[SHOWER RUNNING]
Whoa.
Well, look who's up.
BOY: It's my parents. I don't know, they're just, like, really stupid.
-May I ask how old you are? -Fourteen.
Well, hang on, Jimmy. Your parents are gonna be stupid
for another seven years.
Whoa, seven years?
That's, like, longer than I'll be in high school.
I salute your optimism.
We'll be right back after this.
Oh, God, Roz. A teenager who's embarrassed by his parents?
Can't you come up with something a little more challenging for me?
It was either him or our old pal Rudy, the crier.
Rudy, the crier. He's been on three times in the last month.
You put him on again, he won't be the only one who's crying.
God, I'm in a dry spell.
Where are the souls of genuine torment?
The people teetering on the brink of genuine despair?
Oh, they'll be back. The holidays are just around the corner.
Well, perhaps you're right.
Oh, Roz.
-I've a question I'd like to ask you. -Shoot.
Have you ever had a recurring dream of an intimate nature about someone…
Well, a coworker?
-Oh, no, why'd you tell me? -Oh, Roz.
Now it's gonna be creepy every time you look at me through the glass.
Roz, not you!
-Who was it then? -I'm not gonna go into specifics.
-Gina in accounting? -I'm not gonna do this.
-Oh, Sheila, the slow intern? -Forget I even mentioned it.
Knock, knock.
Gil.
Frasier, I've come to tempt you.
Really?
I am reviewing the new pastry chef at Chez Shea. And I quote:
"His amaretto éclair is so sinful,
it will send you scurrying to your local padre for absolution."
No, thank you, Gil. I'm on a diet, you see.
-Oh, come now, you know you want it. -No, no, no, I really don't.
Off you go. Bye-bye.
-Oh, my God! -What?
-It was Gil! -I never said that.
-Then why are you blushing? -Ridiculous!
-Your ears are turning red. -I am not.
You are.
Still not blushing.
MAN [CRYING]: Just lying there in the hospital bed,
she lifted her head off the pillow,
looked up and said, "I love you." And then she was gone.
Rudy, stop crying.
Now, we've gone over this before.
What was our agreement about sad movies?
-I shouldn't watch them. -Exactly.
Now, go get a cool washcloth
to try to bring down the puffiness around your eyes,
and please stay away from sad or depressing things.
Which, at this moment, includes listening to The Frasier Crane Show.
Well, let's shoot it to the news.
That's it for today. This is Dr. Frasier Crane.
Oh, my God! Well, close the record books.
That was just the dullest three hours in the history of The Frasier Crane Show.
Oh, come on, it wasn't so bad.
What about the woman who was so concerned about her appearance
-she wouldn't leave the house? -That was a commercial!
I believe Miss Clairol solved the problem.
Well, I'll see you tomorrow, Roz. Oh, Roz.
About that dream I mentioned to you earlier…
It goes without saying, I'd rather you didn't share that.
-Oh, sure. -Hi, dream boy.
I hate you.
Couldn't keep your mouth shut, could you?
Just when did you find the time to spread the news?
You don't think I was listening to your show, do you?
BULLDOG: Coming through!
Oh, Doc, I gotta rub this one in a little.
All right, Bulldog, before you start to ridicule me,
yes, yes, I had a dream about Gil,
and, yes, it did have some erotic elements, but…
You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?
I do now. Whoa!
Look, let's just forget it.
What delightful jibe did you have prepared for me?
Oh, I was gonna tell you your show today just broke the snooze-o-meter,
but now I wanna hear about you greasing Gil's cookie sheet.
I'm on a bus to hell.
So I returned to the dry cleaners yet a third time.
I hardly need to tell you how the story ends.
Just tell me when the story ends.
Fine. They realigned my pleats. The end.
I'm sorry, Niles. I'm just a bit distracted today.
See, this morning a man from my building,
approached me with an intriguing problem.
Seems he's been having a recurring dream.
Please, that little gambit didn't work when we were in knee socks.
-What was your dream, Frasier? -Oh, all right.
It's been tormenting me. I haven't been able to sleep in weeks now.
It's a bit hazy, but it starts out in a seedy motel room.
-I'm naked. -Interesting.
Yes, well, I roll over and discover on my forearm
a tattoo with the word "chesty."
-Interesting. -Yes. And then the shower turns off.
Out from the bathroom steps…
A man.
All right, go ahead, let me have it.
Are you saying that now, or is that a quote from the dream?
Please.
We're too intelligent to waste time on the obvious interpretation.
Yes. But you must admit it's rather intriguing.
Would you stop?
It's obviously screaming for a Jungian interpretation.
The sexuality in the dream is surely symbolic
of some deeper non-sexual conflict.
-All right. -Good afternoon, Frasier.
-Gil. -A little birdie tells me,
I was featured in your midnight movie.
Very clever. Off you go.
Very well. See you tomorrow,
or should I say, see you in your dreams.
In this dream of yours, were there any cigars,
bananas or short, blunt swords?
Would you stop it? I'm 43, a little late for latency.
-You guys okay over here? -We're fine.
Well, you must be new here.
I would've remembered such a pretty face as yours.
-You're overcompensating. -Right.
We're fine. Bye-bye.
I'm just baffled by it. Gil Chesterton explains "chesty," but little else.
You should tackle this from a free-association standpoint.
-Oh, God. Must we? -Focus on a detail in the motel room.
What's the first thing that pops into your mind?
A crescent-shaped lamp.
Perfect. A crescent-shaped lamp. Run with that.
Crescent. Moon.
Daphne Moon. French maid.
-Brass bed. Satin rope. -Niles!
-This is my dream. -I was just showing you the process.
You were three words away from a cigarette.
-Your turn. -All right.
-Crescent lamp. -Crescent.
Croissant.
Butter. Apricot jam.
Hunger. Food. Diet.
My God, I've been on a diet. Do you think that's useful?
You could stand to lose a few pounds.
Just wait a minute.
All right, Gil is a restaurant critic. He's a gourmet.
Perhaps he's symbolic of the food I've been denying myself.
That would explain why you're naked.
It's when we're most self-conscious about our bodies.
Yes, and most vulnerable to the way society tattoos us,
with labels about our appearance. Oh, my God, that's it, Niles.
The dream is simply telling me that I've been too rigid about my diet.
You'll know tonight. If this is the correct interpretation,
the conflict will have passed from your unconscious to your conscious mind.
Yes. The dream will have served its purpose.
-And you'll no longer be plagued by it. -Oh, God. I've nailed it. I really have.
Finally, for the first time in weeks,
there'll be no tequila bottles, no tattoo, no half-naked man in my bed.
So then the rabbi says…
[SHOWER RUNNING]
[SHOWER STOPS RUNNING]
Oh, I'm sorry.
Wrong room.
That does it. We're finding another motel.
Oh, God.
[ELEVATOR DINGS]
Hello.
Someone followed me again last night.
You're just being paranoid.
I'm telling you, they're on to me.
Come on, nobody could recognize you after all that plastic surgery.
That's what Marlena thought.
Marlena got sloppy. She never should've gone back to Zürich.
I just don't want any more bloodshed.
[WHISPERS] Relax, you're home-free.
You don't know the Woodchuck and his ways.
[ELEVATOR DINGS]
-Oh, we're terrible. -We are? You are.
"The Woodchuck and his ways"?
You know, we really should stop doing this. It's not nice.
Yeah, you're right. We won't do it anymore.
How'd you get the stuff through customs?
They never check the wooden leg.
The answer has got to be in there somewhere.
Here's something. "Dreams as an expression of wish-fulfillment."
Moving on.
Goodness, are you two still here?
-What are you working on? -Nothing.
I'm helping Frasier interpret a dream he's been having.
You know, maybe Dad can help.
No, no, no. No, no, no.
Don't want to bore Dad with the details of this particular dream.
Dreams can be rooted in childhood experience.
Maybe Dad remembers something you repressed.
Gee, I don't know. If it's about when you were a kid,
I've repressed a lot of that myself.
This is not a dream I wish to share with Dad, thank you very much.
We've exhausted every other interpretation,
so I guess it's back to dreams as wish-fulfillment.
Oh, Dad, would you mind listening to my dream
to see if it conjures up any memories from my childhood?
Oh, come on, you're making too much out of this.
It's a dream. Dreams are weird.
Okay, please, Dad, I wouldn't ask if it weren't really bothering me.
-Oh, all right. Go on. -All right now.
It starts out in a little motel room.
I have a tattoo on my arm, "chesty."
See? That's weird.
Yes, but then out from the bathroom steps a…
All right, now before I continue,
just let me remind you that this is a dream, not to be confused with reality.
Out from the bathroom steps a…
Man…
Eating lion.
Oh, see?
There again, weird.
Look, dreams come, they go. They don't mean anything.
Except if you're lucky once in a while, you might have one that's fun.
Like, you know, you're hitting a home run in the World Series,
or you're in the jungle with Jayne Mansfield
-and she gets bit by a snake. -Thank you, Dad.
-You know who Jayne Mansfield is? -Yes, Dad.
-Know what they do when you're bit? -Yes, Dad.
Wish I knew what I had for dinner that night.
Oh, I get it. "Chesty" refers to Gil Chesterton.
Niles, you gossipy fishwife.
There's no reason to feel self-conscious, Dr. Crane.
We've all had dreams like that.
I had one about a girl I shared a flat with once. A gymnast.
Go on, Daphne. This could be significant.
Well, I remember we were doing stretches in the gymnasium,
when suddenly we decided to take off all our clothes
and go for a bounce on the trampoline.
The next thing you know, I'm chasing her around the pommel horse and…
Oh, never mind.
Don't stop now.
This could help us.
Well, actually, I do have a theory of me own about your dream,
-if you'd like to hear it. -What the hell.
Well, in your dream, who was in the shower? Gil.
What is a shower? Running water.
Who needs water? Fish.
What do fish have? Gills.
Do you see where I'm going?
Insane.
It could be a dream about the loss of a beloved childhood pet.
Thanks a lot, Eddie. Forty-five minutes in the park, you don't have to go.
I get one bite into my sandwich, and you give me the look.
Mr. Crane, did Dr. Crane ever have a goldfish growing up?
-A fish? -Yes, as a pet.
How would I know? That was Hester's department.
Come on, let's go.
Frasier, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
That Dad can interpret the looks from his dog
and has only the spottiest recollections of our childhood?
No, no, no. Hester.
Hesty. The tattoo. That's only one letter away from chesty.
Then are you saying that the dream could have been about Mother?
Well?
I suppose I could've misread the tattoo.
Yes, this freckle pattern here on my arm could be mistaken for a C.
And what swims in the sea? Fish.
All right, all right. I'll go.
Well, so, the tattoo could've said "Hesty."
But the problem is I don't ever remember Dad calling Mom that.
But who's to say he didn't?
[GASPS]
-NILES, FRASIER: Dad, Dad, Dad. -What?
Did you ever have a nickname for Mother?
Oh, for God's sakes, this to do with that stupid dream?
-Dad, this is really important. -Any pet name?
A term of endearment?
Well, when we were first married, I used to call her "honey."
And then there was a time after that that I started calling her "sweetie."
I'm sure there's a delicious anecdote behind each one of those,
but did you ever call her Hesty?
-Hesty? -Oh, come on! Think, man!
Even once. Once in all the years you lived together?
Well, I don't know. I mean, I guess.
-Maybe once, you know. -Oh, thank you, Dad.
Well, there it is.
I must have heard him call her Hesty once,
and neatly tucked it away into my subconscious.
Of course. It's so obvious.
Gil is a food critic. Food. Criticism.
[IN UNISON] Mother!
It's the classic Oedipal dream.
Yes. Only I was so frightened by my sexual urges to be with my mother
that I transformed her into a man.
Oh, what a relief. I've been wringing my hands over nothing.
I mean it's okay. All I want to do is have sex with my dead mother.
[SHOWER RUNNING]
[SHOWER STOPS RUNNING]
Mom?
Mommy?
Patience, Daddy.
[MARTIN GRUNTS]
You'd think by now I'd know better than to have that third Slim Jim
before going to bed.
-You couldn't sleep either, huh? -No.
Frankly, I'm sort of afraid to go back to sleep. It's that damn dream again.
Oh, what are you worried about? It's just a dream.
Worst case scenario:
The man-eating lion leaps on top of you and mauls you.
I'm sorry, Dad. I wasn't completely truthful with you before.
The dream is really about me in a motel room with a male companion,
Gil Chesterton.
You don't care if I ever sleep again, do you?
Dad, please. I'd really like to discuss this.
MARTIN: No, Frasier, please. This makes me very uncomfortable.
-FRASIER: Dad, please? -I know, I know.
In your generation, men talk about everything.
Everything's out in the open.
You know, what really drives me crazy is the way you all touch each other.
Everybody hugs, you know.
In my generation, it was a handshake.
That was good enough,
and maybe if you felt especially close to someone,
you could touch them on the shoulder, but never for more than two seconds.
And don't talk to me about football players
patting people's butts and everything because that's different. That's sports.
-That's like war. Now, good night, son. -Dad!
If you wanna tell me something, write it on a Post-it,
-and stick it on the fridge. -Look, I really want to talk about this.
I've exhausted every other interpretation of this dream.
Is it possible my subconscious is trying to tell me
something about my sexuality?
-Oh, that's ridiculous! -Is it?
I was sensitive as a child.
I didn't go in for sports.
God, it's every cliché in the book.
Surely it must have occurred to you at some point.
You refused to take me to see West Side Story on my birthday.
Well, because of the gangs.
-That's scary for kids. -Even gangs that dance?
Especially gangs that dance.
All right, yeah, okay. Yeah, I thought about it,
but, no, Frasier, no. I don't believe that.
And you know why? Because you would've known by now.
Your unconscious or whatever the hell you call it
could no more have kept its yap shut than the rest of you.
-I suppose you're right. -Yeah.
Now, come on, it's after 3.
You're gonna be worn out before the show tomorrow.
-What a tragedy that would be. -Now what're you complaining about?
Oh, no, just…
I haven't had any really interesting calls lately.
I'm beginning to question whether I'm bored with psychiatry.
You'd never know it the way you got your nose stuck in all those books.
That's true.
The one saving grace about this dream
is it's given me a chance to flex my analytical muscle a bit.
So maybe it wasn't so bad after all.
Wait a minute.
Could that be what this has been all about?
I've been so intellectually unchallenged lately by my show
that my mind had to create a dream that defies interpretation
-just to give me a challenge? -I don't know, keep talking.
You're making me sleepy.
Dad, no, that's got to be it!
My show hasn't provided me with a single patient worthy of my skills.
And I had to invent one myself. Me.
Oh, God, what a relief.
At last, finally, to bed. Dad, you witnessed an epiphany.
MARTIN: Yeah, God, I gotta get you to put this on tape.
FRASIER: Well, off we go.
To sleep, perchance not to dream.
[MOANS]
[SHOWER NOT RUNNING]
[KNOCKING ON DOOR]
Come in.
Dr. Crane? Dr. Sigmund Freud.
-My goodness, this is quite an honor. -The honor is all mine.
I gave you a complex psychological problem, and you solved it.
-Thank you… -You're a brilliant psychiatrist.
Oh, that's very flattering, but there are so many things I'd like to ask you.
In good time, my boy, in good time.
Right now we have more important matters.