Cheers (television series)

[DallasFanForever]

I also watched it regularly during the early seasons, and I also prefer the Diane and Coach episodes. I didn't mind Woody though.

I didn’t mind Woody either. Someone had to take over the “goofiness” role from Coach and I think he did it quite well. And I say that with all due respect. Almost every sitcom back then pretty much had that one “goof” character that made us roll our eyes a lot but still made us laugh.

 

[Crimson]

until shortly after Shelley Long (semi-despised though she was by her co-stars) left, as Kirstie was a weak replacement. Amazingly, some viewers preferred Alley -- go figure!

I was surprised when I realized Diane was a divisive character; some people really disliked her. Maybe it's because she was a pseudo-intellectual snob, not exactly a crowd pleasing type. Or maybe it was something inherently off-putting about Shelley Long; she didn't exactly go onto a great career post-CHEERS.

 

[Barbara Fan]

I loved Cheers at the time, its probably one of the few US comedies I found funny. It was on UK TV on a Friday if i recall and i used to set the video for it if i was out.

I wasnt a fan of Shelley Long though and far prefererd Kirstie Alley as Rebecca

Or maybe it was something inherently off-putting about Shelley Long; she didn't exactly go onto a great career post-CHEERS.

Leaving Cheers was her biggest mistake, although I didnt miss her and her career went downhill big time

Rewatching it now, its not stood the test of time so well

I did enjoy the episode with Alexis Smith in it - and I loved the chimps as a Postman and painter / decorator. Always liked Sam, Woody, Norm and Cliff and Frasier and Lilith

 

[Jimmy Todd]

The character of Diane was a pretentious snob, but she had such great chemistry with the rest of the cast, especially Sam. Shelley Long, whatever she was like in real life, humanized the character enough so that she wasn't unlikable, but at times quite endearing.

 

[Chris2]

I loved the show, particularly the first six seasons. It was so witty and literate - the one liners were amazing. And of course, there was the fun chemistry between Sam and Diane. I thought they handled the transition to Rebecca well, too. But the showrunners changed after season 6, and it was never quite as consistently funny again, though there are certainly some gems in the later years. I also didn’t like how in the later years, the characters became more one dimensional - Carla was meaner, Sam was dumber, Rebecca became a shallow, emotional mess, etc.

But those first six season are real classics.

Also, I think poor Shelley gets tagged as an awful person, and she really wasn’t - at least not according to Ken Levine, one of the producers:

Now let me say a few words about Shelley’s behavior. She could be difficult. She could be obstinate. She could over-think something to death. But it was never out of spite. It was just her very exacting process. At times I will admit it was frustrating. And exhausting. But Shelley has a good heart. She is a sweet person. And in her defense, she had an incredibly complex difficult character to play. To make Diane Chambers loveable and funny while still maintaining her haughty attitude took a very special actress. It would be so easy to just hate Diane. Shelley did an extraordinary job. I can't think of a single actress who could have done the role better... or even as well. So if it took her longer to find the moments and just the right shading then tough. The results were on the screen.

But the point I want to reiterate is that she is a lovely person. I know actors who are just mean-spirited monsters -- unhappy miserable people who want everyone around them to be as unhappy as they are. That’s not Shelley.

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2013/09/did-shelley-long-try-to-get-kelsey.html

 

[Jimmy Todd]

I loved the show, particularly the first six seasons. It was so witty and literate - the one liners were amazing. And of course, there was the fun chemistry between Sam and Diane. I thought they handled the transition to Rebecca well, too. But the showrunners changed after season 6, and it was never quite as consistently funny again, though there are certainly some gems in the later years. I also didn’t like how in the later years, the characters became more one dimensional - Carla was meaner, Sam was dumber, Rebecca became a shallow, emotional mess, etc.

But those first six season are real classics.

Also, I think poor Shelley gets tagged as an awful person, and she really wasn’t - at least not according to Ken Levine, one of the producers:

Now let me say a few words about Shelley’s behavior. She could be difficult. She could be obstinate. She could over-think something to death. But it was never out of spite. It was just her very exacting process. At times I will admit it was frustrating. And exhausting. But Shelley has a good heart. She is a sweet person. And in her defense, she had an incredibly complex difficult character to play. To make Diane Chambers loveable and funny while still maintaining her haughty attitude took a very special actress. It would be so easy to just hate Diane. Shelley did an extraordinary job. I can't think of a single actress who could have done the role better... or even as well. So if it took her longer to find the moments and just the right shading then tough. The results were on the screen.

But the point I want to reiterate is that she is a lovely person. I know actors who are just mean-spirited monsters -- unhappy miserable people who want everyone around them to be as unhappy as they are. That’s not Shelley.

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2013/09/did-shelley-long-try-to-get-kelsey.html

I totally agree with you on the first six seasons. The scripts were so clever and the characters were people with whom you wanted to spend time.
Thanks for that quote about Shelley. It's nice to hear and the comments about the difficulty of making Diane likeable are very interesting.
I read similar comments about Joan Van Ark. Apparently she rubbed the owner of the house that they filmed scenes in for Knots Landing, but from what I read she was a very nice person, but a perfectionist.

I'm still watching more clips of Cheers episodes and I notice what an overall cheerful vibe it has, in a different way than most other shows. I love the cold openings
There's a great one I just saw in which there's almost no dialogue. Norm is tapping a pencil and slowly one by one everyone in the bar and the upstairs restaurant joins in until they're all singing "We Will Rock You."

 

[DallasFanForever]

I'm still watching more clips of Cheers episodes and I notice what an overall cheerful vibe it has, in a different way than most other shows. I love the cold openings
There's a great one I just saw in which there's almost no dialogue. Norm is tapping a pencil and slowly one by one everyone in the bar and the upstairs restaurant joins in until they're all singing "We Will Rock You."

The cold openings on Cheers followed by that iconic song still gives me chills! To me it was the best sitcom open ever. I could watch those all day long.

 

[Jimmy Todd]

The cold openings on Cheers followed by that iconic song still gives me chills! To me it was the best sitcom open ever. I could watch those all day long.

I agree. I get a happy feeling after the opening and when the theme song starts.
This is an example of t.v. at it's most sublime.

 

[Grant Jennings]

I loved Cheers and was a faithful viewer from the beginning. I think Shelley Long's decision was good for the show because Sam and Diane's relationship had more or less run its course; though this turned out to be a bad choice for Long professionally. Kirstie Alley was okay as Rebecca but I disliked her repeated crying scenes (something the writers apparently liked). I also prefer Coach to Woody.

One thing that has always bugged me about Cheers, specifically about Woody (didn't Coach take too many fly-balls to the head, with that being the explanation of his behavior): the trope of the kind-hearted imbecile vs. the mean intellectual.

I think Frazier was a rarity in television: a spin-off that was even better than the original series. Frazier did decline in quality about halfway through its run; I think they dragged out the Niles and Daphne unrequited romance too long. The later seasons saw a definite improvement.

 

[Chris2]

The cold opens were great, and they generally had nothing to do with the plot that followed. They were just little mini-episodes that stood on their own.

One of my favorites is from the last season where Andy Andy shows up with dynamite strapped to his body, demanding to see Diane. When told she no longer works there, he says, “Oh, OK” and walks out. LOL

Kirstie Alley was okay as Rebecca but I disliked her repeated crying scenes (something the writers apparently liked).

I liked her better during her first season, when she was more hard nosed and she verbally sparred with Sam. But the writers didn’t feel that worked - they said that when she entered a scene, they tried to get her into her office as quickly as possible so they wouldn’t have to write for her.

 

[Crimson]

nd in her defense, she had an incredibly complex difficult character to play. To make Diane Chambers loveable and funny while still maintaining her haughty attitude took a very special actress. It would be so easy to just hate Diane.

That's a very valid point. Like Stephanie over on NEWHART, Diane doesn't make much sense on paper. She's a snob from a wealthy family, but chooses to work as a barmaid. The writers never seemed entirely sure if Diane was genuinely intelligent, a fake intellectual, or both. She was set up as both a central character, but also the brunt of the show's most withering scorn (via Carla). If Shelley was trying to make sense of Diane, it must have been a frustrating endeavor.

 

[DallasFanForever]

I liked her better during her first season, when she was more hard nosed and she verbally sparred with Sam

I liked the tough Rebecca also. But I think I liked her better as she evolved into that lovable loser type character. I thought she played that part so well. It was fun to see her constantly losing out on her dreams and wondering if the poor girl would ever win, which at least she finally did in the end (kind of).

 

[Daniel Avery]

That's a very valid point. Like Stephanie over on NEWHART, Diane doesn't make much sense on paper. She's a snob from a wealthy family, but chooses to work as a barmaid. The writers never seemed entirely sure if Diane was genuinely intelligent, a fake intellectual, or both. She was set up as both a central character, but also the brunt of the show's most withering scorn (via Carla). If Shelley was trying to make sense of Diane, it must have been a frustrating endeavor.

I don't know if this is the intention, but I always assumed that Diane worked there because she could feel intellectually superior to everyone else there (the "big fish in a small pond"). If she were to hang out with the intellectual elites, they would recognize immediately that she was not their intellectual equal, and she would always feel inferior to them. She didn't have to suck up to anyone at the bar, but on the other hand no one else there placed much importance on being the smartest person in the room (except maybe Cliff, but he was more of a trivial mind rather than witty or clever).

Speaking of Newhart's Stephanie, her portrayer, Julia Duffy, ended up playing a role similar to Diane Chambers on Designing Women. The role of Alison was a famous failure for that series even as Duffy did a great job playing her. The chief reason the character did not work as it was written was because, like you state about Diane, the character was set up to be central, and yet was a punching bag for the other characters. Unlike Diane, however, Alison was not balanced out with more scenes of her softer, more human side, and certainly did not have the writing behind her to allow viewers to see behind her snobbery and insecurity.

Speaking of Carla, one of her wittier remarks still sticks in my mind. Diane, speaking of a planned trip of some sort to the UK, commented that if she had time, she "might look up Chuck and Di," in that snobbish tone of hers as if they were friends. Carla told her she hoped she would "upchuck and die".

 

[supermanfan]

Cheers was ok liked Frasier better my favorite characters from Frasier were David Hyde pierce and John Mahoney

 

[Grant Jennings]

The highly educated Diane working as a barmaid doesn't seem very illogical to me, her degree was probably in some field that doesn't help one find many paying jobs.

 

[AndyB2008]

I was surprised when I realized Diane was a divisive character; some people really disliked her. Maybe it's because she was a pseudo-intellectual snob, not exactly a crowd pleasing type. Or maybe it was something inherently off-putting about Shelley Long; she didn't exactly go onto a great career post-CHEERS.

She was later in a sitcom called Good Advice (co-produced by her own production company), which seemed cursed.

She fell ill not long after the show got a 2nd season, hence CBS having to put the show on a break until she recovered. Then Estelle Harris and Christopher McDonald got dropped from the main cast for Season 2 in order to bring Teri Garr in. Afterwards, it was cancelled.

ITV picked it up for transmission in the UK, but sadly GA didn't find an audience because it was placed by ITV on Tuesday nights at 7.30pm, directly against a certain Cockney soap that was a ratings powerhouse back then. Anything against said soap back then was going to fail.

(Billy Connolly's short lived sitcom Billy also was placed in the same timeslot, as were the 2nd series of both Holding The Baby and the British version of Mad About You, Loved By You, when the latter 2 flopped in primetime).

 

[ClassyCo]

I started watching CHEERS when Hallmark aired episodes around 4:00am on weekday mornings. I was a little indifferent to the show at first, but I eventually warmed up to them. The first episodes I started watching were the episodes with Diane and Woody in the ensemble, and those early episodes with Frasier and Lilith. I liked Sam well enough, but I'd admit that rest of the characters (Norm, Cliff, and Carla to be specific) are pretty hit or miss for me. Sure, they each round out the cast, but they don't always register with me. I could really take or leave them sometimes, although I'd certainly miss the energetic "Norm!" that the entire exclaims when Norm enters the room.

Needless to say, it wasn't long into my initial viewings of the episodes before Diane left and Rebecca was brought on. On a personal preference level, I found Rebecca prettier and more instantly likable than Diane. Over time, however, I'd probably say that I am more partial to the earlier seasons. The dynamic and will-they-won't-they tension between Sam and Diane wasn't replicated with Sam and Rebecca.

CHEERS can really be broken down into two separate eras: the "Diane years" and the "Rebecca years", and each era of the show has its own solid fan-base. Sam was the straight man to Diane, while she was typically involved in situations that knocked her off her high horse. When Rebecca became apart of the group, Sam became more of a goofball with a mirror in his hand checking his hair.

Overall, I like CHEERS, but it really isn't a show I'd binge. While I have the complete series, there's only a few episodes that I typically want to watch when I need my fix. I really like the episode "Cliffie's Big Score", where Cliff takes Diane to the postman's ball. I also really like the episode "Thanksgiving Orphans", which just might become a Thanksgiving staple at my house if my wife likes it good enough. The later seasons still hold some gems in them, especially the episodes where Woody dates the rich snob Kelly. The episode where he sings "Kelly's Song" is priceless. That little bit of comedy is pure gold.

So, yeah, I like CHEERS. But I doubt it would make a list of my favorite sitcoms.

​

 

[ClassyCo]

‘Cheers’ star George Wendt dead at 76

George Wendt, famous for playing Norm Peterson in the iconic sitcom “Cheers,” has died.

nypost.com

 

[Seaviewer]

‘Cheers’ star George Wendt dead at 76

George Wendt, famous for playing Norm Peterson in the iconic sitcom “Cheers,” has died.

nypost.com

Heard this on the news this morning.
Let's say it together one last time: NORM!!!

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I was just stunned to learn he was only 76.

Work those abs, kiddoes!!