Look up "sangfroid" in the dictionary, and you might find a picture of Lilith Sternin-Crane. First introduced to the Cheers gang as Frasier’s significant other (please, the term girlfriend is just too undignified!), everyone at the bar thinks this brilliant, uptight research psychiatrist should let her perpetually pulled back hair down and live a little.

Whereas Frasier is a hands-on practitioner, Lilith is a dedicated scientist, who’s most content to spend her time conducting experiments on her beloved lab rats rather than dealing with other people’s messy emotions. Lilith’s not interested in abstract theories (this means you, Dr. Freud); rather she believes in the veracity of empirical evidence. Yes, there is something of the prison matron about her. Everything about her, from her hair, to her robotic demeanor, to her daily uniform of drab suits and buttoned up shirts, make her seem severe. It’s enough to make one wonder what’s she’s keeping bottled up inside (perhaps the book she’s authored, entitled Good Girls, Bad Boys, can provide some insights).

They say that still waters run deep, and perhaps that is the case with Lilith. It’s easy to assume the reason she scrutinizes and dissects emotions is because that’s the closest she’ll allow herself to actually experiencing them. True, she may be a bit aloof, but Lilith is hardly heartless. She’s a friend and confidante to Rebecca Howe (who surely needs both), and she’s the woman who helps Frasier forget the heartache of Diane. As a couple, Lilith and Frasier get off to a rocky start. It could have something to do with her disdain for Freud, Frasier’s hero, but more than likely it’s because they are emotional opposites. Where Lilith is cool and detached, Frasier is given to fits of passion and emotional outbursts. However, they learn to overcome their differences, marry and have a son, Frederick.

Lilith eventually has an affair with a work colleague (Dr. Pascal, a bad boy, presumably), with whom she runs off to the desert to live in an EcoPod, abandoning her marriage and her young son. When she returns from this flight of emotional fancy, her marriage is in shambles, and she and Frasier never recover from her betrayal. They divorce and he takes a job in Seattle, while Lilith and Frederick remain in Boston.