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An odd, low budget early promo for Cheers.

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A 2012 interview with the creators and cast.

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The Introduction to "Endless Slumper."

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Cheers | S01E10 cold open | "Have you ever been in any major military skirmishes?"

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Sam attempts his bar slide after loaning out his lucky bottle cap.

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Some extra facts about Cheers from Jennifer M Wood.

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On May 20, 1993-25 years ago today-television audiences said farewell to Sam Malone, the fictional Red Sox pitcher-turned-proprietor of Cheers. Though it's the Boston bar where everybody knows your name, there's plenty you probably don't know about the classic sitcom, which spent 11 seasons on the air.

1. CHEERS ALMOST DIDN'T MAKE IT THROUGH SEASON ONE.

Like many of television's greatest success stories (e.g. Seinfeld), Cheers was not an immediate hit. It premiered on September 30, 1982 to dismal ratings- 77th place out of 100 shows that week, according to Nielsen. It was NBC's entertainment president at the time, Brandon Tartikoff, who saved the show from cancellation during its first season.

2. THE BULL & FINCH PUB, ON WHICH CHEERS IS MODELED, IS NOW CALLED CHEERS

Talk about life imitating art. After it was decided that the series would be set in a bar instead of a hotel, co-creators Glen and Les Charles decided the locale should be moved to New England. "Boston was chosen partially because only five short-lived television shows claimed the city and the East Coast pubs were real neighborhood hangouts," wrote Dennis A. Bjorklund in his book, Toasting Cheers.

As the show's popularity rose, it didn't take long for word to spread that the Beacon Hill tavern was the "real" Cheers (though only the exterior shots were filmed there), turning the neighborhood hangout into a tourist attraction. To satisfy the masses, a second location-this one actually called "Cheers" and featuring a replica of the bar viewers were used to-was opened in nearby Faneuil Hall in 2001. One year later, the Bull & Finch officially changed its name to Cheers.

3. SAM MALONE WAS ORIGINALLY A PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYER.

In the script's earliest incarnations, Sam Malone was an ex-football player, which made sense considering that Fred Dryer-the former NFL defensive end who would go on to star in Hunter -was a top choice to play the role of Sam (opposite Julia Duffy as Diane; William Devane was also a strong contender). Ultimately, it was the chemistry between Ted Danson and Shelley Long that led to them getting the gigs. Once the casting was finalized, the creators swapped out football for baseball, based on Danson's body type.

4. TED DANSON ATTENDED BARTENDING SCHOOL.

Danson spent two weeks at a bartending school in Burbank, California as part of his training to play Sam.

5. NORM AND CLIFF WEREN'T INTENDED TO BE REGULAR CHARACTERS.

Both George Wendt and John Ratzenberger auditioned for the same role in the pilot, a minor character named George who had a single line: "Beer!" The character's name was changed to Norm Peterson when Wendt was cast. But Ratzenberger wasn't about to give up so easily. "As I was leaving the office after the audition, I turned around and asked them, 'Do you have a bar know-it-all?,'" the Bridgeport, Connecticut-born Ratzenberger recalled to Ability Magazine. "None of the creators was from New England. They were all Hollywood-centered. And I said, 'Well, every local bar in New England has got a know-it-all-someone who pretends to have the knowledge of all mankind between his ears and is not shy about sharing it.'" Thus, Cliff Clavin was born.

6. NORM PETERSON IS BASED ON A REAL GUY.

In 2012, co-creator Les Charles told GQ that Norm was based on a real person. "I worked at a bar after college, and we had a guy who came in every night. He wasn't named Norm, [but he] was always going to have just one beer, and then he'd say, 'Maybe I'll just have one more.' We had to help him out of the bar every night. His wife would call, and he'd always say, 'Tell her I'm not here.'"

7. NORM'S NEVER-SEEN WIFE VERA IS VOICED BY GEORGE WENDT'S REAL WIFE.

Though she's only credited in one episode, George Wendt's wife, Bernadette Birkett, provided the voice for Norm's wife, Vera. Birkett did make one appearance on the show-as a love interest of Cliff's-in season three.

8. JOHN RATZENBERGER IMPROVISED MANY OF CLIFF'S FUN FACTS.

Many of the random (and untrue) facts that Cliff Clavin offers up were ad libbed by Ratzenberger. "After a couple of years on the show they realized they could trust me not to mess it up," Ratzenberger told Deseret News in 1993. "So little by little they've let me just sort of run off. Because I know when to stop ... It's easy to improvise comedy. It really is. But the art is knowing when to shut up and let other people talk. That's a hard thing to learn."

9. SOME OF THE DIALOGUE CAME FROM REAL BAR CONVERSATIONS.

In order to nail the bar talk aspect of the series, the creators regularly visited bars in the Los Angeles area to eavesdrop on patrons' conversations. In the series premiere, there's an argument about the sweatiest movie ever made, which was lifted from one of these overheard conversations.

10. CHEERS WASN'T AFRAID TO TACKLE SOCIAL ISSUES.

Cheers' writers never shied away from taboo topics such as alcoholism or homosexuality, through they always had a sense of humor about them. The season one episode "The Boys in the Bar," in which one of Sam's former teammates announces that he is gay, earned writers Ken Levine and David Isaacs a GLAAD Media Award.

11. PLANS FOR AN HIV SCARE FOR SAM HAD TO BE ABANDONED.

In 1988, the Writers Guild of America went on strike, which meant that several planned episodes of the series were never filmed. Among them was a season six cliffhanger in which Sam learns that a former girlfriend is HIV positive.

12. RHEA WASN'T THE ONLY PERLMAN ON THE SET.

Rhea Perlman wasn't the only member of her family to grace the set of Cheers. Her younger sister, Heide, produced more than two dozen episodes between 1985 and 1986 and wrote several episodes throughout the show's run. Perlman's father, Phil, played one of the bar regulars (named Phil).

13. JAY THOMAS MURDERED EDDIE LEBEC.

When character actor Jay Thomas wasn't portraying Carla's Bruin-turned-ice-show-performer husband Eddie LeBec, he was the host of a popular morning radio show in Los Angeles. Which is exactly what led to his character being killed off rather prematurely by way of Zamboni. "A few episodes of recurring bliss and then one day on Jay's radio show, a caller asked him what it was like to be on Cheers," recounted writer Ken Levine. "He said something to the effect of, 'It's brutal. I have to kiss Rhea Perlman.' Well, guess who happened to be listening ... Jay Thomas was never seen on Cheers again."

14. A CHEERS MINI-EPISODE WAS PRODUCED FOR THE U.S. TREASURY.

Early in Cheers ' run, its creators were contracted by the U.S. Treasury to create a special mini-episode to promote the purchase of U.S. savings bonds. Titled "Uncle Sam Malone," the episode never aired on television nor is it included on any of the DVDs; it was intended to be screened for promotional purposes at savings bond drives only.

15. A "LOST" SCENE ALSO AIRED AS PART OF THE 1983 SUPER BOWL XVII PREGAME SHOW.

Back in early 1983, writers Ken Levine and David Isaacs wrote a special one-off scene to air before Super Bowl XVII in which Sam, Diane, Carla, Norm, Cliff, and NBC announcer Pete Axthelm bet on who will win the big game. "They ran it just before game time and it was seen by 80,000,000 people," Levine recalled of the spot on his blog. "Nothing we've ever written before or since has been seen by that many eyeballs at one time. But the scene was never repeated. It never appeared on any DVDs. It just disappeared." (Until now: You can watch it at the link above.)

16. TED DANSON WORE A HAIRPIECE TO PLAY HAIR-OBSESSED SAM

A fact that became apparent when he accepted the Emmy-sans hairpiece-in 1990. In the 1993 episode "It's Lonely on the Top," Sam shares his follicular challenge with Carla.

17. VIEWERS FREQUENTLY COMPLAINED ABOUT THE VOLUME OF THE LAUGH TRACK, EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS NO LAUGH TRACK.

In 1983, a quick disclaimer-spoken by one of the regular cast members-was added to the beginning of each episode: " Cheers was filmed before a live studio audience." This was a direct response to viewer complaints that the "laugh track" was too loud.

18. THE PART OF FRASIER WAS WRITTEN FOR JOHN LITHGOW.

After recent roles in All That Jazz, Blow Out, and The World According to Garp (for which he received his first of two consecutive Oscar nominations), Lithgow was not interested in working on the small screen. "I just said, 'No,'" Lithgow recalled to The Hollywood Reporter. "I barely even remembered that ... It was like swatting away a fly ... I just wasn't going to do a series."

19. KELSEY GRAMMER PLAYED FRASIER CRANE FOR 20 YEARS.

Grammer made his Cheers debut in the third season premiere in 1984. Though he was intended to be a short-lived character, Crane's popularity with audiences led to him becoming a series regular. Four months after Cheers ended in May of 1993, Frasier made its debut (on the redesigned Cheers stage, no less) and ran for its own 11 seasons. Grammer's two-decade run as the pretentious psychiatrist is a record-breaking one for an American comedy actor.

20. TONY SOPRANO'S MOM PLAYED FRASIER'S MOM, TOO.

Nancy Marchand's character threatened to kill Diane. The role of Frasier's mom was played by Tom Hanks's wife Rita Wilson in a 2001 Frasier flashback.

21. KIRSTIE ALLEY IS THE ONLY MAIN CHARACTER WHO DIDN'T MAKE A GUEST APPEARANCE ON FRASIER.

Throughout Frasier's 11-season run, Kirstie Alley was the only one of Cheers' main actors to not make an appearance on the popular spinoff, possibly because the psychiatric profession conflicts with her beliefs as a Scientologist. "Kirstie once said ... she'd never do a show about a psychiatrist," Kelsey Grammer told Entertainment Weekly in 2002.

22. FRASIER'S DAD WAS MAGICALLY RESURRECTED FOR THE SPINOFF.

When Frasier talked about his family on Cheers, he noted that his father-also a well-respected psychiatrist-had passed away. Yet his ex-cop dad, played by John Mahoney, is a main character in Frasier. Incidentally, Mahoney made a one-off appearance in Cheers' eleventh season, as a fast-talking jingle writer named Sy Flembeck:

23. NORM'S FIRST NAME IS HILLARY.

His full name is Hillary Norman Peterson.

24. THAT WOODY PLAYED WOODY WAS A TOTAL COINCIDENCE.

Though many of the non-regular bar patrons' real names were used in filming, that Woody Harrelson ended up playing Woody Boyd is by sheer coincidence. The character's name was written into the script long before any actors had auditioned for the role.

25. NORM DRANK "NEAR BEER."

The bar on the set may have been fully functional, but that doesn't mean the cast got to spend the day throwing back cold ones. Norm may have had it the worst. As the bar's resident lush, he's rarely seen without a sudsy glass of beer in his hand. But what's really in that glass is "near beer," a weakened strain of ale mixed with a bit of salt to keep a perfect head on the glass at all times. Which Wendt unfortunately had to consume on more than one occasion.

26. THE SHOW HELPED PROMOTE THE IDEA OF A DESIGNATED DRIVER.

It was important to the producers of Cheers that no tipsy bar patron ever drove him or herself home, so there are frequent references to calling cabs and designated drivers. The Harvard Alcohol Project had a hand in spreading this message.

27. SAM AND DIANE DID GET MARRIED AT THE END OF SEASON FIVE.

Because Cheers was filmed in front of a live studio audience, the producers had to occasionally trick the audience so that show developments weren't leaked. In order to keep Shelley Long's departure from the series a secret, the live audience saw Sam and Diane get married at the end of season five. The real ending-which sees Diane leaving for six months to finish her book, only to return for a guest appearance in the final season-was filmed on a closed set.

28. CHEERS HABLA ESPAÑOL.

In September 2011, a Spanish version of the series-also called Cheers -made its debut. It starred Alberto San Juan as a former soccer player turned Irish pub owner and ran for just one season.

29. THE END OF THE SHOW IS ALL TED DANSON'S FAULT.

Though understandably so. When Danson announced that he'd be leaving the series at the end of the 1992-1993 season, producers decided that Woody could take over the bar. But Woody Harrelson wasn't interested in continuing the show without Danson, and so its series finale was set.

30. THE CAST AND CREW GOT REALLY, REALLY DRUNK FOR THEIR SENDOFF.

NBC made a major event of the series finale, with cast and crew celebrating at Boston's Bull & Finch Pub, where thousands of fans gathered outside to watch the show on two Jumbotrons. Then the drinks started flowing ... and flowing ... and flowing. "The show ended at eleven," Ken Levine wrote in a 2013 remembrance of the evening for Vulture. "The next half-hour was an emotional tsunami. Everyone was hugging and crying and doing a lot of drinking. We were all completely wrecked."

Then it was time for the cast to make an appearance on The Tonight Show. "The cast, in no condition to face anybody, much less 40 million people, dutifully trooped downstairs to do the live show," Levine continued. "Us non-celeb types stayed back and watched on TV ... in horror. They were so drunk they needed designated walkers. They giggled like schoolgirls over nothing, fired spitballs into each other's mouths, squirted water guns, Woody Harrelson implied he gave oral sex to both Ted Danson and Oliver Stone, and Kirstie Alley sang a song where the only lyric was 'dick, dick, dick.'"

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30 Things You Might Not Know About Cheers

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On May 20, 1993-25 years ago today-television audiences said farewell to Sam Malone, the fictional Red Sox pitcher-turned-proprietor of Cheers. Though it's the Boston bar where everybody knows your name, there's plenty you probably don't know about the classic sitcom, which spent 11 seasons on the air. 1.

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This presentation looks to be a multimedia supplement to my Television Literacy Project for TVDM 201. The material gathered helps to give background and insight into my chosen program, Cheers and S1E10, “Endless Slumper.

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Cliff asks Sam to show an unconvinced bar patron his bar slide.

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Watch Cheers - Bar Slide GIF on Gfycat. Discover more related GIFs on Gfycat

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After low ratings in the first season, executives see promise in flailing Cheers

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Ken Levine, a screen writer for Cheers, explains how they did that bar slide.

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A common trope in situational comedy, Diane and Rick have a misunderstanding.

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Cheers best bits | S01E10 | "My name is Diane Chambers, and I've been doing it for years"

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My detailed breakdown formatted by, Wise Sloth, as mentioned in course blog TVDM 201 and The Atlantic.

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AV club takes a look at "Endless Slumper," in a 2011 review.

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Title

"Coach Returns To Action"/"Endless Slumper"

Title

"Coach Returns To Action"/"Endless Slumper"

"Coach Returns To Action"
In which Coach has a crush on his new, younger neighbor.
Noel Murray: Cheers had far more years with Woody behind the bar than it did with Coach, and even in seasons two and three, Coach spends a lot more time puttering around amusingly in the background than he does driving the A-story. So it's a bit surprising-to me at least-that only nine episodes into the first season, we're already getting our second Coach episode. (And one of my favorite Coach episodes, "Pick A Con... Any Con," still lurks in the wings.) But hey, I'm not complaining. Last week I wrote about the lovely little detail in "Truce Or Consequences" that Coach knows the names and ages of Carla's kids, and this week we see how far out of his way he goes to help his new neighbor, Nina (played by Murphy Cross). Coach can be a tricky character. He's exaggeratedly dim, sometimes beyond the point of believability, as when he worries that he has malaria when he's actually just been walking through freezing weather with no coat. But Coach is such a decent guy-and Nicholas Colasanto's performance is so wonderfully low-key-that he's a delight to be around.

Of course in "Coach Returns To Action," it helps that credited writer Earl Pomerantz contrasts Coach with Sam, who comes off as sleazy in his womanizing nature as he did in "Any Friend Of Diane's." Granted, when Sam begins hitting on Nina, he has no idea that Coach has been thinking of asking her out. Still, it's clear that Nina's not interested, and his continuing to fire passes at her-largely so he won't disappoint Cliff and Norm-doesn't reflect so well on him. (This isn't meant as a critique of Pomerantz or the episode, by the way. I like that Cheers is willing to make Sam kind of a creep at times.)

There was one moment in "Coach Returns To Action" that kind of threw me out of the episode: when Sam times a sliding mug of beer to arrive right when Norm does, and the studio audience applauds. Very un- Cheers-like, that kind of obtrusive interjection from the crowd; and it seems to rattle the actors for a split-second. That said, this was the first week that Cliff really gets to be Cliff, from the way he offers an explanation for how you can drink ice-cold beer on a freezing day (it safely matches your body temperature, he claims) to the way he admits that he can't fix Cheers' bathroom plumbing because he's "strictly theory." I don't know about you guys, but having Cliff so fully involved in the action made this episode feel like a proper Cheers. It's like we've been living in a nice house for a month and we've just now discovered that there's a whole room we didn't know about.

But ultimately this is Coach's showcase, and even more than "Coach's Daughter" four episodes back, "Coach Returns To Action" affirms who this character is and why he's so easy to like. It's in the way he can tell Diane his last effective pick-up line-"How would like a pair of nylons, fraulein?"-and not realize how funny that is. And it's in the way he's willing to hurl himself down a flight of steps to spend an evening with this girl he likes. If Sam said he really wanted to smell Nina's neck, Diane would think he was gross. Coach says it, and he's adorable.

He is adorable, right? What do you all think about how Coach can get away with open desire in a way that Sam couldn't?

Ryan McGee: So much of the contrast develops from intent. Sam can talk all he wants about romantic trips up to Maine, but we know at this point it's all a ruse to get [Insert Female's Name Here] into bed. It's unclear how much Coach even thinks about that step during his pursuit of Nina, almost as if he has an Ozzie-and-Harriet conception of coupledom. (Then again, his last moment on the outside steps suggests that the fall down the stairs may have awoken his libido as well.)

What struck me most about the Coach storyline was the way Cheers built upon the Carla/Diane foundation recently established in "Truce Or Consequences." Sure, Carla has added Diane's number to the graffiti in the men's bathroom. But she backs up Diane' instantly in helping Coach achieve the courage needed to ask Nina out. Atop that camaraderie, there's no hint that either woman is lying when they state Ernie's appeal. Both women love Coach unconditionally, and just as there's no hint of malice in Coach's bones, there's no hint of condescension in the way these two women steel him up. They need Coach to be their moral rock in the way Norm and Cliff need to live vicariously through Sam's sexual conquests. The way that one person's actions/emotions feeds into the overall DNA of the room is striking, and striking to be coalescing this well this soon.

Donna Bowman: Well, some of what makes Coach's desire adorable rather than creepy isn't due to the character. It's because old people are presumed to be asexual, so their romances are innocent, like puppy love. I'm not endorsing this view; it's part of our cultural atmosphere. But the writers and actors play right into it, with their encouragement of Coach's suit and disparagement of Sam's. So I have to admit that I was a little unnerved by the whole affair. When Diane tells Coach to "go get her," she means it in a non-sexual way, but what with the predatory air to Sam's attempt to "get her," I find it hard to take it that way.

And I think that's why my favorite part of this episode was Nina's spunky refusal to be anyone's prize. How many times over the course of this series are we going to see someone sit on the near end of the bar reading or whatever, having the other characters talk him or her over, as if he or she were a side of beef at the butcher's? Those discussions often center on hunting strategy and end with the pursuer marching across the room with some can't-miss methodology in tow. I know that the show, like all sitcoms, will occasionally subvert this paradigm, and Nina is a case in point. But often the quarry is not allowed to have a say; she submits to the recurring character to give us all a moment of victory. In my cut of this episode, Coach doesn't fall down the stairs and get the girl; he offers to help her unpack and comes back with her to the bar before a dinner date at Melville's a few episodes later.

Phil Nugent: What I like best about this episode is that I feel as if the bar has come into its own as a character, with its own personality and atmosphere, and that the actors who make up the repertory company here have fully settled into their roles like clockwork. It feels as if everybody knows what their function should be in a given sort of story, and as if the characters who don't have any particular, natural role to play in the story at hand know how to vamp when the spotlight is on them and somebody else is setting up something that will pay off later. Some of my favorite things in the episode are little throwaway lines that maybe aren't especially funny but that are reassuring because they feel so right coming from the person delivering them, such as when Coach explains that Lux "used to be the soap of the stars." And it's also part of why the aspects of the main story about Coach torching for a much younger woman and having his confidence torpedoed just by Sam's having a passing interest in her don't bother me that much. The main story is just one more thing that's happening, which may not feel any more important, or as important, as half a dozen others things that flirt with your attention in the course of 20-something minutes.

Meredith Blake: There's so much to like in this episode that it's difficult to isolate a single moment. But what really struck me about "Coach Returns To Action" is the how the show has been able to open up the space of the bar without actually leaving its confines. We've talked a little about people we never see on Cheers-namely, Vera-but I'm just as fascinated by the spaces that are kept off-limits. This week we catch our first glimpse of the (surprisingly seedy) men's bathroom, and it's weirdly thrilling; on a show like Cheers, where you're looking at the same simple set 75 percent of the time, the off-screen space is almost as enticing as what's onscreen (as a kid I always longed to see back hallway between the kitchen and the living room on Family Ties). Despite its limited scope, Cheers doesn't feel visually static or claustrophobic. As Todd has pointed out, a lot of that has to do with the extras, who always appear to be enjoying themselves in a bar (except in "Friends, Romans, Accountants," where they just looked like zombies). This time around they line up to use the bathroom at Melville's-another intriguing off-screen space we have yet to see. At some point, though, the audience is going to need something new to look at, and I'm wondering just how long Cheers will go before we finally leave the bar. I like to imagine the decision was an aesthetic one, though I'm guessing it had more to do with the vagaries of the show's budget.

Keith Phipps: There was so much good business in this episode beyond the delightful A-plot that, as Noel suggests, it felt like the show was opening itself up to new possibilities: Carla's hapless plumbing attempt, the rotating coat and tie needed to dine at Melville's, the tour guide, the pretentious schoolgirl, and Cliff, whose ascendance is especially welcome (and whose accent gives the show local character beyond the Boston Red Sox paraphernalia.) But "Coach Returns To Action" is smart to keep its focus on the main story, which tells a lot about who Coach is, how he fits into the bar, and casts his relationship with Sam in a new light (one that doesn't make Sam look so great). I think it's safe to say that this isn't the first time Coach has gotten out of the way of an on-the-prowl Sam and that however deep his affection for Coach goes, Sam doesn't like this upsetting of the natural order. I'm not sure there's a rich mythology to be teased out of Cheers but I love both the little glimpses of past history and the way the show turns Cheers into a rich, bustling place where things happen. Who needs another set when there's so much going on at the bar?

Erik Adams: Yet for all the new possibilities opened up by "Coach Returns To The Action," the episode also sneaks in some stealthy exposition for viewers just sampling Cheers for the first time. Coach's line "Now that's Norm-that's not Norm's jacket" could be for the benefit of Nina as well as these newcomers-however, it kind of took me out of the moment. (That might be because Colasanto's reading of his introductory notes is weirdly reminiscent of Gordon showing Sally around on the first episode of Sesame Street.) Nonetheless, I'd recommend the episode as a entry point for the series, or a decent half-hour to sample if you never knew Woody had a predecessor behind the bar. Colasanto's a goddamn teddy bear in this episode, and it's no wonder Diane and Carla come so quickly to Coach's aid. And while the character's dimwittedness can be far-fetched at times, it's easier to swallow if you consider how many times he's fallen down the stairs in the search for female companionship.

Todd VanDerWerff: I absolutely loved Murphy Cross as Nina here. She was fun and a little bit prickly and feisty, and I'm sad she never had a bigger career. (A quick scan on IMDB reveals she was a consummate sitcom guest star, who was one of the leads in a short-lived show called Phyl And Mikhy. She also apparently had her own quirky sense of song, all of which makes her sort of a proto-Kate Micucci, I guess.) And I agree with Donna that she's got agency of her own here, something going on in her head other than just how she can be used as a part of the plot. She's apparently still working every so often, so here's hoping someone casts her as the mom or something and gives her the career she deserved in 1982. (As I'm looking, I see that she was in some Taxi episodes as well.)

I'm also trying to think of sitcoms that left the set as little as Cheers did, since we're all talking about it now. Barney Miller springs readily to mind, of course. There were whole seasons of that show that didn't once leave the squad room. And Taxi, which the Charles brothers worked on, made a point to emphasize the garage more often than not. But it really does seem like this is an effective way to get viewers to bond with a workplace sitcom that's just gone away. Granted, unless your central setting is a place people will keep coming, like a bar or a police station, there's not really a graceful way to generate conflict. (I hate to imagine how would keep bringing people to Dunder Mifflin if it suddenly did a season without leaving the titular space.) But there's something so pure about never leaving the bar that I wish more shows would experiment with it.
Stray observations:

RM: In this day and age, every single piece of graffiti would be itemized on a show wiki before it aired on the West Coast. My personal favorite? "Show me the way to the next whiskey bar," which means there's a Kurt Weill fan somewhere in the bar. (That, or he just likes The Doors. But I wouldn't put it past this show to have it reference the original, especially give Coach's "fraulein" reference.)

EA: Ryan, how did you know that's exactly what I was doing when the scene changed to the bathroom? Here's a couple other examples that caught my eye: "God save The Kinks" (Does this mean The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society is on the jukebox?) and "Get into sports, dummy!" Ten bucks says the latter is another example of Carla's handiwork. (Speaking of which: Is she fixing the pipes back there, or changing an oil filter? Like Cliff, I work only in theoreticals, but is there really that much black gunk involved in plumbing repair?)

MB: I'm betting the graffiti also includes a few inside jokes for the cast/crew.

MB: Nina might be a cold-hearted ageist, but man, I love her outfit. They just don't make jeans like those anymore.

MB: It's always funny when Diane runs in to someone more highbrow than she is. This time around, that person is a precocious Catholic schoolgirl staging a perfomance of 12 Angry Men (Romeo And Juliet isn't "meaty" enough for her).

TV: This episode aired on Thanksgiving night, 1982! I can vaguely remember NBC airing new episodes of its sitcoms in the mid-'90s on Thanksgiving night, but this is a practice that's mostly gone away nowadays. Perhaps NBC was hoping people pinned to their chairs in food comas would tune in, hence the added exposition.

"Endless Slumper" In which a bottlecap means more to Sam than he lets on.
NM: As a sports fan who's spent more nights than I'd care to admit modifying my behavior to try to affect the outcome of a game-changing my shirt or my seat on the couch, and once sitting cross-legged on the floor chanting "power" over and over while jingling my car-keys in my right hand-I can respect the totemic power of Sam's lucky bottlecap in "Endless Slumper." And when Sam loans that bottlecap to struggling Red Sox reliever Rick Walker (played by a ridiculously young Christopher McDonald), I can totally buy that he'd suddenly become accident-prone, and lose his ability to curve a mug of beer around the corner of the bar. It's funny though; "Endless Slumper" is one of the early Cheers episodes I remember most vividly, probably because of the triumphant moment at the end when Sam overcomes his anxiety and successfully curves a mug rather than drinking from it. And yet that moment-which makes the studio audience burst into applause-now seems so un- Cheers-like.

But that's okay, because it's still as cool a scene as it was when I was 12. And there's plenty about this episode that is Cheers-like. Coming right on the heels of a big Coach showcase, it was great to see a couple more classic Coach moments: Coach singing his own "hold music" into the phone, and Coach sincerely telling Norm that joining a health club will add years to his life, even though Norm only joined for the snack bar. "Endless Slumper" also introduces what will be a recurring bit of shtick: Diane's facial tic, which she claims to have beaten through meditation, though somehow it keeps popping up (and will for the remainder of the character's time on the show).

The tic is a fine bit of physical comedy from Shelley Long, and Ted Danson too gets to show off his (in my opinion underrated) skills as a physical comedian in this episode, when he carries a coffee pot by its glass bowl and then plunges his scalded hands into ice. The Cheers writers and cast excel at farce, and "Endless Slumper" has an almost Three's Company-level farcical setpiece when Diane starts talking about meditation and Rick thinks she's talking about sex. ("Sam, Rick here is after something and I can show him where it is!")

But what's ultimately most significant about this episode is the way it continues to clear a logical path to a Sam and Diane relationship. Just before Sam learns that Rick has lost his bottlecap, he explains to Diane that this was the cap from his last bottle of booze, which he's clung to through some rough nights of near-relapse. And when Diane realizes that Sam may be about to fall off the wagon, she offers to stay with him, to help him make it through. His honesty and her compassion... that's a pretty strong foundation for the future.

I do have to ask, though: Did anyone else notice some unusually ragged edges to this episode? Awkward ADR, mismatched edits and the like? It was almost as if the first cut ran way too long and the Cheers team had a hard time fitting everything into their 25-minute slot.

PN: That moment at the end when Sam slides the beer away from him is one of my all-time favorite Cheers moments, capping one of my all-time favorite Cheers scenes. The slide-and the little celebration Sam throws for himself, where he steps back from the abyss and regains his self-assurance in a quick physical adjustment that looks like his body taking a reality check-would come in handy if you ever needed to pick 15 seconds out of Danson's whole career to establish what a superb actor he is. But the real reason I love it so much, and the reason that I think of it as very Cheers-y-at least, very early, Sam-and-Diane Cheers-y-is how romantic it is. In a way, the whole episode is building up to that moment at the end of the day when everybody else has gone and Diane can't leave, because she thinks that Sam might be in trouble. Danson and Long have had a lot of little moments by now where we could see them silently observing each other in a way that told you they were taking note of what they found amusing and admirable and irritating about each other, but this is the deepest the show has gone up to now in having one of them risk showing how much they care about each other. The recurrence of Diane's tic is the punchline, but for me, the capper is Sam apologizing to Diane for having made her worry when he said "I'm going to make myself feel good" and poured himself a cold one. He sounds a little surprised, as if he either really didn't know that she cared that much, or else he didn't care enough about himself to guess than anyone else could.

DB: To me, the notable feature of "Endless Slumper" is the vulnerability it establishes for Sam. We know he's a recovering alcoholic, but he's been cool about it so far, downplaying the road that got him to this point. But that scene with Diane after hours, when he rails about how hard it was and points out that it won't be any better tomorrow because he'll still have to come back to work in a bar, is a brand new side of the character, and one that doesn't come in a "very special episode" but simply-and effectively-as an unexpected pause of anxiety in the regular course of business.

I was wowed by the big double-entendre scene with Ray, too, because it doesn't reverse-engineer all the laugh lines, but lets some of Diane's dialogue stand as partial non sequiturs. (Asked whether they should take the activity outside, Diane demurs: "I like to take my shoes off when I do it.") That same scene is a great example of another thing I've come to love about Cheers-the cuts to other characters laughing at the jokes. The show doesn't pretend that the characters aren't performing for each other or enjoying each other's company; the bar's a stage and all the denizens strut their appointed hour upon it... and make their best attempts to upstage each other, and engage in fleet improv, and sit back and enjoy the show. Those cuts to Sam laughing at Diane, or to Norm chuckling into his beer, remind me of the pleasure I get when How I Met Your Mother cuts to Barney's almost-out-of-character grin at something Ted says in his douchey earnestness. It's something that rarely happens in family sitcoms or workplace comedies where the characters are too busy having their premise-mandated personal dramas to pay attention to each other. It brings the characters into our role as audience. It makes them our kin.

RM: What's great about the episode's take on Sam's sobriety is how non-showy it is. A few years after the debut of "Endless Slumper", networks would air a "very special episode" on a nearly weekly basis, and already shows like Diff'rent Strokes were delving into some pretty heavy-handed treatment with darker material. Here, Sam's addiction gradually rises to the surface, almost inverse to the way the foam rises in the glasses of beer he pours for Cliff. This episode (and the series as a whole) never shy away from Sam's relationship to booze, but it's just one facet of the show at any given time. It's given temporary prominence tonight, but it's just part of the show shining a spotlight on different characters throughout its early run.

Two things really date this episode for me. Firstly, $6/hour earns Carla a punch in the face from a prospective tutor for her kids? I wouldn't punch any of you for anything less than $10, friends. Secondly, the way Carla hangs on every pitch is a very pre-2004 way to be a Red Sox fan. Two World Series titles have a way of making the team's games seem less life-and-death than they used to be. Still, seeing Carla time her run to Coach's car so she doesn't miss a single pitch evokes romantic notions of a time when the team's troubles bonded us as region. For everything about Cheers that is timeless, it's still of a time all the same.

EA: Noel knocks it out of the park (Too facile? What about "Puts the grounder between Bill Buckner's legs?" "Serves up a beachball to Bucky Dent?") by calling that last moment with Sam "triumphant." "Endless Slumper" is all about sustaining a winning streak, but the biggest victory here isn't notched by that wiry, bright-eyed farmboy claiming to be the future Tappy Tibbons, but rather Sam. Sam Simon's script shows its smarts in its double entendres and the levelheaded way it treats Sam's alcoholism, but it also very smartly draws a parallel between Rick making it to the 21st inning and Sam resisting the temptation to belt that beer-and the fact that neither needed the bottlecap to achieve this. (I think my enthusiasm for the episode's writing made me completely miss any of the gaffs Noel mentioned above.) I recall, in my baseball-obsessed youth, always being disappointed that Cheers was a TV show covered in Red Sox logos that never seemed to be about baseball. Now I can see that when the show deals with Sam and Coach's old profession, it does so on a much more metaphorical level. Kids always seem to miss out on that stuff.

MB: Ryan, you're absolutely right about the "non-showy" aspect of Sam's sobriety. There were a few minutes there I was worried we would, in fact, have a "very special episode" on our hands, particularly when Sam explained to Diane the origins of the bottle cap. They sit face-to-face, framed in tight close-ups, against the black void of the empty bar-all the visual cues indicated a "serious conversation" was underway (just ask Charlie Rose). But the beer-curving gag was a brilliant way to keep the episode from being too mawkish or heavy-handed, while also signaling Sam's triumph over his addiction. And, oh yeah, it was funny. Noel, I see why you think the beer-curve is very un- Cheers-like, and I agree, it is pretty cartoonish. But in another way, it's also very characteristic of the show so far, a moment that's extremely funny and deeply heartfelt all at once. What I was most impressed with in "Endless Slumper" is how it skirted so many sitcom cliches without ever crossing the line. In particular, I'm thinking of the sex/meditation double-entendre bit, which worked because it was over and done with in about 2.5 minutes; that's the kind of wacky mix-up that would fuel an entire episode of Modern Family these days. To borrow a slogan from the '80s, Cheers really knows when to say when.

TV: I'm kind of blown away by this episode. In fact, it might be my favorite we've looked at so far. One of the reasons that I keep harping on the idea of the multi-camera sitcom making a comeback is that I think there's a very particular kind of moment the multi-camera sitcom can capture that no other form of sitcom can, and it's present in spades here: silence. Specifically, the silence of a studio audience, waiting to hear what's going to happen next, not laughing or coughing or anything, so they won't step on the lines. That long, essentially dramatic scene between Sam and Diane that we've all singled out is one that works primarily because the episode's "soundtrack," essentially, drops out entirely, leaving us wondering when it might come back. The applause for the trick with the mug becomes the musical fanfare that would accompany the moment in a single-camera sitcom, but it doesn't feel as forced. It feels like a human reaction because it is one. The multi-camera format, for all of its limitations, really increases intimacy in moments like this. It makes us feel like we're there, because, as an offshoot of the just off-camera audience, we are there. Single-camera sitcoms just can't do this kind of moment because there's not really a way to do it. You've always gotta ladle on the music or something similar to try to achieve the same sort of emotion. Pity today's multi-cameras don't reach for something as meaningful and ambitious as this.
Stray observations:
EA: The lack of a soundtrack was also something I noted in the Sam-Diane scene-though I've been paying particular attention to the backgrounds of scenes during this project because I love, love, love the smooth-rockin' instrumentals that play under the establishing shots and opening credits at the beginning of every episode. Dear Internet: Is there anywhere I can find Craig Safan's Cheers scores out there? Especially the staccato, lightly funky number that opens "Endless Slumper?"
Your thoughts: Every week, we'll go back and pick out some of our favorite comments from the week before from those of you who picked up on stuff we missed, offered interesting counterpoints, or just said something that made us laugh.
In a crossing of gimmick-commenter streams, Cookie_Monster walked into the bar.

zeppomarxist touched off a discussion of how Cheers and used their My Dinner With Andre references differently (and how pop culture references other pop culture in general), noting "Diane never finishes the title of the film, which means the joke depends entirely on the audience being able to mentally complete it for themselves. The movie was only a year or so old, so that makes some amount of sense.

The Community episode, on the other hand, depends on the audience not recognizing what Abed's doing until he reveals that it's a reference to an obscure 30-year-old film that most people haven't heard of."

Carol Brown posits an intriguing hypothesis: "I might also point out that the 'benefit from my depth' line supports my long-held suspicion that Diane Chambers is the inspiration for Gwyneth Paltrow.

There was much discussion as to what TV series touched off the "unseen character" trope, and drdrake traced the convention all the way back to pre-television days: "Actually, the oft-referenced but never-seen character goes way back - Gracie Allen was always telling utterly insane stories about her family, usually to a very bemused George Burns, starting back in radio. In the Fifties DECEMBER BRIDE sitcom, the recently-deceased [sic] and much-loved Harry Morgan played the dyspeptic next door neighbor Pete, who was always complaining about his never-seen wife Gladys and her also never-seen mother."

Next week: Diane keeps tabs on the customers-who may have a spy in their midst in the second episode.

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Cheers: "Coach Returns To Action"/"Endless Slumper"

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"Coach Returns To Action"/"Endless Slumper" "Coach Returns To Action"/"Endless Slumper" "Coach Returns To Action" In which Coach has a crush on his new, younger neighbor. Noel Murray: Cheers had far more years with Woody behind the bar than it did with Coach, and even in seasons two and three, Coach spends a lot more time puttering around amusingly in the background than he does driving the A-story.

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Ted Danson explains how he and Shelley Long got their respective parts on Cheers.

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James Lipton is widely known as the creator, executive-producer, writer and host of Inside the Actors Studio, which is seen in 94 million American homes on Bravo and in 125 countries, and has been recognized with a record seventeen Emmy nominations.

For twenty years, Mr. Lipton has brought to the series his experience as actor, director and producer in theater, film and television, choreographer, playwright, lyricist, screen-writer, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and academician.

He has been responsible as writer and executive-producer for some of television's most celebrated specials, among them Jimmy Carter's Inaugural Gala, the first Presidential concert ever televised; twelve Bob Hope Birthday Specials, reaching record-breaking audiences; and The Road to China, the first American entertainment program from the People's Republic.

On NBC TV, he was the writer and producer of Mirrors, adapted by him from his novel; and he created the story and teleplay for Copacabana, which was chosen by TV Guide as one of the year's ten best TV films.

On Broadway, Mr. Lipton wrote the book and lyrics of two musicals, Nowhere to Go but Up, and Sherry!, which was based on Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner. In 2005, he revisited Sherry!, producing a cast album for Angel Records, starring Nathan Lane, Bernadette Peters, Carol Burnett, Tommy Tune and Mike Myers.

In addition to his novel Mirrors, which reflected his experience in the world of dance and dancers, he is the author of the non-fiction classic An Exaltation of Larks, which has been in print since its publication in 1968, and prompted Newsweek's book critic to write, "If there were an English Academy, Lipton would surely deserve election."

In October, 2007, Mr. Lipton's memoir 'Inside Inside,' was published by Dutton to critical acclaim. An account of his experiences as founding dean of the Actors Studio Drama School of Pace University and creator and host of Inside the Actors Studio, it put Mr. Lipton in the guest chair, to reveal with the same candor he demands of his guests the events and people who have shaped his life, prompting author Jay McInerney to write, "With all due respect to the actors and actresses he has famously interviewed, James Lipton is as interesting a character as any of them. Happily, he has the wit, erudition, and storytelling skills to do justice to his own amazing story."

Mr. Lipton's approach to his duties as host of Inside the Actors Studio -- the more than four hundred blue cards, the focus on craft -- has inspired imitation and parody, notably by Will Ferrell on Saturday Night Live and beyond. That led to Mr. Lipton's role in the film Bewitched with Mr. Ferrell, as well as to 34 appearances on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, to a recurring role on Arrested Development, in its first run and its next one, acting appearances on According to Jim, Suburgatory, Joey, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Glee, and in the animated features Igor and Bolt. In addition to his appearances with Conan, he has appeared on virtually every talk show -- with Jay Leno, Craig Ferguson. Jimmy Kimmel, Larry King, Charlie Rose and the women of The View -- and on Saturday Night Live; on The Celebrity Apprentice as Donald Trump's Board Room Advisor; with Snoop Dogg on the 2013 Hip Hop Awards, and in the 2013 finale of America's Got Talent, in a comedy sketch with one of the contestants.

During the 2012 presidential campaign, his Newsweek piece on the intersection of politics and performance, 'How to Act Human,' attracted so much attention that it propelled him back into the political arena with regular appearances on virtually every news network and program to appraise the candidates' performances, from the primaries to the election, a role that has continued as each breaking show business story, a death, a triumph, a tragedy, summons him back to the television news desks for his comments and opinions.

His commercials for Geico, DirecTV, Toyota, the LG Give It a Ponder campaign against cyber-bullying, and the 2013 Intel Ultrabook campaign have made him an even more familiar face on every television screen in America.

Mr. Lipton is an avid horseman and pilot, has received three honorary Ph.D.s, is a recipient of the French Republic's C hevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres, has been inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame, and has been awarded the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' Lifetime Achievement Emmy.

He has received three Producer Guild Award nominations as Producer of the Year for Non-Fiction Television

In September, 2013, Mr. Lipton received the Emmy for Inside the Actors Studio, which the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences members voted the Outstanding Informational Series.

In 2014, he received his seventeenth Emmy nomination, making Inside the Actors Studio the fifth most nominated prime-time television series in the history of television, behind only American Masters, The Simpsons, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and Saturday Night Live.

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This is How Ted Danson Landed His Role on Cheers

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James Lipton is widely known as the creator, executive-producer, writer and host of Inside the Actors Studio , which is seen in 94 million American homes on Bravo and in 125 countries, and has been recognized with a record seventeen Emmy nominations.

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In this scarce close up shot of a beer mug, the audience silently waits to see if Sam will take a sip.

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A 2017 opinion from Vikram Murthi gives praise for nuanced performances.

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Thirty-five years after itfirst premiered, Cheers remains a sitcom benchmark, a comedy institution that left an indelible mark on the modern television landscape. Over the course of its 11 seasons, Cheers perfected the workplace-cum-surrogate family template established by The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi. It helped introduce TV audiences to the viability of will-they, won't-they relationships, multi-episode arcs, and disconnected cold opens. Pick a workplace sitcom from the last 25 years, and odds are it owes a debt to Cheers co-creators Glen and Les Charles, as well as veteran director James Burrows. The series gained admirers from all walks of life, from subsequent TV stars like Amy Poehler and Dan Harmon to other cultural luminaries like Prince and Kurt Vonnegut, who once said that he'd "rather have written Cheers than anything [he's] written." It's a comedy behemoth whose shadow still looms large over the medium.

But in the fall of 1982, during its first season, Cheers was just a critically adored, low-rated freshman sitcom. In its first 13 episodes, the original run ordered by NBC, the series introduced and slowly developed its five main characters: womanizing owner Sam Malone (Ted Danson), haughty intellectual Diane Chambers (Shelley Long), the lovable yet senile Coach Ernie Pantusso (Nicholas Colasanto), wisecracking Carla Tortelli (Rhea Perlman), and resident barfly Norm Peterson (George Wendt). It established the bar setting as a living, breathing institution, complete with its own recurring faces and unique quirks, which allowed the series to keep the action limited to one location and three sets for its debut year. Taken as a whole, the first season is a minimalist gem that, in its best moments, aspired to the immediacy and tension of live theater.

Yet with any great show, there comes an episode that elevates its status from "very good" to "all-timer" by surpassing its fixed potential and entering a new plane of quality. For Cheers, that episode was "Endless Slumper," which came ten weeks into its run, on December 2, 1982, and illustrated what exactly the series was capable of accomplishing.

In "Endless Slumper," written by the late, great Sam Simon, struggling Red Sox relief pitcher Rick (Christopher McDonald, later of Thelma & Louise and Happy Gilmore fame) enters Cheers to solicit advice from Sam about getting "back on the beam." Sam reluctantly lends his lucky bottle cap to Rick so that it might improve his performance. Rick ends up a hero on the mound, but Sam's own good fortune dwindles without the cap, evidenced by his inability to perform his singular bartending trick: sliding a beer mug around the corner of the bar.

The majority of the episode maintains focus on the ensemble as they try to help Rick, and then lament Sam's bad luck. Though it features some stellar jokes - especially the sight gag of Norm using his 22 empty beer steins to measure the length of an extra-inning baseball game - it's a relatively quiet affair fitting with the tone of the series' early years. It's heavy on conversation, wordplay, and farcical misunderstanding, and light on belly laughs.

In its final six minutes, however, Simon shifts the focus entirely to Sam and Diane (who are in the very early stages of their strained mutual attraction), and "Endless Slumper" moves into a more mature register. Diane learns that Sam's lucky bottle cap didn't help him win games, but helped him maintain his sobriety. Without it, he's feeling tempted to drink again. Sam then finally reaches Rick, who confesses that he lost the bottle cap a week ago and has put off telling him about it. Diane then desperately tries to stop Sam from relapsing at his place of business.

Simon's approach in this closing sequence forgoes emotional shortcuts by emphasizing patience and silence. His script allows both characters to organically move through credible, nuanced emotions without shortchanging the transitions, the moments when one face fades away and another one suddenly takes its place. Sam's monologue about the bottle cap never falls into maudlin very-special-episode territory, but remains grounded and simple, consistent with Sam's characterization up to this point. Diane plays the reactive agent, initially adopting a skeptic's remove toward Sam's story, but she, too, comes to understand its significance without belaboring the message.

It's when Sam learns that the bottle cap has been lost forever that the dual performances overtake the script. Danson and Long would have many electrifying scenes as a couple in future episodes, but this is a platonic scene between new co-workers and it's mesmerizing. At the beginning of the sequence, Danson plays overjoyed relief that he's finally getting his bottle cap back, but as soon as Sam learns the bad news, his visage turns convincingly morose, and he subsequently channels a recovering addict's frustration. He paces around behind the bar, clearly steaming as he halfheartedly restocks glasses. It's only a matter of time until Danson plays angry on a dime. "What are you gonna tell me that I haven't heard a hundred times, huh?" Sam sneers at Diane when she insists she just wants to talk.

Long's role in the scene might be secondary, but it's no less important. The Charles brothers designed the Diane character to be a fish-out-of-water type, a privileged thorn in the side of a blue-collar environment. Long's theatrically affected performance heightened that design by purposefully clashing with the subdued, naturalistic acting of her co-workers. Though this would later create issues as Diane's relationship with the ensemble changed, Long's play-to-the-cheap-seats technique is still reaching its peak during this scene. She potently communicates intimidation and distress behind a failing façade, her concern reaching a believably high register without belying the scene's restrained emotional work. It never fails to choke me up when, after Sam tells her that he's always going to be in a bar every night, Long delivers, through a slightly cracked voice, a futile plea: "But you're gonna feel better tomorrow!"

Burrows, who directed the majority of Cheers and established its house visual style, privileged a moving camera over a stationary one. His camera frequently traveled with the characters both to illustrate a scene's dynamism and to emphasize the set's expanse. He employs that style in the beginning of the sequence as Sam moves from one side of the bar to the other to tell Diane about his past, visually drawing out the eventual truth. As the tension escalates, he limits the motion to key moments, allowing the performances to shine in medium shots and close-ups. The constrained framing renders the normally inviting bar a prison of sorts. At the moment when Sam decides he'll "feel better now" by pouring himself a beer, Burrows quickly pushes in from one side of the bar to Sam's location on the opposite end, keeping pace with the character's own impulsivity. It's a small gesture, but it perfectly captures the Sam's desperation and misguided focus.

Everyone's talents shine in the climax when Sam pours himself a beer and decides not to take a drink. It's a hoary idea on paper, but Burrows's staging of that moment, along with Danson and Long's own controlled performances, render it downright inspiring. It takes a little over 30 seconds from when Sam pours the beer into a glass to when he successfully slides the glass around the bar, and yet it feels like an eternity. There are only six shots in those 30 seconds, and while each is crucial, the penultimate medium shot of Sam slowly deciding not to succumb is a series' high point. Simon's script and Burrows's direction established the scene's high stakes, and Danson realistically conveys a person's capacity to resist temptation under enormous pressure. It's a process and it's a decision.

Of course, none of that would work if "The Endless Slumper" didn't successfully create the illusion that Sam might take that drink. We know he won't because a prime-time network sitcom demands a return to the status quo, but the scene's true magic lies in its ability to suspend that disbelief. Danson, Long, Simon, and Burrows all bring their respective skills to the table, and their collective ability to play the studio audience like an instrument allows for that belief to be deferred. The audience mostly stays silent during the sequence because it's not really played for laughs, but the silence only becomes a part of the scene itself as soon as Sam pours the beer. You can feel the audience in that room at the edge of their seat. You can feel the room, and that collective anticipation engenders the necessary catharsis for Sam's triumph and Diane's relief.

Cheers would have more scenes like these in the future, ones that embraced the series' melancholic foundation and its corresponding emotional stakes. Yet, "Endless Slumper" first signaled that the series was capable of creating a space for the somber and the joyous to sit together hand in hand. It actively engaged with the medium's inherently theatrical nature, channeling television's unique ability for direct emotional connection. It welcomed the idea that a bar slide could be a substitute for a reclamation of the soul. Cheers innately understood that life, in the words of Lester Freamon, is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come, but it never accepted that that shit was solely mundane. "Endless Slumper" illustrated it could take the form of a bartender helping a stranger out of a jam, or a makeshift family worrying about their patriarch, or even a lonely night when two co-workers stare down a dark path and choose not to take it. Most importantly, it embodied the subtext of Cheers: A place where everybody knows your name is a small, but necessary comfort in an otherwise unforgiving world.

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When Cheers Became Cheers: An Appreciation of 'Endless Slumper'

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Thirty-five years after itfirst premiered, Cheers remains a sitcom benchmark, a comedy institution that left an indelible mark on the modern television landscape. Over the course of its 11 seasons, Cheers perfected the workplace-cum-surrogate family template established by The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi.