Frasier experiences a midlife crisis when broadcasters announce he will receive a lifetime achievement award.
Tropes:
- Armor-Piercing Question: Frasier and his old mentor try to get to the root of Frasier's current self-esteem problem, eventually leading to the friend asking Frasier to treat himself like one of his own callers. However, all of Frasier's mental exercises keep failing, because "the caller" already knows them, eventually leading to this exchange:Frasier: I don't know what he wants!Mentor: Then why do you keep trying to bury him in psychiatric exercises?Frasier: Because that's all I have! (Beat) ...I'm sorry, caller. I can't help you.
- Distracting Disambiguation: Frasier's crisis is sparked when his old psychiatry mentor sends him a gift with an attached card stating "You must be proud", rather than stating that the mentor himself was proud of Frasier. When Frasier visits him for clarification (and finds out his secretary wrote the card for him), Frasier himself uses similar dismissive terminology in reference to his accomplishment, and ends up breaking down.
- Escapism: The mentor, at one point, theorizes that Frasier's career in psychology started as a way to distance himself from emotional relationships that scared him, and that his current crisis is caused by the inevitability that his career will end and he'll be forced to deal with people on a more personal level.
- Existential Horror: The episode focuses on Frasier dealing with one of these, rather than a Hollywood Midlife Crisis, when he reevaluates his "lifetime" of work and comes to the realization that it may have been meaningless.
