Niles begins carrying around a sack of flour due wanting to experience fatherhood. Frasier realizes he has inadvertantly written an insensitive comment on a hospital card for a co-worker.
Tropes:
- Born in an Elevator: The Crane men are in a cab driven by a woman who suddenly goes into labor.
- Delivery Guy: Despite their medical degrees, Frasier and Niles prove to be absolutely useless at helping the cab driver with her labor. Martin fares better, having two sons of his own and having delivered other babies during his time on the force.
- Egg Sitting: At Frasier's suggestion, Niles starts carrying around a bag of flour to simulate what it will be like to care for a child. The bag quickly picks up tears and burns from various mishaps, although as Niles points out some of the things that happened to it wouldn't have happened if it was an actual baby.Niles: A real child would have cried before it burst into flames!
- Finger in the Mail: Niles has a dream that his sack of flour is kidnapped and the perpetrators send him muffins as proof of life.
- Hypocritical Humor: When Niles gets on Frasier's case for putting his flour infant, Frasier has this to say.Frasier: OH NILES, I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOUR INSANITY! I HAVE TO GO STEAL A "GET-WELL" CARD FROM A KIDNEY PATIENT!
- Poor Communication Kills: Frasier was under the impression that he signed a birthday card due to it being a giant pink rabbit that had a cheery tune whenever it opened. It turns out to be a get-well card because no other card was big enough to fit the many names of the people who work at KACL.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Frasier's attempts to make a new card with all the signatures in place and return it to Clarence at the hospital end up being all for naught when it turns out he changed rooms and is mad at everyone else at KACL for not sending him a card. Since Frasier accidentally gave the revised card to some other patient he's forced to concede.
- Shout-Out: Daphne alerts Niles to Eddie chewing on his sack of flour by telling him "That dingo's got your baby" in an Australian accent.
- The Tag: Daphne is seen treating a sack of flour like a baby and when Martin mocks her for it, they begin throwing the flour at each other.
