Kelsey would do a 12th season

[Steve M.]

Some critics have actually interpreted "Frasier" as a satire on the educated classes designed to delight the "great unwashed" who hate intellectuals and bourgeois elitists like Frasier and Niles. Appraently, in this analysis, Martin is the respected "average guy" who has to suffer his insufferable twits of sons. After all, it's just not normal for American male heterosexuals to be so cultured and refined like the Crane brothers, no?

I see it differently. Frasier and Niles show that you can be cultured and refined and still act as foolishly as any Joe Sixpack, and Martin has acted foolishly on occasion. In other words, everybody, to quote the Main Ingredient, plays the fool sometimes. What makes Frasier and Niles so funny is that they think that their education and their refinement somehows spare them of having that character trait. Ironically, they make fools of themselves worrying about their status. They're so class-conscious, they agonize over it - a typically American attitude.

As Paul Fussell noted in his 1983 book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, "If you find an American who feels entirely class-secure, stuff him and exhibit him. He's a rare specimen."