This show was the trademark show of the 1980's for NBC. It actually was two series with changes in the cast causing the first series too end & the second one to start. The bridge between each was sudden & distinct. Sam Mayday Malone (Ted Danson) is the glue that held both together. His character is the reason this series ran so long. You could almost believe he was really a Red Sox reliever in the days before they won World Series. That time was pretty much this shows entire run (and more).
The first Cheers had Sam & Diane from show number one. Their on again off again relationship was the catalyst that got the ratings up & kept viewers coming back for another round at the bar. It also had Coach, & he was a really unique character. Norm, Cliff & some of the bar regulars were there too.
Cheers the first started losing it's edge when Coach died, & then really hit the skids when it got stuck in the Sam & Diane rut. The problem was even though Shelly Long has some talent, her character had no where to grow. While she was a dumb phony intellectual blonde, trying to hide how stupid she was, her in-decision about herself put Cheers into neutral. It was actually a blessing when she left. The feud between Long & Rhea Pearlman became a pillar of this series toward the end of Longs reign as it provided welcome relief from Long on screen.
The second Cheers started when Kirsty Alley's Rebecca came in & created fresh angles for the show to grow in. The second Cheers added more characters around the bar, & tried to not get Rebeca caught in the same way Diane was. This worked well for a while. Adding Woody to replace Coach was a stroke of genius as he worked in perfect, along with additions like Fraiser. Some great comic moments happened in the competitions with another bar & the seafood place upstairs.
Then, Rebecca started getting into a rut & started to irritate people too. For some reason, the writers seemed to think viewers liked irritating women to be Sam's (Ted Danson's) love interest. Now the second distinct Cheers bogged down.
Luckily, they decided to end the series with a finale whose plot twisted irony just enough to make it great. It brought back Diane, still in the same rut she had been in before. Amazingly, it left her there at the end too, but it took Rebecca & made her change her life the last show. The final blackout left Sam alone at the bar, right where he was in episode one- with only Coaches picture on the wall to keep him company. It was a fitting end to a class series.
Since the series ended, Shelly Long's career pretty much ended with it. Kirstie Alley is pretty much doing diet commercials. Only Kelsey Grammar prospered after the show went off. He was kind enough to give a lot of the Cheers alumni guest shots on his show to pay them back for his start on Cheers.
Cheers ending marked the ending of a lot of the drunken-drinking humor in American Comedy. In a way, it sent a message often that drinking all the time really did put you in a rut. It put your life on hold. It wasted away your life, & even though it showed us ways to laugh at funny situations, on the whole, Cheers was a real downer of a message the way it ended, sending one last patron away from the closed bar.
The first Cheers had Sam & Diane from show number one. Their on again off again relationship was the catalyst that got the ratings up & kept viewers coming back for another round at the bar. It also had Coach, & he was a really unique character. Norm, Cliff & some of the bar regulars were there too.
Cheers the first started losing it's edge when Coach died, & then really hit the skids when it got stuck in the Sam & Diane rut. The problem was even though Shelly Long has some talent, her character had no where to grow. While she was a dumb phony intellectual blonde, trying to hide how stupid she was, her in-decision about herself put Cheers into neutral. It was actually a blessing when she left. The feud between Long & Rhea Pearlman became a pillar of this series toward the end of Longs reign as it provided welcome relief from Long on screen.
The second Cheers started when Kirsty Alley's Rebecca came in & created fresh angles for the show to grow in. The second Cheers added more characters around the bar, & tried to not get Rebeca caught in the same way Diane was. This worked well for a while. Adding Woody to replace Coach was a stroke of genius as he worked in perfect, along with additions like Fraiser. Some great comic moments happened in the competitions with another bar & the seafood place upstairs.
Then, Rebecca started getting into a rut & started to irritate people too. For some reason, the writers seemed to think viewers liked irritating women to be Sam's (Ted Danson's) love interest. Now the second distinct Cheers bogged down.
Luckily, they decided to end the series with a finale whose plot twisted irony just enough to make it great. It brought back Diane, still in the same rut she had been in before. Amazingly, it left her there at the end too, but it took Rebecca & made her change her life the last show. The final blackout left Sam alone at the bar, right where he was in episode one- with only Coaches picture on the wall to keep him company. It was a fitting end to a class series.
Since the series ended, Shelly Long's career pretty much ended with it. Kirstie Alley is pretty much doing diet commercials. Only Kelsey Grammar prospered after the show went off. He was kind enough to give a lot of the Cheers alumni guest shots on his show to pay them back for his start on Cheers.
Cheers ending marked the ending of a lot of the drunken-drinking humor in American Comedy. In a way, it sent a message often that drinking all the time really did put you in a rut. It put your life on hold. It wasted away your life, & even though it showed us ways to laugh at funny situations, on the whole, Cheers was a real downer of a message the way it ended, sending one last patron away from the closed bar.