An Incredibly Deep Dive Into the Best Cheers and Frasier Episodes to Watch Before the Frasier Revival

The doctor is back in! 

Psychiatrist Frasier Crane, as portrayed by Kelsey Grammer, was a familiar, welcome face on must-see TV for 20 consecutive years spanning 203 episodes of Cheers, one guest appearance on Wings, and 264 episodes of his own sitcom, Frasier. And now, after a 19-year hiatus, one of television's most enduringly beloved characters is returning to the screen, headlining the Paramount+ revival of Frasier, which finds him returning to his old elbow-bending grounds in Boston and reconnecting with his increasingly distant son, Freddy, who's chosen a radically different life path as a firefighter.

For those viewers with hazy memories as well as an entire generation who've never experienced the particular splendors of the perpetually pompous, hilariously highbrow, romantically challenged, and endearingly exasperated psychiatrist-turned-broadcaster, that's a LOT of TV to be refreshed on or take in for the first time. Luckily, I've assembled a cheat sheet filled with episodes vital to helping understand the long road the good doctor has traveled and inform the new relationship dynamics that kick off Frasier's latest TV journey.

The Essential Cheers Episodes

It's important to recognize that Frasier's initial stint as a resident of Boston, while full of major life moments including his marriage to his ex-wife Lillith Sterin (Bebe Neuwirth) and the birth of their son Frederick, his time there was also flooded with personal setbacks that, while fueling big laughs, led him to realize he perhaps wasn't the best version of himself — thus making his return, despite the chance to revisit his academic past and finally live in the same city as his son again, more than a little fraught.

Viewers first met Frasier at Cheers, the Boston bar at the center of the eponymous sitcom, one of the all-time classics of the form, during its two-part third season premiere in 1984, "Rebound, Parts One and Two" (Season 3, Episodes 1 and 2). After a wildly acrimonious spilt between the star-crossed bar owner Sam Malone (Ted Danson) and barmaid/aspiring artiste Diane Chambers (Shelley Long), Frasier appears as Diane's new, equally high-minded paramour, far more buttoned-up than he'd later become. Soon after, he forges a friendly bond with his romantic rival Sam and the loveably lowbrow barflies at Cheers. (Viewed retroactively, perhaps a subconscious attempt to connect with the common man in ways he never could with his own policeman father, Martin.) 

As powerfully as his contentious relationship with his father defined his life, Frasier was at the core his mother's son. When Hester Crane, an accomplished research scientist, visits Boston in "Diane Meets Mom" (Season 3, Episode 8) and only feigns approval of Diane while going to great lengths to force her out of Frasier's life, it's both a glimpse at the origins of Frasier's lifelong romantic travails and an early glimpse of the later well-established dysfunctional Crane family dynamic — a penchant for meddling, manipulation, and misunderstanding that just might rear its head whenever Frasier disapproves of his own offspring's life choices.

With "Birth, Death, Love and Rice" (Season 4, Episode 1), Frasier reveals that Diane left him at the altar, a heartbreak that introduces a strain of wounded bitterness and romantic failure into the character that would be mined for comedic gold for years to come. 

And even so, he still can't quit the Cheers gang, who serve as sounding boards in Frasier's next big relationship with the icy, intellectually strident, and even more tightly wound Dr. Lilith Sternin, who debuts as a seemingly ill-matched date in "Second Time Around" (Season 4, Episode 17), emerges in "Abnormal Psychology" (Season 5, Episode 4) as an initially antagonistic but surprisingly amorous romantic partner, sparking a raucous courtship of ups and downs ultimately culminating in their off-screen wedding and the riotous birth of their son Freddy in "The Stork Brings a Crane" (Season 8, Episode 6). 

(These are the formative episodes, but with Bebe Neuwirth slated to return for a guest shot in the revival, virtually every Frasier-Lilith-centric Cheers and Frasier entry makes for delightful viewing that will also inform the ex-couple's eventual dynamic.)

In "Two Girls for Every Boyd" (Season 8, Episode 10) there's a brief scene in which Frasier reveals to his bar mates that his father was a research scientist whose stern disapproval for the arts led Frasier to follow in his father's footsteps into psychology, and that Frasier hated him for it but regretted he never got to tell him he was right before he died. Far more satisfying than the punchline that comes at the end of that tale is the payoff four years later on the Frasier episode "The Show Where Sam Shows Up" (Frasier, Season 2, Episode 16) when a visiting Sam Malone meets the very much not-dead, never-a-scientist Martin Crane (John Mahoney), and both learn Frasier's rationale for fabricating Martin's backstory.

Even after entering private practice, Frasier was enamored of academia, a world that looms large as he returns to Boston in the revival. For a taste of Frasier in that world, there's "Whodunnit?" (Season 3, Episode 13), in which Frasier is aghast when his beloved mentor Dr. Bennett Ludlow strikes up a dalliance with barmaid Carla Tortelli (Rhea Perlman), and "Simon Says" (Season 5, Episode 21), where he reconnects with his Oxford classmate, bestselling relationship guru Dr. Simon Finch-Royce, played by a deliriously acerbic John Cleese.

Indeed, Frasier's obsession with intellectual achievement, shared with Lilith, forms the core of "Breaking in is Hard to Do" (Season 9, Episode 7), where Freddy's below average speech development sparks panicked efforts on his parents' behalf to put him back on pace, demonstrating the lengths they were already willing to go to early on to push their son forward, resulting in a truly laugh-out-loud reveal of Freddy's ultimate first word. 

But as simpatico as the Cranes long seemed to be, another heartbreak loomed for Frasier in the two-parter "Teaching with the Enemy" and "The Girl in the Plastic Bubble" (Season 11, Episodes 6 and 7), in which he discovers Lilith is carrying on an affair with her lab partner. For Frasier, it's an even lower ebb than when Diane left him at the altar, and one that ultimately puts him out on the ledge of a building, contemplating suicide (which somehow the show manages to mine for comedy) — a key moment that would be later revisited in Frasier as a critical motivator in his return to his hometown. 

The couple's rift reaches a seeming resolution — if not one that sticks — in another key two-parter, "Is There a Doctor In the Howe?" and "The Bar Manager, the Shrink, His Wife and Her Lover" (Season 11, Episodes 16 and 17) where just as Frasier is ready to move on — quite possibly with Rebecca Howe — Lilith recomplicates his life.

The Essential Frasier Episodes

Returning to his hometown with a new career as a radio psychiatrist with his own call-in show, Frasier's life is wonderfully redefined in the Frasier pilot "The Good Son" (Season 1, Episode 1), where just as he's eagerly entering a period of reinvention on his own terms, he dutifully brings his estranged, embittered father Martin, wounded when intervening during a liquor store holdup, into his home, where their strained relationship — plus Martin's inscrutable dog Eddie, his eccentric physical therapist Daphne Moon (Jane Leeves), and Frasier's even more snobbish, uptight and competitive brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) — upends his newfound harmony, but offers glimmers of hope that father and son might finally bridge their differences. 

Frasier's ever contentious, often poignant, always uproarious relationship with Martin fueled the series' laughter and warmth for eleven seasons and will deeply inform the generational and cultural clash he'll next experience with Freddy in the revival, and "The Good Son" and its subsequent episode "Space Quest" (Season 1, Episode 2) form a nifty bookend with the initial two episodes of the revival.

Of course, each episode of Frasier develops our hero and his quirky clan in fresh and hilarious ways, but a few layer on additional pathos and illustrate the evolution in the Frasier-Martin rapport. "You Can Go Home Again" (Season 3, Episode 24) is a flashback to the earliest days of Frasier's return to Seattle which shows just how seemingly insurmountable the vast gulf between the Cranes was, while "The Return of Martin Crane" (Season 9, Episode 4) has Martin, about to return to the workforce as a security guard, looking back at the moments before he was shot when he was reflecting on his fractured relationship with his sons, with a moving ending that shows just how far the Crane men have come.

Episodes more lighthearted in mood explore the thawing relationships among Frasier, Martin, and Niles, including "Breaking the Ice" (Season 2, Episode 20), in which they go ice fishing together for the first time and wind up stranded together overnight; "Martin Does It His Way" (Season 3, Episode 3), where the brothers try to help Martin achieve his secretly held dream of writing a song for Frank Sinatra; and "Our Father Whose Art Ain't Heaven" (Season 4, Episode 8), where Martin has a wildly unexpected reaction when Frasier admits he doesn't like the expensive painting his father gave him for Christmas.

Most of the Frasier episodes focusing on Freddy are underlined by the psychiatrist's efforts to be a good father despite the long geographic distance between them. Two of the best occur as Freddy matures into a pre-teen and teen, where Frasier has to work harder to maintain a connection with his son: "Cranes Unplugged" (Season 8, Episode 10) finds Frasier, disappointed in electronics-immersed Freddy's indifference to the activities he's planned, forcing Freddy and Martin into a "bonding" camping trip; and "High Holidays" (Season 11, Episode 11), in which Frasier contends with Freddy's transformation into a disaffected Goth perpetually embarrassed by everything his father does.

Despite their martial split, Frasier and Lilith remained united in their efforts to assure the brightest possible future for Freddy — which to them, of course, means the most elite education possible. In one of the series' funniest episodes, "A Lilith Thanksgiving" (Season 4, Episode 7), the ex-couple relentlessly attempts to better the odds of Freddy's admittance into a prestigious private school, even as their efforts prove increasingly irritating to the imperious head of admissions. The episode offers a prelude to the revival's suggestion that Freddy did not always share his parents' grand ambitions for his own path.

No foray into Frasier would be complete without sampling one of the show's signatures: sublimely farce-driven episodes, masterfully constructed soufflés of miscommunication, mistaken identities, frustrated libidos, thwarted ambitions, and best laid plans gone awry — a tradition first introduced on Cheers and certain to carry over to the new revival. For sheer comic delight, you can't go wrong with "The Innkeepers" (Season 2, Episode 23), "Ham Radio" (Season 4, Episode 18), "The Ski Lodge" (Season 5, Episode 14) and "Three Valentines" (Season 6, Episode 14).

Finally, the two-part series finale, "Goodnight, Seattle, Parts One and Two" (Season 11, Episodes 23 and 24) provides a key refresher course in just where and how Frasier's Seattle journey concluded, having established himself as a popular radio personality while reforging the splintered bonds with his father and brother and extending the inner circle with his close friend Roz Doyle (Peri Gilpin, who'll return for a guest stint in the revival, after ascending to station manager in KACL in the original run's finale), Martin's new bride Ronnie, Niles' soulmate Daphne, and the family's latest addition, their newborn son David (who grows up to become a central character in the revival). 

Ever on the road to growth and seeking true love, Frasier takes a big gamble by relocating to Chicago to pursue his sadly aborted romance with the unlucky-in-love matchmaker Charlotte Connor. After nearly two decades, viewers will discover exactly what came of that big leap, and how it leads him back to Boston all these years later.

Frasier premieres Oct. 12 on Paramount+.