Recap / Cheers S 10 E 13

Episode: Season 10, Episode 13
Title: Don't Shoot... I'm Only the Psychiatrist
Directed by: James Burrows
Written by: Kathy Ann Stumpe
Air Date: January 2, 1992
Previous: Go Make
Next: No Rest for the Woody
Guest Starring: Keene Curtis, David Levy, Paul Willson

"Don't Shoot... I'm Only the Psychiatrist" is the 13th episode of the tenth season of Cheers.

Frasier, against Lilith's advice, takes his low self-esteem group to Cheers in an effort to get them to mingle with the rest of the crowd. Two of them flee in terror, but the other three eventually come out of their shells and make friends with the Cheers gang. Frasier is pleased by this, until he finds out what they bonded over: making fun of him.

Meanwhile, Sam is facing a hair emergency. He is in need of a haircut, and Tony, his hair stylist, broke both his legs in a car accident. Woody volunteers to cut Sam's hair, with disastrous results. And in the C plot, it's Elvis's birthday. Carla, the Elvis superfan who is convinced that Elvis Lives, is holding a vigil and is convinced that he will appear at the bar.

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Tropes:

• Belligerent Sexual Tension: In another nod to the bizarre insults-and-sex relationship between Carla and John Allen Hill, Hill appears in the bar and they fling insults at each other for a while before Hill asks if Carla will be free later.
• The Cameo: Kirstie Alley's father Robert appears as the white-haired man talking to Phil in the bar.
• Continuity Nod: Two earlier Cheers episodes—"Home Malone" and "Everyone Imitates Art"—referenced Carla being an Elvis super-fan who made pilgrimages to Graceland.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: After Woody gets gum in Sam's hair, he offers to let Sam shave off all his hair as punishment. Sam apparently reconsiders... but then he gets pissed again and takes Woody into his office. Woody reappears soon, but with all his hair still on his head. Turns out that's the only hair he's got left after Sam shaved the rest of him.
• Elvis Lives: Carla is utterly convinced that Elvis lives. At the end of the episode she gets flowers from "the King". (They're from John Allen Hill.)
• Food Slap: Carla pours a beer over the head of a customer with insufficient knowledge of Elvis trivia.
• Gag Haircut: Woody has to shave off a large patch of Sam's hair after accidentally dropping his gum on his head.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Another peek into the dark and twisted relationship between Esther Clavin and her son Cliff. Cliff says that he was perfectly well-adjusted in school, and that he was popular. But Ma Clavin thought some of the comments in Cliff's high school yearbook were vulgar... so she made him eat it.
• Hypocritical Humor: Carla describes Elvis as "the man who through his music"—and here she pauses to dump a beer over a customer's head—"taught us all the meaning of love."
• It's All About Me: Sam comments that Tony can't cut his hair because Tony was in a car accident and is hospitalized with two broken legs. Then Sam says "I hate it when stuff like that happens to me."
• Nobody Touches the Hair: A Running Gag regarding Sam and his obsession with his hair. He does not take it well when Woody accidentally drops his gum into Sam's hair and apparently has to shave some off. He does not take it well at all.
• No Party Like a Donner Party: Discussed Trope. Frasier says of his low self-esteem group that "You'll never find a sadder group of people." Cliff, being Cliff, feels compelled to challenge that, and says that the Donner Party was a sadder group of people because they got stuck in the mountains and had to eat each other.
  Frasier: Well, you caught me. Cannibalism is sadder than low self-esteem.
• Pants-Pulling Prank: Norm, Cliff and Paul convince Frasier's support group to pants him. It actually goes a long way towards curing their agoraphobia.
  Frasier: For I am a healer. That is what I do.
  Cliff: And we are pantsers.
  Norm: That is what we do.
  [They chase him out of the bar.]
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Frasier brings his low-self-esteem group to Cheers, two of them instantly bolt out the door the moment they come inside.
• Shown Their Work: This episode aired six days before Elvis Presley's 56th birthday.
• Something Only They Would Say: Apparently Fras has been spreading gab about Norm and Cliff in his therapy sessions, as his group are able to work out Cliff is "Mr. X" from his rattling off Little Known Facts and his wearing a mailman's uniform every day, and that Norm is his "fat friend, Mr. Y".
• The Unintelligible: One of the therapy group only speaks in vague mumblings. Frasier has to guess what he's saying.