"I'm not condemning you for your little 'fling,' but don't try to pass it off as something deeper than it is; the only thing you two have in common is the faint impression of the word Sealy on your backsides."
Niles (David Hyde Pierce)
In the episode of Frasier that first aired on this night in 1998, "Frasier Gotta Have It," Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) was excited about a new relationship he had with Caitlin (Lisa Edelstein), a young artist.
They didn't seem to have much in common beyond the physical, and Niles (David Hyde Pierce) enjoyed teasing his brother about that.
Frasier, however, did not like being teased, and he kept insisting there was much more to it than the physical — even though he confessed that, when they met, he and Caitlin had not discussed whether she was a native of Seattle, the school she had attended or her preferences in the arts.
In an attempt to learn more about her, Frasier invited her to dinner. When she arrived, there still was no indication that the relationship was anything more than physical as the two fell into each other's arms and shared a long, passionate kiss.
Did they share more than that? Well, Niles speculated that, at that moment, they were sharing a Tic Tac.
Frasier did learn a few things about Caitlin that evening that he hadn't known.
For example, he learned that Caitlin's father owned a vineyard when she was growing up so she had more than a casual knowledge of wine.
She wasn't a wine drinker, though. She told Frasier and Niles that she had always hated the taste of wine. In fact, she said, she had cut alcohol out of her life altogether — along with sugar, dairy products and meat.
That put a considerable dent in Frasier's planned menu for the evening.
Frasier also learned — to his chagrin — that Caitlin thought Martin's chair was cool. Frasier, of course, thought it was hideous.
But he didn't let that get in the way. If anything, the physical relationship grew hotter. When Frasier went over to Caitlin's place to break things off, he got swept away with lust, and the two fell into bed with each other.
In fact, the finicky, fastidious Frasier overlooked many things in Caitlin that would have been (and often were) dealbreakers in his other relationships. Why? Because, in his own words, he was a sexaholic.
And strictly physical infatuations blind people to things that normally would matter to them.
Frasier certainly wasn't immune to that.
One of the things that I thought made the episode intriguing was the fact that Dan Butler, who ordinarily played Bulldog Briscoe, a notorious womanizer from KACL, directed it. It wasn't unusual for cast members, particularly Grammer, to direct episodes, and I don't know if this was Butler's only directorial effort on Frasier — but considering the character he usually played, it was an interesting topic.
