TheJohn
"Sometimes you just gotta go where everyone wishes Diane Chambers was dead*"
For those who either love or hate the 80's.
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American situation comedy television series set in Boston
< read all 2 reviewsSometimes you just gotta go where everyone wishes Diane Chambers was dead*
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Nov 8, 2010
- by TheJohn
Rating:
Cheers. What needs to be said? It's one of the greatest shows ever made.
+5
Part "work-com" and growing more into a traditional "sitcom" later on with a great ensemble cast. Cheers was about the misadventures at a bar in Boston MA. Run by former baseball pitcher turned booze jockey Sam "Mayday" Malone, a recovering alcoholic who employs the snarky and meanspirited Carla and the ingratiatingly sweet and obnoxious Diane Chambers as waitresses and Ernie Pantusso, "the Coach" as assistant bartender. The show would have barflys like no-nothing know it all Cliff Clavin and the bar's cornerstone Norm Peterson drop in for beers, strange stories, little known facts and more beer.
The show had a wonderful sense of camaraderie with all the cast members with jokes that piled up on top of other jokes and even when more characters were added later or left the replacements were great too. Frasier Crane was introduced in this show with his pale and deadpan wife Lilith. Woody would replace Coach and by comparison, Woody a new bartender made Coach look like Mr. Wizard on a rainy Saturday with his lack of smarts, Paul would be a new bar patron to mingle with Cliff and Norm and finally Rebbecca Howe would come along to get ownership of Cheers and later would become an item with Sam. Sam's love affairs with bimbos were often a staple of episodes as were Cliff and Norm's non adventures in and out of the bar with best known examples of writing jokes for The Tonight Show and appearing on Jeopardy.
Not only a great cast but even recurring characters like conman Harry the Hat, or Nick Tortelli, Carlas slimy ex husband and even later on guys like John Allen Hill and Gary who are two guys you just want to strangle for they're smug snake attitudes. More often then not, Sam would look like a loser by the end of these episodes but damn it we root for him just the same.
As the show progressed it obviously started to get harder for the show to stay fresh and at it's worst, Cheers started to look like a bad sitcom with it's contrived stories and jokes telegraphed a mile away. This sitcoms worst years, are still better then a poor sitcoms best years.
*Did I mention I hate Diane?
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More Cheers (TV show) reviews
Quick Tip by TheJohn.
November 07, 2010
Sometimes a show comes along that everyone can agree was awesome.
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About the reviewer
John Nelson (TheJohn)
Born in Wausau Wisconsin. Move at an early age to Ventura California and lived for 8 years. Growing up in a big city landscape didn't prepare me for my next move: Archbold Ohio with a population of … more
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About this tv show
The famous Boston bar "Where everybody knows your name" first opened its doors September 30, 1982, on NBC. The original cast of the classic sitcom Cheers included Ted Danson as Sam Malone, the womanizing ex-ballplayer and recovering alcoholic who owned the titular Beacon Street watering hole; Shelley Long as Diane Chambers, the college-bred intellectual and aspiring author who was obliged to take a lowly barmaid job at Cheers when she was abandoned there by her faithless fiancé; Rhea Perlman as the much-married Carla Torelli, Cheers' vituperative head barmaid who never had anything nice to say about anyone, least of all Diane; Nicholas Colasanto as bartender Ernie "Coach" Pantusso, onetime Red Sox coach and Sam's best friend; and Cheers' two most frequent customers, George Wendt as chunky, habitually unemployed accountant Norm Peterson, and John Ratzenberger as mail carrier and self-appointed expert on everything Cliff Clavin. Both of these worthies were saddled with women trouble: Norm lived in mortal terror of his never-seen wife, and Cliff shared an apartment with his obstreperous mother. Among those added to the cast in later seasons were Kirstie Alley as Cheers' new manager Rebecca Howe, installed during Sam's absence while he endeavored to get over the departure of his off-and-on lover Diane (Sam had been forced by financial problems to return to the bar as Rebecca's employee -- a situation that would eventually reverse itself); Woody ...
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When I was a little kid, I used to despise this show because it aired right after The Simpsons, so that meant that was the end of my favorite show for the evening :P Over the years after watching a few reruns of it, its grown on me and now I see the show as so nostalgic. Great review, John!