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For Your Consideration: The under-appreciated greatness of Cheers

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Double Down, Oct 2, 2012.

  1. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    The last episode was one of the better finales ever made, since unlike so many shows of late, where they try to tie up all the loose ends, the bar was merely closed for the night, as if it would reopen the next day. I wasn't a regular with the reruns after it went off the air until the middle of last decade, when I was working in Arizona and it was on between Leno and Conan, and the timelessness and simplicity struck me.
     
  2. Gutter

    Gutter Well-Known Member

    Great thread.

    Gentlemen!
     
  3. Gutter

    Gutter Well-Known Member

    And that was a nice touch in the final scene of Friends when they addressed that.
     
  4. Gutter

    Gutter Well-Known Member

    Would a good boy do this?
     
  5. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    And to be fair, Clavin started out as an extra and only became a "character" because they liked Ratz's suggestion of having a bar know-it-all. If you re-watch the first six episodes or so, he's barely in them or only visible in the background.
     
  6. Huggy

    Huggy Well-Known Member

    Fuck, that's funny.

    Loved the episode where they get the karaoke machine:

     
  7. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    To talk about Cheers and other things from this thread generally...

    - I'm 28, and just started watching Cheers from start to finish this week, actually, spurred on by that excellent GQ oral history. The thing that's most striking to me is how maudlin / somber the show is at times. Like, just in the first two seasons, Diane almost gets raped by Norm's boss, who fires Norm as a result, Sam is dealing with feelings of inferiority over his older brother, and the very first episode has Diane getting dumped by her fiance at the bar for his ex-old lady. Frankly, as someone who grew up watching sitcoms first in the late 1990s, that sort of tone for a "funny" show is just so alien to me.

    - I saw plenty of episodes of Friends, and I never once thought I was watching an epic sitcom. Friends is the Jay Leno of sitcoms. It's capable, and really good at what it does, but it never reached the levels of Cheers or Seinfeld to me (not that there's anything wrong with that). Although the content of the shows is vastly different, it strikes me as the Two and a Half Men of its generation, where people are just hungry for some funnies and don't mind that it's not the most refined sitcom in the world. The funny was a lot better in the earlier seasons, before it went from a straight sitcom to a soap opera comedy to attract more female viewers.
     
  8. KJIM

    KJIM Well-Known Member

    I think it holds up extremely well. As I've already stated, I loved Cheers -- even had a board game as some point -- and have watched and re-watched it on both Netflix on demand and the DVDs.

    It was real at the time and has aged nicely. Really, the only thing that dates it, at least in my mind, is the hair/wardrobe and appearance of Tip O'Neill. Then you realize, boy, that was a long time ago.

    Guy I housesat for was a good friend of the guy that owned the Bull & Finch. My buddy went to the final party there in, what was it, 1993?

    The barflies: The one who was Rhea Pearlman's dad, I swear, in one of the earlier ones he was in, they did a pan of the bar and I swear to God it was a cardboard cutout. I wish I could remember which episode it was.

    One of my favorite episodes, early in season one: The one with Coach's daughter, when she was going to marry the jerk and then Coach tells her like it is. Then she tells him like (she thinks) it is.

    She tries get him to acknowledge she's not beautiful, and tells him to look at her the way others see her. Coach does and realizes she looks "just like your mother."

    She tries to say "Yes, and mom wasn't pretty" but she starts says, "I look exactly like her. and mom wasn't--" then she realizes her dad is remembering how beautiful his mom was and realizes she can do better and finishes with "comfortable with her beauty."

    That was a really, really early episode -- like three or four -- and demonstrates the development of the characters and writing. It had some off-moments (mostly in the later seasons), but I don't think it ever whiffed.

    I don't have time to sit and research the GQ thing, but Cheers is a show I never under-appreciated.
     
  9. I have always argued NBC is missing the boat and needs to shell out the bucks for a reunion night.
    One night .. bring back Cheers for one episode. Seinfeld and even the Cosby show.
     
  10. HC

    HC Well-Known Member

    Sam: What would you say to a beer, Norm.
    Norm: Going down.
     
  11. Norrin Radd

    Norrin Radd New Member

    "What are you up to, Mr. Peterson?"
    "My idea weight if I were 11 feet tall."
     
  12. Huggy

    Huggy Well-Known Member

    There was a great open when a guy comes into the bar, looks around and tells Woody that he hasn't been in the place in years and that it has really changed. Woody asks what's different and he tells him the stairs leading to Melville's used to behind the bar. Woody can't picture it and says, "Where?" and the guy says, "Behind Norm."
     
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