The “On the Couch with Frasier” Drinking Game
Frasier evokes strong memories for me. Back in the day, we used to record episodes on VHS. And then I went over to my parents’ and put on Frasier and worked late into the night on their Windows computer—mine ran Linux—practicing designing 3D scenes. My idea was to create a computer game about a haunted school building, but the problem was that I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
Now, I waste time watching Frasier on Netflix, and I drink for all the stupid, idiotic stuff—drink coffee if I want to get wired or wine if I want to get smashed, and this show is rich enough to accomplish either!
- Drink when Frasier makes a stupid pun, on purpose, and then pauses for a laugh. (Feel free to let out a muffled groan before drinking.)
- Drink when Frasier or Niles uses a word you would need a dictionary to spell, or a literary allusion that you would need the Spark Notes to understand.
- Drink when Frasier goes on and on embarrassingly (or boringly), when a simple statement would do just as well.
- Drink when Frasier or Niles does or says something that proves that, as a psychiatrist, he has absolutely no clue whatsoever how other people’s minds work. (e.g., Frasier thinks he’s a sex god.)
- Drink whenever Frasier or Niles, with his PhD, falls into a trap so stupid and wimpy, even I could figure out a way around it.
- Drink when Frasier or Niles does anything more obsessive, compulsive, narcissistic, or neurotic than any of their patients, including:
- competes with his brother,
- obsesses over something insignificant,
- buts into someone else’s business so he can feel better about himself,
- struggles with basic relationship issues that we all learned to handle by the age of 4,
- ends a relationship permanently just because it’s not fairy-tale perfect,
- overdramatizes anything.
- Drink when Frasier or Niles tries to talk like he knows something about some manly subject that he’s completely clueless about. Drink again if it’s a topic you mastered when you were 10 or younger.
- Drink whenever one of Frasier’s high-school nemeses proves that neither of them have become even a day more mature over the past 30 years, by playing juvenile mind games on Frasier, who naively and repeatedly falls into these traps.
- Drink if Frasier concocts some complicated scheme to find out whether a woman likes him, when it would have been simpler just to ask.
- Drink if Frasier thinks up a complicated lie, when the truth would have worked even better. Drink again if it’s to impress a woman.
Sigh. I still like watching this classic series. It makes me laugh. It makes me cry. It makes me want to gut out my own entrails and force-feed them to the idiots that stuck in so many bad jokes along with the good ones. Still I keep going back for more, kind of like a dysfunctional psychiatrist.
Just keep the booze coming!
Cheers!
-TimK
