Diane Chambers

Diane Chambers
Cheers character
Shelley Long as Diane Chambers
First appearance	"Give Me a Ring Sometime" (episode 1.01)
Last appearance	"Don Juan in Hell (pt. 2)" (Frasier episode 9.02)
Portrayed by	Shelley Long
Information
Gender	Female
Occupation	Waitress
Significant other(s)	Sumner Sloan, (engaged, 1982) Frasier Crane, (engaged, 1985) Sam Malone, (engaged, 1987)
Nationality	American

Diane Chambers is a fictional character portrayed by Shelley Long on the American television show Cheers (1982–1987, 1993), and on several episodes of the subsequent Cheers spin-off Frasier. Diane is introduced in the Cheers pilot episode, when her fiancé Sumner Sloane leaves her waiting at Cheers while he goes back to recover his wedding ring from his ex-wife. When he never returns, she realizes she's been jilted and takes a job waitressing at Cheers to try to rebuild her life.

Diane appeared as a main character for 123 episodes of Cheers between 1982-1987, with a guest appearance in the finale, "One for the Road". She also made four guest appearances on Frasier.

Character background

Early life

Various episodes of Cheers establish that Diane is the only child of a wealthy family. She had a friendly, if distant relationship with her eccentric mother Helen; her father, Spencer, died about ten years before her arrival at Cheers. Her only real childhood companion was her cat, Elizabeth (named after Elizabeth Barrett Browning). It is unsure when she was born as she has said she was premature in one episode and born late in another.

Diane spent much of her early adult life attending college (it is implied in various episodes that she goes to Boston University, while one episode mentioned she attended Bennington College where she would have completed her undergraduate degree), and studying a wide range of disciplines at the graduate level. She changed her major numerous times, though she tended to focus on literature, social studies, and history. At one point, she claims to only be one credit away from getting a master's degree in any one of 37 different disciplines.

In the early 1980s, Diane had an affair with Sumner Sloan, one of her literature professors—he was the cad who dumped her by leaving her at Cheers' the night they were supposed to fly to Barbados and get married. Stranded at the bar, and unwilling to return to the life of a perpetual grad student, Diane took a job as a waitress at Cheers after admitting that she had no marketable skills and was unqualified for any other sort of work but has an excellent memory for drink orders, although it is also strongly implied that she stayed at Cheers due to her sexual attraction to Cheers owner/bartender Sam Malone.

The Cheers Years (1982-1987)

Though bright and witty, rabbecca was also often pretentious, snobbish and woefully lacking in street-smarts. Working at Cheers, she seemed amusingly out of place in comparison to the bar's general clientele and staff. Perhaps due to the stress of waitressing, rabbecca also suffered from an occasional nervous facial tic, and from obsessive-compulsive disorder. This is hinted at in various episodes; rabbecca demands that the pencils and pens in her pocket be in very precise order. In the episode "Power Play" it is revealed that rabbecca obsessively hoards stuffed animals.

Her most complex relationship at Cheers was with bartender Sam Malone. rabbecca found Sam's rugged and rather obvious charms by turns repulsive and magnetic. Sam was in turn both maddened and drawn by rabbecca ambivalence toward him. Often at loggerheads during Season 1, by Season 2 they were a couple whose very rocky relationship was based more on mutual lust than any actual personal compatibility.

After a dramatically bad break up with Sam, Diane was admitted to Goldenbrook Psychiatric Hospital, between seasons 2 and 3, for extreme depression. It was there that she met Dr. Frasier Crane. She returned to working at the bar and, after a romance with Frasier (which she later admits was a "bit of fun," and that she strung him along), she left him at the altar in Italy at the end of Season 3.

After having a number of sexual affairs throughout Europe, Diane tried to atone for her behavior by working at a Boston area convent. However, she went back to Cheers again after a visit from Sam in the Season 4 opener. Although Sam and rabbecca said they were only friends, sexual tension ensued between them for much of Season 4, and Sam eventually proposed to rabbecca over the phone in the season finale.

rabbecca wanted to be proposed to in a more romantic fashion, and so she didn't give him an answer. Sam proposed again on a moonlit boat ride during the premiere of Season 5—only to have rabbecca say no because she thought that Sam was "on the rebound" from his break-up with Boston city councilwoman Janet Eldridge. rabbecca later changed her mind, but found that Sam was not willing to propose again. After she began to cry, Sam did propose, but rabbecca said no again, fearing that he was only reacting to emotional blackmail. Sam chased her out of Cheers, and rabbecca fled, causing her to fall and injure herself.

rabbecca pressed charges against Sam for assault and battery. However, in the courtroom, Sam proposed again, at the judge's behest, and rabbecca finally accepted. While rabbecca did not hold Sam to the proposal since it was made under duress, he affirmed that he still wanted to marry her.

rabbecca was written out of Cheers following Shelley Long's decision to leave the show after Season 5 in 1987. In the season finale, rabbecca was given the opportunity to finish a book she had started years before ("Jocasta's Conundrum"), and to have it published. Ironically, this opportunity was engineered for her by none other than Sumner Sloan, the man who originally brought her to Cheers.

rabbecca wanted to marry Sam before writing the book, but Sam (who knew that rabbecca was going to resent him for keeping her from her dreams) talked her out of it. rabbecca received a hefty advance for her manuscript, and left Sam to complete it. Promising to be back in six months to marry him, Diane left Boston. Knowing rabbecca would not return, Sam told her, "Have a good life." The episode ended with a coda in which Sam imagined rabbecca and himself as an elderly married couple.

Return to Cheers (1993)

In a 1987 Cheers episode, Woody Boyd mentions in passing that the last the Cheers staff had heard, Diane had ended up in Hollywood writing for television. However, no other details were offered about Diane's actual fate until Long reprised her role in the Cheers series finale in 1993.

In this episode, it was revealed that Diane's novel never came together, but that she had rebounded and was a successful writer of a made-for-TV movie called "The Heart Held Hostage". The movie, loosely based on Diane's memories of the life of fellow Cheers waitress Carla Tortelli, won Diane a 1993 Cable ACE Award for best writing in a TV movie or mini-series.

After winning the award, Diane returned to Boston. Stopping at the bar for a visit, she told Sam that she was married with children. This prompted Sam to claim—falsely—that he was also married, to Rebecca Howe (Kirstie Alley).

Sam and Diane agreed to meet for dinner with their respective spouses. However, at the dinner Rebecca's actual boyfriend came by and proposed to her (and Rebecca accepted), and Diane's supposed "husband" was similarly whisked away by his gay partner. It turned out that both Sam and Diane were still single, and had been desperately trying to impress each other by showing how well they had rebounded since their break-up six years earlier.

Their covers blown, they found themselves alone together once more. The old romantic spark soon rekindled, and Diane and Sam made plans to run off to California together. However, while sitting in the plane waiting for takeoff they both had second thoughts and decided to once more call it off and say goodbye.

The Post-Cheers Years

Long also reprised the Chambers character in subsequent guest appearances on the Cheers spin-off series, Frasier. She is seen very briefly in a dream sequence in a second season episode, and also more extensively in a dream sequence in a ninth season two-parter called "Don Juan In Hell". The character is seen 'for real', as it were, in the February 1996 episode called "The Show Where Diane Comes Back". In this episode, it's revealed that Diane's TV writing career continued after the events of Cheers, and she worked her way to a staff writing position on the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. She continued to be successful, living in a large Malibu beach house, and was in a seemingly stable two-year relationship. However, sometime in late 1995, she was fired from the TV show for accidentally setting star Jane Seymour's hair on fire while trying to show her how to cauterize a wound with a branding iron.

Several months after that incident, Diane had lost her beach house and her relationship came to an end. She then travelled to Seattle to supervise the production of a play she had written called "Rhapsody and Requiem". The play turned out to be a very-thinly disguised roman a clef about her time at Cheers, and her feelings for both Sam and Frasier, with her character as "Mary Anne". In the episode, Frasier and Diane reconcile over her jilting him at the altar.

Diane's subconscious attraction to Sam Malone is also seen in that episode; she is seen kissing and having an affair with the actor that plays Sam in her play based on her life at Cheers. In "Don Juan in Hell", an imaginary Diane is still obsessed with Sam, and she is seen painting a portrait of him.

Casting and development

Before Shelley Long won the role, two other actresses, Lisa Eichhorn and Julia Duffy, auditioned for the role of Diane Chambers. Julia Duffy later appeared in "Any Friend of Diane's", a 1982 episode of Cheers, as one of Diane Chambers's friends.

Diane is full of gumption and chutzpah, but quite frequently, she doesn't have the vaguest idea [about] what's going on. However, the producers are cooperative, [and] they have agreed Diane will change. One of my fears of television is `Do I want to play the same character seven, eight, maybe 10 years?' But it wouldn't be that bad because Diane has a lot of room to grow and still be funny. It's because she cares so deeply.

—Shelley Long, Rome News-Tribune

In summer 1984, Shelley Long was married to stockbroker Bruce Tyson and pregnant with his child, and the storyline of Diane Chambers' out-of-wedlock pregnancy was planned with "health, diet, and exercise", as the father of the child would have been either Sam or Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), who was introduced as a foil of the "Sam and Diane" story arc in Season Three (1984–1985). Eventually, however, the producers deemed the pregnancy plan as undesirable and scrapped it. Instead, Diane became written as childless, and Diane and Frasier were written to be wed in Europe. During filming of Season Three, Long was shot on camera either from above her waist or while she stood behind the bar to disguise her pregnancy. In March, she gave birth to a baby girl.

Concept of Cheers and Shelley Long's departure

Sam and Diane were the center of 'Cheers' as a partnership, and now the partnership is gone. There will be huge comparisons made.

Ted Danson, The New York Times, September 23, 1987

In December 15, 1986, Shelley Long decided to no longer be a permanent cast member of Cheers as Diane Chambers, even though she and Ted "[had] done some really terrific work at Cheers". Instead, she wanted to pursue a movie career and family. The creators in February 1987 decided to find a female lead replacement whose hair was not blonde and who did not resemble Shelley Long. Meanwhile, Ted Danson signed a contract for Season Six (1987–1988).

During production of the Season Five finale, "I Do, Adieu" (1987), the producers were developing stories to separate Sam and Diane, while to keep Sam and write Diane out, based on these circumstances without risking quality and alienating audience; some ideas were thrown out and found unappealing by producers, such as conception of Sam and Diane's child, as Sam would have been a single father and Diane a deadbeat mother, and another man to take Diane away from Sam. Thereafter, they wrote Diane off by turning her into a pursuer of writing. Before the completion of the Season Five finale, three endings were filmed: 1) Sam and Diane become married; 2) Diane accepts an offer to finish a novel; 3) not revealed by creators.

An original concept of Diane Chambers was the executive businesswoman, who would have a "love-hate" relationship with the ex-athlete, Sam Malone, inspired by works about "mixture of romance and antagonism of two people, [portrayed by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn], in a competitive situation". The concept of Diane evolved into a "pretentious, college-student relationship with Sam," an ex-baseball player. After Shelley Long's departure, the concept was reverted back to the original concept with Long's replacement, Kirstie Alley, as Rebecca Howe.

The producers, as James Burrows admitted, intended Cheers to be a comedy about "[the] bar with a relationship in the bar" as its initial premise since the show's 1982 debut. Eventually, "the relationship became very strong and [...] dominated the bar," said Burrows. If Shelley Long stayed longer after "I Do, Adieu" (1987), Sam and Diane would have been married, and the show would have been a "domestic sitcom," been predominated by their marriage, and lost its initial premise, the "bar"; Burrows found this possibility "unappealing." When Long decided to leave Cheers, the producers made plans to do "major retooling" while to retain its initial premise and then credited Long's departure for "[helping] the series" survive.

Reception

In 1999, Diane was rated number 33 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Characters list. Shelley Long has received one Emmy in 1983 and two Golden Globes in 1983 and 1985 for her portrayal of Diane Chambers in the series Cheers. In 2011, Kim Potts from The Huffington Post ranked her #30 of top 100 "Greatest TV Women".

In 2009, Andrea Zimmerman from Lemondrop website ranked Diane #5 of "20 Least Feminist TV Characters" for chasing after Sam to prevent her own insanity. In 2012, Steve Silverman from the Screen Junkies website considered her "too needy and insecure for anyone, [like Sam], to have a legitimate relationship with."

See also

• Sam and Diane