TheFrasierreboot introduced Nicholas Lyndhurst’s Alan Cornwall as Dr. Crane’s long-time best friend – so where was he in the previous two shows? The new series sees Frasier returning to Boston for his third actafter his father Martin has passed away. He hoped to reconnect with his estranged son Freddy, so he bought Freddy’s apartment building and moved into the apartment across the hall from his. But Freddy isn’t the only old acquaintance with whom Frasier reconnected upon his return to Boston.
The first episode of the revival saw Frasier giving a guest lecture at Harvard University as a favor to Alan, his classmate from his time at Oxford.Frasier ended up taking a professorship at Harvardand sharing an office with Alan. Alan has supposedly been one of Frasier’s closest friends since they went to college, but he was never seen throughout the entire run ofCheersor the entire run of the originalFrasierseries, so where was he during all that time?
Alan Was Likely Teaching At Harvard During Both Cheers & Frasier
It’s Established That He’s Been At Harvard For A Long Time
It’s established thatAlan has been teaching at Harvard for a long time – so long that he has tenure. Alan is shown to be disillusioned with teaching, but he’s so grandfathered in that the university can’t get rid of him. This is a time-worn comic archetype: the tenured professor who’s been teaching for so long, and whose job is so safe, that he barely puts in any effort anymore. This means thatAlan was probably teaching at Harvard throughout Frasier’s entire run on television.
Frasier: 10 Biggest Differences Between The Revival Show & The Original
Frasier came back last year with a revival series on Paramount+, and the reboot does a lot of things differently than the classic original show.
It would certainly make sense that Alan was busy teaching at Harvard duringFrasier’s original run, becausethe original show was set in Seattle. If Alan was tied to a demanding job in Boston, it would make sense that he never made it out to Seattle to visit his old college friend. It would make less sense if Alan was teaching at Harvard duringCheers’ Boston-set run.Alan may have been teaching at a different university somewhere else in the country duringCheers, or it wouldn’t make sense for Frasier and Alan to never see each other during that time.
Why Wasn’t Alan Mentioned In Cheers Or Frasier – Is It A Plot Hole?
The Real-World Explanation Is That He Hadn’t Been Created Yet
The short answer is that yes, Alan’s absence fromCheersand the originalFrasierseries is a plot hole. It’s strange that Frasier and Alan have supposedly been best friends for 40 years, and yetFrasier didn’t mention Alan once in 20 seasons of television. Of course, the real-world reason for that is because Alan hadn’t been created yet. There’s no official in-universe explanation for why Frasier failed to mention Alan for two decades, but it could just be that that’s how life goes sometimes.
Season 2 of the newFrasierseries began airing on August 21, 2025.
Since sitcoms have recurring cast members, they tend to stay in each other’s lives. The six friends inFriendssaw each other every single day for a decade. But that’s not the way it works in real life.In real life, people come in and out of each other’s lives; two people could be best friends for years, then one of them moves away for a job, and they don’t speak for a decade. Frasier and Alan were close at Oxford, then they led separate lives for a few decades, and now, fate has brought them back together.
Why Frasier’s Reboot Introduced Alan When He Wasn’t In Cheers Or Frasier
Frasier Needed A Sidekick In Niles' Absence
So, why did theFrasierreboot bother to introduce a character whose very existence creates a plot hole within the two previous shows? It’s because the writers needed to have that type of character for Frasier to play off. Frasier and Alan’s long history might not make sense in the context of the largerCheerscinematic universe, butit does make sense for the story of the reboot, which sees Frasier going back to his roots. IfDavid Hyde Pierce had agreed to play Niles in the reboot, then the reboot wouldn’t need Alan; Alan essentially fills that role.
The genius of Niles’ role in the originalFrasierseries is that he gave Frasier an even Frasier-er version of himself to bounce off. InCheers, Frasier’s stuffy intellectualism was contrasted with Sam Malone’s everyman charms. In the initialFrasierspin-off, the writers introduced an even stuffier intellectual – Frasier’s snooty brother – to make Frasier seem like more of a Sam-esque everyman by comparison. That’s the role that Alan plays in theFrasierreboot.
Frasier
Cast
Follow Frasier Crane in the next chapter of his life as he returns to Boston, Mass., with new challenges to face, new relationships to forge and an old dream or two to finally fulfill.
