There's so much about "Frasier" that conveys the comforting aura of a quintessential '90s sitcom. On "Frasier" sets, which cost a shocking amount of money to buildalthough designed with a distinct wood paneling aesthetic that has since become known as "Frasurbane", it still retained the familiar warmth of the era's sitcom sets. The live studio audience and the laugh track, the comedic beats, even the film grain — it all belongs to the golden age of sitcoms that should be familiar to any '90s kid who grew up on "Frasier," "Friends." and Seinfeld."

But there's also something distinctly different about "Frasier." While it shared a lot in common with those other legendary sitcoms of the era, it was also quite clearly trying something new. Not only that Kelsey Grammer's Dr. Crane and his brother, Nils (David Hyde Pierce) were elitist social climbers you didn't see before in other sitcoms. Nor was it that the show's humor often dealt with more sophisticated and arcane subjects than its contemporaries. Ever since the first episode of Frasier, the writers have been subtly subverting many sitcom tropes that had become well established by the time the show hit the airwaves in 1993. In fact, co-creator David Lee had a specific sitcom in mind as an example of what not to do when it came to making "Frasier."

"Frasier" ran for 11 seasons from 1993 to 2004, cementing its status as one of the greatest sitcoms in the process - a legacy neither the disappointing nor the superb "Frasier" revival the show has yet to come alive. While many '90s kids may now think of the show as a comfortable watch, the series was actually quite subversive in its own way and demonstrated a kind of anti-sitcom sentiment right from the start. its pilot episode—an episode that, by the way, Niles actor David Hyde Pierce initially thought was "terrible."

David Lee once spoke to Television Academy Foundation about writing that pilot, explaining some of the guiding principles he and his writing team had for writing it. Specifically, the show's writers set out to deconstruct and, in some cases, destroy the rallying cry against mainstream sitcom tropes of the time, with Lee explaining how the rise of "Seinfeld" gave them the perfect formula for subversion. In your own words:

"At the time, 'Seinfeld' was at its peak and it was the beginning of what I call 'short attention span theater,' where scenes and sitcoms got shorter and shorter and shorter until it was basically, 'Here's the outside of one building, you go inside for two or three jokes and then move on to the next scene.' A lot of scenes, short hits and they work great, they are wonderful, but we decided to try something different.

Lee went on to explain his and his writers' approach to making "Frasier" the anti-"short attention span theater" of Seinfeld. It began with the group writing "the longest scenes possible", with Lee claiming that the ultimate goal was "to have an entire episode that took place in real time, or to have an act where there's only one scene, in another. words are something like a game.' But this kind of anti-sitcom approach to sitcom writing has extended far beyond the usual scenes.

To be clear, "Frasier" was not a complete overhaul of the sitcom format. Not only was it created by three sitcom legends in the form of David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee of Cheers fame, but it used the same multi-camera shooting format used on every other sitcom of the moment. "Frasier" tapped sitcom directing legend James Burrows, who also went from "Cheers" to "Frasier" and who has lent his talents to nearly every sitcom series ever made, including "Friends." Couple that with a studio audience and the aforementioned general '90s aura to the whole thing and you get a sitcom that, on the surface, isn't quite a genre revolution.

But when you look more closely, "Frasier" did try some surprisingly unconventional things throughout its run. Pick up the black title cards that separate the acts. These trademarks of the series are another aspect that arose from the desire of Lee and his writers to subvert the sitcom standards. As Lee went on to explain in his Television Academy Foundation interview, the mindset was best summed up as, "Do we need those exterior shots of buildings?" Is the audience smart enough to know that if we're in Frasier's apartment, he's probably in an apartment building and you shouldn't be seeing the outside? Indeed, such shots are so deeply embedded in sitcom DNA that we barely notice when the camera pans around the side of a Friends apartment building in New York accompanied by a quick musical stab to mark the start of a new scene, and even when we get opening shot of Jerry's building in "Seinfeld."

For Lee and his crew, however, removing this standard feature of sitcoms was a necessity, leading to the creation of black title cards between scenes. Even then, "Frasier" pushes things even further, eschewing any musical accompaniment. "We didn't have to have music," Lee noted, "and to this day I think it's still the only sitcom that doesn't have interstitial music cues for whatever that's worth." In that sense, while "Frasier" is more than capable of lulling you into '90s sitcom-induced comfort, it also maintains a deceptively disruptive approach, giving us all another reason to love the show.