Cheers

Cheers was a situation comedy (sitcom) that aired on the National Broadcasting Company network for eleven years, from September 1982 to May 1993. (NBC). It was a quasi-family show with an ensemble cast, set in a working-class neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, and based on a bar called "Cheers." This is a workplace comedy in which the bar serves as a platform for the viewer to connect with the different characters introduced in the season. Sam "Mayday" Malone, a womanizing ex-Boston Red Sox pitcher and recovering alcoholic, owns the pub. Ernie "Coach" Pantuso, an absent-minded bartender and Sam's mentor, and Carla Tortelli, a cynical and irreverent waitress, are among Sam's first employees. A second waitress, Diane Chambers, an Ivy League-educated woman who is left by her fiancée for his ex-wife in the very first episode, is hired by Sam near the end of the premier episode cementing the four basic characters around which this show will be built. The show itself is based around personal interaction of the characters and the denizens of the bar and brings to life many of the strengths and weaknesses of the characters. Using the premier season of Cheers, this essay will comment on the various aspects which made this show such a long-running hit for NBC.

In addition to the four main characters, there are two characters which form the “clown” characters for the series. These two characters also form the yin-yang relationship because of their friendship and symbiosis throughout the series run. These two characters are Norm Peterson and Cliff Clavin. Norm is the typical barfly-type of character who would never go home save for the fact that the bar closes. Cliff is a Boston mail carrier who is the bar’s self-appointed historian, trivia specialist, and anything else which is needed to inject comedic reflection into any conversation.

Turning to the Wants, Needs and Life Dreams of the six major characters on Cheers, we start with the main, patriarchal, and very active character of Sam Malone. Sam’s Life Dream would be to have a more settled life after years of alcoholic revelry as an ex-pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. To this end, as we find out in the very first episode, “Give Me a Ring Some Time”, Sam bought Cheers when he was not drunk and “held onto it for sentimental reasons”, one of which could have been his yearning to settle down. However, to get to this goal, Sam will have to change his womanizing ways, a weakness which entangles Sam but one which he eventually works through. The contrast between the Want and the Need of Sam’s character creates a comic discrepancy because they are extreme opposites. However, Sam’s womanizing ways do serve as comic foil for the other main characters throughout the series. For example, they create the tension which is essential to the development of Sam’s relationship with Diane. The tension is created when Sam starts to become interested in Diane but still wants to hold on to his womanizing ways because as he puts it in the episode entitled “Sam’s Women”, “You see, I like fun women, hotdogs, and gameshows and I don’t care what anybody says about them.” This is a rebuttal to Diane who said she thinks that Sam should settle down.

The next character to be examined is Diane Chambers. Her role on Cheers is one that is complicated because in the early episodes of the series she is pitted against Sam’s character using her Ivy League education and erudite outlook as a sort of antagonist to Sam. However, her antagonistic persona is always backed up by a certain appreciation and eventually love for Sam. Given this fact, she is an active candidate and a candidate for the matriarchal character but this distinction is unclear beyond the first season of the show. However, Diane does exhibit many of the features of a typical matriarchal character because she is the moral center and heart of the show. Diane’s Want, much like Sam’s is to find someone with which to settle down and lead a more normal life. This is shown from the first minutes of the series in “Give Me a Ring Some Time” where Diane is about to be married to Sumner Sloan, one of her professors at Boston College. The Need which Diane’s character displays is that, although she is highly-educated and a connoisseur of the finer things, she desperately lacks social skills and is a bit naïve to the ways of what she considers at first to be “the common folk.” Also, she initially resists Sam because, as Sam puts it in “Sam’s Women” Diane is a “snob.”

The other active female character on Cheers, Carla Tortelli, is a loud, down-to-earth, single mother of four children, struggling to make ends meet. Her first husband left her after he graduated from the TV Repairman’s Academy because as Carla puts it in the premier episode “Give Me a Ring Some Time”, “He thinks I wouldn’t fit in with the other repairman’s wives.” She is also a spark plug because she has a temper which can be set off by the smallest provocation. Carla is also an extremely loyal and dedicated personality whether it be working at Cheers or supporting Boston’s major sports teams. In line with her character, Carla has an immediate Want to provide a better life for her children. Carla’s Need is a simple one. She is an under-educated woman with limited skills struggling to raise her children. Carla’s Life Dream would be to find a man to love and take care of her and her family for the rest of her life. However, like Diane, Carla is not the best at picking prospective mates.

Working closely with Sam, but with a tendency to be absent-minded and easily confused, is the character of Ernie “Coach” Pantusso. “Coach” is a simple man who Sam sort of looks after because he was Sam’s baseball coach in his minor and major leagues days. What makes the character of “Coach” so endearing is his backstory. Apparently, “Coach” was hit in the head by one-too-many fastballs in his years playing and coaching baseball which accounts for his absent-mindedness and confusion. In fact, as he explained in the episode “Coach’s Daughter”, he was famous during his playing days for getting hit a lot by pitchers just to get on base, many times, as “Coach” noted “right in the old noggin.” This character is sort of hard to read as to his Wants, and Life Dream, however his Need is front and center, his absent-mindedness and confusion. However, this is also what makes “Coach’s” character so endearing to the audience. “Coach’s” Want could be as simple as wanting to be understood and accepted even given his obvious Need. However, ultimately, “Coach’s” Life Dream would probably be to see his daughter Lisa get married and settle down.

Moving beyond the three principle main characters, as noted above, there is the comic team of Norm and Cliff. These two must be examined together because one without the other just does not make too much sense. As noted above, these two characters form a yin-yang relationship on the show which plays off the strengths and weaknesses of each character to form a complete whole. They are also both, for the most part, passive characters because neither of them wants anything about Cheers to change. Starting with Norm, this character’s obvious Want is to be with his friends and drink as much as possible, all the while avoiding going home to his wife Vera (who is never actually seen in the entire series run of eleven years). As noted above, Norm would take up residence at the bar if it were only open all the time. Norm is a shy, sensitive character who is a great accountant but struggles with fitting in. For example, in the episode, “Friends, Romans, Accountants”, Norm volunteers to plan an office party to impress his boss and get a promotion like his subordinate did the year before but the plan backfires and Norm ends up getting fired. Norm’s Need is also obvious, his love of beer and his reluctance to go home to his wife. As for his Life Dream, Norm’s character needs to be a good friend to everyone and find a way to better understand his wife Vera.

Turning to the other side of the yin and yang of Cheers, there is Cliff. Cliff is a single mail carrier for the U.S. Post Office who is possessed of a vibrant imagination and talent for coming up with trivia on any subject, although most of the time he is misquoted or mistaken. For instance, in the first episode “Give Me a Ring Some Time”, Cliff, after a bar discussion of the “sweatiest movies of all time” adds the trivial fact that women have less sweat glands than men but tend to perspire more. At which point he turns to Diane and asks, “Excuse me Miss, what are your perspiration patterns?” This early exchange cements Cliff as the “Clown” of the series. At heart, the character of Cliff is a momma’s boy who even though being in his early 40’s still lives at home. He has false bravado when it comes to his prowess with women and is comically called on the carpet about it many times throughout the series. He is also extremely proud to be a postal worker and U.S. government employee. As for the character’s Want, it would probably be perceived as an important member of the social circle that is Cheers. Cliff is a simple character so his Need would be his desire to feel important and loved by his fellow denizens. As for his Life Dream, one would be hard-pressed to surmise this, but overall one would assume his Life Dream would be a simple one befitting his overall character, something like being a good friend, a dutiful son, and a good person.

Having covered the basics of the characters which inhabit the Cheers universe, we turn to some of the more technical aspects of the show which made it a beloved, long-running, and successful show. The first element, which most all sitcoms have in one form or another, is tension. Generally, tension has a “cause” and “effect” aspect to it where a character has a want or need that runs into an obstacle to overcome which keeps the audience engaged in the story. Much of the tension in Cheers was of a straight tension variety where the audience and the characters go along with the same level of knowledge waiting for the tension to play itself out. Although this was not always true. In the episode “Sam at Eleven”, Sam is selected by the local sports commentator to do an interview, however, little does Sam know that he was only selected because all the other personalities the sportscaster had selected cancelled out on him and Sam was his only choice. Sam does not know this which creates a dramatic irony situation played for comedic value. Carla finds out the truth and persuades Diane to try to talk Sam out of doing the interview. Diane’s persuasion leads ultimately to a surprise tension when Sam, disappointed at finding out the truth suppresses his anger which finally expresses in kissing Diane for the first time in the series. To which Diane reacts by flipping Sam onto a pool table creating more surprise tension.

Tension in the series is also sometimes created by an antagonist. Two episodes where the antagonist is used in the first season are “Coach’s Daughter” and “The Tortelli Tort.” In “Coach’s Daughter”, the antagonist is portrayed by Coach’s daughter Lisa’s fiancée, Roy. Roy is an overbearing, obnoxious salesman who works for Lisa. Roy’s obnoxious character is visible within minutes of his entrance when he pulls out a big cigar, asks if anyone minds if he smokes, then proceeds to light up even after Diane asked him not to. Diane notes that this is because the smoke smells so bad, to which Roy replies “Yeah, I know it stinks but it tastes great” and continues to smoke. This creates straight tension and for the most part that is the kind of tension which surrounds the character of Roy. Dramatic irony is created near the end of the episode when Lisa emerges from a private meeting with her father “Coach” where she admits to him that she is “settling” for Roy because she believes if she does not that no one will ever love her or want to marry her ever again. Lisa walks out and informs Roy that she is not going to marry him to which Roy, arrogant and obnoxious to the end states, “If I walk out that door right now, I’m gone” which elicits a thunderous round of applause from everyone in the bar. In the second episode where an antagonist causes tension, “The Tortelli Tort”, Carla gets Sam in legal trouble with a customer from New York when she assaults the man for denigrating Boston’s sports teams and for insulting Sam. The man threatens to sue Sam for everything he’s got unless he fires Carla. This situation creates a condition where straight tension is used. Sam cooks up a plan to have the man over to the bar on Carla’s day off to “show him” that Carla is no longer there so he will drop the lawsuit. Unfortunately, in a twist of fate, surprise tension is created when Carla, with her anger management therapist in tow, shows up at the bar and the man threatens to renew the lawsuit. However, Carla suggests that the man test her to see if the therapy she is receiving is helping her control her anger. The man agrees and starts insulting everything about Boston, its sports teams, Cheers, Sam, and even Carla, ending with “The Bruins are bunch of ignorant, stupid, sissies!” Suspense is created as the audience waits to see if Carla will maintain her composure or blow her top. Carla wins out and the man leaves dropping the lawsuit against Sam ending the overall suspense of the episode. These forms of tension, and many others, are used throughout the series to keep the audience engaged and to draw them in to the story of Cheers.

In a series like Cheers, the thing that most ties the whole endeavor together is the theme. Theme, as defined by most scholars of television, is the primary aspect of the human condition with which the series deals on a regular basis. The overall theme of the series Cheers is clearly stated in its theme song, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” which goes;

Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.

Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name,

and they're always glad you came.

You wanna be where you can see,

our troubles are all the same

You wanna be where everybody knows

Your name.



You wanna go where people know,

people are all the same,

You wanna go where everybody knows

your name.

(Repeat above stanza)

As noted in the theme song, the overall theme of the show is the comfort of knowing that you have a place to go where you can be part of a family, share your life struggles, and learn that no matter how different we sometimes are, we all have things which tie us together as part of a bigger family of mankind. This theme underlies all the different episodic themes which the series used throughout its eleven-year run. In the theme presentation, “What’s it all about: Television Genres” it lists some different kinds of themes which shows often use including “friendship, love/romance, justice, ambition/greed, workplace politics, family dynamics, and identity (knowing one’s true nature).” With Cheers, family dynamics is one theme that is on display much of the time because the cast cares for each other and are involved in each other’s lives. However, the show also deals with many, if not all, of the listed themes above. Friendship is also one of the major themes in Cheers, which is prominent in the episode “The Tortelli Tort” where Sam defends Carla even though he is in danger of losing his bar in a lawsuit brought against Sam for Carla’s assault on an obnoxious patron from New York. Love and romance are also strong themes, especially as the relationship between Sam and Diane grows stronger. As noted above, Cheers is a show which has a wide variety of themes throughout its eleven-year run and the strongest of these is family dynamics.

One final technical aspect and literary device, which is used sparingly in the series Cheers, is non-linear narrative. When non-linear narrative is employed in the show it is usually to back up an existing storyline or to explain a character’s actions regarding a certain situation. Non-linear storytelling is not used during the first season of the show but is used at times later in the series run. Cheers does not use non-linear storytelling because once the backstories of the various characters were established, there was no real need to use flashbacks or other devices to enhance the storylines.

Cheers contained all the varied ingredients which make for a successful sitcom. A strong cast backed up by great writing and a relatable storyline made this series one that was loved and watched by millions of Americans. The characters were relatable, friendly, and created a sense of family that the series tapped into and used so successfully. Through many plots, themes, storylines, and the many years, Cheers proved itself to be a program with lasting appeal. Even though the cast went through cosmetic changes over the years of on-air hijinks, the main characters, Sam, Diane, Carla, Norm and Cliff formed an inseparable bond which was the glue for the other parts of the series to latch onto and use for support. Cheers was a one-of-a-kind show during the very turbulent times of the 1980’s and early 1990’s and one that this writer thoroughly enjoyed.

Works Cited

Burrows, James, Les Charles and Glen Charles, Executive Producers. Cheers. Charles-Burrows-Charles Productions in association with Paramount Television, 1982-1993.

“The Cheers Theme.” Lyrics on Demand. http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/cheerslyrics.html. Accessed May 27, 2017.