correction
A previous version of this article failed to put quote marks around two sentences and attribute them to Emily Kunkel. Kunkel said, “Getting ready to go out for a walk with your baby for the first time? It’s basically Niles’ wordless Valentine’s Day lazzi with the ironing board.” She also said, “At his heart, Frasier is a character who is always, ardently, often hilariously incorrectly, trying to do the right thing. And that’s exactly the energy you want to welcome into your postpartum cocoon.” The article has been corrected.
For the first year of my daughter’s life, I couldn’t fall asleep at night without consuming at least one episode of “Frasier.” (And by “fall asleep,” I mean the 45-minute stretch I enjoyed until baby screams viciously woke me from a “Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs” stupor.) As an outline of the Seattle skyline danced across my TV, I knew that for the next 22 minutes, I would be spending time with grown-ups (plus the Jack Russell terrier Eddie), engaged by proxy in what was likely to be my first adult conversation of the day, and comforted by the fact that my TV friends’ most pressing problems would involve a mad dash to make the late dinner seating at Le Cigare Volant.
