006: My Happy Place

Welcome back readers. Here’s the post I’ve been teasing on social media. If you were hoping for some more video game-related content, you’ll have to wait for another time. I had to push all other potential posts out of the way to do this one early on, since it's a subject so near and dear to me. This will not be the last time I post about this, I can guarantee that. I'm going to try to not get too far in the weeds here or too personal... no promises. But you all need to know one thing about me. My favorite television show of all time is Cheers.

Sing along now… "You want to go where everybody knows your name!" (Credit: Paramount)

Those who know me in real life HAD to have seen this coming. Of course I'd have to do a post about this show. In my first Godzilla entry I posed a question about why exactly I love the things I love. In the case of Cheers, it's probably a bit more complicated, and things are going to get a little personal for a bit. (I promise I'll reign it in and go back to lighthearted soon.) I just feel the need to provide a bit of background.

I discovered Cheers in my adolescence, very late in its run. I mean, I knew OF it, but I can't recall ever watching it as a child. Which is odd, since I watched everything. I really watched way too much TV in the 80s. At some point when I was (I think) 16, I tuned in to an episode and immediately liked it. I noticed that reruns were playing from 6-7 PM on weekdays, so I started watching them after school, working my way through the series. I started watching during the Rebecca years, and then when the show caught up to what had been syndicated, it started over. My enjoyment of the show increased the more I watched it. I found myself looking forward to two (new to me) episodes every night. It was different from everything else on television. The characters almost instantly felt like friends.

As was a trend when I was younger, once I started enjoying something, it wasn't long before it ended or was cancelled. In 1993, Cheers aired its last episode. I tuned in and was very moved by it. I haven't watched the final episode again since, but I'm coming up on it quickly in my rewatch.

As the years went on, the reruns disappeared, but I never forgot the show and how it comforted the teenage me. Fast forward to my early twenties, newly a father, in a complicated marriage, working the night shift, all around miserable. Said marriage was slowly disintegrating and I was not enjoying the whole adulthood thing. I had Dish at the time and flipping through the channels I found a station that showed Cheers. It helped. It was good to have that old comfort back, those old friends. My wife did not enjoy it, but I was able to tune her out. (I think she would watch it with me just to complain about it.) I remember she was particularly annoyed by the episode where the gang threw Frasier a Divorce Party.

Fast forward more. That marriage is far in the past. Second marriage is over, I'm in an unfulfilling relationship, suffering from depression, and I notice Cheers is on Netflix. Throughout my life I occasionally have bouts of depression, and my best method for dealing with those is distracting myself until they pass. At this phase of my life, these periods were particularly bad and frequent, so I once again turned to my comfort show for escape.

Following that, I had a couple of lonely stressful years as a single dad, and lo and behold, there was Cheers again, this time in the form of a huge DVD collection that I couldn't afford but also couldn't afford to not get.

43 discs. 275 episodes. Running time approximately 112 hours.

And now more years have passed and all that heavy shit is in the past. I have a happy life. Good marriage, stable job, parenthood is less stressful. I have a successful blog that everyone loves. (Hehe.) And now I'm watching my show for more positive reasons... just to enjoy it. Mostly gone are the days of using it as a form of self-medication. But still, if I have a bad day or when my mood gets low, I always have a place to go. It's familiar, it's comforting, it's a perfect distraction. My old friends are there.

No matter what I'm going through, how bad my day has been, how dark my mood is, as soon as I hear that theme song start up, I feel a little better.

Norm, in his spot. And Carla, probably up to no good. (Credit: Paramount)

Okay, so that’s some of my history. Now for the show. Cheers is a fairly well-known show from the 80s and 90s. It was created by Glen Charles, Les Charles, and James Burrows. It originally aired for 275 episodes from 1982 to 1993 on NBC. The premise is simple. Cheers is a bar in Boston and the main characters are the employees and the regular customers. This will mostly be an overview, but there will be spoilers for major plot points. (Pretty sure spoiler warnings really don't have to be on something that's been over for 26 years, but I like to be courteous.)

Okay, so before I get too far into this, I feel the need to address the elephant in the room. This show was made in the 80s to early 90s. As such, in some ways it's a tad behind the times by today's standards. To put it bluntly, Sam is a womanizer. As such, he fraternizes with a specific sort of woman. Several women are depicted as being one-dimensional, sex-pot, bubble-heads. What some may have issue with is Sam's treatment of Diane and Rebecca. Some of Sam's behavior nowadays would be considered sexual harassment, especially considering they were employees. This is always played for humor, and genuine relationships/friendships grow over time, but there are some cringe-worthy moments here and there.

In the show's defense, there were character motivations behind Sam's behavior. The flirting was mostly a way for Sam to annoy Diane (and later Rebecca) and work out or mask his feelings. I'm not saying his behavior was acceptable, but it was understandable in the context of his character. And he never made a secret about who he was. He was very open about it. Being an irrepressible flirt was a major part of Sam Malone’s makeup.

There are other things, such as the lack of diversity in the cast. (All the main characters are white with few minor characters of color.) The prevalence of drinking and driving... the show made some mentions here and there of calling a cab or having a designated driver, but those felt like they were put in as afterthoughts, and you usually just have to assume they're driving home with several drinks in them. Mental illness was sometimes treated as joke fodder, sometimes not. But when it came to the depiction of emotional or mental issues, multiple sides were often shown.

I know I can just hide behind the whole "It was a different time" defense, but I don't want to do that. I feel the need to bring these things up so no one is surprised when they encounter them. I am very confident in saying that if this show were to be made now, many things would be different. It was a product of its time, and it did just fine with what it had. Also it was meant to be a comedy above all else, so there were some things that just weren’t focused on too closely.

Still, for being made in a less-enlightened time, there were several things of note that were ahead of the curve. The times when non-white characters were depicted, they were not shown negatively or as stereotypes. Early on, homosexuality was touched on with the usual phobia and levity of the era, but the message was a positive one of acceptance and reevaluating what you thought you knew about a person with the facts of who they are.

FASHION! (Credit: Paramount)

Sexism was covered fairly early on with Diane and revisited often through Rebecca's battles against the glass ceiling. Women were generally depicted being as strong and capable as men, while still being as flawed as them. Alcoholism was a common topic, which makes sense seeing as how the show takes place in a bar. Yes, it was usually played for laughs, but at times they showed it as a serious disease with a major impact on Sam and his life. The before-mentioned womanizing was actually dealt with in the final season with a story line about Sam realizing he was a sex addict and seeking therapy for his issues. (Poor Sam. He had all the problems.)

I'm sure there are other shows that were more progressive, but moments such as these just make me love the show more. Some shows really haven't aged well (I'm looking at you, Alf!) but I feel like Cheers has held up over the years, aside from what I mentioned above.

Now that that's out of the way, I can get to the lighter stuff. Yes, this show has faults, but I love it still. Mainly because of the characters, but there are many other things. The quality of writing, the sharpness of the humor, the show's consistency, and overall the familiarity. Over the course of the series, the characters begin to feel like friends. The bar feels like a comfortable, real place. Better than real. Hanging out in a bar has never been as fun for me as watching these people hanging out in this bar.

They weren’t eavesdropping. (Credit: Paramount)

I think the biggest draw for me with this show is the style. It doesn't always feel like a sitcom. It's really set up more like a stage play. (The first few seasons especially.) The back and forth between Sam and Diane, the drama of their on-again off-again relationship, the movement and blocking of the characters, the lighting, the fixed-camera settings; it all feels like a performance on a stage. The live audience helps with that, as well.

The later seasons changed the tone and feel of the show. After Diane left and Rebecca came on, the show picked up more of a sitcom vibe. There are those who believe the show's quality declined in these seasons, but I disagree. I don't feel the show lost any quality... it simply changed. Things evolve over time, and not everyone is going to be happy about that. I enjoy both phases for different reasons. It's all Cheers, but the Rebecca years moved focus away from Sam and Diane. This was needed after years of going in circles. There’s only so much you can do with a single relationship anyway. The later seasons focused more on Sam, the bar, and the other cast members. Also, this is the era I started watching it, so I have an affinity for it.

The episodes were mostly self-contained, but they had strong continuity. There were frequently season-long story arcs that played out over the course of the season. The first season's arc began the famous will-they won't-they of Sam and Diane's relationship, culminating in their first kiss. Season 3 focused on their breakup and the love triangle with Frasier. Season 5 dealt mostly with their engagement and ended with their near-marriage and Diane's exit from the show. Season 6 picked up six months later. Sam had sold the bar, bought a boat, attempted to sail around the world, sank his boat, and came back to find Rebecca Howe in charge. That season focused on Sam's clumsy and ineffectual flirting with Rebecca and his attempts to get the bar back. This didn't happen until the end of Season 8, when he bought the bar back for a staggering 85 cents. Eventually the flirting stopped, Sam and Rebecca became friends, and then attempted to have a child together. (As friends do?)

Along with the story arcs, there were also character arcs. Norm started off the series as an accountant with a steady job. He lost his job and this started a string of brief employments. He spent most of the series unemployed, but along with being an accountant, he worked as an HR director, a tax preparer, a house painter, an interior decorator, and for a very short time, a beer tester in a brewery. (His dream job.)

Frasier, making an entrance. (Credit: Paramount)

In Season 3 Frasier Crane was introduced as a love interest to Diane and rival to Sam. He was out of place in the bar, being of a much higher class than the usual customers. However, he was eager to fit in and become one of the guys. Frasier had quite the journey in this series. He started as young, naive, idealistic, and enthusiastic. He becomes bitter, jaded, and miserable, mostly due to being left at the alter by Diane. Through this hardship, he and Sam became fairly close. Frasier later met, dated, and married Lilith Sternin. They had a child together, Frederick. In the final season, their clearly-mismatched relationship started to break down. This culminated in their divorce, which left Frasier even more bitter.

Woody’s most common expression. (Credit: Paramount)

The other characters have their journeys as well. Woody is a struggling actor from a small farming community in Indiana. He eventually marries a wealthy and innocent girl named Kelly Gaines. Cliff struggles to get out from under his mother's suffocating influence and live his own life, but ends up living with her again. He has several attempts at relationships, none of which pan out. Rebecca suffers through a string of infatuations with rich and oblivious businessmen. She attempts to prove herself not just to the corporation she works for, but to herself... something at which she repeatedly fails. In the latter part of the series she clings onto the idea that motherhood would give her the purpose and fulfillment she's been missing, but this inevitably proves a hollow pursuit as well.

Splash. Carla is the best. (Credit: Paramount)

One of the craziest journeys in the series was Carla's. (Full name Carla Maria Victoria Angelina Teresa Apollonia Lozupone Tortelli LeBec.) Carla is the perpetually angry, always superstitious, outspoken waitress at Cheers. She began the series with four kids, all with the same guy, her ex-husband Nick. By the end of the series she has eight kids with three different men, is a widow, and still working as a waitress at Cheers. (Any time Rhea Perlman was pregnant in real life, they wrote in a pregnancy for Carla too.) Her children are continuously referenced as being out of control, all of which we get to see by the end of the series. Her oldest son Anthony follows in his father's footsteps, marrying young, getting in trouble with the law, and generally being sleazy. He also ended up with a woman who was shockingly similar to his mother, a fact that irritated Carla. Carla’s oldest daughter Serafina ends up following her mother’s path by getting pregnant and married at way too young an age.

Carla is my favorite character. She has no filter, she's tough, she's crude. But under all that, there's another layer to her, moments where she's vulnerable and she shows her heart.

Ah, young love. (Credit: Paramount)

Sam Malone is the core of the show. He's the center that everyone else orbits around. Sam was a failed relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. He was known for his womanizing and drinking. (As Coach said on the first episode, "He was a great drunk! Everything that kid did was great!”) After hitting rock bottom, he quit drinking and bought Cheers. Diane pointed out the irony of an alcoholic owning a bar in the first episode. (Some of the show's attention to detail: even when everyone else was drinking, Sam had a bottle of water or coffee.) Between seasons 2 and 3, Sam had a relapse and it took Diane and Coach's interference to get him back off the booze.

When pseudointellectual college student Diane Chambers wandered into Sam's life, everything started changing for him. There were sparks on their first meeting, but it took most of the first season for those sparks to fully ignite. Although the two of them were undeniably a bad match, there was still something there. Sam tries to be a better man and Diane tries to understand him and the others in the bar. They challenge each other to improve while simultaneously driving each other crazy. They compliment and contrast each other at the same time.

As the show went on, Sam lost the bar, trying over and over to get it back, eventually succeeding. He could never get out of the shadow of his past sports fame. He considered his brief time as a relief pitcher to be his glory days, even though he ruined his chances at real fame with his drinking. (Also, it’s strongly implied that he really wasn’t that good at baseball anyway.) Although a notorious womanizer, he found a fulfillment in his relationship with Diane that he hadn't known before, even in his prior marriage. Another ongoing struggle he had through the series was facing his own aging. Sam was not ready to grow up and admit that he was past his prime.

None of the main characters were one-dimensional or cliche, and this was shown most with Sam. A lot of Sam's character is summed up by saying his ego and over-confidence overshadowed a great lack of confidence. This was shown very well in the first season finale where his older brother Derek was introduced. (Well, he was there, but off camera or obscured by other people at all times.) Derek was the one who was always more handsome and successful and more well-liked than Sam. Underneath Sam’s bravado and friendliness, he was a sad, lonely man. Although Sam was a jock who lived for sex and was obsessed with his hair and car, he was more intelligent than he seemed. He was also very faithful to his friends and his bar.

There’s a lot more I could say. Diane, Cliff, Rebecca, Coach… they all had stories and depth. Diane’s emotional problems and constant need for validation. Rebecca’s self-imposed pressure for perfection and success. I could go on and on about each character, but I’ll leave it at this.

The eleventh and final season changed many things, advancing the character's stories in significant ways. Rebecca found love, Cliff got a promotion, Diane returned to try and get Sam back, Woody ran for city council (and won!), Sam’s rival Gary got his comeuppance. No one's story ended, which is important. Life goes on. Even after the final episode you felt as though these characters (aside from Frasier, who moved away to his own show) were still meeting up in Cheers night after night, living their lives. They’re probably still there. At least I’d like to believe they are.

The cool kids. (Credit: Paramount)

The continuity on this show was excellent, and it was certainly ahead of the curve when it came to that. The formula back then for sitcoms was that everything should essentially "reset" after the episode so that viewers could watch random episodes out of order without needing to get up to speed. Cheers threw this out of the window. Relationships and character arcs remained where they left off, advancing and growing as the show went on. (Like in real life!) If Sam and Diane had a fight in one episode, they'd still be upset the following episode. If Norm lost his job, he'd be job hunting next week.

Another place the continuity shines is in running gags. There were many of these, more than I can cover here. Cliff’s “little known facts”. Sam's Black Book where he kept the phone numbers and notes on his many conquests. Norm's wife Vera, sometimes heard but never seen. (She was a good example of what's known as an "unseen character". This is something Frasier replicated with Niles's wife Maris.) Carla's kids were a continual source of running jokes, and also for the most part unseen characters. Her kids were often referred to as hell-raisers and criminals and Carla could never keep a babysitter. Woody’s colorful stories about Hanover, Indiana. Norm's growing bar tab was often referenced (and sometimes shown). One of the jokes had to do with needing to send his tab off to NASA to tabulate it.

The show also had several recurring characters. In the early part of the series was Andy Andy, a unusual man Sam attempted to set Diane up with who proved to be unhinged. (Those were fantastic episodes and I wish they’d done more with him.) Harry the Hat, a con man played by Harry Anderson in his pre-Night Court days. Carla's ex-husband Nick Tortelli and his new wife, Loretta made several appearances. Sam’s arch rival Gary from Gary's Olde Towne Tavern. John Allen Hill, the owner of Melville's, the upscale seafood restaurant above the bar. There were many more, including recurring barflys. (This was a nice touch. Aside from the main cast, you'd often see the same people hanging out at the bar.)

Coach was a sweetheart. (Credit: Paramount)

As mentioned before, the show did lose a couple of cast members/characters over the years. However, they were never forgotten in the context of the show. After Season 3 Nicholas Colasanto passed away of a heart attack. Coach, real name Ernie Pantusso, was Sam’s coach in his baseball days. Coach was very much the heart of the show in the beginning. He was simple, sweet, and caring. He was the kindly grandfather of the bar at the same time as being childlike. (Nicholas once stated that he played the character as though he were 12 years old at all times.) The show was never fully the same without him, but after his untimely departure Woody became a main character. After Season 5, Diane left to write a novel and Shelly Long left to star in movies. Neither plan panned out. (Sorry, couldn't resist. Really there were several reasons she left.) Since the show was still popular, the decision was made to push forward without her. Thus we got Rebecca Howe, who was designed to be Diane’s polar opposite..

The cast is the big draw for me. Everyone is fantastic and the characters always speak and act with their own identities. In some shows characters will say or do things utterly out of character simply because it's what the plot demands. (In my opinion that's unforgivable and lazy writing. I have stopped watching shows when they do that too much. Some good examples of this bad habit were Empire, The Strain, and Under the Dome.) You don't see that here. If Carla throws a beer in someone's face or insults them, you know it's just because of who Carla is. If Norm makes a rude joke about his wife, you know beneath the facade that he adores her. Each character has a psychology to them, motivations. And above all, consistency.

The characters are far from one-dimensional; there are layers to them. Carla is a tiny little bad-ass Italian mother who never backs down from a challenge or runs out of insults. But underneath she has a huge heart and loves her friends and family with a love that exceeds her stature. Woody is the token dumb character, but he has a sly, shrewd side that comes out when you least expect it. Norm never runs out of jokes about his wife, but he would be completely lost without her. (And has been in a few episodes.) Cliff is the resident bar know-it-all, but that’s because he has rock-bottom self esteem and craves attention. As you get to know the characters, you get to see deeper into what makes them tick. And that's more than you can say about a lot of sitcoms.

Moments before the big kiss. (Credit: Paramount)

For the past few years I have been working my way through the entire series again and I have now reached Season 10 in my DVD collection. (I’ve been watching them sparingly, trying to make the experience last.) Once I'm done with the whole thing, I'll likely move on to Frasier. I only saw the first few seasons of that before I couldn't afford cable anymore, so that'll be nice to go through the whole series. It's a good continuation of Cheers. (A few of the character guest star to continue their stories.) And besides being a spin off, it actually found its own identity, which is fantastic. After that I intend to take Cocoashade through the entire 11 seasons of Cheers. She's watched a few with me, but I want to share the whole experience with her, beginning to end. She has grown to appreciate the series from the few episodes we watched. (And I’m sure the fact that I don’t shut up about it has something to do with that growing appreciation. Hehe.)

Thank you for reading my Cheers retrospective post. Let me know what you think and if you'd be interested in future Cheers posts. There’s a whole lot more that I could cover that didn’t make the cut for this post. I'm really tempted to do season-by-season reviews during my rewatch with Cocoa, and a couple of deep dive posts for important episodes. (The first and last episodes, first season finale, etc.) We'll see where my interest takes me. This entry was a blast, and I never tire of talking about this show. I'll be back next time with my super secret special Halloween post. Until then, keep searching out that treasure!