Best CHEERS character

the spontaneous "we will rock you" moment that opens s08e18 is SO good

isn’t it great? it’s also the only time i can recall close-ups of anything at all in this show. they never go in tighter than a head-to-waist shot (unless it’s a one-shot of norm at the bar, in which case there are always people milling about behind him).

How are you all blazing through so fast? OK, maybe stupid question, but I'm still on S2 despite sheltering in place. I find I can only binge 3-4 episodes at a time

we’re smashing out 20–30 episodes a week (watching s09e09 right now)

ooh, hill just introduced himself

Finished season 6 last night and the closing run of episodes is so great. The whole season really works as an extended excercise in knocking Sam off his pedestal.

Rebecca is crucial in that, because Sam is an alpha male by the standards of the dudes in the bar, and also by the standards of the eggheads that Diane knows, but absolutely not by Rebecca's standards (the business elite of Boston).

Also Danson was clearly getting older and the scripts needed to reflect that.

took a break at the beginning of season 5 bc im not ready to say goodbye to Dianne.

I’m definitely in the thick of when I started watching in real time though. It’s pretty wild in the way smells can trigger memories, apparently so can Sam’s blousy collarless um henleys?

close-ups of anything at all in this show

this caught my attention for sure. it was kinda cool to "experience" the bar in a more intimate way.

i also kept expecting somebody to burst in with a wisecrack. when nobody did and the credits just started to play it made it even funnier.

Another low-key running gag I love is Woody writing the Cheers Newsletter for no reason whatsoever.

cheers-era kirstie alley is my current crush btw

Another low-key running gag I love is Woody writing the Cheers Newsletter for no reason whatsoever.

the show is full of gorgeous stuff like this, e.g. rebecca rifling through a box of receipts but never achieving anything (iirc they call her out for this towards the end)

just watched the s02 one where diane teaches andy the murderer to act and they do othello. it's basically perfect

i love it! a desdemona who fights back!

I think that might be the best episode of all of them.

ooh, hill just introduced himself

"oh Sa-aam"

the effect hill has on sam is glorious, and gives danson an excuse to unleash some of his best comic and physical acting. he really lights up the screen. we’re in the same series now and it’s a joy to watch.

we’ve just hit the daffy-nitions episode

What's up with that?

I was up early this morning and saw a good Lilith episode (be still my beating heart).

Was rewatching some S05 episodes earlier, and as much as I appreciate the later, more cynical Sam Malone, the bit in Everyone Imitates Art, where it is revealed that Sam has saved all his love letters from Diane, bound up with a silk ribbon, is such a warm and startling moment. Theirs really is the best-written romance in all sitcom - prickly, mismatched, with crackling dialogue straight out of screwball, but the warmth and love ring just as true. And as much as Diane's made out as some kind of nightmare by all the other characters, and as much as their final reunion in the last episode ends, predictably, in disaster, Sam's affection for her is very real, and gave the show an emotional centre it lacked later on.

Yeah but the episode where Rebecca pretends to have shot her sister.

That one is good too

Only found out today that Frasier wasn't the first Cheers spin-off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PYEedFNWQ

The double episode for Woody and Kelly's wedding is an absolute masterpiece. Frasier occasionally went full farce but there isn't really another Cheers episode that does that.

Also if you ride on straight through to Season 11 you realise that Frasier lost several stone in weight over the course of Woody's wedding night.

cocaine's a helluva drug

About to go in on the finale lads.

I don’t think I ever saw it. Man I have a lot of catching up to do.

Beautiful final episode, I did see it 20 years or so ago but at the end of five months' worth of lockdown viewing it's just absolutely perfectly pitched.

With its rejection of the traditional comic/Hollywood conclusion, in culminating in heterosexual marriage (teased here, but then denied), the last episode still strikes me as brave.

in culminating

It's so perfect that Frasier isn't canon for me. It treated the other Cheers characters direspectfully, and quickly descended into bawdy farce.

matt what will you do with your quarantine lives now?

the recastings make it easy to headcanon that Frasier is a different continuity

all the Bar Wars episodes with the alternate Gary are future crossovers with the Frasierverse

Oh god I love a good Bar Wars episode

The one where Gary dies! (I can't tell if that's my favourite or if they went too far)

Last season definitely feels like it's preparing for Frasier - he's treated more prominently as a character and perhaps more seriously than the previous pompous bar buffoon.

Amazing Woody line right at the end as well.

We were discussing last night how Norm is maybe the only character in this with any self-awareness and he's maybe the most painfully self aware character in television.

Probably just going to start on Frasier now - I like a good baudy farce. I love the Bar Wars episode as well, when you see Harry The Hat turn up at the start you just know that only one can survive.

still cross abt where cliffie's mom ended up in the poll

Last season definitely feels like it's preparing for Frasier

Only in retrospect, though. Kelsey was actually prepping some show where he'd be a bedridden CEO and it would revolve around him and his "Daphne"-type person trying to run his empire from home. It never got off the ground, so then they pitched giving Frasier a spinoff and that was greenlit.

I rewatched Frasier recently and he was far more insufferable than I'd remembered for a good portion of the series. Niles as well. Also I'd forgotten that the Niles and Daphne getting together thing happened in about the midpoint as opposed to towards the end.

Also I never knew until recently that Lisa Kudrow was originally cast in the Roz role, but the chemistry was wrong when filming the pilot so they sacked her and hired Peri Gilpin. Trying to imagine Kudrow as Roz and I can't wrap my brain around it.

frasier is just hannibal but not funny

If they weren't preparing for Frasier in that season then I read the Lilith arc all wrong as well. Was Bebe Neuwirth unavailable for much of that season or did they just decide it didn't make sense to have Lilith sitting in the bar all the time? (Obviously this is madness because Lilith roxx).

Also being sacked from Frasier worked out just fine for Lisa Kudrow (who also appears in Cheers btw). Everyone benefits in this story.

Was Bebe Neuwirth unavailable for much of that season or did they just decide it didn't make sense to have Lilith sitting in the bar all the time?

I figured it might have been because she was doing something on Broadway, but the closest thing I could find was her in Damn Yankees which didn't premiere until nearly a year after Cheers was done. She had some bit parts in films around that time, so maybe that was part of it.

To add to the list of things I wish I hadn't found out - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ratzenberger#Political_views

Cliffie's a fash, what's up with that?

He was cast in Jim Jefferies' single-cam sitcom Legit as a bloviating conservative elder dad for verisimilitude. "He spouts his Republican bullshit all day, but there's no-one better to go out with. The cunt hasn't had to pay for a drink in 30 years!"

Jefferies' famous gun-control routine was motivated by several days' conversation after Ratzenberger strolled up to him on set the day of the Sandy Hook shooting and said "Eh Jim, y'know if only the teachers had guns, we wouldn’t have these problems."

ha!

John Ratzenberger... welcome to the resistance.

I guess it's not ironic that he's starting to look like the author of "Post Office".

MIscha the dog lies dead in the bog
The children cry over the carcass
The mist chokes my heart, covers the mourners
Al least this year we eat