Bebe Glazer
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| Bebe Glazer | |
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| First appearance | Selling Out (Season 1) November 11, 1993 |
| Last appearance | Goodnight, Seattle (Season 11) May 13, 2004 |
| Portrayed by |
 Seattle, Washington, USA |
| Information | |
| Occupation | Celebrity Agent |
| Family | Vera Glazer (mother) |
| Spouse(s) | Big Willy (1997, deceased) |
| Children | One Daughter (mentioned in "Selling Out") Steve Glazer (son) |
Bebe Glazer is a character on American television sitcom Frasier. She is played by Harriet Sansom Harris.
Bebe is a Seattle talent agent who represents Frasier. She is a recurring character who appeared roughly once per season for each of the eleven seasons of Frasier (she appeared twice in the first season).
[edit] Background and role in the series
Almost nothing is known about Bebe's background. A successful talent agent, Bebe decided on the career after considering going into nursing. Of indeterminate age (she has had plastic surgery), Bebe has a middle-aged son and a daughter at Stanford. She and Frasier meet because she represents his KACL colleague, Bulldog Briscoe. She also eventually represents Frasier's producer Roz Doyle.
She is a chain smoker, aggressive and unscrupulous, melodramatic, haughty, emotionally manipulative, duplicitous, and abusive. She will go to extreme measures for her clients, and has been known to use bribery and blackmail, and even the killing of animals (and possibly people) to achieve her aims (in one episode, Bebe is implied to have killed a Whooping Crane that was causing bad publicity for Frasier; when Frasier asked if there's any chance she wasn't involved, she evasively replies that "there's always a chance"). She once feigned a suicide attempt during Frasier's contract negotiations to secure him a higher salary.
Bebe is frequently abusive to subordinates, shouting at service staff, ordering around Daphne Moon, and publicly berating her secretary (Bebe's mother, played by Kathryn Joosten). Her ethics have been said to be able to "raise eyebrows in the court of Caligula."
Frasier's brother Niles has described Bebe as "Lady Macbeth without the sincerity". Frasier himself describes her as having "no scruples, no ethics, and no reflection." Frasier and his family often liken her to Satan (Frasier has stated that "She doesn't have to [worship Satan]—he worships her!"), or to Frasier's ex-wife, Lilith; Bebe often appears immediately after a reference to evil or demons. For example, in the episode "Goodnight, Seattle", in the midst of a heat wave during Martin's wedding, Frasier says, "It's like the ninth circle of Hell in here!" Moments later, Bebe walks in and remarks, "Do you love this weather, or what?"
Although Frasier is often distraught by Bebe's complete lack of principles, he is loath to let her go because of the substantial salary and perks she has negotiated for him over the years.
Bebe appears to be conscious of her own lack of ethics, as she once told Frasier that she had to choose between being a good person and being a good agent, "because believe me you can't be both".
[edit] Seasons 1–4
In her first appearance on the series ("Selling Out"), Bebe tries unsuccessfully to persuade Frasier to star in a lucrative TV commercial for Emory's Nuts (a spot that ultimately goes to Dr. Joyce Brothers). Initially she also has a crush on Frasier (of which he is at first oblivious), inviting herself as his date to his first Seabee Awards dinner ("And the Whimper Is...").
In a subsequent episode ("Agents in America, Part III"), after she has bluffed KACL into renegotiating Frasier's contract by having him play sick, the two celebrate the station's willingness to open contract talks with champagne and Scotch, and end up sleeping together. Niles expressed his concern that she killed after mating. Later in the episode, Bebe pretends that she is about to jump out of a ninth floor window so that Frasier can appear to talk her out of it; she then uses this as leverage in his contract renegotiations.
Bebe later almost weds an elderly multimillionaire media mogul from Texas, "Big Willy" Boone, who will only marry her if she quits smoking. Big Willy eventually dies as he is about to walk down the aisle, despite Bebe's best attempts to keep him animated ("Where There's Smoke There's Fired"). She steals Big Willy's watch from his corpse, and gives it to Frasier as a gift.
Bebe once stopped Roz from getting her own radio show when Frasier said that he would miss Roz if she stopped being his producer (("Roz's Turn")). Bebe assumed that Frasier was asking her to sabotage Roz's chances. The episode ends with Frasier firing Bebe and Roz hiring her.
[edit] Seasons 5–11
In "The Zoo Story", Frasier has fired Bebe, but she wins him back by playing upon his fears about his current agent's lack of assertiveness, ultimately killing a crane that had caused Frasier some embarrassingly bad publicity. As another ploy to enhance his bargaining position with KACL during contract talks, she arranges for Frasier and Roz to guest host AM Seattle, a local morning TV talk show, but when Roz becomes ill, Bebe herself steps in as Frasier's bantering co-host, and she is nearly successful in clinching permanent hosting positions for the two of them by appealing to his vanity and long-cherished desire to be a television celebrity, ("Morning Becomes Entertainment").
When Bebe later appears to have become preoccupied with representing a younger and more handsome rival radio psychiatrist, she attempts to pass Frasier off on her young and seemingly inexperienced assistant, "Junior Agent" Portia Sanders (Kristin Chenoweth). Portia, as it turns out, can be just as wily, persistent, and determined to act in her clients' best interests as her boss.
Despite Portia's ambitious plans for his career's advancement, Frasier switches talent agencies. Bebe eventually calls in an IOU earned in a poker game from Dr. Phil McGraw, who claims to Frasier that she has been his agent for the past year and is responsible for his stellar career; once again, Bebe succeeds in winning Frasier back to her client roster, but not before a scene in a hotel room strongly reminiscent of Faust ("The Devil & Dr. Phil").
In the series finale, "Goodnight, Seattle", Bebe tells Frasier that a preeminent television psychiatrist in San Francisco has just died after being hit by a falling air conditioner (after a suggestive look from Frasier, Bebe denies being anywhere in the vicinity of the accident at the time—"You're worse than the police!") and that she has mailed off a demo tape of Frasier's show so that he may be considered as a replacement.
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