Cheers

In September we will have reached the 25th anniversary of the seminal television sitcom Cheers. It is the Silver Anniversary, and for Gen X types like myself, the silver celebration is starting to match the unwelcomed silver strands in our once lustrous hairlines. Cheers, of course, was a phenomenal piece of episodic art; that said, every sitcom that ever was celebrates some anniversary of sort with each passing year (season), so what was so special about Cheers to warrant such belated admiration?

I’ll start with originality.

In 1978, the documentary Scared Straight hit the airwaves. It was a precursor of the much maligned, equally ridiculed and praised sub genre of viewing culture that would come to be known as “reality”. Of course, the realism in this program was limited; the unspoken truth between viewer and participant was that no matter how harrowing the “reality” onscreen might have been, these kids were in no real danger from the barbs and threatening diatribe of the inmates. One false move and production would have folded like the proverbial cheap suit.

In 1992, a station that used to play music videos introduced a force known as The Real World. It was to be Candid Camera 24/7, as stereotypes of every race, gender and heritage were thrown together in a three million dollar loft in Manhattan (real?) and left to fend for themselves on camera. A girl happened to be from the south, so she was cast as the ignorant prototype of naivity. A guy happened to be African American and outspoken, so he was, of course, militant. Then there was Eric Nies, who was a model with six ridges in his stomach and was portrayed as a narcisist who played to the camera (though this might have been his own doing).

In 1983, wedged loosely in between these two programs, was Cheers. Now, Cheers was a scripted, live-in-front-of-a-studio-audience program, undoubtedly. It had its cliches and lazy writing and made-for-TV situations, but the argument can be made: Cheers was reality programming.

Before Sam Malone first introduced the couch residing lexicon to his misogynistic ways, Americans were fed a bunch of lies. Every family, according to the creators of Leave It To Beaver, were as wholesome as depicted. Imagine the horror felt by the 99% who were not! The biggest problem an American could have possibly faced was a dasterdly tarantula, a la The Brady Bunch. Johnny Bravo ruined the narrative for all of us normies, void of a sunshiney day!

Cheers was almost canceled, a potential thievery that can only spur contemplation of other groundbreaking shows that never saw the air (as such campy, hidden debauchery shows as The Love Boat were flourishing). But it stuck around because it had shades of truth. In television, shades of anything are as good as it gets. It had Sam Malone, the one time Boston Red Sox pitcher, a hero struck down by the very real issue of alcoholism (though his post baseball career choice was a head scratcher). Diane Chambers, the pseudo- intellectual who, though she and everyone else knew she belonged to a greater existence, was trapped in a lower middle class realm. Woody Boyd, the awestruck farmboy determined to make it in the big city, common sense and likelihood be damned. Carla, the fertile, eternal barmaid, a loser in love and life, yet too offended by her surroundings to wave a white flag. Frasier Crane, the cerbral excavator who drowned his sorrows with tonic and gin while presumably guiding others away from such self medication. Cliff Clavin, the blue collared know it all who knew not enough to stop pigeonholing himself as a caicature. Norm, the self deprecating, heavy set everyman, a C student in life but a saloon valedictorian (with a reserved seat and a catchphrase as brilliantly unoriginal as his name). There was even Paul. Who’s Paul? Exactly. You know him. He was in every episode. But he was just…there. There are ten Paul’s in every bar in America.

This is where the reality set in.

None of these characters were a newspaper columnist. No one was jumping sharks in water skis and a leather coat. Levity was key; it got as serious as beating Gary, a rival barkeep, in a prank war. Every conflict, victory or happening occurred within the four corners of the bar. And for a shockingly large segment of America, this is and always has been true. For every corner dive, with a sassy bartender and bacteria cesspool communal pretzel bowl, there is a story like Cheers. It might not be a mirror, but it exists. The hole in the wall where you ingest commercial beer like its oxygen, the owner, its Sam Malone, probably had another goal in life. He or she never dreamed their pub was “it”. Undoubtedly, there is a Diane Chambers working there, a bright bulb in a dim bunch that could, should, be doing something greater in life, but alas, there she is, her Contemporary Art degree withering away, her Masters in English useless to an audience seeking less Shakespeare and more shaken martinis. There is a Woody Boyd, born of another town, seeking the sleek city life that (ironically) TV promised him should he move away from Farmville. Cliff Clavin might wear a FedEx suit or a factory man’s boots, but he can tell you nine backstories to a three minute long Jouney song. Carla goes without saying, you recognize her strained face as she unceremoniously hands you a draft; your local Frasier wears a sport coat that doesn’t quite fit in with the décor, likely the driver of the car that doesn’t quite fit in with the parking lot. Norm is, well, Norm. He is the most easily transferred character on the show. Except perhaps Paul, who exists in every bar. Have you ever “known” someone at the watering hole for so long that…it would be embarrassing to admit you don’t know his name?

The saving grace of Cheers was that when they resorted to gimmick (Kevin McHale, Dick Cavett, Alex Trebek), it was still grounded in realism-you felt that these celeb types COULD have accidentally stumbled into the Boston bar. Famous people have to drink somewhere. And the antics? No Hollywood liberty, they exist in every drinkers lounge in the country. Who doesn’t know the bartender’s drama? Who doesn’t know who the owner is sleeping with? Who doesn’t know every painfully dull and anticlimatic detail of every “regular” on the stool? A bar is a family, at a price (money, liver). It has never been anything but, and when Cheers debuted a quarter of a century ago, we saw our reflection in our off-orange mug of suds. The cocktails have changed; the things we bitch about have changed. Through the genocide of brain cells the drinking public has blamed, since Cheers began, Reagan for their problems. Since then the blame has fallen on Reagan again, Bush Sr., Clinton twice, Bush Jr. twice, and now Obama. In that duration, rivalries have developed with competing bars. Romance, under the influence of closing time Chardonnay and bushels of Budweiser, have certainly blossomed between potential Sam Malone’s and aspiring Diane Chambers’ (maybe even a few Rebecca Howe’s, though being a purist I nary mention her name). Some random saloon has a Carla who hates that bar’s Cliff, and some form of Norm laughs at it while that venue’s Woody has no idea what is happening. And the many Paul’s are undoubtedly thinking or saying something, though no one cares.

Cheers was a place where “Everybody knows your name”, and across the lower 48 (and the other 2) there is a Cheers and everybody knows everybody’s name. I salute the 25th, because it was real, it was honest, and like these bar stools that help us forget, there was no glitz or glam-only barley, hops and malts. But Cheers, like the barflies before it, never dies. Like Atticus Finch it surpasses time, because time is only a set of numbers. Last Call is an imaginary, incomprehensible endgame, like Judgment Day and our own individual demise. It very well may come, but until it does…

Another round for the gang.