Best CHEERS character

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

The place where I had dinner tonight had a TV way across the room playing the Rebecca-burns-down-the-bar episode (or the second of two episodes, can't remember). The sound was off, the captions were on; from where I was, I could only read some of them, and just barely at that.

Even with all that, when it got to the moment where Rebecca comes back to the bar after owning up to what she did, where she coldly hands in her resignation and tells Sam he said some unforgivable things, when Sam says "Do you want your job back" and she starts blubbering "Yes, yes," that's one of the few TV moments ever that always makes me tear up. The instantaneous change in Rebecca absolutely rises to the level of art.

lads, lads. the gif motherlode: https://twitter.com/smdcgifs

I think of this scene every time I drink whisky

amazing how bebe invented comedy with this scene pic.twitter.com/vegGcZXCuS

— silver shoes with rhinestone buckles✨ (@sapphicsternin) September 16, 2020

That one season where Lilith just hangs around the bar for no reason is exceptional.

lads, lads. the gif motherlode: https://twitter.com/smdcgifs

she was really good, wasn't she

I honestly think she and Kirstie were superlative comedic actors - but Shelley has this streak of unhingedness that sets her a pace ahead.

this jumped out at me rewatching the finale today

Always preferred Shelly Long pic.twitter.com/iWydWLq5LL

— Stevie Chick (@stevie_chick) October 18, 2020

Only £5 a season on Amazon now (but still not on Netflix UK) so I caved and will try to rewatch it all over the next year or so.

Just a few episodes into S1 I noticed the sound was really off dub by around half a second. Couldn't really tell if it was a streaming issue (late night on an otherwise unused fibre line) or a fault with the source.

streaming issue.

on the other hand (hi, i have the entire region 2 box set and am slowly catching up with Matt DC) season 1 and part of season 2 have some incredibly shonky camerawork that includes some straight-up out-of-focus shots - seemingly always at the tenderest moment of the episode!

streaming issue

Right where's that thread on all the ways technology is worse now than when this show first started

I'm still mad this left Netflix before I could finish my re-watch. Love that I will soon be paying more than I ever did for cable to keep up with the rotating streaming services necessary to follow shows.

Have also been rewatching the chunky red Cheers Region 2 complete box set during lockdown. Currently on the last disc of season nine.

There are a number of episodes where the picture quality markedly drops for a few seconds - as if the original footage had gone missing, and a poor duplicate was all that was available. The early episodes in particular also frequently employ a semi-documentary, semi-Altmanesque documentary approach that, seemingly deliberately, sometimes looks a bit inept or ill-made. I think it does help to make the bar seem like a 'real' place, with other stories going on at the edges, in the corners, that we'll never get to know. If you ever do zone out and concentrate on the background players for a moment or two, they're always totally 'in character' without ever being foreground intrusive.

Weirdly, starting around series six, some of the episodes truncate the opening credits/song. And then in season nine, they suddenly get an exterior shot of the bar they've never had before, so lots of the opening gags take place in the street outside Cheers.

Weirdly, starting around series six, some of the episodes truncate the opening credits/song.

episode length probably shrank due to ad breaks increasing; shorter credits mean more laffs

lots of the opening gags take place in the street outside Cheers.

iirc they went to Boston for some "keys to the city" type PR event, and wrote months worth of opening gags to shoot in one day while there?

I'm only halfway through season 1 but the seasons on Amazon Prime are already back up to £20 each again >:[ (a bit cheaper on Play store)

One of the things I am enjoying most is Diane's "..Norman.." after everyone else's

Less enjoyable - the visible sparkling sweat beads on several characters foreheads especially Sam's under the ruthless set lights, presumably an effect of the upscaling.

everyone else's "NORM" that should be of course

The really SHOUT it in the first couple of seasons I noticed!

Love the British acTOR type who fools Carla into thinking he's a spy and then Dian into thinking he's a poet...and then how tolerant everyone is of his genteel emotional grift. I don't suppose he returns later as a double-act with Harry The Hat..

every character in this is so great, its so hard to choose. rebecca was a little off-message her first season or two, but the whole robin colcord subplot is gravy - the episode with her getting drunk the night before the wedding and trying to seduce sam is all time.

Just caught the end of the episode where Robin Colcord makes his first appearance, preceding this Rebecca has decided to settle for Sam because "Robin Colcord or Donald Trump are not knocking on my door".

You won't tell my mother will you?
Mom's the word
You won't tell my mom will you?

that's gold, what episode is it from

i assume that’s woody in the first and last lines

surely

Yeah that's Woody, and talking to Diane.
It's season 5 episode 10 where Woodys girlfriend turns up with another bloke and Woody goes on a fake date with Sams cleaning lady

tbf she had "five stars the best" in Sam's little black book

Cliff: Check out this headline "SUICIDAL TWIN KILLS BROTHER BY MISTAKE"

Pretty sure I missed this poll, but I’d have voted for Shelley Long.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/3f/7f/ee/3f7fee3b717b96328347c8243301baed--golden-girls-meme-girl-memes.jpg

Definitely should have been more love for Diane. Certainly above Carla

Classic cold open where Frasier attempts to discuss Ingmar Bergman with the gang at Cheers. pic.twitter.com/ufUQ72nYcf

— Adam Rackoff (@AdamRackoff) September 20, 2022

example of the good frasier material

"To the layman"--someone should have decked him!

they’re used to it by that point - it’ll take more than that - “to the layman” merely the foothills of frasier’s mountainous condescension

example of the good frasier material

The turn to Abbot & Costello/Martin & Lewis at the end is the mark of genius.

I think one of my favourite Cheers runs is the episode where Frasier is reading Dickens, and starts to read some to the bar, but when they get restless he adulterates it with some horror/action movie schtik to keep them interested. By the end, he's reading lines like, "It's a far, far better butt-kicking I give today..."

seriously how is Cliff only mid-30s when this show started..