Cheers / YMMV - TV Tropes

Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Sam Malone: A womanising dumb jock, or a deeply insecure and lonely man who carefully cultivated the facade of a womanising dumb jock to fill the void in his life and feed off the adulation of the regulars of the bar? There are several instances where he lets the facade down and shows his hidden sensitivity and intelligence that he dare not let the other guys see.
- Norm Peterson: A hardcore alcoholic who neglects his work and family obligations to spend 12-14 hours per day in a bar? Or a loving husband with a unique relationship with his wife, who just lies about his life to fit in with the other guys? Although there's many jokes about the former, several episodes indicate the latter, with Norm admitting he's lying about neglecting his wife and becoming desperate to keep her when his marriage is actually threatened.
- Not to mention Cliff Clavin; interpretations vary whether he's an awkward and unappealing blowhard, who's ultimately harmless and can even be sweet, or a dangerously paranoid, delusional, sexually dysfunctional and possibly matricidal postal worker who stalks TV personalities, writes threatening letters to politicians and has an unhealthy obsession with conspiracy theories and government plots.
- An interesting one involves Diane being a Femme Fatale rather than a nice (if pretentious) girlfriend; considering that her two most serious love interests (Sam and Frasier) end up suffering a lot of emotional trauma thanks to her, Sam multiple times, it's not out of the question. Frasier himself tends to look back on Diane as a Femme Fatale in-universe.
- Because of Protagonist-Centered Morality and Diane's Moe tendencies, it's pretty clear that viewers are supposed to view Carla as being in the wrong for the way she treats Diane. But look at the situation from Carla's point of view. Not only did Diane put her best friend through hell and back, but it's also hinted (and sometimes just shown) that she is quite incompetent at her job and only works there because Sam is sexually interested in her. While Carla is busting her ass to support 4-7 kids, Diane is making the same amount of money for doing considerably less work. Taking all this into consideration, is it any wonder that Carla can't stand her?
- Carla and Diane being Vitriolic Best Buds, or at least start off as that, until Diane gets into her relationship with Sam, to whom Carla has Undying Loyalty, at which point it becomes legitimate hatred on Carla's part.
Archive Panic: The show ran for eleven seasons and had a spin-off run for just as many years.
Awesome Music:
- The opening theme is the iconic TV theme of the The '80s. The opening piano to the sing-along chorus captures the feeling of melancholy, camaraderie, and heartfelt feelings the show provides.
- Coach's "Albania song", set to the melody of "When the Saints Go Marching In", is this combined with Funny. Nicholas Colasanto's idiosyncratic delivery and the hilariously awkward way Coach tries to cram the lyrics to the point that it barely stays in the original rhythm makes it one hell of an Ear Worm that helps both Sam and many Geography students in the audience pass their tests.
Base-Breaking Character: Diane. To her fans, she's the biggest sweetheart, The Cutie, and something of The Woobie. To her haters, she's an annoying snob who gets Strangled by the Red String with Sam, and never gels with the rest of the bar.
Bizarro Episode: There was a special episode that was never aired on television called "Uncle Sam Malone", in which the gang tries to convince Diane that U.S. Savings Bonds are a good investment. It was a special episode produced for the U.S. Treasury to be used during savings bonds drives. Written by Ralph Phillips (who was a sitcom writer but never wrote a "real" episode of Cheers), while it has the standard Cold Open followed by the theme song, the rest of the episode is basically a ten-minute ad for savings bonds (and the payroll savings plan for small business owners like Sam - or the potential viewer).^note
Crosses the Line Twice:
- Sam and Diane hitting each other in a scene that would be seen as domestic assault today? Not funny. Sam and Diane hitting each other in a perfectly timed that it basically goes into slapstick territory and then pinching each other's noses? Absolute comedy gold.
- Throughout "Rescue Me", Frasier and Diane are at a fancy restaurant whose owner is desperately trying to remain upbeat despite the beloved head chef having died just recently enough that the funeral was just that morning... and failing miserably. Repeatedly.
- Frasier's segment of "Cheers: The Motion Picture" has him trying to reassure the Boyds about psychiatry, only for his efforts to be undermined by someone committing suicide right behind him, with Frasier's only response being annoyance.
- After a while, Woody's stories about life in Hanover, which manage to be both deeply disturbing and just weird, but Woody recounts them as if it's perfectly normal.
Draco in Leather Pants: Diane abandons both Sam and Frasier at the altar, blames Frasier for being upset about it, cheats on both men at least once, and generally shows utter disregard for anybody's feelings and emotions other than her own. Despite all of this, she's not only liked (or at least not disliked) by a good chunk of the cast in-universe, but many of her fans characterize her as a sweet, cute, graceful and put-upon young woman whose only flaw is being a little pretentious.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Many. Frasier got his own successful Spin-Off. Nick Tortelli got a Spin-Off too, though it was very short-lived.
- Al, played by Al Rosen. He first appeared exclaiming "Sinatra!" in one episode, and was such a hit with the writers, he was given more and more punchlines by the writers. He was later referenced in Frasier episode Cheerful Goodbyes when Cliff told Phil, "You've always been there for me, Al", and Phil retorted, "I'm Phil. Al's been dead for fourteen years, you dumb son of a bitch!"
- Corrine, the waitress from Norm's favorite eatery, "The Hungry Heifer". It helps she's played by Doris Grau in full Deadpan Snarker mode.
Fanon:
- Quite a few LGBT Cheers fans like to headcanon Norm, especially in the later seasons, as a romantic asexual, mostly due to him not wanting to have sex but still loving his wife dearly. Even early on when there was a subplot about Vera wanting a child, Norm indicated that he didn't enjoy trying to get her pregnant and only did his part to make her happy.
- Many fans like to believe that the customer in the show's final scene that Sam shoos away because the bar is closed is the same Minor with Fake I.D. that tried to get Sam to serve him in the first episode, now old enough to drink legally.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In Australia, Cheers has an extra piece of notoriety due to its role in the infamous cancellation of the Nine Network program Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos during its first and only broadcast in September 1992.^note Viewers memorably saw the network abruptly cut to the beginning of a Cheers rerun halfway into the broadcast, which filled up the remaining airtime. ^note When the program was reaired in its entirety in 2008, it abruptly cut away to the opening of Cheers midway through in a recreation of the incident before resuming the second half of the program that didn't get aired.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- One episode saw Sam give a radio interview in which he makes disparaging comments of Diane. She gets mad. He gets apologetic. Years later, recurring cast member Jay Thomas gave a radio interview in which he made some disparaging comments about Rhea Perlman. She got mad. He got fired.
- Another episode had Cliff taking medication for work-induced stress. He does comment that he has job security and asks rhetorically "What would we do without the U.S. Postal Service?" Woody replies "Probably fax everything and it will get there faster, cheaper, and more efficiently." This just adds more stress to Cliff. Twenty years later, the Postal Service would find itself falling on hard times due to the proliferation of e-mail which delivers messages "faster, cheaper, and more efficiently". However, this gets addressed in Frasier — in "Cheerful Goodbyes", Cliff says that email has hurt the postal service, but "it's just a fad", then asks Niles to feel his bicep (!).
- Dr. Simon Finch-Royce in "Simon Says" comes to the conclusion that Sam and Diane's problems will ensure a short-lived marriage and that it'd be better for both of them if they just break up now. Diane is outraged, so Hilarity Ensues until Simon tells them what they want to hear. Thing is, if you watch the Season 5 finale and the Grand Finale itself, Simon ended up having a point about Sam and Diane just not being able to make it work.
- After Lilith finds out Frasier was married once before her she starts crossly referring to him as her "first husband" which loses some of the humor considering she does divorce Frasier and marry someone else (who in turn leaves her).
- Throughout their relationship, it's mentioned and shown Carla is deathly paranoid that Eddie is cheating on her. Then, after aforementioned firing of Jay Thomas, Eddie gets a bridge dropped on him, and it's revealed that yes, he was cheating on her.
- Late in season 11, Sam and Rebecca have a conversation where they bring up the divorce of Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer, with Rebecca telling Sam she considered Diana's situation a win. This was only a few years before Diana's death.
- An In-Universe example: it's difficult to watch Season 2 and watch the romance erode because the viewer already knows how the season ends — and how season five ends — and how the finale ends.
- Remember the episode when Frasier presented Lilith a prenuptial agreement, and she got pissed off? That scene's a little jarring to watch now, knowing that much later Frasier and Lilith will get a divorce..... because Lilith cheated on Frasier.
- The part of Diane's paper in "Don Juan Is Hell" that Sam reads aloud easily becomes this—especially her predictions that "Trevor" will end up more and more alone and depressed as he gets older, due to his womanizing hurting his chances at long-term relationships. Honestly, it's eerie how prophetic it is, considering Sam's arc in the series's final season.
- Frasier makes his first appearance during the intervention for Sam, who had fallen off the wagon. Becomes a lot harsher in retrospect, as by the end of the series, Kelsey Grammer's own battle with alcoholism and substance abuse forced the cast of Cheers (and later Frasier) to hold similar interventions, though thankfully the latter one stuck.
- During the Season 3 episode "Peterson Cruise," (air date December 13, 1984) Norm has a health scare. Diane says they'll all be by Norm's side, and Coach asks if they have to go through heart surgery along with Norm. It's Played for Laughs, but becomes much Harsher in Hindsight after Nicholas Colasanto's death from a heart attack just two months later.
- In the first part of the tenth season, Sam and Rebecca have a character arc in which they attempt to have a baby. (This was an attempt to incorporate Kirstie Alley's pregnancy into the show.) The arc ends when Sam and Rebecca realize they're not ready to be parents and Sam imagines the son that will never be fading away. It's rather sad on its own, but it gets sadder when you remember the real reason the arc was abandoned: Alley had miscarried. The would-be son insists that Sam will have him one day. However, the show ends with Sam single and a later guest appearance on Frasier even derails a possible wedding he intended to have.
- In one season 7 episode, Rebecca gets several comments about gaining weight, to where even Sam pranks her by placing his foot on the scale while she's weighing herself. Kirstie Alley would go on to have much-publicized battles with her weight that turned her into an industry punchline for a while.
- In the series finale, Sam and Diane are on a TWA flight that returns to the terminal due to an electrical problem. Three years later, TWA Flight 800 exploded off the coast of Long Island due to a short circuit that caused a fuel tank to ignite, killing everyone onboard.
- One episode has a newspaper mistakenly run Rebecca’s obituary. In 2022, Kirstie Alley would become the first main-billed cast member to die after the show ceased production.
Heartwarming in Hindsight:
- One episode has Woody's parents request that he come home, believing that Boston is too dangerous for him. They change their minds after Al sends them a message saying "Let your son pick his own path and it will all come back to you." Near the end of the series, when Woody is elected to the city council, he's proven right. (Pity Al didn't live to see it.)
- During Sam's fantasy in "I Do and Adieu", he imagines that future Woody would end up married with a wife and two kids (son and daughter). A few seasons later, Woody would meet Kelly, who he did end up marrying, and by the time of Frasier is mentioned to have a son and daughter. Given how the fantasy ends up going, it's nice that part of it at least came true for someone.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- In "The Boys in the Bar", Norm is afraid Cheers will become a gay bar, with his biggest concern being that there will... be ferns everywhere ("Ferns, Sam."). Come season 6, the bar set is redesigned, and there are ferns everywhere.
- Right after Frasier is first turned down by Lilith, Sam sets him up with an old girlfriend Candy as a one night stand and Frasier ends up impulsively getting engaged to her, prompting Diane to intervene. Later on in Frasier, the same actress plays another cheap date Frasier plans to spend the night with, only this time it's interrupted by the woman he loves walking in. This is more of a case of Casting Gag, according to Word of God.
- In one episode, Diane keeps pronouncing "mime" as "meme", saying, "Everybody loves a meme!"
- In Season Five's "Abnormal Psychology", Norm and Cliff return from a "gladiator film festival" arguing about the number of anachronisms in what they've seen. Their exchange about a taxi cab allegedly being in one of the films can easily cause modern viewers to briefly think they're talking about the 1999 movie Titus (famous for its use of motorcycles and cars in Imperial Rome)...though the episode first aired thirteen years before the movie's release!
- In Season Two's "How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Call You Back", Diane is lounging about in her apartment at night, drunk, with the lights off and a host of lit candles throughout the living room. When Sam stops by, he remarks that the ambiance invokes a haunted house (when Diane turns on the lights, Sam chuckles, "No bats!"). Years later, Shelley Long would guest-star in Sabrina the Teenage Witch as a wicked witch.
- The Season Four episode "From Beer to Eternity" reveals that Woody has won trophies for bowling (although he refuses to take part in the match against Gary's Olde Towne Tavern due to a bowling-related incident that he was involved in back in Indiana). In 1996, Woody Harrelson played a down-on-his-luck former pro bowler in Kingpin.
- Woody Harrelson plays a character who winds up in the audience of Jeopardy! both in the episode "What Is... Cliff Clavin?" and a few years later, in the film White Men Can't Jump.
- Another Woody Harrelson example, in the Season 9 episode "Rat Girl", Woody, taunting the dieting Rebecca, glows about how much he loves snowballs and shoves one into his mouth whole. In the movie Zombieland Woody's character is frustrated when he comes across a truck carrying only Snowballs on his search for a Twinkie - refusing to settle due to a hatred of coconut.
- Frasier's mentor, Dr. Bennett Ludlow, has an affair with Carla, an average working woman who's been around the block a few times and seems completely wrong for him. Pretty much the same thing happens again in Frasier, when his other mentor Dr. Tewksbury has a fling with Roz, his producer.
- In a latter episode Cliff starts out directing a video for Woody's and Kelly's families, but proves such a Prima Donna Director that he gets replaced by Frasier, who turns out to be just as bad. This has an extra layer of hilarity when you consider that John Ratzenberger was a semi-regular director on this series, and Kelsey Grammer later became one of the most frequent directors on Frasier. Plus, Frasier is again a horrible director in his own show's "Ham Radio," often considered one of its best episodes.
- In the second part of Kelly and Woody's wedding, Sam is attacked by a jealous, sword armed German husband who thinks his wife is cheating with him, before Frasier steps in with his poor understanding of German to convince him to back off. Frasier and his brother Niles are attacked by another German swordsman in Frasier, where infidelity is again the motive.
- All the Boston Red Sox jokes. The Boston Red Sox, after an 86 year long championship drought, would go on to win the World Series in 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018.
- More minor example. In season 5, there's an episode entitled "The Godfather, Part 3", a few years before there actually was a Godfather III.
- One episode has Lilith (while she's married to Frasier) become despondent when one of her lab rats dies. Eventually, she becomes so distraught she starts carrying the rat's corpse around in her purse. On Frasier, he finds his mother's journals (she was herself a scientist) and discovers she too became emotionally attached to her lab rats. (Her journal says that one of them dying was the thing she feared most.) In fact, she was so attached to her rats she named her sons after them.
- "Send In the Crane" has Frasier filling in for Woody as a clown at a child's birthday party. As Woody hands over the equipment, he comments "It takes a big man to fill these shoes" and hands him a pair of massive clown shoes. A little over a year later, The Simpsons had the "Krusty Gets Busted" episode where Sideshow Bob (who like Frasier is played by Kelsey Grammer) frames Krusty for robbing the Kwik-E-Mart. The clue that tips off Bart of the frame-up is that Krusty has small feet compared to his big clown shoes while Bob has huge feet that require large shoes.
- "Diane's Nightmare" has an appearance by Nancy Cartwright who at one point politely introduces herself to Frasier. Knowing the two will end up voicing arch enemies on The Simpsons makes the whole scene much funnier.
- When Woody first starts doing community theatre, Carla makes some disparaging comments about his lack of success as an actor. Now that Woody Harrelson is the show's most successful former cast member, he's apparently gotten the last laugh.
- Sam Malone has his own Plan Z in an episode of Season 9.
- When then-Senator John Kerry cameoed on the show, his surname was misspelled as "Kerrey" in the closing credits, likely the result of someone getting him mixed up with fellow senator Bob Kerrey (who at the time was in the news as one of the front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination for 1992, which ended up being won by Bill Clinton). This foreshadowed the much bigger error over his surname a Minnesota electoral college voter would make during Kerry's presidential run in 2004, when they mistakenly voted for someone named "John Ewards", which was taken as a vote for Kerry's running-mate, John Edwards.
- Norm once remarked that Edward Asner was the only actor who could play his wife. Norm, did you somehow marry Granny Goodness?
- The plot of "Diane Meets Mom" is Diane meeting Frasier's mother, who regards her as a bad partner for Frasier and threatens to (and seriously considers) kill her if she doesn't break it off. That's not the funny part - what is the funny part is that Frasier establishes that Niles had started dating Maris around the same time Diane and Frasier were engaged. Sadly, we can only speculate as to how Hester took that arrangement.
  - Not to mention the other big reason someone might get a kick out of seeing Nancy Marchand play a homicidal mother figure.
- In the first episode, Diane takes a call from a Vicki, who Sam has no interest in talking to. Decades later, Ted Danson would play a character with a nemesis by the name of Vicky.
- In "Christmas Cheers" Lilith compares a grumpy Frasier to Ebeneezer Scrooge at one point. 17 years later and Kelsey Grammer actually would play Scrooge.
- Shortly before Robin walks into her life, Rebecca bemoans to Sam that the rich, ambitious, upwardly mobile men she deserves to be courted by aren't exactly beating down a door and queuing up to go out with her. She specifically mentions Donald Trump as an example of the sort of man who is exactly right for her. Even more hilarious when you realize that Kirstie Alley, who played Rebecca, voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 (this could also be considered Harsher in Hindsight, depending on your political views).
- In "What Is... Cliff Clavin", Cliff goes on Jeopardy!, but blows what could have been a record-setting game by stupidly wagering everything in "Final Jeopardy!", even though he'd effectively locked up the game. Around the same time the episode aired, Frank Spangenberg had a 5-game run in which he set both a 1-day record of $30,600 and an all-time record of $102,597 in his final game.
- When Shelley Long left the series, many feared it would bring about the end of the show. Her successor, Kirstie Alley, wound up appearing in more episodes than Long did.
- In an elaborate prank Sam makes his friends think they are a target of a Mob hit and have them driven all the way out to North Dakota. The destination of the bus they took is Seattle.
- In the season 2 episode "Fortunes and Men's Weights," Coach describes a salesman who conned him into buying an antique scale as being like a cross between Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler.
- Rebecca's most notable bosses and crushes are Evan Drake and Robin Colcord. Just a few months after Robin's debut, Tim Drake became the third DC Comics Robin.
- The fantasy flashforward in "I Do And Adieu" is already slightly giggle-worthy given it's clearly just Ted Danson and Shelley Long in make-up to sort of look elderly, but even moreso given Ten Danson ended up aging somewhat more differently than shown.
- When Frasier and Lilith first introduce their son Frederick to Sam, Sam calls him "Freddy" before being hastily corrected by Frasier. As Frasier (2023) would show, Frederick would grow up to prefer the nickname "Freddy" after all!
Hollywood Homely:
- In an early episode, Carla's son Gino is mentioned as looking "goofy," with Sam being equal parts amused and insulted that Carla chose him out of all her kids to be Sam's supposed son in a prank she was pulling on Diane. When we actually see Gino much later in the show's run, he looks completely normal. Possibly justified by the time span involved, and Gino just growing up to be much better-looking than when he was a kid.
- Cliff is universally regarded in-universe as extremely physically repulsive. He’s really no worse than average-looking, and he is much easier on the eyes than the obese, slovenly Norm.
Les Yay: In "Father Knows Last", Carla presumes to demonstrate to Diane "this thing [her ex-husband Nick] does"...which apparently involves putting his lips to a woman's ear. Cliff walks in on them—resulting in a most awkward moment. There's also their embrace in "Truce Or Consequences" when they're totally wasted.
Memetic Mutation:
- Almost everything in "What is... Cliff Clavin?", when Cliff goes on Jeopardy!, especially his "Final Jeopardy!" answer "Who are three people who have never been in my kitchen?", which has since become a stock answer to difficult questions. Since then, Alex Trebek often warns players not to "pull a Cliff Clavin" (endanger a definite win) in FJ!. The categories from Cliff's "dream board" were featured in a 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions game.
- "NORM"!
- Also, Norm's "Women...Can't live with 'em. Pass the beer nuts" line.
- On the Cheers subreddit, it's been common to post any image of a vegetable/fruit that vaguely looks like a person and captioning it with “Cliff?” in the title. A reference to the famous running gag of Cliff's random vegetables.
Misaimed Fandom: The show often received letters from fans who wished that their own relationships were like Sam and Diane's. One of the show's creators commented that this was insane, because Sam and Diane had "a totally dysfunctional relationship."
- Norm Peterson is extremely popular amongst fans for being essentially a hard drinking man. The fact is, by ANY rational definition, Norm Peterson is an alcoholic who ignores his wife, is unemployed most of the series, and essentially drinks on a tab he has no intention of paying. He’s outright BANNED from other bars because he won’t pay, several episodes have heavily hinted that his tab is so large that if he got around to it Cheers would be the wealthiest bar in Boston, and at one point, even SAM loses his patience with Norm not paying his tab when Norm comes into money. The fact is, given his weight problem, poor diet, and MASSIVE consumption of alcohol, the fact that Norm didn’t die during the series run is nothing short of a miracle.
Moral Event Horizon: Diane's actions in "Chambers Vs. Malone" where, after she emotionally blackmails Sam into proposing to her yet again, she refuses again and flees in the face of Sam's (pretty understandable) anger. In the process, she falls over while running, and then takes Sam to court on falsified claims he assaulted her (when Sam had A: given up chasing her almost immediately, and B: never had any intention of hurting her in the first place). While in court, she plays up her incredibly minor injuries to make it look like Sam seriously hurt her, just so Sam is faced with proposing to her "romantically" or be outright sent to jail.
Never Live It Down: Zig-zagged for Sam. People like to throw Sam's previous alcoholism in his face as a low-blow, in particular how it ruined his lifelong dream of pitching in the Major Leagues, but others (including Diane) are very impressed that Sam was able to kick the habit and get his life together. It takes a lot of willpower to not drink when you work in a bar.
- Played straight for Diane. The constant gags Season 3 on, about someone or something happening to remind us of her time at Goldenbrook. These moments invariably have Diane insisting that it wasn't nearly as bad as everyone says....
  - Season 4 on, Frasier persists in reminding her (and everyone else) about her breaking his heart. And he's not the only one...
    Woody: Was that before or after you dumped Dr. Crane and sent him into an alcoholic tailspin?
    Diane: (Timid squirm) Um... after.
    Frasier: (Piping in, snarky) How long after?
  - This follows her all the way through to the finale of the show...and even in her special appearance in Frasier.
Newer Than They Think: While the show will always be synonymous with the 1980s, it continued to air into the Clinton administration. (Its spinoff subsequently aired into the Bush administration.)
Once Original, Now Common: While the show is still beloved in television circles, one of its main calling cards in the first five season has fallen into this, with Sam and Diane being the Trope Codifier of Belligerent Sexual Tension and Will They or Won't They? of American sitcoms, long before Friends took the baton in the 1990s. That a sitcom could write an ever-evolving arc between two love interests full of tension, putting them together, breaking them up, and then teasing a reconciliation captivated audiences beyond the show's strong ensemble and writing, a dynamic that's ever-present in many a sitcom today. In fact, the series was too effective with this; one of the factors in Shelly Long walking away from the show was over her frustration with the writers' reluctance to fully commit to Sam and Diane's endgame of whether they'd get together for good or not.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
- Rebecca often tread the line of almost falling into Replacement Scrappy, especially for fans of Diane. (Despite the fact that the writers strove to make her different from Diane from the beginning, the character still suffered a LOT of unfavorable compare/contrasts with her predecessor from fans of the old days, a la "Diane would've never done that!" Especially when letting Robin walk all over her while seeming oblivious to his manipulations of the rest of the gang....) Once the writers switched her from half-Ice Queen/half-hopeless-piner-for-rich-guys to the cutely neurotic mess she was for the rest of the run, fan animosity cooled.
- Frasier was disliked during his early appearances (Kelsey Grammer even received hate mail). Obviously, things got better.
- Woody was also looked at as a Replacement Scrappy for Coach. Many fans didn't like the idea of having another dim-witted bartender. He did, however, grow on audiences and was loved by the end of the series.
Retroactive Recognition: There are several in the series.
- Harry Anderson was Harry the Hat as a recurring character in the first few seasons. At the time, he was best known as a prop comic. His appearances ceased once he snagged the lead role in Night Court (although he returned as a guest on occasion, including in the last season). Harry was also an Actor Allusion for Anderson, who was also an expert at confidence swindles and taught audiences about it during his standup act; he was also a stage magician, and demonstrated there's a lot of crossover between the two skills.
- Carla's daughter who gets married is played by Leah Remini (The King of Queens).
- Brent Spiner appeared in a two part episode as a man who was on trial for attempted murder.
- Frasier regulars Peri Gilpin and John Mahoney appeared in separate episodes.
  - John Mahoney plays Sy Flembeck, a jingle writer - whose skills wind up being criticized by Frasier. In Frasier, Martin helps Frasier write a jingle.
  - Peri Gilpin plays a jaded reporter who has all of the same mannerisms and snarkiness as Roz.
- Kate Mulgrew was a romantic partner for Sam in a three episode Cliffhanger, while Max Wright appears in the same story arc as a campaign opponent that Diane and Frasier helped.
- George Gaynes appears as a dying businessman who has a fun night with the gang and wills them a million dollars.
- Officer Bubba Skinner appears as Sam's old teammate who comes to the bar to promote his autobiography.
- Nancy Cartwright appeared as Andy-Andy's fiance. Fellow Simpsons (and The Critic) castmember Doris Grau had a few appearances as Corrine.
- Michael Richards appeared as a man who made a bet with Sam that he could marry Jacqueline Bisset.
- Thomas Haden Church appears in "Death Takes a Holiday on Ice" as another member of the ice show. A studly blond Kevin Conroy appears in the same episode.
- Diedrich Bader appeared as a snarky waiter in episode "Sammy and the Professor".
- Lisa Kudrow appears as a young, dark haired community theater actress in the episode "Two Girls for Every Boyd".
- Jim Norton appeared as the brother-in-law of Cliff's co-worker Twitch, who conned him into thinking Pimp Duds were the new official postal uniform.
- Carmen Argenziano is the furious husband who tries to shoot Sam for sleeping with his wife.
- John Allen Hill (Keene Curtis) later voiced The Pastmaster.
- A very young Marcia Cross plays Rebecca's sister in Season 7.
- Corey Feldman, in a possible allusion to his role in the series version of The Bad News Bears plays a Little League team member in Season 2.
- Rob Long co-wrote 34 episodes. Long is best known as co-creator and co-executive producer of Sullivan & Son.
- David Angell wrote 17 episodes. Angell is best known as co-creator and co-executive producer of Wings and Frasier.
- Peter Casey and David Lee wrote ten episodes. Both also served as co-creators and co-executive producers of Wings and Frasier.
- Sam Simon wrote five episodes. Simon is best known as co-developer and co-executive producer of The Simpsons.
- Earl Pomerantz wrote four episodes. Pomerantz is best known as developer and executive producer of Major Dad.
- Tracy Newman and Jonathan Stark wrote three episodes. Both are best known as creators and executive producers of According to Jim.
- Jeff Abugov wrote two episodes. Abugov is best known as developer and co-executive producer of Fugget About It.
- Michael J. Weithorn wrote an episode. Weithorn is best known as creator and executive producer of Ned & Stacey and co-creator and executive producer of The King of Queens.
- Glenn Beck was a background extra in "Severe Crane Damage", which he has occasionally recalled on his radio show.
Seasonal Rot: At the very least Season 11, the show's final year, is widely seen as sub-par, with the writers often falling back on storylines that had been done earlier in the show, just a lot more mean-spirited. Some fans feel that the rot started even earlier, around Season 8, with some even going so far as to consider the entire "Rebecca era" starting in Season 6 as one long Audience-Alienating Era for the show.
Shipping Bed Death: Apparently, the show creators decided to break up Sam and Diane at the end of Season 2 because they were afraid this was starting to happen. Actually lampshaded by Diane herself in that Season's "Coachie Makes Three", when she openly worries if she and Sam are starting to become "routine".
Strawman Has a Point: Carla is treated as just irrationally hating Diane when she insists that Diane only keeps her job because Sam's got the hots for her. There's a fair point, though, since Diane casually performs a number of things that would normally get a waitress fired immediately, but Sam doesn't fire her because of their relationship.
Super Couple: The "Sam & Diane" pairing is one of the most influential and well-known on-screen romances in the history of American television.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Hester Crane, Frasier's mother, appears in only one early episode of the show, during which Frasier himself was still clicking his dynamic, and is a Posthumous Character by the time of his own series. Her Knight Templar Parent demeanor might have made for a unique dynamic with Frasier (and a fun contrast to his more laid-back and contrasting relationship with Martin later on). Punctuated when she reappears via an Imagine Spot in an episode of Frasier trading barbs with Diane, Lilith and Nanette (albeit with a different actress but still calling-back to her Cheers personality), demonstrating she could have maintained her Sitcom Arch-Nemesis dynamic with all of Frasier's love interests throughout the show.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Many fans often express their dissatisfaction with much of the first half of Season 5, regarding how it handles the Sam/Diane relationship. The season's second episode wonderfully explores many dramatic implications for their dynamic (including the implication that Diane is only clinging on to her hope that Sam will propose again because she doesn't think she'll be able to deal with the alternative) but everything after that is filler until the episode Knights of the Scimitar, which picks it back up, and Sam and Diane are eventually broken up completely. Shelley Long would later strongly imply that the writers' constantly putting off answering the question of Sam and Diane marrying was a major factor in her decision to leave the show.
- In Season 5's "The Book Of Samuel", Diane tells Woody that, as she effectively got him into an awkward situation (involving lying to Woody's former girlfriend that he's now seeing someone else), she should help him find a way out of it. At this point, the episode seems to be building up to Diane offering to be Woody's pseudo-date for the evening so he can save face. Such would have been a great way to truly address the implied crush Woody has for Diane—and ultimately, how Woody has tried reconciling it both with their "Like Brother and Sister" dynamic and his Shipper on Deck attitude towards her and Sam. Alas, Diane is basically interrupted before she can propose any solution—and we get Woody rummaging through Sam's black book, and...
Unintentional Period Piece: The show is soaked in '80s (and very early '90s) style and culture.
- In the pilot, Diane predicts that her (ex-)fiance Sumner Sloan will be on the cover of Saturday Review someday - unlikely, considering that it ceased publication that very year (1982).
- The first season is set against the backdrop of the early 1980s recession - Norm, an accountant, spends most of the season unemployed. On the other hand, Cliff, a postal worker, enjoys the kind of job security that could only come in the days before the union-busting of The '80s and The '90s, followed by the rise of the internet as an existential threat to the very idea of postal service.
- Many of the politician and pro athlete guest stars quite firmly date the episode in which they make their appearance:
  - Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, made a cameo in a first-season episode (a writer later joked that he was the biggest star the low-rated show could attract at the time), firmly setting it before he retired in 1987. (Fun fact: Cheers - or rather, the Bull and Finch - was actually physically located within his constituency, making him one of the more plausible celebrity guests.)
  - Gary Hart's cameo in the fourth season finale (which aired on May 8th, 1986) really stands out here. When starstruck Diane meets him, she exclaims that he "could have been President" (a reference to his second-place finish in the 1984 Democratic primaries). Then she remarks that he "could still be President", and indeed he was considered a front-runner for the 1988 nomination... until the Donna Rice scandal broke out just over a year after the episode aired.^note(Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, who also appeared on Cheers, won the nomination instead.)
- Cliff's appearance on Jeopardy! is firmly dated to when it was shot (late 1989) and aired (January 1990) due to the set design (even at the time, the set was frequently renovated between seasons), the musical cues (the synth-heavy intro was dumped and a mix emphasizing the percussion debuted in 1991), the sound design (most of the "classic" sound effects have now been replaced), and Alex's appearance (the mustache is still present, and his hair is salt-and-pepper, not to mention thicker and wavier than it was in his later life).
- Diane's return for the series finale is predicated on the gang at the bar seeing her winning a CableACE award and Sam taking the opportunity to invite her back to Boston to reminisce. The joke is that Diane leaving the bar to realize her potential as a writer had her go no further than slumming it writing for cable television. In the quarter-century since then, cable television has come to produce some of the most acclaimed and popular shows on the air, to the point that the CableACE awards don't even exist anymore because they were deemed superfluous, since cable shows now win Emmys with much greater regularity than network shows. (A network show has not won Outstanding Drama Series at the Emmy Awards since 2006.)
- When everyone wonders if the bar is becoming a popular gay hangout, a lot of attention is paid to putting ferns up, a stereotype of gay bars which is completely forgotten now.
Values Dissonance:
- Probably the record for shortest time interval between the example and the values shift: Rebecca's dilemma with her spring-chicken boss's unwelcome advances, which is treated fairly humorously, was only three years before the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings made sexual harassment a major workplace concern all over the country.
- Also, Sam's constant come-ons to Diane, especially before their first relationship and him being her employer, could be interpreted by some as "harassment" today, even though in-show it's treated as completely harmless.
- The episode "The Boys In The Bar" has the gang paranoid about which two men in the bar are gay (as Diane indicates there are two gay men in the bar, but not which ones.) The gang's paranoia in itself is treated as the result of bigotry, with both Diane and even Sam calling them on it, but the example comes in that one of the behaviors that seems to confirm that two men they suspect are gay is the fact that they order light beer. Back then, light beer was seen as something only women and gay men drank. Nowadays, light beers are most widely consumed by straight men.
- Smoking in the bar is not addressed when it occurs. In fact, it's seen as completely acceptable. As early as 1995, smoking in bars was illegal in some states, and it was banned entirely in 2004 in the state of Massachusetts. Today, smoking in most enclosed areas such as bars is considered a risk for the health of the patrons and employees, not to mention incredibly rude. No one in the show asks their smoking patrons to take it outside, except for one instance in a season 1 episode, and even then it's only Diane doing it because a customer's smoking is bothering her.
- In Season 9's "Uncle Sam Wants You," Sam decides he wants a baby. He propositions a woman, who is offended he asks her to be his "breeder," an "incubator" for his child. Not such a big deal later on, with celebrities such as Ricky Martin and Sarah Jessica Parker having children via surrogate.
- One episode has Frasier and Lilith discussing the fact he stalked her between their romance and their marriage, which is played for laughs, Frasier even darkly commenting "worked, didn't it?" Hell of a lot less funny in this day and age.
- One episode has the idea that Frasier and Lilith plan to raise their not-yet-born child in a gender neutral fashion, which is portrayed as them being out-of-touch snobby intellectuals (which, in fairness, they totally are), but is something more common in the 2010s. Their intent to enforce this with strict monochromatic abstract shapes are... less wise.
- This is quite a hard one, as the theme tune "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" isn't played in full with the show, but one of the lines of the full song is "and your husband wants to be a girl." While this is still sometimes said about trans women, it's a far less acceptable attitude towards them these days. It’s worse in context because it’s listed as one of the reasons you would be world-weary and want to go to a bar, though it's basically about a failed relationship.
- Frasier and Diane's relationship started when she was a patient in a mental hospital and he was treating her. The show only made it look like Frasier was making a huge mistake because Diane was clearly still in love with Sam. Today, that would be considered the least of the reasons why Frasier shouldn't have gotten involved with her. It's especially jarring when the spin-off establishes that Frasier can't even attempt to do anything unethical without becoming physically ill.
- The episode "The Visiting Lecher" can be uncomfortable to watch today due to how it's all about sexual harassment being Played for Laughs. An old colleague of Frasier's visits Cheers and, while alone with Rebecca, comes onto her. Because Rebecca never finds the right words to describe what he did and the man is always able to come up with innocuous explanations, no one believes her. Even worse, they chastise her for daring to call the supposedly Happily Married man's character into question. By the end of the episode, the man is a Karma Houdini as Rebecca is dragged, screaming with frustration, out of his hotel room where she went to confront him with Sam to prove she "wasn't crazy."
Values Resonance:
- Lillian's daughter is openly romantic, but doesn't want sex, which would be the definition of asexual relationships. Zigzags with Values Dissonance since it's not treated as a natural sexual preference, but the result of childhood trauma (her father died as a result of too much sex with her mother).
- Several times in the series, including in the finale, Sam and Diane's Slap-Slap-Kiss and Belligerent Sexual Tension dynamic is treated as the way it really is: toxic and a sign it's good that the two never ended up together. This dynamic would later become popularized in 90s and 2000s media, with these couples still forming relationships and ignoring the toxicity.
The Woobie:
- Diane; as naive and clueless as she is, she ends up getting crushed constantly, purely by expecting better of people and getting her expectations disappointed. That's not counting some of the worse things that have happened to her in the early seasons—-she begins the very first episode getting jilted (in a very embarrassing way) by her fiance. Her longtime best friend and family cat passes away when she wasn't able to be with her in her last moments, she's almost choked to death by a mentally ill ex-con (which is shown to have traumatized her to where she has nightmares of him killing her when she hears he's been released,) and is almost sexually assaulted by Norm's boss, and in a later episode, by a drunk patron. There's also her relationship with Sam; as much grief as she gives him, she suffers a lot from Sam's womanizing ways in turn, and is absolutely heartbroken in Season 5 when Sam, frustrated from Diane's waffling on accepting his proposal earlier, pledges he will never propose to her ever again. Even Sam gives in when he sees her break down in tears. By the time of her appearance on Frasier, her life has become a mess and the one thing she has going for her is a narcissistic play that she later admits isn't ready to show to the public.
- Woody. Every time he thinks he's done something wrong, he breaks down in hysterical tears. Though this is played for laughs, one can't help but feel really sorry for him.
- Sam, a recovered alcoholic who (it's revealed in one episode) had to live in the shadow of his better older brother for his whole childhood and who ruined his own baseball career because the pressures of living up to everyone's praise drove him to drinking. He's put through hell by Diane (especially in the later seasons) and the series gradually unveils how self-destructive even his womanizing is, womanizing which is partially driven by his need to be praised by his peers and which ruins any relationship he tries to have with a woman. He eventually has to get himself treated for sex addiction, and is still struggling to find real happiness by the time he shows up on Frasier.

YMMV / Cheers

Edit Locked