Title: Someday My Prince Will Come
Directed by: James Burrows
Written by: Tom Seeley & Norm Gunzenhauser
Air Date: October 17, 1985
Previous: Woody Goes Belly Up
Next: The Groom Wore Clearasil
Guest Starring: Frank Dent
"Some Day My Prince Will Come" is the third episode of the fourth season of Cheers.
A man leaves a coat on the bar at Cheers. It is, as Diane notices, a very expensive hand-tailored cashmere coat, with tortoiseshell buttons and a Bemberg
lining. As Diane keeps noticing more details from and in the coat—a pipe that smells of a fancy brand of tobacco, a crushed rose petal, tickets to a Japanese kabuki play—the unseen owner of the coat starts to sound more and more like her dream man. When the man calls her on his car phone, a car phone being pretty darn cool in 1985, Diane makes a date with him, sight unseen, despite both Sam and Carla urging caution.
The man, one Stuart Sorensen (Frank Dent), finally shows up to retrieve his coat, and he is just as suave and sophisticated as Diane deduced. He is also quite homely, with frizzy hair, big dorky glasses, and no chin to speak of. Sam is highly amused, but Diane insists that she still finds him attractive.
In the B-plot, Carla brings her son Gino's science fair project (an electric generator) to the bar and asks for the guys to help fix it.
Tropes:
- Blind Date: Diane makes one on the spur of the moment when the mysterious owner of the coat calls the bar.
- Hypocritical Humor
- Diane is embarrassed to admit that Sam was right, that looks are important to her, and that she just can't get into a relationship with Stuart because he isn't attractive enough.
- Sam recommends a way to get out of the relationship: tell Stuart that she has a contagious skin disease and insanity runs in her family. Diane sneers at his dishonesty, but when she thinks Stuart is going to pop the question she uses Sam's line.
- The Igor: When asked to help Cliff with Gino's electric generator, Norm refuses, saying "I think I'll pass, Dr. Frankenstein." When Cliff gets a free beer for his good deed, Norm says "But what about one for Igor?", and does the slouching humpbacked walk into the pool room.
- Mathematician's Answer: Sam hands Woody some receipts and asks him to add them up. After a moment Woody hands them back and says "There's eight of them."
- Name One: Sam believes that he has caught Diane out as being superficial and obsessed with looks.Sam Malone: There was only one reason why you ever went out with me and that was because of my looks.Diane Chambers: Not entirely.Sam: Yes entirely. Name one other reason why anyone would go out with me? Come on, name one. You can't, can you?Diane: [mockingly] No Sam, I can't.
- Not So Above It All: Diane talks with some sophisticated customers and tells them that she's working in a bar filled with "the lumpen proletariat" as research for a novel. But when the guys in the bar do the Wave after seeing it on TV, she does the same.Diane: Well, you have to go along with them, or they get testy.
- The Parent-Produced Project: Carla brings the electric generator that Gino can't get to work to the bar. Norm and Cliff tinker with it, they spin it up, and Cliff gets a shock to his "nether regions."Cliff: Crank it again.
- Perfumigation: One of many many disparaging remarks Diane makes about Sam's cologne. When Sam says he can't smell the nicotine odor from the pipe, Diane says "Your olfactory scenes have been destroyed by that cologne you marinate in."
- Rom Com Job: Stuart's an architect. This is part of the whole joke about how he's Diane's ideal man in every way other than physically.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Half the episode is Diane cooing over the expensive hand-tailored coat she finds at the bar.
- Shout-Out: Diane tells Woody how much she enjoyed watching Mikhail Baryshnikov at the ballet.
- True Beauty Is on the Inside: Subverted, as while Stuart is a pretty awesome guy, Diane can't get past how ugly he is.
