Chess Pains

First of all, the chess matches are uninteresting and hard to swallow. An experienced player such as Frasier isn't going to lose consistently to someone who has just learned the rules (castle things, horsies, etc.). But this is more about Frasier's ego and his need to win. Martin sees this and it would be quite demeaning. Not enough to rate it very highly.

Okay, let's review: lifelong chess player who knows the game well enough to name obscure strategies cannot beat a halfwit excop who has never played the game. I cant get past the stupidity of the premise. The rest of the father-son baloney is boring, as usual. This would be a much better show without the John Mahoney character; he's an ungrateful, smartass creep and he degrades every episode in which he plays a major role. More Daphne, please, and put the nasty old crock in assisted living.

Nevertheless, the Niles interactions with Frasier (particularly the unboxing of the chess set ) and the bit with the dog rescue the episode.

I can see other reviews have focused on the chess game without really watching the episode, it's been well established at this point that frasier is a phoney when it comes to many things such as Art, Dating, Decor and in this episode Chess, he knows the terminology but is consistently beaten by his father, this is later explained in the episode that Fraisers subconscious isnt allowing him to topple his father, he's also focusing so much on his individual moves that would win the game quickly and not focused on the end game, but more importantly, maybe frasier just doesn't know the game as well as he pretends to! The armchair chess pros on here have reviewed the episode based on this alone, notice there aren't many real therapists judging the show based on his ability to successfully treat anyone? All that said the episode is a good one, the only thing they didn't do was give Frasier a chance to grow, they could have made it so Frasier is humbled at the game and learns to deal with it, but the writers caved, frasier wins in the end and the father who didn't want to play to begin with, ends up being tortured for it. This point in the show was getting frustrating because Niles is single and loves Daphne but the writers needed to drag it out, had they got them together sooner, the show would have had alot more to work with and we'd never have had to suffer through the whole Donnie & Mell nonsense. Overall a good episode, the pompous chess experts ironically missed the point it was making.