Frasier: I ordered from the toy catalog from the special section called Gifts for the Gifted. I got him the junior astronomy set and the geology lab ... oh, and a fabulous thing called the Living Brain. You get to paint each lobe a different color, then you stuff it inside the Living Skull.
Martin: Hey, you know what kids really like? They've been advertising it like crazy on TV. It's great. The Outlaw Laser Robo Geek. Its head lights up and it shoots death rays out of its eyes. (Frasier glares at him) Yeah. A little like that!
I wrote a bit last year about the Christmas episodes of popular TV shows — one Christmas episode in particular.
Some TV series have a Christmas episode — at least one — every year. Given the fickle nature of the viewing audience, I suppose that is the prudent thing to do, especially when a series is new. Most series don't last longer than a year or two, anyway, so if you want the audience to know your characters and you're gonna have a Christmas episode, anyway ...
But all shows are not created equal, and neither are Christmas episodes. Some series, like Christmas episodes, have better acting than others. Some have better writing, better stories. And some are just better all the way around.
Frasier, of course, turned out to be an exception. By the time the show ended its 11–year run, Kelsey Grammer had played Frasier for more than 20 years — first as a supporting character on Cheers, then as the lead character on his own show.
As familiar as Frasier was to TV viewers, it wasn't necessary for him to do Christmas–themed programs except within the context of Frasier's personal story — and, consequently, the series' holiday episodes were opportunities to explore personal issues that went beyond the standard Christmas reminders of love and peace. They certainly weren't necessary as far as ratings were concerned.
In the first season (1993–1994), Frasier's Christmas episode dealt with Frasier's decision to volunteer to work on Christmas when his young son's plans to visit him in Seattle changed.
In the fifth season (1997–1998), the Christmas episode dealt with the different perspectives each member of Frasier's family had of Christmas that year.
The next season's Christmas episode provided an opportunity for Frasier's new Jewish love interest to be introduced to his family and the viewing audience.
The seventh season brought a two–parter that really didn't have to be told at Christmas. The focus of the story was on how Niles' feelings for Daphne were revealed to her. The fact that it happened during the Christmas season was sort of incidental.
During the eighth season, Frasier found himself hosting the annual Christmas parade with Dr. Mary, a former protege.
Two years later, after Niles and Daphne had married, Niles and Frasier argued over who should host the family gathering — an argument that was rendered moot when their father had to work on Christmas.
And, in the final season, Frasier's son, now in his mid–teens, came to visit sporting his new "goth" look while Niles decided to finally do something he never did in his own teens — rebel.
Fifteen years ago this Sunday, the series aired a Christmas episode that probably wasn't its best — but it was better than most. And I always enjoy watching it.
I have found new relevance in it every time I have seen it.
In the episode, Frasier learned an important lesson.
After going to considerable trouble to do so, Frasier had ordered educational toys to give his young son. But, when the package arrived, the wrong shipment had been sent to him — and the truth was that neither that shipment nor the order Frasier had really placed was what his son wanted.
"You're always giving people things you think they should like," Frasier's father told him, "instead of things that they really like."
On Christmas Eve, Frasier's son announced that he was going to bed right away so the next thing he knew it would be Christmas. And he was particularly excited because he knew what Santa would bring — the popular new toy that had been all over the airwaves.
That, of course, wasn't what Frasier had purchased for his son. But then his father unexpectedly came to the rescue.
I enjoyed watching the episode when it first aired, but it has taken on a different meaning, a relevance, for me on subsequent viewings.
When it was first shown, I was only about six months removed from my mother's death. Things were still pretty chaotic in my life, and some of the more subtle messages of the story escaped me at the time.
My father remarried the following year. To put it bluntly, my stepmother and I have never been close. I was aware at the time we met that she was determined to keep me at arm's distance — at least — so I was put on the defensive from the beginning.
For whatever reason, she made assumptions about me that my father has never, to my knowledge, attempted to correct, and that has been a source of, to put it mildly, bitter disappointment for me.
When I was a child, he was my defender. He and my mother repeatedly discouraged me from prejudging people, yet he may have been — either inadvertently or deliberately — the source for my stepmother's assumptions.
What assumptions did my stepmother make? I couldn't say. I only know that she made them, not what they were or why she made them.
What I can say, with absolute certainty, is this: She's never tried to get to know me, to find out what makes me tick — beyond making nominal attempts at holidays, presumably for appearances' sake.
In recent years, she hasn't bothered to pretend that she is interested.
Well, I guess, when I use words like "presumably," I am acknowledging my own assumption. But what choice have I had?
It would be fair to say, I think, that things got off on the wrong foot between my stepmother and me. And no one — myself included — really tried to get them on the right track.
I'll accept my share of the blame for that. I won't be the whipping boy for all of it.
Perhaps I'm being dismissive when I call her familial attempts "nominal" — although I do have other reasons for feeling that way.
But the thing about this Frasier episode that reminds me of my relationship with my stepmother is one Christmas when her gift to me revealed just how much of what she thinks of the people in her world is shaped by assumption and not by fact.
I don't know how much my stepmother really knows about my father's life before they met, but she must know he was a missionary with my mother in Africa in his 20s because they took a trip to Africa together a few years ago. I gather, from what little I have been told of that trip, that it was sort of a journey down Memory Lane for my father, and I'm sure he must have spoken with my stepmother of his earlier experiences.
I presume it was a trip he always expected to take with my mother. If she had lived to retirement, I might have gone with them since I was born while they were in Africa.
My father brought back an African wood carving for me. It depicted a father, a mother and a child, and my guess is that he explained to my stepmother why he was buying it.
Anyway, armed only with this information, my stepmother took it upon herself to give me a CD for Christmas a few years back.
She apparently decided to give me a CD of a black performer even though she had no knowledge of black performers or whether I particularly like them.
(My father later told me, in amused tones, of accompanying her on her trip to a CD store and listening to her inquiries as to who B.B. King was. I can't claim that I witnessed that, but I know for a fact that she never asked me about my musical preferences.)
The truth is, I don't care for some black performers, but not because they are black. And I do like other black performers. Again, their color is not an issue.
If she had bothered to ask me about black singers I like, I could have told her that I like Jimi Hendrix. I also like B.B. King. I like the Temptations. I like Chuck Berry. I like Earth, Wind & Fire. I like John Lee Hooker. I like Wilson Pickett. I like Miles Davis.
But she never asked me. She made an assumption.
What did she give me? A CD of Ray Charles' music.
And, although I never said so out loud, I had to wonder — Where the hell did that come from?
I've never owned a Ray Charles album in my life so I don't see how the seed for that idea could have come from my father. If he ever heard Ray Charles' music coming from my room when I was a teenager, it was being played on the radio.
I have nothing against Ray Charles, but I've just never been one of his fans. I don't care what color he was.
And that, to me, is a real–life illustration of what Frasier's father meant when he said, "You're always giving people things you think they should like instead of things that they really like."
Well, Frasier had an excuse, I guess. He was Frederick's father. He knew something about his son, even if he didn't know what he would really like to have for Christmas.
If you still have some of your Christmas shopping to do, here is some advice: Put the folks on your list and their preferences first. Put yourself and your own preferences last.
If the two happen to be the same, so much the better.
