Saturday, May 12, 2018

An Unexpected Party Guest



Frasier (Kelsey Grammer): Murderers on death row can find women to marry them! I can't find one to sit through coffee with me!

Niles (David Hyde Pierce): It's easy for those men to attract women. They have all that time to work out in the yard.

Perhaps the worst–kept secret on the Frasier show was the fact that the Crane brothers, Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and Niles (David Hyde Pierce), led star–crossed love lives — except that, unlike Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, it didn't apply merely to one lover but to all.

Not so with Roz (Peri Gilpin). She had a very active love life — and, in the episode that first aired on this night in 1998, "Life of the Party," Roz's sex life had caught up to her.

It had been established earlier in the Frasier timeline that Roz was pregnant. It was on this night 20 years ago that Roz's baby made her first appearance.

The occasion was a singles–only party that Niles and Frasier were throwing at Niles' place. It had been suggested by their father Martin (John Mahoney). When he was young, he told his sons, he and his buddies threw such parties — frequently — when they were hard up for dates.

At first Niles and Frasier weren't too keen on the idea — but then Martin announced that he had a new 10,000–piece jigsaw puzzle called "The Wheatfield." The brothers suddenly became more open to the idea.

Martin was one of the attendees, but, acting on Daphne's advice (Jane Leeves), he had dyed his hair to appear younger — and was under the impression that his efforts were succeeding.

But then at the party, the dye job began to drip, and Martin left a large stain on one of Niles' chairs.

Turned out Martin had used shoe polish instead of hair dye.

As far as Niles and Frasier were concerned, the party had had its desired effect, and both had met someone they wanted to date. Trouble was that it was the same person.

So they spent much of the episode vying for this woman's attention.

But then things were interrupted because Roz went into labor — right there in the middle of the party — and the Cranes took her to the hospital. As they sat in the waiting room, they bickered — stopping only to wish Roz the best as the hospital staff wheeled her to the delivery room. As soon as she disappeared, the bickering resumed.

Then when the delivery was over, they went into Roz's room to see the baby.

The baby, Roz told them, would be named Alice — and Alice would be a fixture on Frasier in the years to come.