The Bizarre, Brilliant Meme-ification of ‘Frasier’

A new Frasier might be set to premiere on Paramount+ this week, but true fans of Kelsey Grammer’s irascible radio host know that he already found a new audience years ago on social media. Dr. Crane’s Must-See TV neighbors Friends and Seinfeld have generated endless reams of articles, blog posts, and BuzzFeed quizzes, along with a few books, but in their own way, the internet’s ongoing fascination with uncanny, often dark Frasier memes illustrates a truth that devotees of the sitcom have long recognized: Frasier has always been the most powerful of them all.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any TV series with a somewhat respectable following will eventually become viral social media chum, but Frasier’s memes stand a dank cut above the rest. For years, fans have contributed some of Instagram and Weird Twitter’s most bespoke work. In 2018, Priscilla Frank explored the phenomenon for HuffPost and posited that perhaps millennials—specifically, millennial men—saw themselves in Frasier’s portrayal of generational disconnect, particularly as it pertains to masculinity. (Also, as The New Yorker so kindly pointed out in 2020, many millennials also live with their dads.)

Still, how do we explain the utter weirdness of some of these memes? Take, for instance, Frasier Looking at Video Games—an account on X (formerly Twitter) that often superimposes video game imagery onto various stills from the show.

The punchline underpinning these images speaks to an aspect of Frasier's reputation that makes it so meme-able: Given that our favorite radio host is also a creaky snob who would likely have little use for video games or social media (beyond promoting his own work) it’s inherently amusing to foist them upon him anyway. The contrast between the show’s grainy presentation and the sharp video game images only enhances the contrast.

That juxtaposition is key. With its jazzy intro and use of piano music throughout, Frasier cultivated a distinct feel from younger-seeming contemporaries. Frasier and Niles’ obsession with taste above all else shaped the show’s muted, carefully curated look–unintentionally creating a perfect foil, visual and thematic, for the online world’s ephemeral flashiness.

When asked why fans might’ve latched onto Frasier as a source of memes, Dr. Sulafa Zidani—assistant professor of media studies at Northwestern University’s Communication Studies department—noted that the internet loves authenticity, particularly when it’s expressed through imperfection. Who could be more imperfect than the pretentious, stubborn, utterly self-important dolts Frasier and Niles Crane?

Frasier Crane wants more than anything to be perceived as an authoritative intellectual who has things all figured out. “But in practice,” Zidani said, “he’s failing at all of these things. He’s constantly unable to find a partner; he’s getting into trouble at work with his family and his relationships.”

Frasier and his brother’s flaws are often on full display, which makes them all the more meme-orable. As Zidani put it, “There’s like an attraction to what we would consider to be like a normal or relatable human being.”

But there’s something going on here beyond viewers’ personal affinity (or disdain) for the characters; Frasier memes also seem to scratch at something darker within the human psyche.

Often, the best entries in the Frasier meme canon make little sense at all; they might be as simple as ominously edited images or, in the case of Twin Peaks and Scrambled Eggs, an unsettling mash-up that, among other jokes, superimposes Frasier quotes over Twin Peaks imagery.

The disconcerting streak that pervades these mash-ups illustrates another defining trait that’s set Frasier apart: As much as the internet loves authenticity, Zidani said, it also adores absurdist and parodical content. “In Frasier, this is so evident because it’s like, he’s having an existential crisis all the time,” Zidani said. They don’t shy away from these topics, but they’re presented in a comedic way.”

In other words: As well as Frasier’s wry sense of humor works on screen, it might speak to the internet even more profoundly.

Spend enough time scrolling through Twin Peaks and Scrambled Eggs on Instagram, and you might conclude that there's more common ground between the NBC sitcom and David Lynch's unnerving mystery series than meets the eye. Yes, both shows take place in Washington state, but they also share other qualities, like a bleak weariness and marked skepticism toward the “American Dream.” At the same time, Zidani noted that a humor studies concept called “incongruity theory” might also help explain why mash-ups like these can be so successful: People laugh at the unexpected.

At this point, the online Frasier fandom has stretched its creativity beyond meme accounts. In addition to Paramount+’s new series, which debuts Oct. 12, there’s also “Our Frasier Remake”—an animated collaboration made by more than 100 Frasier fans that remakes seconds-long chunks of the show’s Season One finale, “My Coffee With Niles.”

As previously reported by the AV Club, Jimmy Kimmel Live director Jacob Reed created the project, and contributors include the BAFTA-winning animator Steven Kraan, Robot Chicken director Harry Chaskin, and KC Green—aka, the artist who gave us the “This is fine” dog.

The project is set to premiere on Oct. 11—one day before the official reboot begins. The remake’s trailer teases, “Before they can mess with the show we love, we’re doing it first.”

But the projects don’t end there. If a completely immersive and surreal Frasier experience is what you crave, you can also join a Frasier-themed Dungeons and Dragons game—or watch a mash-up of Frasier and the video game Cyberpunk 2077 featuring a cover of the song “Never Fade Away,” rewritten to be about tossed salad and scrambled eggs. The video’s creator, social media user “Major Frasier,” has been at this for a while—creating mash-ups and edited episode clips that often defy explanation through their utter peculiarity.

​​More than anything else, however, it might just be the performances themselves that have made Frasier memes so prolific and enduring.

Every time I revisit this series, the genius of Grammer and David Hyde Pierce’s performances stands out more. Grammer’s mannered vocal expressions work like a time machine; each bug-eyed stare and catastrophic “Dear God!” hits harder than the last. And then, there’s Pierce, who plays Niles as a perfectly insufferable, ineffectual prig. (Speaking of which—for those hoping to expand their vocabularies, there’s also an online Frasier Dictionary that provides definitions for words like “prig” alongside clips from the show for demonstration.) How could you not make memes about these two goofuses and their big, big suits?

As Zidani notes, memes lean heavily on the viewer’s pre-existing knowledge to imbue them with meaning. Memorable performances can create richer humorous landscapes, allowing memes to blossom. “Every time that we look at an image from the show, we are thinking of that scene, or we are thinking of the words that were said.”

In other words, as Zidani put it, if an actor is able to make their performance truly singular, like one Dr. Crane, “It makes them memorable—and thus, meme-able.” Maybe that’s why his fans online, at least, never stopped listening.

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