“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…”

Each decade brings about a chunk of sitcoms that define an era.  While the 80s were somewhat undefined, bringing viewers a combination of the posh (Dynasty, anyone?), the fast (Knight Rider!!), the extraterrestrial (ALF) and of course, the everyday, which was epitomized with Cheers.  The series starred Ted Danson as Sam ‘Mayday’ Malone, a former Red Sox pitcher who was a recovering alcoholic… with a bar.  After debuting in the fall lineup of 1982, Cheers went on to become one of the most popular shows of all time, running longer than any other comedy series on NBC.

Ernie “Coach” Pantusso, Malone’s former Red Sox coach, tended bar while snappy Carla Tortelli brought drinks out to the regulars, like best friends, postal worker Cliff Clavin and one-time accountant, full-time beer swiller Norm Peterson.  Oh, and then there was Diane, the novelist who just prior to showing up at the bar was dumped by her fiancé.  Every episode would feature this cast of regulars, along with a few others who came and went throughout the show. 

Though the show was shot primarily within the confines of the bar, it couldn’t hold back the verbal sparring, gags, and laughs that flew out from every corner.  The staff and the patrons were pretty easy targets, too.  Sam was quite the ladies man, Diane was the ‘intellectual snob’ and Carla was a feisty mother of six that wasn’t about to let Diane steamroll her with her hooty-snooty ways.  Coach, though dim-witted at times, was lovable and goofy, providing a nice balance amongst the staff.  Cliff kept an encyclopedic store of useless, and often incorrect, knowledge that he shared at every open moment, and Norm was the popular beerhound, who drank away his problems at Cheers, where everyone knew his name, often calling it out whenever he came into the bar.

The sexual tension between Sam and Diane kept its small fan base tuning in each week, continuing the will-they-won’t-they saga.  By Season Two, the two were an official item.  Oddly enough, in retrospect, the show nearly didn’t get a second shot at it.  At one point, Cheers sat uncheerfully at the bottom of the Nielsen ratings.  NBC decided to stick with it, and took a ratings gamble by putting it on the air once more.  Their bets paid off, and by the end of the ’83 – ’84 season, they’d moved Cheers into a Thursday night timeslot, giving NBC their coveted two-decade run of “Must-See TV.”  Cheers went from the bottom of the barrel to being a veritable ratings powerhouse, boosting the ratings of programs airing on either side of it with its beer-colored glow. 

As time went on, Diane dumped Sam for her psychiatrist, Dr. Frasier Crane, who incidentally would go on to his own successful spin-off Frasier, becoming the longest-running character in television history.  After leaving Crane at the altar in Italy at the end of the third season, he became a regular patron and Diane fell back into the arms of Sam.  For the duration of Season 4, audiences were re-introduced to the on again-off again insanity of the first season, except this time it wasn’t a question of kissing, it was a question of marriage.  At the end of their tumultuous relationship, Diane left Sam to pursue her dream of writing, promising to return.  But we all knew better (it was public knowledge that Long was leaving the show at the end of the season), and so did Sam, who sold off his stake in Cheers, bought a sailboat and sailed off into the sunset.  Except the boat sank. 

In 1985, Coach passed away, which the Cheers gang paid homage to gracefully.  However, there was a dopey void to fill, and they found a prime candidate in “Woody” Boyd, the Indiana bumpkin with a heart of gold.  Also joining the show in 1987 was Rebecca Howe, who had taken over management of Cheers upon Sam’s departure.  As the face to the corporation that bought out Cheers, Rebecca was power-hungry.  When Sam came back to tend bar, he must’ve found the strong woman thing appealing, and being himself, he pulled out all the stops in the hopes of scoring with his new boss.

In the ensuing years, Carla married hockey player Eddie LeBec, and had two more children.  Frasier fell in love with the frosty psychiatrist, Lillith, and the two married during the ’87 – ’88 season.  The Eddie died and Carla was a single mom once more.  Frasier and Lillith became proud parents, then less-proud divorcees.  Despite the ups and downs, the sexual tension on the show was as high as ever thanks to the chemistry between Sam and Rebecca during her earlier years on the show.  In their own version of the will-they-won’t-they game, they boosted the ratings to #1 for the season. 

Eventually, Sam bought back Cheers, and Rebecca took over as another barmaid.  Things were as they always were.  In fact, though it had 11 seasons on the air and a variety of personnel changes, very little had actually changed in terms of the group dynamic.  They had the lecher, the spitfire, the comedians, the goofy guy and the ditzy girl in their lineup, keeping the spirit of the show much the same as it was on the day it debuted.

By the end of the ’92 – ’93 season, Danson wanted to call it quits and move onto something new.  Rather than risk ‘jumping the shark’ (they had some rather near calls, though they all seemed to work out in the end), they decided to send the show out in style.  The extravagant series finale drew in the second largest number of viewers for any series finale, coming in at 42.63 million households around the U.S. and capped off their successful run with Sam turning out the lights, closing the bar doors, and saying “We’re closed.” 

Cheers remains a syndication favorite, as well as a cultural touchstone that appears in pop culture in references on The Simpsons to a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine send up with a regular in Quark’s Bar, a very Norm-like character, Morn.  Even a chain of “Cheers” themed pubs exist in a number of airports around the world.  Of course, you could always go to the real deal, Boston’s ‘The Bull and Finch,’ for which the series was created based on.  It seems that a decade and a half later, and we’re still looking to go where everybody knows our name.

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