Recap / Cheers S 9 E 21

Episode: Season 9, Episode 21
Title: Crash of the Titans
Directed by: Andy Ackerman
Written by: Cheri Eichen, Bill Steinkellner, and Phoef Sutton
Air Date: March 14, 1991
Previous: It's a Wonderful Wife
Next: Carla Loves Clavin
Guest Starring: Bebe Neuwirth

"Cheers Has Chili" is the 21st episode of the ninth season of Cheers.

Rebecca's got another hare-brained venture to raise capital at Cheers - an up-market tea room in what was the pool room. Sam's not remotely enthused by it, but Rebecca insists it'll make money, even betting Sam that if she makes $500 by the evening, she can keep her tea rooms.

Things initially don't get off to the greatest start. Seems a bar like Cheers just doesn't attract the kind of clientele who go to tea rooms. Meanwhile, Woody's bringing in some homemade chili, and it's damn good stuff. So good, in fact, Rebecca appropriates it to draw customers to her tea room and win the bet.

In the B-plot, Cliff is again being mildly creepy, paying a little too much attention to the lady who hosts the Weather Channel at night.

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Tropes:

• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Carla advises Sam to murder Rebecca to win the bet, but she does not approve of cheating .
• Epic Fail: Sam and the stove. He's barely in the backroom for ten seconds before there's an almighty boom, and everyone comes to find the room devastated and covered in chili, as is Sam himself, ground zero for the chilisplosion (which apparently catapulted the stove across the back alley and into a wall).
• Food Slap: Cliff decides to screw with Carla by putting her tip under an upturned glass full of water. Not only does Carla not fall for it, she throws the glass of water in Cliff's face.
• Henpecked Husband: Frasier admits he's only going to the tea room because he's "whipped, and proud of it". On the plus side, this gets him out of trouble later when he's in trouble with Lilith.
  Frasier: Let me have this one. I already said I was whipped in front of the guys.
  Lilith: That was good.
• Jerkass: Much like just two episodes ago in "Crash of the Titans", Sam cruelly mocks a business idea of Rebecca's. This time he's probably right—as events prove, Cheers does not attract the tea room sort—but he's mean about it, drawing up a big fat 0 on a poster board when Rebecca says he can have half the profits. And just like two episodes ago Sam's meanness threatens to backfire, when Rebecca commandeers Woody's pot of chili and starts making a lot more money.
• Mistaken Age: Cliff gets an answer to his fan letter to Dorothy Boysick, the late-night Weather Channel meteorologist. She guesses that he's in fifth or sixth grade, and suggests that maybe he could be a weatherman when he grows up.
• No Sympathy: After his behaviour toward her in this episode, Rebecca's not exactly overflowing with concern when Sam injures himself, even when he admits he probably needs to go to a trauma center after having a pot of chili flash past his head at the speed of light.
• Onion Tears: When Sam says he feels like crying after blowing up Rebecca's pot of chili, she demands that he actually does cry. He tries to use the chopped onions on one of Rebecca's tea room tables, to no avail.
• The Precious, Precious Car: How Rebecca manages to get Sam to cry in the end. She goes and smashes all the windows of his beloved 'vette. Sam immediately starts weeping.
• Saying Too Much:
  • As Cliff talks about the weather girl he's got a crush on, he adds that the weather channel is on all night, prompting Fras to snark "you're a very lonely man, aren't you?"
  • Frasier tries to compare the notion of tea rooms to a mistress, in a way that suggests he's been thinking way too much about the subject, much to Lilith's ire and suspicion.
• Verbal Tic: The reason for Cliff's attraction to Dorothy is her lisp, especially pronounced when she gets to "s" sounds.
  • The outrage Sam has over the tea room makes him say "ish" and get mad at himself for saying "ish"
• What the Hell, Hero?: Woody and Carla disapprove of Sam cheating when it looks like he's losing his bet with Rebecca.