9 Most Fan-Pleasing Moments In Television

…except in the case of Daphne and Niles from the hit sitcom Frasier, of course.

In the original drafts of the show, Frasier didn’t have a brother and Daphne was a fiery Latina. That all changed when the producers were given a head shot of David Hyde Pierce, and they discovered how much he looked like a young Kelsey Grammer. Once Jane Leeves had been cast as their father Martin’s live-in physical therapist, the core of the show, the four of them, was set in stone.

The relationship between Niles and Daphne wasn’t intended from the beginning either: it was purely a throwaway joke that Niles had an intense crush on Daphne from the word go, when the writers were spitballing what Niles’ reaction to meeting her would be. As time went on and Hyde Pierce’ nuanced, sly performance allowed Niles to become the show’s breakout character, fans began to clamour for a genuine consummation of his feelings towards her, yelling at the screen to tell her how he felt.

Over seven years, the fans waited: through the hilarious, then painful break-up of Niles’ marriage, through his time spent single and patching himself up. It’s unfortunate that the moment they’d been waiting so long for occurred during the downturn in Frasier’s creative fortunes – by the time Niles and Daphne got together, the show simply wasn’t as funny as it had been.

But the fans got what they wanted. Patiently, carefully set up to be the perfect couple, despite their vastly different personalities and interests, Niles and Daphne are pure, perfect fan service.