Best CHEERS character

Only to the extent that *every* performance on the show was one based on a few tics. Danson has the richest character to play though--take him out of the show and you are basically left with a series of one-note sketches based on easily recognizable character types--and I thought he always (with a few exceptions, when it was more of a case of the writers letting him down) played it beautifully.

lillith is amazing

Unquestionably. Loved how the only time she laughed was at Cliff's awful stand-up jokes (which no one else laughed at).

The way Danson said "Have a nice life" in the season 5 finale kills me every time

Swanson: I've known Prince for many years—I worked on the "Raspberry Beret" video—and Kirstie and I used to fight about him. He once sent a card (saying) he had penned a song about me, called "Palomino Pleasure Ride."

I want to remake the theme song in a minor key and change the chorus to "Sometimes you wanna go to where nobody knows your name"

"Who the hell are all the people at the bottom?"

Robin Colcord ... (Roger Rees) 1
- owner of the bar during early Kirstie Alley years, sent Rebecca weak at the knees and brain

Paul Krapence ... (Paul Willson) 1
- barfly who gradually worked his way up to supporting character in last few years

About 14 years into my rewatch, and just hit Paul getting a surname: in a Season 10 episode starring Harry Connick Jr as Woody's cousin.

lol - he was in the show from Season 1!

the paul in the earlier seasons is a different character and actor.

this guy:

http://img5.bdbphotos.com/images/orig/k/c/kcb3wr1y223bb3y.jpgl

not this guy:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/cheers/images/d/d9/Paulkrapence.jpg

http://img5.bdbphotos.com/images/orig/k/c/kcb3wr1y223bb3y.jpg

oops fucked up the first link

i always remember the bit where Woody's rehearsing a romantic scene from a play with his female co-star and Kelly walks in on them kissing and immediately and angrily comes to a realization and accuses him of...being in a play behind her back.

right, that's a different character.

Paul Wilson is in Season 1 tho, imdb says: Appeared on Cheers (1982) during its first season as bar patron, Tom, before starting his recurring role of Paul in 1991.

xp

lol who voted for evan drake and robin colcord as best character

kelly gaines and ma claven and eddie lebec all were way better, ditto cliffie's gf played by annie golden formerly of the shirts who didn't make the list

Not even sure that note is accurate, it looks like he was credited as Paul before 1991.

- One for the Road (1993) ... Paul Krapence
- The Guy Can't Help It (1993) ... Paul Krapence
- Rebecca Gaines, Rebecca Loses (1993) ... Paul Krapence
- It's Lonely on the Top (1993) ... Paul Krapence
- Woody Gets an Election (1993) ... Paul Krapence
- Bar Wars VII: The Naked Prey (1993) ... Paul Krapence
- The Bar Manager, the Shrink, His Wife and Her Lover (1993) ... Paul Krapence
- Is There a Doctor in the Howe? (1993) ... Paul Krapence
- Norm's Big Audit (1993) ... Paul Krapence
- Sunday Dinner (1993) ... Paul Krapence
- Feelings... Whoa, Whoa, Whoa (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- Do Not Forsake Me, O' My Postman (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- The King of Beers (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- The Beer Is Always Greener (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- Heeeeeere's... Cliffy! (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- Bar Wars VI: This Time It's for Real (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- Rebecca's Lover... Not (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- Take Me Out of the Ball Game (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- Smotherly Love (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- License to Hill (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- A Diminished Rebecca with a Suspended Cliff (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- One Hugs, the Other Doesn't (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- My Son, My Father (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- No Rest for the Woody (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- Don't Shoot... I'm Only the Psychiatrist (1992) ... Paul Krapence
- Go Make (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- I'm Okay, You're Defective (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- A Fine French Whine (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Head Over Hill (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Where Have All the Floorboards Gone? (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Bar Wars V: The Final Judgement (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Unplanned Parenthood (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Ma's Little Maggie (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- The Norm Who Came to Dinner (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Get Your Kicks on Route 666 (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Uncle Sam Wants You (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Home Malone (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Rat Girl (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Carla Loves Clavin (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Crash of the Titans (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- I'm Getting My Act Together and Sticking It in Your Face (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Wedding Bell Blues (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- The Days of Wine and Neuroses (1991) ... Paul Krapence
- Woody Interruptus (1990) ... Paul Krapence
- Norm and Cliff's Excellent Adventure (1990) ... Paul Krapence
- Breaking in Is Hard to Do (1990) ... Paul Krapence
- Ma Always Liked You Better (1990) ... Paul Krapence
- Where Nobody Knows Your Name (1990) ... Paul Krapence
- Tale of Two Cuties (1988) ... Paul
- Tan 'N' Wash (1986) ... Paul
- Money Dearest (1986) ... Paul
- Strange Bedfellows: Part 1 (1986) ... Paul
- Fools and Their Money (1985) ... Paul
- Little Sister, Don't Cha (1983) ... Tom
- Someone Single, Someone Blue (1983) ... Gregg

xp

Maybe someone was really into Robin Colcord also playing the substitute teacher on My So Called Life. xpost

I dreamed of being a daytime bartender because of Cheers and Kicking and Screaming but then it kind of sucks because you end up receiving the deliveries.

Lilith's mother pours scorn on Sam for arriving at Frasier & Lilith's renewal of vows without bringing a gift: "Don't give it a second thought, Mr Trump."

there’s so many trump references in cheers, particularly re: Rebecca

Paul was great! I mentioned him as one of my runners-up way above.

these results are terrible, of course. cliff is barely top-10, if that

ok

Funny you should say that, there Mook, because there have been many anti-Cliff curmudgeons who have also been passionate enough to (a.) draw up a Top 10 list of Cheers characters in their mind AND (2.) be unstable members of society, possibly serial killers. It all goes back to something Oliver Wendall Holmes once said...

hey, thanks pplainy

Inspired by this thread, I’ve started watching from S1E1. It really came out of the gate strong, huh? Ep.1 is a bit languid, with not many real laughs, but by ep. 2, you can already see everyone figuring out the rhythms that would define the show for its whole run. Shelley Long puts so much into Diane — her reactions to everyone else’s lines are perfect and massively expressive. The editing is snappy and has its own personality — I love the way the camera cuts in close & quick for Carla’s snide asides. The final scene just brought a huge grin to my face that didn’t fade for minutes. Where Sam is spinning his yarn about the colour of Diane’s eyes and time just slows down as he settles in and takes all the time he needs to inhabit the lie, and the rest of the world just kind of fades into the background for a while as Diane is drawn in... then bang, she stumbles into the realization, throws up her armour, and drinks her customer’s vodka shot as she turns away... then a perfect beat of Sam’s self-satisfaction, just the way he and the camera both move in that final second — it’s beyond perfect.

In the oral history linked above, Shelley Long comes off as a real-life Diane. I half expected her to throw in a little showoff French as she justified why she was such a royal PITA to everyone else on the show!

Man! Episode 5, the scene between Coach and his daughter. Call me sentimental, but —

All: “You’re sentimental!”

— but I must admit I wept freely.

Then this great transition out of that scene back into the bar, where the camera cuts ahead of Lisa and Coach to Norm trying to light a suit jacket on fire. Sam with a punchline. Beat. Then the climactic confrontation. NICELY DONE.

***

From Wikipedia:

Shelley Long was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1949.[4] She is the daughter of Ivadine, a school teacher, and Leland Long, who worked in the rubber industry before becoming a teacher.[5] She was active on her high school speech team, competing in the Indiana High School Forensic Association. In 1967, she won the National Forensic League's National Championship in Original Oratory.

In the Cheers biography documentary, co-star Ted Danson ... stated that Long was much more like her character than she would like to admit...

You don’t say!

And in the fourth episode (I think?) there was actually a very unusual and long tracking shot that backs out of the back room where Diane and Sam are arguing, down the hallway past the bathroom where a couple patrons come out, back into the main room past Norm's seat and down the bar to an entirely different conversation. It was sort of jarring how nakedly cinematic it was, not like a standard sitcom shot at all.

― Οὖτις

(and naked lolz at Diane’s uni course, “Practical Feminism,” which gave her the ability to reflexively land a sexual assaulter on his back.)

As a kid I didn't get the full joke of the character of Cliff, because I didn't realize he spouted pure jibberish while trying to sound smart. "Get that man 50 milligrams of cc's!". I thought he was actually smart but was mocked anyway because everyone hates a know-it-all. Kinda like how they did with Frazier.

In the early years he’s just a pub bore who half-knows one thing about a lot of topics. He becomes more of a spurious bloviator as the decade rolls on.

I just finished re-watching up thru season 4 and was surprised how much of his "knowledge" even in the first few seasons was nonsense, ie using $100 words incorrectly, conflating various concepts or historical figures/events, etc.

Also, this time through I found the Sam-Diane thing was grating, was given too much focus, and wasn't believable. Per Wikipedia, there was a lot of contemporaneous criticism along those lines too. I'd never heard of that criticism; only ever heard that the show wasn't doing well in the ratings and Sam-Diane romance saved it from cancellation.

At age 31, Kate Mulgrew had the voice of a 55 yr old east coast patrician. I liked how the writers didn't give her character some major flaw and therefore make Sam's choice between her and Diane an easy one.

Yeah, but he's spinning off the tiny bit of something he almost-remembers, and often getting away with it because the rest of the bar profoundly don't care. By the final seasons he ran out of half-facts a long time ago and p much everyone politely loathes him. It works both as a change in the writing approach and as a genuine character arc, which is really fun.

(I totally fell for it as a kid too! as well as Diane's assessment of herself as an intellectual. Rewatching in my late teens I'd already cottoned on to Cliff from his later, more pathetic version, but Diane's essential delusion was a slow "waaaait a minute" realisation.)

Was it ever explicitly stated or did I just invent it in my head that Diane stays at Cheers as long as she did because it allows her to think of herself as an intellectual. Cause compared to the rest of the ppl there, she is.

I think someone does say that one point, although I'm not sure who

Sam, most likely?

might’ve been sumner?

Ted Danson recently said he felt awkward behind the bar, that it'd be obvious that he didn't really know what he was doing back there, so to mask that he would constantly be polishing shot glasses and doing lil routines with his bar towel. But he's a retired pro athlete who owns a bar...why would he be expected to be a pro bartender?

coulda been Frasier too

feel like the polishing glasses stuff was maybe once 'explained' as a nervous side-effect of being an alcoholic running a bar

Lilith appears 2/3 of the way thru season 4, but in only 1 episode and doesn't reappear until 4th episode of season 5. Is there a backstory to that? I assume she was supposed to only appear in the one episode, but then someone or some ppl thought she was a great foil for Frasier so had her written back in?

that's addressed in the oral history:

Bill Steinkellner: [Cheri and I] wrote the first script that Lilith was in. . She was in a little bit of the first scene, and then she left. The next year came, they said, "Let's get a girlfriend for Frasier."

Bebe Neuwirth (Lilith Sternin): In 1985, I was doing a pre-Broadway run of Sweet Charity [that] started in LA and had four months off before opening on Broadway. So I stayed and tried to rustle up whatever work I could while I was waiting. The first job was on Simon Simon, and the second was Cheers. I don't know that I had seen it. But my parents, who are very smart, very sophisticated, they loved Cheers.

In New York, in musicals, I was playing parts that would never have been described the way Lilith was in the breakdown. [I thought], "What do you mean, 'not so good-looking?'" [laughs] She was kind of drab—hair straight back in a bun, uptight, no sense of humor. The musical stuff I'd go up for was always funny, sexy, tough-as-nails, heart-of-gold characters. So when I first auditioned for Lilith, I really struggled. Then her voice occurred to me in my head, and I started reading it out loud to myself, and it made me laugh. That was her.

feel like the polishing glasses stuff was maybe once 'explained' as a nervous side-effect of being an alcoholic running a bar

genius-level analysis from one of the true scholars of our times iirc

love his constant cutting up of limes when's he's playing the background of a scene too - no-one's ordering G&Ts or V/L/S or whatever, but he's an in-recovery alcoholic in a bar and is keeping his hands busy. same with the completely inappropriate swagger that he brings to swigging from those dinky little water bottles. his swig swag.

― ʘ (sic), Thursday, August 23, 2012 11:32 AM (seven years ago)

Ooh thanks Shakey. I see a link to the oral history posted upthread.

since this image from seven years upthread has linkrotted:

https://i.imgur.com/G4H7wI9.jpg

Does anyone know what the situation is re: rights in the UK? I haven’t seen it since...the early 90s? Maybe earlier? I know it’s on streaming services in the US...

It's was on Channel 4 in the mornings for ages - Diane era - but I think they've reverted to King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond now.

... just checked, it's still on but before King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond.

... so, get up early!

I will!