Frasier and Niles use a beach-house owned by Maris to hold a party, but the stench of a dead seal (that is never shown throughout the episode) interferes.
Tropes:
- The Cameo: Playwright Christopher Durang as Sebastian.
- Dirty Old Man: Daphne calls Martin this when she realises he's trying to flirt with her friend Pam, who's young enough to be his daughter.Martin: Hey, the girls in Pyongang used to think I was pretty damn cute!
Daphne: Yeah, well this is a bit different. You're not 21 and her village hasn't just burned down! - Not What It Looks Like: Niles and Frasier wrap the seal in one of Maris' robes, douse it in perfume and dump it off the side of a rowboat. One of the neighbors sees all this and, not knowing about the seal, assumes they killed Maris and dumped her body. Frasier tries to explain to the police but then they see Niles with a bloody knife, from trying to stab the seal and make it less buoyant, which doesn't help their case.
- Race Fetish: Martin is attracted to Pam because she's Asian and reminds him of the girls he met during the Korean War.Daphne: This explains that so-called "mix up" at the video store. "Mistake" my fanny, you ordered The Joy Luck Club!
- Shout-Out: To The Man Who Came to Dinner.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: Somehow, the show managed to get away with this by using, of all things, something that was dead! No matter what Frasier or Niles did to get rid of the dead seal, it just kept on coming back.
