Recap / Cheers S 5 E 10 Everyone Imitates Art

Episode: Season 5, Episode 10
Title: Everyone Imitates Art
Directed by: James Burrows
Written by: Cheri Eichen and Bill Steinkellner
Air Date: December 4, 1986
Previous: Thanksgiving Orphans
Next: The Book of Samuel

"Everyone Imitates Art" is the 10th episode of the fifth season of Cheers.

Diane comes into the bar bragging, because she has gotten a letter from "Syzygy", an obscure literary journal, to which she submitted a poem. Frasier looks it over and realizes that it's a rejection letter, and Sam agrees that it looks like a form letter, but Diane characterizes it as a "soon and inevitably to be accepted letter."

Irritated by Diane's superiority, Sam says that he could write in to the magazine and get the same letter. Diane ridicules that idea. Eventually, Sam does send in a poem, and he doesn't get the same letter—he gets published, to Diane's absolute horror. Diane reads Sam's poem, thinks it's familiar, and decides that Sam plagiarized it. After Sam refuses to admit it, Diane goes hunting through the halls of literature to figure out where Sam got his poem.

In the short B-plot, Carla goes to Graceland for the 10th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death.

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Tropes:

• Break the Haughty: After learning she got the same rejection letter for her submission as Woody, Diane has this painful speech:
  Diane: (utterly defeated) You win, Sam. I've struggled so hard for so long to keep my dreams alive, and I haven't fooled anyone but myself. I know all along you all considered me a pretentious, self-deluded windbag and apparently, you've all been right. I'm never going to be Diane Chambers, the great poet, the world-famous novelist, the revered artist. I've gone as high as I'm going to go. I'm a waitress in a beer hall... and not a very good one. (increasingly depressed) A waitress... a waitress... (Beat) A waitress...
  Customer: Excuse me, miss, can you take our order?
  (Diane breaks down crying)
• Cigarette of Anxiety: Diane comes into the bar looking disheveled and with a cigarette clamped between her teeth, as she has come increasingly unglued trying to figure out where Sam got that poem.
  Frasier: Diane, you don't smoke.
  Diane: [irritated] What's your point?
• Facepalm: Diane caps off her breakdown by just referring to herself as a waitress over and over again. A man at a nearby table then asks if Diane can take an order, prompting her to do this (with a good bit of crying to go along with it).
• The Gadfly: Rather than simply tell Diane he inexplicably got published, Sam leaves a copy of the magazine lying around, claims he read it for inspiration out of respect for the craft, and suggests she check a particular page number. He can't wait for her to get to the writer credit.
• Gone Horribly Right: When confessing to what he did, Sam says Diane's inability to recognize her own poem made him want to play this whole thing out For the Lulz, but her breakdown made him realize it went too far.
• Heroic BSoD: Diane is rocked to her core when she finds out that Woody got the same rejection letter she did.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Sam politely says he just doesn't love Diane anymore and that he's moved on, with the old love letter being something he just stumbled onto rather than deliberately saved. Privately, he reveals a whole stack of saved love letters (complete with a ribbon tying them together). When Diane catches him, Sam desperately insists he saves lots of junk he doesn't care about (from a toaster warranty to a bunch of paperclips).
• Hypocritical Humor: Diane says Sam's poem is terrible, but when she finds out it's actually hers she thinks it's great. When Sam calls her out on this she says "Sam, I'm a poet, not a critic."
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • Woody has some odd thoughts about reincarnation.
  Woody: I think in my next life I'd like to come back as the President of France.
  Norm: Why is that, Wood?
  Woody: I think it'd attract a lot of attention to the bar.
  • Diane starts running on this during her breakdown.
• I Reject Your Reality: Sam points out this is one of Diane's problems. She cannot accept a loss, and must always rewrite things to favor her, citing her behaviour over the last ten episodes as proof.
• Lampshade Hanging: In the final scene, Diane points out that Sam is always Easily Forgiven for whatever he did and never has to face any real consequences for jerking her around, as well as how he cares about her more than he's willing to let on.
• Last-Second Word Swap: When told the poem is hers, Diane says she hasn't been this happy since the first time she... rode a bicycle. Sam, however, is aware of what she was actually going to say before catching herself and suggests they go ride one together.
• Manly Tears: Sam sheds a few again after he thinks he's convinced Diane he doesn't love her anymore. He hasn't—and she catches him with his collection of her love letters within a minute.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Sam confesses what he did because he feels the whole thing went too far and really messed Diane up.
• Springtime for Hitler: Sam tries to write a bad poem which will get rejected, so as to prove to Diane she received a form-letter. It ends up getting published instead.
• Stylistic Suck: The poem Sam sends to Syzygy is, from what we hear, pretty awful.