The Problem with Maris

I recently watched all eleven seasons of Frasier – as I wrote about in a recent blog post – and I loved it. I think that Frasier was a smart, funny sitcom that features some excellent writing. This was a show that could have a full blown farce, that could have dramatic character based episodes. The flexibility and what the writers were able to do and what the characters were able to do was impressive.

While it was an excellent show in many ways, the show had a big recurring problem: They never found anything funny to do with Maris.

When the show began, the character was unseen. Which has been the case with multiple characters in the course of television over the years. Based on different interviews with the show’s creators, the intention was to not have her appear in the first episodes and then to simply have her appear without fanfare in one episode. 

The problem is that at a certain point, they just decided that they were having so much finding absurd reasons for her not to attend family functions or go out to dinner, that they decided that Maris should remain invisible. And I understand. They were entertaining and they got a laugh each time. 

Early in the show, Niles would often leave a scene or appear having just attended or about to attend some group therapy session or a meeting of some kind. How he had to leave now because filling out the name tags for his multiple personality session took forever. Or after some family fight he had to run to a dysfunctional family seminar. The show kept doing that for a while, but it tapered off. It was a good joke to give to Niles before the writers and the actor knew the character better and could write for them.

Maris of course never showed up, so all she ever was was those excuses.

Think about how Frasier and other characters described Lilith on the show. Cruel, dismissive, angry terms that were thrown around. None of the other characters liked her. Frasier ranted about her. But when she arrived on the scene, she and Frasier had to interact with each other. We understood that while they’re still angry at each, they also still care about each other. It was a complicated relationship and that was acknowledged, but what made it work was that she was always her own person who existed independent of his anger or lust or annoyance that he had towards her. 

Maris, by never being on screen and never being portrayed, could never be humanized. Therefore she became nothing more than a series of character traits.

Specifically, she was rich and thin and high strung and particular.

In the same way that the show’s creators decided that Frasier’s brother should be like Niles – I think Frasier once said “I’m a teamster compared to you” – I can only imagine that in the original conception, Maris : Niles as Niles : Frasier.

And there is potential in that. Or in Maris being on one side of things and Martin being on the other and Frasier and Niles being somewhere in the middle. Even as I’m writing this I’m thinking of ways that such a character could play off the others. But of course, that never happened.

More to the point, what was Maris ultimately? She was an anorexic who was constantly getting plastic surgery, a snob whose wealth ultimately came from urinal cakes, a fact that she hides from everyone. A woman who uses her money to control people. Just as I think of Rebecca Howe, played by Kirstie Alley in Cheers, as the show’s attempt to satirize professional women – except the writers loathed such women and it showed – Maris felt like a way to mock women. Or at least, certain kinds of women.

Because she’s obsessed with being thin. Obviously that’s her own fault so she should be mocked for it. She’s obsessed with plastic surgery and looking young. Again, where could such an obsession come from? She’s obsessed with money – gee, where could people who work in Hollywood come up with such a character?

Honestly the lengthy divorce that Maris was dragging Niles through was funnier than when they were married, and after they get divorced in the sixth season, Maris is rarely mentioned. When the character returns in the final season – in an episode title “Maris Returns” – she never really left and she was never really there. She simply stopped being mentioned.

The story arc that Maris gets the final season was entertaining and shows that the character had possibilities. All along there were missed opportunities to play with this crazy character.

Just image what the show would have been like if they had cast someone like Valerie Mahaffey or Julie Hagerty, who could have played a character with this almost disturbing ease who could have gone from being charming and friendly with one character one moment to being hysterically neurotic the next moment to seeming flighty and in the next to being terrifying in the next as she threatens another character. 

It would have been an incredibly hard character to play – and an incredibly hard character to write. But it could have been amazing.