Recap / Cheers S1E9: "Coach Returns to Action"

Episode: Season 1, Episode 9
Title: Coach Returns to Action
Directed by: James Burrows
Written by: Earl Pomerantz
Air Date: November 25, 1982
Previous: Truce or Consequences
Next: Endless Slumper
Guest Starring: John Ratzenberger, Murphy Cross, Bill Wiley

"Coach Returns to Action" is the ninth episode of the first season of Cheers.

Coach tells Diane that he has gotten interested in a neighbor in his apartment building, a younger woman named Nina (Murphy Cross). Nina comes to the bar because it's a cold winter day and the heater in her apartment is busted. Diane urges Coach to work up his courage and ask Nina out. When Sam comes out to the bar Diane panics and tells Sam not to ask Nina out. Sam, being Sam and thinking that Diane is playing some weird sort of mind game, naturally immediately starts making advances on Nina.

In the B-plot, the Cheers men's room is busted, forcing patrons to put on jackets and use the restroom at Melville's. Carla picks up a wrench and sets out to fix the men's room herself.

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Tropes:

• Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: A local tour guide has been passing the bar off as a historic place so that he can warm up and drink during walking tours. Meanwhile, the bathroom is out of order and Carla is trying to fix it because they can't get ahold of a plumber.
  Tour Guide: This is where Paul Revere said—
  Carla: Line up, the can's fixed!
• Bar Slide: Sam does a little trick where he slides a glass of beer down the bar counter to Norm.
• Brick Joke:
  • The alcoholic tour guide who leads his clients into Cheers and tells them it's Paul Revere's house. Later he does the same with another tour group and tells them it's Harvard Yard.
  • Coach tells Diane that he used to injure himself when he was a minor-league baseball player to draw the attention of women. He does just that at the end to attract Nina.
  • The means of getting into Melville's, in order to use their toilet.
• Gratuitous Latin: Coach introduces his neighbour, Nina, to Diane, and tells Nina "Diane is very smart. Diane, say something very smart." Apparently deciding that the best way to sound intelligent on command is to speak Latin, Diane says, "Tempus fugit." (Usually translated as "Time flies.")
• Jenny's Number: A bathroom graffito reads "For a good time call Diane Chambers 867-5309" Carla did it. When Diane discovers it and tries to erase it, Carla huffs, "Last time I play Cupid for you!"
  Diane: Thank God they got the number wrong!
  Carla: I got it right off your application!
• Little Known Facts: This is the episode where Cliff giving spectacularly bad trivia begins in earnest.
  • Early on, when Diane asks Norm how he can drink beer on a cold day, Norm turns to Cliff for an answer.
  Diane: Now what makes you so sure he has one?
  Norm: Five bucks says he does, ten bucks says it's a doozy.
  Cliff: When the English ruled the Punjab-
  Norm: Ten bucks, all the way.
  • Cliff claims Romans were experts on plumbing when Sam asks for help with the bar's washroom, until Sam clarifies he needs someone to help fix it.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Diane tells Sam not to talk to the attractive woman sitting at the bar... who Sam hadn't actually noticed.
• No Periods, Period: Allusively averted by Carla. When Norm has to put on a suit and tie to use the bathroom at Melville's, she says, "You men have it easy. We have to wear taffeta and have the correct change."
• Reverse Psychology: Sam thinks Diane is doing this when she isn't, when she tells him not to talk to Nina.
• Shout-Out:
  • Norm has to get dressed up to use the bathroom at Melvilles. He puts on the ill-fitting jacket, and as he's futzing with his tie, Cliff says "Have a good time up there, Ollie."
  • When Coach and Diane are arguing in the men's room, behind Coach graffiti can be seen quoting The Doors' song "Whisky Bar".
• Stealth Insult: Diane sarcastically notes how picky Carla is with her men. Carla nods in agreement, before realising what Diane meant.
• Terrible Pick-Up Lines: Sam Malone, hound extraordinaire, fouls out with Nina shooting down his awful lines.
  Nina: I wish you could bottle that charm.
  Sam: Oh yeah?
  Nina: Yeah. So you can stick a cork in it!
• Wise Beyond Their Years: A little girl comes into the bar looking to put up a flyer about her school's production of Twelve Angry Men. When Diane mentions as a child her school did Romeo & Juliet, the girl responds "we were looking for something with more meat on it."
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Played for laughs. Coach tells Diane that when he was playing minor-league baseball and he wanted to get the attention of the ladies, he used to injure himself, doing things like getting hit by a pitch or falling down the bathroom steps. At the end, he manages to get Nina to come to his apartment by tumbling down the stairs to Melville's and faking injury.
• Wrench Wench: Subverted and ultimately played straight. Carla insists on taking a wrench and fixing the plumbing in the Cheers men's room. She struggles tremendously, getting herself covered in grease and dirt and at one point trying to throw out pieces of pipe that she can't fit together, but she does ultimately fix the plumbing.

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