>Maris Crane is Niles Crane's wife for much of the series, though she is never fully seen onscreen (much like Norm Peterson's wife, Vera, on Cheers). She is the most notable of the show's never-seen characters, and often the subject of many jokes. Her family is not revealed on the series. Maris is immensely wealthy, much wealthier than Niles, as well as spoiled, dominating and neurotic. Many of the characters pointedly dislike her (to Niles' consternation), with Frasier contributing in the show's first episode, "Maris is like the sun...except without the warmth". In a further humorous vein, David Hyde Pierce passively describes Maris during a Montreal comedy performance (which he performs in-character) as "...a wife who's like a refugee from '[The] Taming of the Shrew'...

>Maris was born in 1952, in Seattle. Her father was referred to as "The Commodore". She also has at least two sisters, one named Bree, who was born with only one nostril; she is mentioned as Frasier's date in one episode. As a child, Maris was overweight, but started losing weight and soon became very thin. She is described as small, very pale and pathologically emaciated; Roz originally mistook her for a hat rack, and Niles noted that she once sat on a whoopee cushion without setting it off.

>Maris lived in her family's mansion, which has been in the family for four generations after they made their fortune from urinal cakes (but she fools people by telling them her fortune comes from timber). She met her husband, Niles, during his internship in Seattle when he stopped to help her as she was banging on the electric gates to get into her home. They were married three years later, in 1986.

>Maris makes only two onscreen "appearances": once in the episode "Voyage of the Damned" when her shadow is seen through a shower curtain, and again in "Rooms with a View", where she appears in Niles' memory, almost completely covered by bandages after surgery. In "The Seal Who Came to Dinner", the pass-code to Maris's seaside home is described as her "ideal weight", and "what she weighed at her débutante ball" during her pageant years. The series of numbers that Niles punched in would mean that Maris, at that time, was 45 pounds and 12 ounces. Aside from her low weight, Maris is subject to various medical problems: she has abnormally tight quadriceps, a rigid spine, a large number of very specific allergies, she cannot produce saliva, and has a slight webbing of her hands that made her self-conscious enough to shy away from their physical touch. She frequently travels to Europe for plastic surgery and expensive, eccentric health treatments.

>In 1993 Maris and Niles refer Frasier to Daphne Moon (Niles' future wife) as a live-in physical therapist for Martin. Two years later, Maris goes to New York without telling Niles, who worries greatly. On her return, Niles stands up to Maris and she kicks him out of the house, beginning a two-year separation. Maris eventually reunites with Niles, but immediately has an affair with their marital therapist, Dr. Bernard Shenkman. In 1998. Niles finally files for divorce. In spite of the finalized divorce, Maris and Niles continue to be codependent for some time, until Niles finally breaks completely free, largely due to Daphne's aggravation. In 2003 Maris becomes romantically involved with a violent Argentinian polo player, Esteban de Rojo (Victor Alfieri), whom Maris kills in self-defense. Consequently, she is jailed for a few months on suspicion of murder. In 2004, shortly before her trial is scheduled to begin, she escapes to her family's private island from which she cannot be extradited, effectively stranding her for life.

she also shows up in an isolation chamber in one ep. never knew the urinal cake bit, would the head CEOs of urinal cakes be rich enough to have a mansion like her? they seemed old money rich

>>212709015
Urinal cakes first started appearing in the late 1800s and since nobody ever stops taking a piss, they were probably always in demand.

Like, did she have lizard skin or something? I'm trying to remember some of the descriptions, like she had scale removal at some point?

>>212708771 (OP)
It was a compromise for both of them. Niles was a pretentious snob who was well off compared to normal people but not as obscenely wealthy as his pretentions required. And Maris was from an extremely wealthy old money family but was a mildly inbred freak of a woman with no real prospects of attracting a man aside from her status.

Niles married her to upgrade his lifestyle and she knew that, but accepted it because he was the only semi-normal man she could find in their snobbish circles who was well bred enough to fit in but still wanted to marry her for her money. Most guys who went to Ivy League schools didn't need to settle for a Maris.

And then, like most people who settle for their partner, they both began to resent each other for not being what they really wanted even though they knew that going in. Niles just wanted someone attractive and nice and not deformed even if she was working class trash and Maris, like most spoiled white women, wanted the bad boy. Marriages of compromise never work long term

>>212708771 (OP)
I always figured the woman Niles was going out with before Daphne was basically what Maris looked like.

>>212708771 (OP)
>[The] Taming of the Shrew
Before my time. Don't know it.