Antonio. A fan favorite from day one, his role grew more prominent each season. Just before the show's cancellation, he was heading rapidly toward Breakout Character status.
The show in general. Despite constantly being moved from one time slot to another, the ratings held firm and it lasted for a solid eight seasons.
Fridge Horror: For 16 years, Roy lied to everyone about his ex-wife Sylvia and claimed that she was dead, he even held a pancake breakfast memorial fund in her honor for years, which means that Roy could have only gotten away with the lie if he convinced (or forced) his son RJ to go along with it and tell everyone that his own mother was dead. Or worse, Roy lied to RJ too and pulled off the lie successfully because Sylvia also abandoned her son and never bothered to make contact with him.
Growing the Beard: While the first two seasons are seen as pretty decent, many fans feel that the show really hit its stride in the third season, in part due to several new writers being brought in, but largely because that was when Antonio joined the main cast and the show stopped trying to a be Cheers clone.
Harsher in Hindsight: In a sad irony for a show about running an airline service, David Angell and his wife, Lynn, were both killed when they were flying back home to California after attending a family wedding in Cape Cod, when the plane that they were on, American Airlines Flight 11, was hijacked and deliberately flown into the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001.
Joe's behavior after Helen leaves to accept Davis's proposal—following her to New York after breaking his promise to leave her alone if she can swear that she loves Davis instead of him, cornering her in an elevator, basically browbeating her into admitting that she loves him, ignoring her pleas that he leave alone—"It's just not going to work out!"—and basically further browbeating her into accepting his own proposal—has really not aged well.
Roy laughing at the fact that a Simon Says instructor died of an apparent heart attack (while leading a Simon Says game, he collapsed and said, "Call an ambulance!", but nobody moved because he did not say "Simon Says") became this after David Schramm died of a heart attack in 2020.
In the CheersCrossover episode "Planes, Trains, and Visiting Cranes," Joe calls Lillith Crane "Morticia." Bebe Neuwirth would later originate the role of Morticia in The Musical version of The Addams Family.
Also, the fact that Tony Shalhoub starred in this show gets funnier when you realize that Wingswas rerun quite heavily by the USA Network— which would have its first bonafide hit original in Monk, which starred Shalhoub as the protagonist.
Hollywood Pudgy: Many jokes were made about Helen being overweight growing up, but when we finally see her as a kid, she is only slightly larger than the other children.
Replacement Scrappy: Budd Bronski, the mechanic who replaced Lowell. He was criticized for essentially being the same character, and quietly dropped after a handful of appearances. Speculation abounds that the reason for his existence was because his episodes were written before Thomas Haden Church left for Ned & Stacey, and that he was essentially supposed to have been a placeholder character.
Steven Levitan wrote 15 episodes. Levitan is best known as creator and executive producer of Just Shoot Me! and Stark Raving Mad and co-creator and co-executive producer of Modern Family.
Dave Hackel wrote 12 episodes. Hackel is best known as creator and executive producer of Becker.
Mark Reisman also wrote 12 episodes. Reisman is best known as creator and executive producer of The Exes and Sydney to the Max.
Michael Sardo also wrote 12 episodes. Sardo is best known as creator and executive producer of Fairly Legal.
Howard Gewirtz wrote ten episodes. Gewirtz is best known as creator and executive producer of Oliver Beene.
Christopher Lloyd wrote six episodes. Lloyd is also best known as co-creator and co-executive producer of Modern Family.
Laura Innes (ER's Kerry Weaver) as Lowell's sweet, but slutty and perpetually unfaithful wife.
A young Matthew Fox plays a high school pitching phenom who almost misses a game because Joe refuses to land the plane he's on in a thick fog. Maybe if Joe had been piloting Oceanic Flight 815, things would've ended differently...
Casey. Some fans were able to appreciate what she brought to the ensemble, while others disliked her. Others feel she sucked at first, but got better once the writers ditched the spoiled rich girl persona and gave her an actual personality.
Alex, the character who preceded Casey, was not universally popular herself, as she was intended to be a strong career-minded woman, but in practice tended to come across as being completely stiff and humorless. Many fans also didn't like that she ended up in a relationship with Brian, when her personality seemed like a much better match for that of Joe. (Though in hindsight, the writers had a good reason for not putting her with Joe- it would have interfered with their plans to get Joe and Helen back together.) Additionally, many felt that her reasons for breaking up with Brian were petty and weak, note Specifically, Brian had been spending time with an old womanizing buddy of his, but hearing the guy say Brian was lucky to have Alex made him go back to her. She asked him if he wanted that life back again, and, when he hesitated in answering, took that as a "yes" and ended things. and her behavior toward him afterward (refusing to make any attempt to talk things out, then leaving in the middle of the night so he couldn't contact her again) was unnecessarily cold.
Scenes taking place inside Antonio's cab often featured very obvious chroma keying, complete with jagged edges and blue screen reflections on the actor's faces.
Some scenes showing the plane in flight also used chroma keying and suffered this to a degree, but the blue sky made it less noticeable in those instances.
Values Dissonance: Joe follows Helen to New York after breaking his promise to leave her alone if she can swear that she loves Davis instead of him. He promptly corners her in an elevator and basically browbeats her into admitting that she loves him, ignoring her pleas that he leave alone—"It's just not going to work out!"—and basically further browbeats her into accepting his own proposal. None of this would fly in the #MeToo era.
Cliché Storm: Wings is a story about an outcast teenager who is bullied by everyone around her for her "special" trait (namely her wings). She, however, is destined for great things. Hoping to win respect from her hometown, Dawn runs off after she sees a comet crash in the mountain. This leads her on an adventure where she meets a boy and goes up against enemies.
