Title: Rescue Me
Directed by: James Burrows
Written by: Ken Estin
Air Date: May 9, 1985
Previous: The Belles of St. Clete's
Next: Birth, Death, Love, and Rice
Guest Starring: Kelsey Grammer, Martin Ferrero
"Rescue Me" is the 25th and last episode of the third season of Cheers.
Diane and Frasier are continuing on their tour of Italy. One night when they've stopped at a restaurant, Frasier springs a surprise. He asks Diane to marry him...the next day. It seems a colleague, Dr. Marino, has offered his estate at Florence for Diane and Frasier to get married. Diane, shocked and panicked, calls Sam Malone back in Boston. She clearly wants him to say that he loves her so she has a reason to come back, but after he gives her his best wishes, she hangs up.
However, Sam is not as calm about this as he pretended to be on the phone. As the truth gradually dawns on him, he realizes that he has to do something about it. He decides to fly to Italy to stop the wedding. As the episode and the season end, Sam's on a plane while Diane and Frasier are looking for a place to get married.
This was Nicholas Colasanto's last appearance on Cheers. This was actually the third episode produced after Colasanto's death on February 12, 1985. As a tribute to Colasanto and Coach, a Deleted Scene was repurposed and used as the Cold Open. (Note that in the cold open, Carla is not pregnant.)
Tropes:
- Chekhov's Gun: Sam gets an answering machine for his personal line at the bar. His message has a fake-out opening: "Hi this is Sam Malone. Suckered you in, I'm not here!". This throwaway gag comes back at the end of the episode when Diane, who is hoping against hope that Sam has come for her, hears "Hi this is Sam Malone" on the phone and hangs up, assuming that Sam is still back in Boston.
- Cliffhanger: Will Diane get married? Will Sam make it to her wedding on time? Tune in next fall for Season 4 of Cheers!
- Daydream Surprise: Sam imagines dramatically stopping Diane's wedding to Frasier. The viewer figures out that it's Sam's fantasy right around the time Diane says Sam can keep dating other women.
- Imagine Spot: Sam has a daydream in which he bursts in on Diane and Frasier's wedding at the last moment and literally carries her away.
- Inelegant Blubbering: Frasier takes Diane to Luigi's, a fancy Italian restaurant, only to find out from the waiter that Luigi the chef died that very morning. A repeated gag in this scene has the waiter bursting into inelegant tears as he tries to serve the two of them.
- Psychic Link: A couple of times during the run of Cheers there were suggestions that Sam and Diane were linked on some deep level, and one of them is in this episode, as Sam, on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic, gets a chill at the moment that Diane in Italy says that she wants to marry Frasier right now.
- Race for Your Love: Sam has a daydream in which he races to Italy and bursts in on Diane and Frasier's wedding. Soon after he does it for real, and is still in flight when the episode ends.
- Split-Screen Phone Call: When Diane calls Sam, tells him that she and Frasier are getting married, and makes an unspoken but very obvious request for him to say that he loves her.
- Voicemail Confusion: Sam's phone message sounds like him answering the phone, then a long pause, followed by "Just kidding. You got my machine." Diane calls Sam before her wedding to Frasier, hoping Sam is on a plane on his way to stop the wedding. When she thinks he has answered, she hangs up in disgust without hearing the rest, and thus doesn't know that Sam is on his way.
