Niles Crane
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| Niles Crane | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | The Good Son |
| Last appearance | Goodnight, Seattle |
| Portrayed by | David Hyde Pierce |
| Information | |
| Occupation | Psychiatrist |
| Family | Martin Crane (father) Hester Crane (mother, deceased) Frasier Crane (brother) |
| Spouse(s) | Maris Crane (divorced) Mel Crane (divorced) Daphne Moon |
| Children | David Crane |
Dr. Niles Crane (b. 1957) is a fictional character on the American sitcom Frasier, a spin-off of the popular show Cheers. He is played by David Hyde Pierce. Niles is the younger brother of Frasier Crane and the son of Martin Crane.
While it had originally been intended that Frasier be an only child, David Hyde Pierce was hired because Frasier producers saw his headshot and commented on how much he looked like a young Kelsey Grammer. Unlike Frasier, much of whose background comes from the Cheers series, Niles' background is established over the course of Frasier (with additional retcons made where necessary if Niles' existence clashes with previous revelations made on Cheers).
On Bravo TV's countdown of the 100 Greatest TV characters, David Hyde Pierce described Niles as "Frasier if he had never gone to Boston."
[edit] Background
Born in Seattle, Washington, in 1957, to Hester Crane, a psychiatrist, and Martin Crane, a police detective, the exact date of Niles' birth and the age difference between the two brothers is never revealed. However, taking into account that Frasier was born in 1952, we can assume that the age difference is 5 years, give or take a few months, since we do not actually know Niles' exact birthdate. In the third season episode "The Friend" Niles says that he has been Frasier's brother for 38 years, and in the episode "IQ," we learned that Niles was given Frasier's tricycle when Frasier was eight.
Like Frasier, Niles was named for one of his mother's lab rats ("Are you Being Served"). Niles was an unusually sensitive child when growing up, and a frequent target for bullies. As a result, he was quite close to his older brother, and at the same time fiercely competitive with him. Like Frasier, Niles also preferred fine arts, music, and intellectual pursuits to boyhood activities like sports.
Niles attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut (as did David Hyde Pierce) as an undergraduate, and the Yale School of Medicine for both his M.D. and Ph.D. in psychiatry. He subsequently attended the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England, where he was a postdoctoral fellow while completing his professional training. This further highlights the close competitive relationship with his brother, Frasier, who attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts as an undergraduate, then Harvard Medical School for both his M.D. and Ph.D. in psychiatry, subsequently followed by his own postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England.
Niles describes his profession as "the saving grace of my life" (in episode "IQ") and is greatly respected professionally. He runs his own Jungian practice (Frasier is a Freudian) and has had his research published in several psychiatric journals. Even so, Frasier sometimes quotes Freud to coerce Niles emotionally.
[edit] Personality
Niles is fastidious, snobby and fussy, and has gourmet tastes. He is an admirer of the fine arts including opera, theatre and classical music, drinks fine wine and enjoys French food which he himself cooks, and frequently obsesses about knowing the right people and climbing the social ladder.
Physically weak and very uncoordinated, Niles has a long list of phobias and medical conditions, many of which are clearly psychosomatic. Most prominently, he is quite mysophobic, given to wiping his hands after human contact and wiping down chairs in public places before sitting on them. He has nose bleeds when he tells a direct lie, and he faints at the sight of blood. When extremely stressed, he is prone to panic attacks and fits of hyperventilation which have, on more than one occasion, seen him lose consciousness. He also suffers from a long list of allergies, some exceedingly rare. He is seemingly hopeless at sports, barely able to catch objects even after simple throws. However, in some episodes he is shown to be fair at basketball. On one occasion, while attending a basketball game, he is fortuitously invited on court during the game's intermission to try his skill (or luck) at scoring from half court, and much to the astonishment of his brother and father (and himself), Niles makes the impossible throw. The brothers are often seen coming or going to squash matches, though Martin once commented in disbelief, "You have to wonder what happens on that squash court." Accompanying Martin on the shooting range one day, Niles discovered that he is an excellent marksman. He is a fair fencer, and has had some lessons in kickboxing. On other occasions he has expressed interest in lifting weights and taking karate lessons, but these ventures are typically laughed at by his father and brother and often amount to nothing. He is also a master speller, having come close to winning the national spelling competition as a youth.
He drives a Mercedes-Benz with the licence plate 5HR1NK. It is unknown which Mercedes he drives in the latter half of the series but in a second season episode, he states that he drives a Mercedes-Benz E320.
[edit] Role in the series
Niles is Frasier's constant companion and rival, and his secret love for their father's physical therapist Daphne Moon is both a source of tension and comedy in the show in the first seven seasons.
Niles' first wife is Maris, the selfish, haughty, highly-strung and anorexic daughter of a wealthy Seattle family who is never seen on the show, despite being referred to frequently. After fifteen years of marriage, the two separate. Numerous attempts at reconciliation (mainly initiated by Niles), are followed by a bitter and protracted divorce.
Niles then marries Mel Karnofsky, Maris' plastic surgeon, whom he starts dating following his divorce. The two elope, but the marriage falls apart after only two days when Niles confesses his love for Daphne the night before her wedding to lawyer Donny. As a consequence, Mel forces Niles to participate in a prolonged charade of a happy marriage before granting him a divorce after he embarrasses her in front of her society friends.
By far, Niles' most significant relationship on the show is with Daphne, perhaps an unlikely attraction given the significant differences in their tastes, temperament and social standing (he once referred to her as a "working-class Venus"). For numerous reasons during the first six seasons of the show, Niles is unable to confess his feelings for Daphne, who remains unaware of his love for her (despite her professed psychic abilities). Niles' feelings for Daphne are the basis for many gags on the show, including the numerous ways he demonstrates how besotted he is with her (such as being entranced by the smell of her hair or staring at her rear end when she bends over), but develops over the course of the series into an important plotline. Pierce engaged in innumerable bits of nearly unnoticeable stage business, displaying Niles' almost trancelike attraction to Daphne even when audience focus of attention is not on the pair. Niles is frequently jealous of Daphne's boyfriends (and even his own nephew, Frederick, who nurses a crush on Daphne as a pre-adolescent). Niles does tell Frasier repeatedly that he is over Daphne when she accepts Donny Douglas's proposal of marriage, and even goes as far as marrying another woman but admits that he still loves Daphne when Frasier tell him that Daphne knows of Niles' feelings and reciprocates them on the eve of her wedding.
When the two do attempt a relationship, they must reconcile their many lifestyle differences, and Daphne is so worried she will not live up to Niles' idealistic vision of her that she begins over indulging on chocolate. She gains over sixty pounds, but Niles doesn't even notice until Daphne finally reaches her breaking point when she falls to the floor and is too heavy to get up without the help of Frasier, Niles and Martin (Prompting Martin's classic line; "Hey Daph I just thought of something funny, it took three Cranes to lift you") and goes to a spa to lose the weight.
Ultimately Niles and Daphne marry in Reno, Nevada, and the series ends with the birth of their son, David, who was born at the vet's. David is named after Frasier co-creator David Angell who was killed, along with his wife Lynn, in the crash of American Airlines Flight 11 in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
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