Flour Child

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Frasier season two September 1994 - May 1995 List of Frasier episodes

Episodes: Slow Tango in South Seattle The Unkindest Cut of All The Matchmaker Flour Child Duke's We Hardly Knew Ye' The Botched Language of the Cranes The Candidate Adventures in Paradise (Part I) Adventures in Paradise (Part II) Burying a Grudge Seat of Power Roz in the Doghouse Retirement Is Murder Fool Me Once, Shame On You... You Scratch My Book... The Show Where Sam Shows Up Daphne's Room The Club Someone to Watch Over Me Breaking the Ice An Affair to Forget Agents in America, Part III The Innkeepers Dark Victory

Flour Child is the fourth episode of the second season of Frasier. It was originally aired on 11 October 1994.

[edit] Plot

After witnessing a birth, Niles starts to contemplate the idea of becoming a parent himself. Frasier mentions in passing that schools often give teenagers who want to be a parent a bag of flour to look after and watch for a week, and Niles takes the idea seriously and decides to try it. Over the week, the baby is bumped, soaked, set on fire, poked with a chopstick, and finally gored by Eddie the dog.

Meanwhile, Frasier is asked to sign a card for a work colleague. He jokingly writes "Dear Clarence, you're not getting older, you're just getting closer to death", before finding to his horror that the card is not for a birthday - Clarence has had a kidney transplant. To avoid embarrassment he has to buy the exact same card, sneak into the hospital to get the old one back, and recreate everyone else's messages letter-for-letter. When returning the card he sees Clarence, who is delighted that Frasier "went to the trouble to visit when the rest of those bums didn't even send me a card".

One fondly-remembered joke involves Niles enthusiastically running into the kitchen and picking up a bag which says 'extra-refined'. and noting that "he [the baby] is taking after his old man already". Frasier interrupts him by saying that's the sugar, and he finds the flour, and reads that its packaging says "bleached, 100% fat free, best when kept in an airtight container. Seems like this one's taking after its mother", a reference to Niles' unseen wife Maris.