text things on like TikTok and Instagram, it auto-corrects the alphabet. That's funny. That's great. So he's not far off on that. You also casually dropped MoMA. I thought we were talking about a food place and then you're like, oh, it's actually an art museum. I was like, oh man, hearing so many things right now. Well, I figured as soon as I said it, I should like specify that it was the Museum of Modern Art. Ryan being lost in this conversation was kind of fun. You, Danny, just sort of sighing and being like, oh, Ryan, when he doesn't know these things is a delight. It's my favorite part of this episode so far. Oh, good. You seem like a real jet setter with the way you talk about. I'm just like hearing all these things. I didn't, I never been to a movie premiere in another city or state than the one I lived in. So I will say there was, they had announced like a month or so prior that they were going to do these like, was it four or five like big city like premieres? So when we found out about it was going to be one in New York was, how could they not? It was half of them not. Worse? Yeah. I found out it was going to be in, it was going to happen when I was going to be in New York. Oh, that just happened to work out. Yeah. Wow. It was going to be right around my birthday. It was the day before my birthday, I think. Happy birthday to you. I know, right? Oh yeah, it was great. But I had found out that there was rumors it was going to be at MoMA, but we had no time, no actual like thing out there. It was like you kind of just had to be in the know. Which I'm not. I didn't know what MoMA was. Me and Ryan have never, ever in our lives been in the know on anything. You know, I stalked pages and everything and nothing was ever posted. So we show up, they had kind of like barricades out. So we like knew something had to be happening. Wait, how did you find out about it? It was like in one article. That was it. What do you mean article? You read articles? From where? I had Google alerts on, okay? I was serious about finding out when this premiere was. So yeah, I was just searching. An article came up and it mentioned, you know, New York premiere, MoMA. But it had no times, no nothing. It just had the date. So we show up, no one knows anything. We're waiting. You're on like a whodunit mystery right now. Like this is wild. It was. I mean, I kid you not guys. When we were standing outside in the cold, not my due, this is November. Everyone was trying to get around, trying to ask people like, do you know anything? Do you know what time it's going to start? We're here at seven. But is that true? No one knows anything. We're trying to get like security, like information. They weren't telling us anything. They're just setting stuff up. Then the cars start arriving. Now I will say, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were there, but they were blocked from our view by their big old trucks that they came in. So we did not get a view of them, but they were there. I don't even know half the people you said there. I don't even know how many people. I know. Ryan, it's okay. It's okay. You said somewhere between two to four people right there. I don't know. I know Ariana Grande. I don't know what the other things you said. Well, Cynthia Erivo was the other main actress that played Alphabet. She played Alphabet. Yeah, Alphabet. Yes. The first I've ever heard that name. But yes, to answer your question, she is actually very short. Asked that question like a couple cities ago. Yes, exactly. So yeah, actually I was the perfect guest for this because yeah, I've actually seen her in person. I sent you a text message that said, do you happen to be a fan of Broadway musicals? And perhaps Kristen Chenoweth in particular, like I was just like, oh, let me just feel her out. You must've just been laughing when you saw that text. She was sitting next to Kristen at the time. Yeah, you know, we're buddies. We're back. Snapping some pics for the gram or whatever you kids do nowadays. I don't know. I'm not in the know, obviously. It's TikTok now, Ryan. Jesus. Keep up. Ryan, I'll get you there. It's fine. I'll teach you everything you need to know. I just, I think you should be a PI. That's the only thing I took from that whole story. I mean, I could probably be great at it. I'm shocked I figured all that out. We actually were on the wrong side of MoMA and we're like, well, you know, let's go down. We were actually walking somewhere else because it was dark out. It was November. It was like four o'clock, five o'clock. We go around the building and I was like, let's just walk down the other side just in case. And sure enough, that's how we found the barricade. My whole life I've been on the wrong side of MoMA. If it was me, I would have been like, there's nobody here. Let's leave. Like I wouldn't, I wouldn't go around the building. I would just assume that it wasn't happening. I'd have been like, oh, we accidentally landed a museum. I thought this was going to be a noodle bar. We should leave. I mean, we had to cancel bar reservations and all kinds of things to stay. Danny, what are you talking, what do you mean bar reservations? That's not a thing. That I know isn't a thing. It is in New York. It is. Oh no. Curt, we're untraveled. We got to step it up. I feel like we should cancel our reservations to discuss this episode because I just want to hear more about your trip to New York. I just want to get more informed about life. I have so much to teach you guys about Broadway in New York. I forgot this whole thing was about Broadway. Honestly, this is one of the most interesting and wide-ranging introductions we've ever had. I don't know how to pivot into an episode of Frasier after this. Well, let's go ahead and try. Let's move on. We can talk about the other stuff later. Ryan, shall we give the old college a try? Let's do it. We open with a blimp flying over Seattle. Frasier is dismissive of his new competition, the Sex Fuel Dr. Zach. Kenny refuses to increase the ad budget. So it sounds like he's a therapist over the radio. Good enough. Ding, ding, ding. Okay. How long did it take you to figure that out? A couple minutes, maybe. That's pretty good. Yeah. I'll say, Curt, this is a little workier than usual. Yeah. For this episode? Oftentimes, he'll be at work, but not for any work reasons. He'll just have a conversation in that set and then continue on with the episode about his personal life. Oh, interesting. Occasionally, we get a wrap-up. He's just finishing a call. So this was one of the longest calls we've witnessed that we're now, what, two and a half seasons in. Interesting. It might be by far the longest. Huh. I'm interested to see how it is because you guys, you said you go backwards, right? We go backwards. That's right. That's what I thought. So I'm curious to see how it starts off then. So, yeah, I'm going to have to watch the show. So am I. Yeah. Still, I guess I don't know quite who everyone is to one another, which I know I'm getting further ahead in the episode, but I assume the one girl was an assistant or a co-host, and then you had the guy, the producer or whatever for the ad. To catch you up. So the woman in this scene is Roz. She is the producer of his radio show. She kind of handles all the calls and setting everything up. The man, the fatter guy, Kenny, he is the station manager. So he's kind of the head honcho at KACL. How did you feel about Frasier when you first met him? Um, he's a little whiny. He is a little whiny. I mean, fair. Did he seem capable, qualified, all that? Not sure. No, it's fine. Inclusive. That's how I felt. Like, it was very much he was doing a horrible job, as he usually does. Okay, so I'm not far off there, because it was questionable. Okay. I think you're dead on the money. Okay, cool. So, Curt, I think we're, what, two episodes from now? We do the market research stuff? I think all of that spins off of this episode, I guess. That's kind of weird. I think you're right. I think that once there was a decision made to actually go for this increased ad buy, he wanted to know who he was targeting. And apparently, it's just sad old men who are lonely. Yeah. Yeah, fun reveal for us. Come in the correct way around, not the right way around. We hear a lot about the competition Frasier has. This is the first and last time, I assume, we're going to be hearing about that. Well, I mean, I guess if you guys go backwards, I guess if you hadn't heard about him before, it sounds like he was being irreduced in this episode. So, that's probably accurate. Yeah, well, we never hear from this guy again. Doctor, whatever his name is, he's done. Dr. Zach, yeah. As soon as Frasier steals his pants, it's over for that guy. I guess Frasier is right. He's not lasting. We're a Flasier. I was going to say Flavor of the Month. I can't talk. What are you talking? What is happening? I was going to say Flavor of the Month, but I was going to say Flasier, which is a name both I and Frasier have called Frasier. Yeah, but you don't have to keep doing callbacks to that random thing. It wouldn't make any sense for Danny. I know she confused us at the top of this episode, but just relax. You can talk regular. No, yeah. We, what were we talking about? I had a point. I lost it completely when you said Flasier, like an idiot. We were talking about the new doctor. Oh, Dr. Zach, yeah. He proved not to have any staying power because we've never heard of him since. That is a really good point that I didn't pick up while watching it because, Danny, you couldn't have known that. Like they make the joke. I think Frasier says that he's only going to last five or six weeks. And Kenny says he's been top of the church for 10 weeks. But clearly he takes a nosedive after this. Yeah. Or it becomes so big that it's irrelevant to Frasier either way. Yeah, either way. Or, you know, there's other things happening in the episode that could have just bombed. And it's the reason why he's not. But I don't want to jump the gun on that. Curt, you should jump. Marty's prescription has run out, but he doesn't want a trip to the doctor to get a refill. Diles refuses to write him one. Frustrated by the marketing push for Dr. Zach, Frasier enlists BB's help. What did you think about the weird old guy? I thought he was pretty funny. I'm assuming that's Frasier's father, correct? Yes. That's correct. Okay. And then the other guy is Frasier's brother. Very good. Okay. I guess as we're watching it, I just assume all these things. I don't. Did they explicitly lay that out? Or how did you piece that? Did you do some more MoMA work? I think it was just like little hints throughout the episode. I can't remember if it explicitly says like, we'll get your brother to write the prescription or something like that. So I think I just kind of took little hints there. It wasn't super explicit though. A lot of times they are super explicit and this was not the case, but you seem to have navigated it without any issue. Danny, the show is not going to reintroduce every character in every episode. You've been giving minimal context. You pieced it all together. You've figured out who all these characters are. You've got it down. Ryan spent the better part of a season not noticing that there is a recurring character on this show that is a dog. He just didn't know there was a dog on the show, even though it was in like every other episode. Oh my God. Well, that's news to me. I didn't see no dog. The dog was not in this episode. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. You're not crazy. Ryan is. Okay, cool. Now I will say there was one character. I don't know who she is. And it's the other woman. I know. I know. I've seen the actress in a bunch of other things. I think you're talking about Daphne. Is that the British woman? Yep. What do you think Daphne's relationship to everyone is? She was harder to piece together. She would be. Yeah. She would be. What's your best guess? There was less context for her because she just had her little spiel about her brother. One year, he grew little boobies. I don't know. I was trying to figure out if she was someone's wife or if she was a caregiver. But if she was a caregiver, then the whole thing with medication probably wouldn't have mattered. I gotta tell you, Danny, you're just a knockout. This is crazy. This is crazy. So Daphne is Niles' girlfriend, but she will become his wife. She also happens to be the physical therapist to Marty. So she is a caregiver. Like you are. I'm literally right on the dot. You nailed both of your speculations. With basically zero context. So this episode has no interest in, first of all, most episodes have no interest in Daphne. This episode in particular has no interest. You got a decent amount of time with Daphne. Not every episode does. I didn't Google any of this either. This is just based on the two times I've watched the episode. You're a knockout. You're just giving more credence to your PI at work. That's all. Thank you. I gotta say, and again, you wouldn't know this, Danny, because you haven't seen the latter half of this show's episodes. But we get introduced to her mom. We get introduced to some of her brothers. The fact that we never got to meet her brother, Billy, pisses me off. Like, I'm like, where is this guy? I hope he shows up earlier because he sounds crazy. From the time he was a little boy, he'd start getting undressed in the car. You don't think he's one of the guys at the end? I mean, I guess he could be, but I don't remember a Billy. And what she describes does not sound like any of the characters we saw. And Billy's the one with that love going to the doctor, correct? Yes. Okay. A lot of times the way they use Daphne is she does a weird anecdote about her childhood. And this was a very weird one. Not the weirdest we've heard, but a weird one. It was definitely interesting. Makes you think about her family. That's for sure. I don't think we have time to dive into all of this. We're friends we can go down. Let's just pass on it. All right. Okay. We know that BB is going to show up now, but we don't see her yet. I thought it was really fun how the whole family reacts to him talking about BB. All of them think it's a mistake that he has signed with her. Yeah, I noticed that. I don't know if she's a reoccurring character or not throughout the show. This might be the fourth episode we've seen with her. Okay. She's averaging about once a season. Yeah, yeah. And they're like, why would you sign with her? Which is not the vibe I've actually gotten from the past episodes. Hmm. Makes you wonder what happens before. It does make me wonder what happened before. I am slightly confused by that, Ryan, though, that you said that. Because the last time we saw BB was in an episode with Dr. Phil. And in that episode, she is portrayed as a literal devil at one point. Yes, but a literal devil is a useful agent, right? The things that Frasier's saying in this scene, like, that gives credence to that fact, right? Like, if she's a monster of a human, she still can get him really good deals. But that wasn't really, like, when he said that, no one was like, oh, yeah, that's a good point. They're all like, yeah, I don't know. It seems awful. Well, because they're not benefiting from her. He is. Like, they just see her being a monster. Literally two people that he's talking to at the time are living in his apartment. What do you mean they're not benefiting? Okay. I guess I meant not directly. Interesting. Interesting. Right? Frasier was being childish at the end of this, but I don't remember why. So, Dr. Zach has a full-page ad-out for him, and Frasier, while he's waiting on the phone to get through to BB, he draws a mustache on Dr. Zach like a middle schooler. Yes, and he's so proud of himself. And he also gives him a mole, which is, that's not the next move. It's not mustache, then mole. No. What's the next move? Glasses, weird eyebrows, devil horns. Yeah, there's all kinds of things. Oh, yeah, the unibrow. Unibrow. Unibrow. Definitely unibrow. No, Frasier went with the beauty mark. Speaks to his character. Apparently, he was a hot doctor, so you had to make him ugly. We mean, apparently, we meet him. We haven't gotten there yet. Oh, sorry. Sorry. BB tries to pawn Frasier off on her assistant because she is focused on her new client, Dr. Zach. He fires her instead. Okay. You know what I really loved about this little scene here? I assume it was the little person that was in the scene. Yeah, but it was when he enters there, she's back in the file cabinet, and she's just, you know, kind of smiling and looking, and then BB comes out and is like, go get him a coffee. And she's like, she's acting like she's still fully an assistant. And like, yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. And then you find out that that's not really what she does. But she's still carrying on that, those jobs. Okay, that's a question I have, sort of. Is this her assistant, who she's just so checked out on being Frasier's agent that she's like, you know what, Portia, my assistant, you just handle him. Like, you're not an agent, but I'm just going to let you handle him because I don't care about him. Or was she actually being promoted to a junior agent, and this was like the first client she was willing to pawn off? Yeah, I don't know. I was confused by that, too, because I couldn't tell if, like, she already knew she was going to be a junior agent, or if she found out right there. Portia seems gung-ho. Like, she seems like she is really trying to grab the bull by the horns on this potential new role. Well, I think she was doing whatever she could to get the job right, right? Yeah. Well, this is a TV trope thing that I don't know if it exists in the real world, where it's the assistant that really wants to be, you know, whatever the role is, the agent. Don't know if that's a thing. It shows up plenty in TV, though. So I think for sure she's been, you know, pitching Bebe this and said, hey, I can be an agent. I'm definitely not annoying. I'm definitely smart. I can be an agent. Or do you think when this hot doctor comes along, Bebe's like, oh, God, I gotta pawn off Frazier. Who's the person that I can pawn it off to? And then it just ends up having to be poor shot. I think it's Beau. She's been the assistant for, like, four years. I wonder if she's getting really antsy, and she really wants to be an agent. And Bebe has been kind of leading her along, like, someday, someday, someday. And finally, it's become clear, like, she's going to lose her assistant if she doesn't promote her. And she doesn't actually want her to be an agent. She just wants to keep her assistant. So instead of actually promoting her, she's like, you're still my assistant. You still don't have all the assistant things. But here's this one client you can have. Oh, yeah. That's a good take, too. Well, yeah, it is interesting. If after she becomes Frazier's agent, quote unquote, which we know she doesn't, by the way, we know it's still Bebe at the end of this. So I don't know what we're doing here. Yeah. And that's why it makes me think it's like a ploy. It's not like she's really getting the job of junior agent. She's still the assistant. I'm choosing to believe that Bebe definitely wanted the hot new doctor. And Portia's been pushing for a long time. She's like, this is the perfect, this is the perfect situation. Like, all right, Portia, you go. If this works out, I'll get a new assistant. If it doesn't, you'll keep getting me terrible coffee. She doesn't feel like a good assistant, though. I think I want to ask about this, because they make a point of her getting Frazier's coffee wrong, her saying, why didn't you ever say something? I would have gotten it right if you just told me. And he's like, I've told you every time that you got it wrong. Yeah. And they're really setting her up like a bit of a moron. What do you mean a bit of? A huge moron. Maybe they're setting her up to be the biggest moron. I feel like I saw this coming a mile away, that they're setting her up as incompetent so that by the end of the episode, she can knock everybody's socks off with how great she is. Was that as obvious to you as it was to me that that's where this is going? Yeah. I feel like also like bad coffee as an assistant is just such a trope that they do in every show that's possible. There's always bad coffee. Well, basically during the follow up bits, I was like, OK, that's what they're doing. But when they made her out to be like the biggest dummy in the world, I thought they were dropping that. I thought it was just going to be the story of B.B. pounding her off. And here in this office, I thought that based on her energy that she gave off, I took it as she just tries so hard it failed. Oh, like she's got a nervous energy about her. That like as much as she wants to get that coffee, right? She just can't. She's just overly like excited, anxious, whatever. And she just gets it wrong every time. Trying to be perfect. The episode backs that up. Yeah. I didn't get that at all watching it. I think you nailed it. She's played that kind of role before in other things I've seen her in. So I don't know if that's why I just kind of took it that way or what. It's just that energy she gives off. Because it's hard to explain her being so good at the job later if she's so bad at this job at the beginning. I feel like that helps to bridge those two ideas in a nice way. Yeah. Yeah. It does. I think she's so overly anxious and excited. And then later down the road, she gets, I don't know, maybe more confident in what she's doing. So she ends up doing better. Not to jump to the end. I actually disagree with that. I don't think it's that she gets more confident. I think it's that she gets more fed up. Frazier flat out is going to tell her, I'm done with you. It's not going to happen. So she has nothing to lose at that point. She's not like got that nervous energy of how I don't want to screw it up. It's just, I'm going to prove you wrong at that point. Okay. Yeah. And that's the energy that I think propels her forward. Okay. That, okay. Maybe confidence was not the correct term. Maybe it's the empowerment to prove herself. That, yes. Curt, we got to stop bringing on our friends who have never seen Frazier before. Because I got to tell you, the same thing that happened when we brought Sneha in. Like, I'm seeing things that I did not see during the episode that now make way more sense. Why do you not want to have this experience? Sometimes it's nice to be miserable about watching the Fraser slog of season nine. It makes me feel dumb. It's like they come in, they notice all these things. They make good observations. And then I just have to deal with that. It's horrible. Yeah. Deal with it. One other thing I want to talk about is she keeps saying, I want a meeting. And he keeps saying, we've met. And I just wonder, does he not know what a meeting is? Because meetings do not exclusively mean first time you have an introduction to somebody. I was wondering that the same thing. Because I was like, well, you could have met. But like, I think she even says that you've never met me as a agent. You've only met me as an assistant. So they are different. She goes to handshake him, though, like, and says her name. He's like, I know who you are. You've been here for four years. I get later what you're saying. Like, when she's like, I want to introduce myself as an agent. But it is annoying when you're like, yeah, I know who you are. What are you talking about? I take it as like, OK, so like, for example, you go to the, I don't know, the doctor. And you see the assistant, you know, you check in everything. It could be the same assistant person checking you in every time you go to the doctor. Do you necessarily know who they are? He may not know who she is, who Portia is every time he comes in. I don't have that kind of relationship with my doctor, though. Like, there's a more intimate relationship. What's an example? I'll say, OK, how about this, Dani? When you become a PI and I inevitably have to hire you, if you go to introduce yourself, I'm going to be very annoyed. I'm going to make sure I do it, though. I just need to introduce myself as Dani the PI. I'll be like, shut up, what are you doing? What if she does it like she's Jean Parmesan and just shows up in disguise, then reveals herself? Ah, jeez! Well, that I'd be on board. If Kristen Chenoweth was wearing a little mustache, that would have been fine. That would have been good. We get a title card. In Martin's defense, Eddie ate some too. Portia has been stalking Frazier and trying desperately to woo him. But he sees himself as a hot free agent. Niles agrees to drive Marty to the doctor. I gotta tell you, a real weak play from Frazier, just hiding out in the stairwell until she leaves. Just a terrible look for him. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Oh, yeah. I don't, like, why doesn't he just hear the ideas also? I know it's to set up the last scene, but, like, how long could it possibly take? Because he's whiny. I think this is explained a little bit more in the next scene. Because he basically sees himself as free from Bebe and he wants to punish Bebe for doing this. So he doesn't want to go with Portia and hear her out, even if she could be good for him. Because he feels like he's being treated badly by Bebe and he wants to punish her. Yeah, I agree with that. It's one of those things that's like, if he chooses Portia, then Bebe's winning. And he doesn't want Bebe to win. And he thinks he's such a hot commodity that all these other agents are going to swoop in and be his savior. And then he's realizing that's not what's happening. And, Danny, you may not know this about Frazier yet, but he is absolutely a character who will cut off his nose to spite his face. Yeah, I was gathering that with him. He's an interesting character, that's for sure. In terms of the Marty side of the scene, he calls his doctor to try to get an over-the-phone prescription refill. And the doctor clearly says, no, you have to come in. I need to examine you. And he's like, okay, I'll be in tomorrow. And that's the end of the call. How easy was it to get a doctor's appointment in 2001? I found this whole interaction so confusing. It's like, did Marty send it? Was he just like, I don't care what your calendar is. I will show up whenever I need to. That's how I took it. Like, if you're going to force me to come in and get a physical to get my prescription refill, then you're going to go when I want to go. And you're going to be happy about it. Yeah, it's on my time. Yeah. And that seems like it would have worked. That wasn't going to be a problem. So that's confusing. It makes me question the doctor, that's for sure. Also, I don't know. Do you guys talk to your doctor on the phone? That's not something that happens usually. Not the doctor directly. You'll call the office and get the receptionist, but you never get to the doctor ever. I mean, we got a nurse's line, you know. I feel like if you're talking to the doctor, it's not for a good reason. Yes. Yeah. 100%. You don't want to talk to the doctor, let's be honest. No. You're certainly not like, oh, just send me that script illegally. He'll be like, no. Also, get off the phone with me. I have patience, you idiot. We get this ethical dilemma. Niles doesn't want to fill out the prescription for his dad. And he just kind of didn't want to have to give his dad a physical. But what I don't get is that didn't seem to me to be the ethical dilemma. Not that he didn't give the physical, but that it's your family member. It's your father. You're not supposed to prescribe drugs to your family. What are you talking about, Curt? Like, if he does a proper physical exam, because there's a real concern that Marty is not in proper health because he's like 150 or whatever his age is. Like, he has to get checked out regularly. It's probably suitable if Niles does that. But who wants to give their dad a physical? But also, you just said he's a psychiatrist. Oh, yeah, Danny. I learned this as well. Apparently, they're actual doctors, but they mostly focus on the brain. I don't know. That's what Curtis yelled at me for a while about it. I don't know. Oh, okay. Psychologists just give therapy. Psychiatrists can prescribe drugs. That's basically the difference. They're officially medical doctors. I mean, yes, they did know they can prescribe medication. Yeah, but I assume there's just brain drugs. I don't know that you can prescribe, like, hip medication if you're a psychiatrist. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm assuming they have to go through similar training, but I don't know if it's the same, like, your family doctor. They have to go through med school. They do. It's a specialty, but it is a full medical doctor. Just to be clear, I'm pretty sure if it's not illegal, it's at least considered unethical to prescribe your own family medication. I disagree. You can be technically, you could be, like, your dad's doctor. I think that is allowed. The ethical dilemma would be just giving him a script based on his feelings or whatever. Like, it's writing it without the medical. I don't know if that is allowed. Why not? I don't know. I think there's, like Curtis said, ethical dilemmas that arise. Like, family members can do stuff for other families professionally, right? Like, there's arrangements can be had. That happens all the time in all sorts of fields. Yeah, but, like, what if you have a family member that's, like, highly addicted to drugs? Right. That's a different problem. This is one of those debates that isn't a debate because we can just look it up. According to the American Medical Association Code of Ethics, except in emergencies, it is not appropriate for physicians to write prescriptions for controlled substances to themselves or immediate family members. But this was an emergency because he really didn't want to go to the doctor. Frazier continues to dodge Portia until she corners him at work. He firmly and unambiguously shuts her down. Acting as his own agent, he embarks on a charm offensive against Kenny. Frazier is hiding under a desk because he hides from this lady. Yep. Yep. By the way, I was kind of happy with that reveal because when Roz explains that every Wednesday is the best of Crane, I thought, you're telling me that every single Wednesday is a repeat? Like, every single Wednesday he doesn't do an episode? We know this is nine seasons in. They've talked about it on this episode. Like, there's plenty of content. Gas. And we know Frazier doesn't work that hard. That's true. This scene cracked me up, though. Why is that? Because of Portia. Yeah. Because she's so adamant to finding him. And then she goes outside and is going to leave a note on his car. I was like, wait a minute. His car is here, so he is here. And then she surprises him. And what's fun about her delivery, the actress, Kirsten Chenoweth, is that she could have played it as, like, dummy who didn't get it. Or she could have played it, like, kind of passive aggressive. But she kind of straddles this line in between where she's kind of giving him the benefit of the doubt. But also doesn't come off like a complete moron. Just like, oh, I figured it out. Like, this doesn't make sense. Here you are. Like, she doesn't have any malice towards him knowing he's clearly hiding from her. Or she's just like, oh, you're here. So here's my ideas. Yeah, I took it as, like, she's trying anything and everything to get to Frazier, to meet with him. And then so she's going as far as to find his car, which I'm sure is in a parking lot, full of cars. So, one, she knows what car he drives and which one it is. So dedication. And then it's one of those things she finds it and is like, wait a minute. And it hits her. Why does she know what car he drives? Dedication, man. Yeah, but dedication to what? To proving herself that she's worthy to be an agent. You can't, like, Google that. Like, I mean, she's stalking him, presumably. Yeah, low key. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, that's what's happening. It's also possible that she just, she didn't go to his car. She just kind of could read the room and see that Roz was bullshitting her and just left for five minutes so she could return and catch him being there. And just made up a story about going to the car. I don't know. That's not how she delivered it. It's not. I think you nailed it. She towed that line between possibly ditzy, possibly, you know, just buying, you know, just doing her job and then be like, wait a minute. This doesn't make sense. Because she's, you know, so tunnel visioned on trying to get Frazier to be her agent. I think that's what it was. She was so tunnel visioned to finding him. So she finds the car and then it hits her. Like, wake up. His car is here. He's here. Go find him. Yeah. Her delivery was perfect on that, I think. Her delivery of every line in this episode is spot on. Oh, good. There's a reason she became a superstar, I think. I think we're seeing even in this early part of her career, she is she is nailing it. Oh, yeah, for sure. We also get some fun bits with Kenny. I love the way he assumes Frazier wants to take him to a strip club. And then when Frazier tries to explain it's not a strip club, he just assumes it's a really expensive strip club. It's like, wink, wink. I know what you're talking about. Okay. So five, sir. That was pretty funny. Is it nice to be invited by another man to a spa or whatever the hell we go to? It's an athletic club with squash courts and a swimming pool. This struck me as one of those wealthy people things. Like this is like something a fancy pants like Frazier does. If someone invited me to a fitness club, a spa, whatever, I would say no. Regardless of who they are. Yeah, I don't know. Ryan, you're a manager now. If one of your subordinates invited you to a spa to get basically naked with them, would you be excited about that? Would you be concerned? I'd point them to HR and be like, you have to have a conversation now. Don't do this again. Oh, man. Niles gets pulled over and wants ex-cop Marty to get him out of the ticket. Marty agrees in exchange for that prescription. Twist. Marty put the cop up to it. Double twist. Niles drew a dog instead of a prescription. Okay. This is the scene that made me laugh. I did like this scene. Danny, I watched a lot of this, especially the latter half of this show growing up. Okay. Like when you said you knew of it growing up, but you didn't watch it. I did. And I remember not this episode at all, except for this scene. I have vivid memories of this scene. That's funny. Right at the top of this scene, Marty's complaining about why he doesn't want to go to the doctor. He says something about getting up on a steel table. Is that, have you guys ever been to a doctor's office where that's the, I feel like every doctor's office has the exact same cushy table. I don't know what the hell he's talking about. Steel table. I wonder if this is like a 20 year old reference that maybe back in the day, it was more like a steel table. And now they've got that cushy table. You think in 2001, that's what they were using? I don't, I don't think so. I remember cushy tables when I was a child. I think Marty is a man from like, like his peak going to the doctor as a, as an adult for the first time was probably in the sixties and he's been going to the same doctor and that doctor has never updated. Like there's a reason he doesn't want to go because his doctor has an uncomfortable, outdated office. I think you make a good point. We're thinking he's been to the doctor in the early, early 2000s when he probably hasn't been to the doctor in like 30, 40 years. Since doctors were invented. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe back then they were steel tables. I don't know. It doesn't feel like a good setup for any situation. I don't know. I don't know what position you'd have to be in where you're like, let's get our patients on a steel table. Yeah. That doesn't seem ideal. Sounds like a food prep table from like a restaurant. Yeah. Or like a morgue or something. I don't know. I'm questioning his, uh, his doctor here. Oh, he's in this doctor is definitely not above board. If you can just make your own appointments, whatever you feel like. But I did, I did really find this thing funny with, with him tricking him with the illegal left hand turn and the cop. And then, um, you said Niall. Is that his name? Niall? Yeah. Um, tricking him again with just writing the dog or drawing the dog. I thought the back and forth and that was really funny. Yeah. I think it's, it's, it's always a fun bit where you see like somebody, uh, trick the other character only to find out they were never tricked. They saw it coming and, and yeah, it's always a fun bit. Well, you're okay. Okay. All right. I don't, I'm not, I'm totally buying the Marty's a terrible person. This tracks this. Of course he said he got some of his, you know, off duty cop buddies to help out. Right. That makes sense. This Niles being full blown panic to then be like, well, I don't think he sussed out that this was a trick. That's not what I think happened. Did you think he was panicked? He was definitely panicked. I mean, at the start, I was like, come on, dad. I don't know if I think I'm as panicked. I think he was, he was more, I don't know. I didn't take it that way. I mean, of course I also didn't see him drawing the dog. Like I didn't necessarily see that coming, but I had a feeling something wasn't right. An illegal left-hand turn. I feel like that's something one you would absolutely know you did. So I think that was the first giveaway. I think that could be it. I also think it's possible that it's not so like he can afford to pay the ticket. Like he's not worried about the ticket and he doesn't seem particularly fearful of the cop. It's more just that he feels a little bit entitled to like having a cop dad get him out of a ticket. Yeah. And a little annoyed that his dad wants to extract something for that favor. I thought he was fearful of breaking the law and he was caught with his pants down for a second. He didn't want it on his permanent record. Yeah. That's how I felt. But I think your perspective is interesting, Danny. Yeah, I took it like especially because, you know, the whole thing with the left-hand turn and then he's like giving hints to the cop that his dad, I don't know, a former cop or whatever. I took it as he was a former cop. Nailed it. In law enforcement. And then he was trying to coax his dad like, hey, why aren't you getting me out of this ticket? And his dad's like, you know, I took an oath too. So that kind of pissed him off. Do cops take an oath? I don't. Is that what they do? I think so. I think if anything, they take an oath that they will get themselves and their family out of any ticket they can. I think that's the oath they take. After a nice steam, Kenny refuses to increase ads. When Portia storms in stealing pants and demanding attention, she wins them both over with delusions of syndication. Great scene. Definitely great scene. Such a weird start. What was that stuff? Steam. Yeah, that was questionable. How has he never heard of steam? I question that. That's for sure. That was a little odd to me. I question both Kenny and Frazier's competence at their jobs because Kenny expresses pretty early in this episode that what is selling with Dr. Zack is the sex angle. He wants Frazier to get more lurid. And Frazier's kind of resistant. He doesn't want to go down that road. But he does want ads. And Kenny doesn't want to spend the money on ads. And he says in this scene, you know, your show's been on so long. If there's no new angle to promote, there's nothing to promote. There's no reason to spend money on an ad. And I feel like if Frazier had just, if they'd just both been like, hey, I want ad money. You want sex. Let's trade one for the other. That makes you sound like Frazier the prostitute. We weren't really going there, huh? Some people don't watch the show. You can't say things like that. Not what happened. Oh, man. But do you know what I mean? Kind of. Like, there was a trade-off they could have done that nobody thought of. Well, I mean, Frazier had already dismissed the idea that he wasn't going to go low to repeal some people. He was never going to go with that. His ego would not let him do that, I feel like. Well, that's why I think Kenny's bad at his job. Because he didn't even raise it as, like, an option. Like, he didn't even suggest it as, well, if you want the ad money, let's do an episode about sex. That's the only defense that he's good at his job. Because he knows it's a waste of breath to bring that up to Frazier, who thinks he's got some sort of high-quality work. Fair enough. Yeah. So, okay. Korsha storms in, right? Yeah. Oh, she storms in. She comes in with a ball of fire. This scene alone just showed that she needs business. And it shows, I think, her acting skill of showing, like, you know, not necessarily the ditzy side, but, like, also, like, how do I want to put it? One, that she can command the room. Yes. She did command the room. She got some gravitas. That's not easy to do when it comes to acting. In a men's locker room? No. No. Standing at, what, 411? No. Yeah, she didn't come up to the top locker, but she commanded the room. Yeah. And I loved every second of it. I love that she, I think, quotes the phrase, from Portland to the other Portland. Like, what a great way to describe all of America. Oh, yeah, she does. Yeah. What do you mean she quotes it? Well, I'm saying, like, I feel like we should replace from sea to shining sea with Portland to the other Portland. I think that's a better descriptor. I think you'll have half of a minute for saying there's another Portland. Wow. If you've never been to Portland, Maine, which I haven't, apparently it's cool. Apparently it's quite the place. I have been to neither Portland. Me too, actually. Gang. I think we can do a Portland to Portland trip. Oh, my God. Let's do it. I'm really into this. We know from the Upside Down, Danny, that, yes, Frazier will syndicate his show to, he's in Seattle for all these years. He's going to syndicate to Spokane, Washington, a smaller market also in Washington. We get no indication that they ever go to the two stations she mentions in this episode. And then eventually he loses Spokane and ends the series with just the Seattle show. So we know this whole syndication game isn't going to work out, but I do wonder, do you feel like we're meant to believe in her the way that Frazier and Kenny do? Because I felt like we're supposed to believe she's really got something here and it is not going to pay off. Well, one, I didn't even know where the show was taking place until just now. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, you probably wouldn't. There's that. Um, and then, yeah, I took it out of the, you know, obviously not knowing anything that happened after this. I had no idea if that, I had no idea if she was just a one-off like guest star in the episode or she had been in previous. But the way it read in the episode, she's been seen multiple times, but that's, I mean, that's sitcoms anyway. It doesn't always happen that way. It'd be amazing if she shows up in a previous episode. There's almost no chance. It'd be so good. Probably not because that's sitcoms. And you personally know she wasn't in any future episodes because she's like becomes wicked famous 10 minutes from this episode releasing. Exactly. She's probably in workshops as she's filming her. Yeah. I don't know. I felt like I believed her. I felt like that was going to happen and she was going to make it happen because of how she commanded it and basically whipped those guys into shape and making them close their legs and everything else. I'm glad they had the towels on because they were excited at the end of that scene. Yeah. I agree with you, Dani. And I think it's one of the fun things about doing this backward rewatch is that if you watch this the front way forwards, you will see this scene. You'll be excited about her. You'll be like, she proved herself. She's great. And then you'll forget about her when they never bring her up again. But watching it backwards, we have this other perspective where we're like, oh, she doesn't know what she's doing. And she might have a plan, but it is not going to work. Right. Right. And I think that's great how you guys watch it backwards. Or at a minimum, Fraser will sabotage it and not allow it to work. Right. Because like, I mean, that's how sitcoms work, right? There's all those in-betweens you don't see. And she acts like she sounds like she knows what she's doing. She knows she sounds like she she has this, you know, foolproof plan in place that'll get on what he wants. And then obviously it just doesn't happen that way. So what do you think? What do you guys think happened? Why didn't this why didn't this plan succeed? Because I think that's fun. A fun question. That's actually that's a great question. Well, in this Spokane episode, we do see that he gets off to a very rocky start. And I think he's just not good at expanding. Like, I think he got a few opportunities and he fell flat. You're implying that he could have expanded to Portland to Portland. And there are wherever the two she lays. She lays out two explicit ones. You think he tried for that and just botched it? I think I think that's the most plausible scenario, because she she says she's got two likely options right now. We know he does successfully get into Spokane and we know they don't keep him around like they kick him to the curb at some point. Spokane wasn't one of them, though, right? Not in this episode. But I'm saying like we know for a fact he does get syndicated to at least one other market and it doesn't pan out in the long run. And that's got to be because he doesn't he doesn't get in our audience there. Is Spokane like just like the episode like I guess after this? It's like the end of this season. So it's like. Oh, OK, OK. I just want to make sure linguistically where we're at. Well, OK. So that is. Yeah, that's actually closer than I thought. So it's clearly her idea. The way that they do that episode. I think it implies that they didn't try out for these or maybe we didn't get there yet. Spokane came up first, maybe like it sounds like very far away and very very small markets. Yeah. Yeah. So I think in this case, like once that like maybe they did land those. We don't know. But Spokane is local enough and big enough. I bet that they were like, we could do an episode. We could go physically to Spokane to promote this new market. Here's a theory, because you say B.B. comes back later, right? Yes. There's no mention of Portia at all. Could it be that Portia tried so hard to get these, you know, Midwest small town stations and it just completely flopped? And so Frazier fires her and then he just, you know, you know, tail between his legs, crawls back to B.B. A hundred percent. I think that is. I think that's the Occam's razor. Yeah. Yeah. That's my guess of seeing no other episode but this. Well, you nailed it. That's my theory. Frazier plays this out by stealing Dr. Zach's pants from the locker room. Seattle's not mad about it because he's a beefcake. Did you watch it on Paramount Plus or Hulu? How'd you watch this? I attempted Paramount Plus because I don't get a lot of commercials on that. But for whatever reason, mine was suffering like crazy. So I had to switch to Hulu. Well, you are lucky because fuck Paramount Plus. Oh. Right? Because I was watching it on there. And right as it got to like the joke bit where he goes to steal the pants, it cut to the next episode. Oh, I hate when it does that. It took me 10 minutes to get back and figure out like what the joke they were going for was. I was so mad by the time I saw it. That is annoying. I almost had the same problem with Paramount Plus. In my case, it didn't cut to the next episode, but it put up that like we're about to play the next episode screen where they like cover a big chunk of what's on the screen. And it was impossible for me to see what he grabbed. I knew he grabbed something. I guessed it was pants, but I had to like stop and pause and hit the button that says like watch credits so that I could confirm it was pants. Yeah. I'm trying to remember if I even seen it. I don't know who did that or not. I'm blanking if I even saw that. I just want to remind Paramount Plus, you don't have to have the worst app of all time. You guys can try to step it up a little bit. And then on top of that, after you've watched the episode, it presents you all of the episodes from season nine, but in a scrambled order. It's so, so annoying. So infuriating. Apparently Hulu was the way to go. Hulu was the way to go, but you can't watch it in my office for some reason. Danny, as a heterosexual woman on this podcast, I would love to ask, what was your opinion of Dr. Zach? Did you find him a beefcake? Because I thought he was a beefcake. Grade A prime beefcake. I thought he was good looking for sure. I mean, I feel like that's the vibe I got. He was a beefcake, but like, you know, very passable. As someone who's not into dudes, I feel like you and Danny, you and I are giving out the same vibe. He was beefcake. He looked good. You don't seem that interested in him, though. I think the problem here is that your body quit. Your body quit. And unfortunately, it's no longer legit. I mean, you weren't like a wooga. No, I mean, I don't know if you. Well, he was good looking. Like, there was no denying he would definitely pass as a sexy doctor. OK, but I've seen hotter men. What the hell are you talking about? How about this, Danny? Would you listen to his radio channel just because of how hot he is? Yeah. Oh, OK. Probably so. That's where we depart. Bear in mind, we saw the scene where we see a half-naked Frasier and Kenny. It's the comparison. It's the comp. That's what's making me go, what a beefcake. So this is a question for you, too. There was no real level of sexiness in the whole locker room. No. No. Mm-mm. Did you want there to be? I don't. But if there's a beefcake doctor around, I would expect some of that. Why? I don't know. Because that's all he talks about, right? That's what a show's about. If we were in a lady's locker room and there was, you know, hot girls, I'd be like, oh, this is a good scene, you know? You don't seem to have that. Right. Oh, you're, you're, OK. You're not saying you wanted her to be, like, mood lighting. You're saying that if there is a beefcake in there, the people who are attracted to that should be more, like, excited than me and Danny are. Yeah, right. There should be more. I think there should be more sexual attention than there was in the locker room. Ryan, I'd like you to be sent to the HR team. I think you need to have a discussion with them. This can never happen again. Fair enough. Oh, man. Well, Danny, did you like this episode? I did. It definitely made me interested in starting the show at some point. Just try and see kind of what actually is, like, going on in this show. I think definitely, you know, having one of the all-time greatest Broadway actors on the show was definitely key for me. Is she, like, a no-questions top three Broadway lady? Broadway person? Oh, yeah. She's definitely up there. Yeah. OK. Certainly of her generation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. There's obviously different generations of, like, Broadway great. I mean, you say obviously. I can tell you. I don't know that. I know Hamilton exists, and I know Wicked exists. Both phenomenal. Phenomenal shows. Hamilton will be here this July. Really? Yep. Oh, for the listening audience, Danny and I live in the same city. Did you come up with a type of rating? I was going to give it a certain amount of Broadway stars. I was going to say something Broadway-esque. What's the scale? One to five. A five-star scale. OK, classic. My rating is definitely going to be just based on the episode, my enjoyment of it. I would give it 4.5. For me, I rank this fairly high, 26 out of 72. Wow. Oh, a new number. Yeah, I'd rather watch, and Frasier makes three, the other Beefcake episode with Aaron Eckhart. I was going to say, that's a Frank episode. You have that one too left. It is better than Match Game, which is, like, right in that same era of Charlotte setting him up on dates. Yeah. Do you want to explain to Danny what you just did? Yeah, I was going to say, I need to know what your scale is here. Oh, yeah, sorry. So my scale is, every episode we watch, I rank. So I'm literally, like, we've watched 72 episodes now, and this is, of all of those 72, I think this is the 26th best episode. Oh, OK, OK. That's for 72. Top third. That's a good area. Yeah, that's not bad. Yeah, it's really good. It's very good. And if you're interested in watching the rest of Frasier, that gives you hope that there may be 25 better. Maybe Curt's an idiot with rating stuff. Who knows? Yeah, we'll find out, right? Yeah. Ryan, what about you? I gave this a 6-9. I like the build that we got to ending up in the locker room. I thought all of it was fairly organic, fairly well executed. Kristen is absolutely fantastic. She might be the best guest star we've had. And that's saying a lot. It's between her and Keaton, I think, which is interesting, because this season has sucked, but the guest stars have been fire. Yeah. Michael Keaton was on one of the episodes. Oh, wow. Wow. I was wondering if that's who you meant. Knowing that it's Frasier, it would have been more plausible that it was Diane Keaton, but... Yeah. Oh, well, that's definitely not where my mind went, but yeah. She's in play. I could see her show up, but she hasn't. It was Michael. This is definitely our best guest effort. Frasier was great. You know, I think there's a lot of positives. There was too much Marty winning, which is always disappointing, but all in all, pretty good episode. I mean, he still had to go to the doctor in the end. He didn't? Yeah. Yes, he did. Yeah. Oh, shit. I just assumed he stopped taking his meds because he's an idiot. Now for another edition of Rank the Ratings. I've compiled a list of shows from the 2001 to 2002 television season. You will have to guess whether these shows did better or worse than Frasier in the ratings. This is a post 9-11 TV season. Yes. Oh. This is tough. Yeah. Oh. And we're going to do this a little differently this time. The first thing I want you both to do is guess where Frasier ranked. So like out of, say, 100 shows. Oh, gosh. Okay. And post 9-11 out of like the top 100 shows, where does it rank? Yes. Oh, God. Was this a hit show? Was this... I mean, bear in mind, we got two more seasons, so that should tell you something, but... Right. Well, I mean, you got the likes of like Friends, which was definitely a powerhouse of the 90s and early 2000s. I know that was definitely still on. Friends was wrapping up really close to now, right? I think they ended in the same year. They ended in 2024. Yeah. It ended in 2024? Really? What? What a run. What? 2004. Oh, my gosh. That sounds more right. Yeah, yeah. 2004. My God, I'm adding 20 years. I'm trying to think what else was on it. Here's a fun question while you're mulling this over. Did you know that Frasier was a spinoff? No. Spinoff of... Have you ever heard of Cheers? Yes. Yes. Frasier was a like bit character from Cheers. Interesting. Yep. Did not know that. I have watched a bit of Cheers. I couldn't tell you much of it because it was a while ago. Probably watched like the first season, maybe. Frasier shows up, I think, in season three. Oh, okay. So I never even want to reach that. I'm like 100. I would rate this in somewhere definitely within one through 20. I'll get a fairly high rating of like nine. Wow. Okay. So when we've done this in the past, Frasier's been in like the 40s. Oh, shoot. You didn't tell me that. Well, that's why we wanted to go first. And this season is also garbage. So I am guessing it's probably holding flat. I'm guessing it's probably like 40. Okay. I will reveal at the end what the answer is. But for now, we're going to move on to the game. So how this is going to work this time. I'm going to describe the show. And then you have to guess the name. First come, first serve. So whichever one of you gets the name right, gets a point. Or do it to buzz in? No. In this case, you just yell it out. And whoever I hear first wins. Can we buzz in? You may buzz, but I will not acknowledge your buzzing. So we'll start with that. So I'll give you the description. A classic American tale of fat schlub with a hot Scientologist wife. It launched the career of Patton Oswalt, who once spent an entire episode in the background, not moving. King of Queens. Correct. It's King of Queens. Ryan gets a point. Both of you answer for yourselves whether it did better or worse than Frasier. Ooh. This is tough. I watched King of Queens all the time on syndication, but I don't know if it ever aired live. I feel, yeah, I definitely have seen it. I'm going to rank it slightly higher. Well, not in my ratings. I was going to say, you think Frasier's nine. You think King of Queens is definitely higher? Oh, yeah. We're going to put my own rating, then lower. But bear in mind, bear in mind. You can change your mind at this point about how high or low you think it is. I'll reveal whether each one is better or worse in the end. So you're going to get a sense of how accurate you might have been. Well, based on my rating, I'm going to go worse. You don't have to base it on your rating, no. Just again, to be clear. I'm still going to go worse. This is really tough. Are we able to know what season the King of Queens is in? Ah, yes. I'm sorry. I should have shared this. This is season four. Would you like to change your answer, Danny? I'm still going to... The answers have been accepted and there are no alterations. Ryan, what is your answer? Oh, I like that you've thrown Danny under the bus for no reason. Awesome. King of Queens season four, I think, will have been better than Frasier season nine. Ryan, you get a point because you guessed the name of the episode, but you are wrong. It was worse. It was number 20 in the rankings. Does that mean I get a point? You get a point, Danny. You get a point for getting this right and Ryan gets the points for guessing the name of the show. Wow. Oh, well, you know what? The September 11th year. Yeah. Bad year for TV. That makes sense. Yeah. Mark L. Wahlberg hosted this reality show where four couples are sent to live with super hot people to see if they will cheat on each other. Oh, okay. Mark Wahlberg? Mark L. Wahlberg. An important distinction. Oh, okay. I was like, what? I don't know. This is... It's like Temptation Island or some crap like that. Ryan's very good at that. It's... That's a point to Ryan. I would have never gotten that. Was this show better or worse in the ratings than Frasier? Worse. Oh, but it's reality. I don't remember it getting a season two. This was season two. Oh, wow. I'm going to say worse. I'm also going to say worse then. You both get a point. It was worse. And Ryan gets a bonus point for guessing the show. Boom. Okay. Next up. Zoom, zoom. Yeah. It's Law & Order. We got it. Ryan's killing it on guessing the shows. This was season 12 of Law & Order. Was this better or worse than Frasier? I'm going to say season 12. That's pretty... Well, I mean, it's still going. That's true. It's garbage TV, but it's been garbage for a long time and people don't care. We watched it in college all the time. You and the masses are willing to put it on for endless amounts of time. Yep. Is it really still going? Yeah. It did get canceled at one point. Why? It was a tin pole! A tin pole! But they brought it back. Okay. Whatever. I'm going to say it was better. I'm also going to do better. And you're both right. It was better at number four in the ratings. Oh my God. Very popular show. What? That's disgusting. Step it up, America. Oh, they're about to. An adult sitcom about a foul-mouthed, sentient puppet working on a children's show starring Seth Green, Eugene Levy, and Sarah Silverman. Oh, shit. Oh my God. She knows it. It's in there somewhere. No, I don't remember the name. I, I, mmm. It's puppets, puppets. I saw it. Oh my God. I don't, I don't, I don't. I'll give you a hint because it's, I feel like you probably know it. It's one half of Dharma and Greg. Well, that clarified nothing. One half of Dharma and Greg. The latter half, specifically. Okay. I want to say I know the show, but I, for the life of me, I got no name. Is this, this sounds like Avenue Q, but I didn't think that was a show. It's Greg the Bunny. What? I don't know what it is. Did you make that up? Okay. Sounds familiar. Does it? Does that sound familiar? This was the first season and its final season. It was, it was canceled. So. Like the cast and the puppets sounded familiar, but the name does not ring a bell at all. I don't know why it didn't succeed. Was this better or worse than the ratings? I'm doing lower. I would love to do better, but no one's ever heard of this. I feel like you just found the whatever was last on IMDb or whatever. This was 99 in the ratings. You both get a point. Knew it. I don't know. It sounded familiar, but it definitely wasn't. Contestants in this game had to answer questions while subject to extreme heat or cold. Despite premiering to an audience of 10 million, controversy plagued it due to it being televised torture. While post 9-11, it wasn't post 9-11 enough to secure season two. I fucking love this show. There was two of them. Here's the problem. I don't know which one it was. It was either The Chamber or The Chair. And both are just fucking torture shows. I'm not going to make you pick which one because it was The Chamber. You're really good at guessing. I fucking loved The Chamber. I loved it. I've seen neither. Have you ever seen people get tortured? Because that's what this show was. No. And they didn't just do hot and cold. They introduced other elements. It was crazy. It had earthquakes and hurricanes. Oh my gosh. They had to have people strapped up to vitals. They're just like, hey, we're going to make sure you live. But we're also going to ask you questions while you're in clear peril. It was amazing. I think they had to cancel it because it was so fucking dangerous. That's absolutely the case. Oh. I should not get the both point there because I was just in the right age. I think Dan is just slightly too young. I mean, that's going to hurt her for all of these. Yeah, but this happens to be like the one thing that I was just so into. You're like middle school, the perfect age to be like really into torture. To be right for it. Of entertainment. Yeah, absolutely. This was great. It's clear you thought this was better than Frasier, but did you think it was better in the ratings is the question. I was so mad at it in Guinness season two. It was must watch television. Like it has to be better. I'll be so mad if it was worse. I'm going to go worse. All right. So we've got a better and a worse. Are you saying because of the torture element? Ryan, you got a point for getting the show right, but you have neutralized it with your wrong answer. It was 89 in the rating. What? I think they only aired like six episodes. You really, really knew this show because I was looking this up on Wikipedia to talk about it. And you're like, I think you nailed it. I think it was exactly six. I was this year. I was like randomly like, oh, what happened to that torture show? I loved that thing. And I think I Googled it. I cannot. You know, you know, like all those competition shows where you like it's someone on a stage doing whatever. This was the perfect version of it. And again, it was just like probably was going to kill someone eventually. So they had to stop. And that's fair. But it was must watch TV. I don't know how it was 89. It was also on like Fox or something like that. Like one of the big ones. It's also hard to watch someone get tortured. Apparently for most of America, I had no problem with it. Middle school me was fine with it. Before the MCU, before Veep, before the new adventures of old Christine, Julia Louis-Dreyfus had this creative and critical failure. Oh, it was the new adventures of old Christine. No, it was not. Wasn't that one? That was successful. Or was that? Oh, shit. Okay. It's a different Julia Louis-Dreyfus show. I mentioned it in the description if you would just listen to me describe it. Honestly, I didn't check in till the end. I was listening, but. Was it Seinfeld? This was the first season. It is not the last season. It did get renewed. What was the original clue? This one was kind of included in case Brad joined us. I think he would have got this. It's called Watching Ellie. Oh, I would have never run that. I've never even heard of that. Maybe I heard of it. Maybe. Better or worse? Worse. Okay, I'm going to say better because she was a hot commodity at this point. Well, you're wrong. It was worse. Watching Ellie was 33rd in the ratings, so no points awarded to Ryan. I mean, she was a hot commodity. He clearly proved that. This was that era where like the same year, I think, Jason Alexander had a show that flopped. I think all the Seinfeld people were in this like Seinfeld curse where nothing they did was successful post-Seinfeld. I was going to say, it was also a tough year, too. Yeah, that's true. It wasn't a tough year. A show originally conceived as A Few Good Men meets Top Gun. This show somehow had a reputation in my house as the most boring show of all time. I don't know what to do with that, Curt. I don't think you described the TV show. The show is called Jack. Well, give us a shot, Curt. I didn't say we were done guessing. I would have never gotten that. I would never have got it, but give me a chance. Don't ask me what it stands for because I didn't look that up. Does it stand for something? I thought it was just like, you know, these guys have sharp edges or whatever. This is season seven. What is very famous? Yeah, I definitely heard of it. I lump it in with mash. So this is tough. Yeah. Clearly, they're not the same. I feel like it's going to be close to it regardless if it's higher or lower. I think you're dead on. I think Curt's circling the drain on this one and just being annoying. I'm going to go with lower. I could be wrong on that, though. I'll go higher. People love Jag. There's a bunch of Jag offs out there. Ryan's back in the game. It was better at 15 in the ratings. Okay. I still have my speculations, but okay. I've kind of lost the plot, if I'm going to be honest, on the ranking bet. But this is her first mess. But I am so good at guessing the names of the shows. You guys are currently tied for points. That's exciting. It's on. A six-month-old can literally talk like an adult. It was renewed for a season two. And after cancellation, Quiznos revived the character for commercials. Was Look Who's Talking a show? I know it was a movie. You're definitely describing Family Guy, right? I'm going to take those as both of your answers. And they're both wrong. It was called Baby Bob. No points awarded. Oh, I'm doing lower. Was that a family guy ripoff? That's weird. Yeah, it's definitely worse. Correct on both counts. You both get a point. It was worse at 25 in the ratings. That's closer than I would have thought, though. Yeah, that's way higher than anticipated. Finally, Breckenmeyer's dating life is illustrated using sports highlights. For example, when his date reveals she has three kids, a referee appears to call too many players on the field. I'm just going to say, big Breckenmeyer fan. No idea what this is. I have no idea who Breckenmeyer is. He was the guy in Rat Race. He was also the guy in that other movie that came out near Rat Race. Was he in that? It was also a road trip movie, wasn't it? Road trip. He was in Road Trip. It's a show that Brad loves. It's like Sports Night or whatever. No, it's not even that. It's a show called Inside Schwartz. This was its first and only season. Never heard of it. Never heard of it. TV writer Dan Harmon once said, and I quote, In September of 2001, everything really changed. And the way we perceive television changed because of a tragedy called the premiere of NBC's Inside Schwartz. It was at that point that we realized television was broken and could never be fixed. Oh, oh. What do you think? Better or worse? That's the most Dan Harmon quote ever. I'm going to go worse, but that is oof. I am going to go. This is the Nielsen ratings we're going off of, right? Uh. Isn't it? Yes. Sorry. I don't know why I hesitated on that. Okay. I'm going to. I'll go better. I think if Dan Harmon thought this was going to be a nationally broadcasted show, that's when we're going with it. We're going with it better. Okay. This is for the point. Ryan, you're right. It was at 14. This show did incredibly well, but was canceled anyway because its lead-in was Friends. That'll do it. How about airing some more promos on my lead-in? I mean, they get a sizable audience. That's fun. Yeah, I was waiting for a Friends one. I would have had that. Why would it get canceled because its lead-in was Friends? How does that make sense? Because most people probably turned off the TV after watching Friends. The opposite, because people were watching Friends. They were already tuned to NBC, so they just kept watching for whatever it came on after. That's why we're moving them to evening drive time. I mean, I'm their lead-in now? Yeah. They're not too happy about it. Okay. Yeah, my bad. That's what I meant. Yes. This is like when I was watching pro wrestling and then eventually Sex and the City would show up. You'd be like, what is this? This is a total change in programming. It's a like-for-like comparison. Yeah. We have a score for Danny at seven points, a score for Ryan at nine points. Oh. Okay. I asked you to guess where the show Frasier ranked. Danny guessed nine. Ryan guessed 40. I'm going to reveal the actual ranking and the difference between what you said and what was reality. That difference, that will be the number of points subtracted from your score. Oh, good. Okay. I'm looking good then. Wait, can we guess where we think it landed? Sure. I think we have to. I think we have to do that. I think it landed at 15. 15 was one of them. Yeah. Jag was 15, and that was better than Frasier. Okay, 16. Between 15 and 20, so yeah, I'll go like 19. I'm still going with your original scorings. Yeah. Well, yeah. But it wouldn't have mattered, even if I adopted yours, because Danny, you had a dead on. It was 16. Yes. Wow. When you said it's definitely lower than 20, I thought you were going to nail it in the first try. Danny, you lost seven points. That is subtracted from your score of seven points. You're at zero. But guess what? You won because Ryan guessed 40, so he lost 24 points. He's at negative 15. Yes. Man, you psyched me out too, Ryan. I thought I was too high. I am such a favor of the way that Curt has turned the scoring around. I'm so proud of you, Curt. For exactly how I would have scored this. I love it. Ryan, you're really good at guessing which sitcom from the early 2000s, but can you tell us what to expect next week when we cover the previous episode at Season 9, Episode 9, Sharing Kirby? I think I can, Curt, because Kirby returns as Frasier in Roz's assistant. And he bumbles about and does not assist. I mean, it seems plausible, right? I thought you'd be really upset when you saw the title because you were gung-ho about never wanting to see Kirby again. Even if they do a poor job, I like to see continuity. I like to see these characters come back, even if they're garbage characters. Like, we get Marty every week. I can deal with Kirby twice. Well, I guess we'll find out next week if that's what it's going to be. Well, that will do it for us. Big, big thank you to Dani for joining us. Thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun. Thanks to Kevin MacLeod for our theme music, and thank you for listening. I suppose you don't really care if this podcast is successful. You would never take five minutes out of your precious day to go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. You don't use Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram, or TikTok. You aren't curious what happens if you search for Reverse Psych Pod. Lord knows you can't be bothered to shoot us an email at reversepsychpod at gmail.com. For myself, for Ryan, and for Dani, no thank you. Curt does that every episode. No one knows what he's talking about. Rapid Fire, I'm going to give you a musical. You tell me how many stars you gave me. Okay. Wicked. Five. Hamilton. Five. Cats. Zero. It's a one to five scale, Dani. Okay, one. I hated Cats. Phantom of the Opera. I've actually not gotten to see Phantom of the Opera. I've rated many things that I've never seen. I've seen the movie and I'll give it a four. Wow. Okay. The Scrub the Musical episode. I've not seen Scrub. Don't hate me. The Even Stevens musical episode. Okay. So here's my thing with Even Stevens. Interesting. I love that you have a thing. I have a love-hate relationship with it for obvious reasons. Because of your last name? Yeah. Oh, that's funny. As a kid, I was constantly asked, is your family like Even Stevens? I got all the jokes. So although I would watch it here and there, it was very hard to, yeah, watch. I would feel sympathy for you, except that my last name is Sheck. And I was in middle school when the movie Shrek came out. Oh, that's funny. Free Rob. You guys passed trauma is hilarious. I had one more. I forgot it. Oh, High School Musical. Oh, 10. Out of 5 stars? 10 stars out of 5 stars? Oh, yeah. I was in love with Zac Efron. Absolutely. Comes back to the beefcake. Yeah, absolutely.