Rebecca Howe
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| Cheers character | |
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| Rebecca Howe | |
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| Gender | Female |
| Hair color | Brown |
| Eye color | Blue |
| Role in Cheers | Manager/Waitress |
| Portrayed by | Kirstie Alley |
Rebecca Howe-Sandtry is a fictional character on the American television show Cheers, portrayed by Kirstie Alley. She is introduced after Shelley Long, who played overeducated barmaid Diane Chambers, left to pursue a movie career. Much of the show's humor had been based around the interaction and sexual tension between the womanizing, working-class main character, bartender Sam Malone, and the high-class, snobby Diane. Rebecca was intended to fill the gap as Sam's new female foil.
Rebecca appeared in 147 episodes of Cheers between 1987-1993. She also appeared briefly in the season four Wings episode titled "I Love Brian."
[edit] Character overview
Rebecca Howe enters Cheers as the manager assigned by the bar's new corporate owner. Rebecca is eager to please her bosses (see "The Gift of the Woodi" episode) and move up the corporate ladder, although the atmosphere of the Cheers bar is like purgatory to her. She is initially presented as a tough, no-nonsense corporate type ("this one eats live sharks" Carla comments) but her façade soon drops, revealing her neurotic and clumsy tendencies.
In the episode "Paint Your Office" Rebecca reveals to Sam Malone that she was born in San Diego and is one of the four children of a Navy officer. In the "Last Angry Mailman" we learn that she went to the University of Connecticut where she was viewed as a party girl.
Rebecca is fired from the Lillian Corporation at the same time Sam gets the bar back from the corporation. Sam keeps Rebecca on staff as a "hired babe," technically as a waitress, though she is practically never seen waiting tables. Shortly thereafter, Sam hires her to run the day-to-day operation of Cheers. She has a cigarette addiction, which causes an enormous fire, which results in Rebecca using her life savings to repair Cheers.
Arguably, Rebecca's most prominent story line was throughout seasons 8 & 9, where she dated multi-millionaire Robin Colcord. Robin was often condescending and rude to the rest of the Cheers gang, making him disliked. He even cheated on Rebecca with other women, stating not being able to decide on which one to settle with, but Rebecca stayed loyal because Robin stated she was "in the lead." At the end of season 8; Rebecca, Sam, and Norm discover Robin had been dating Rebecca to gain insider information on the Lillian Corporation. After Sam turns Robin in to the police for Rebecca's safety, he returns to profess his love to her. Robin pleads guilty for his charges, losing all his money, and goes to prison. Once he is released, he proposes matrimony and she accepts. However, on their wedding day, Rebecca calls off the wedding, telling Robin "I only loved you for your money!" After hearing this, Robin promptly pulls his hidden money belt from out of Sam's office full of six million dollars. Robin leaves Rebecca, as she wallows in despair.
After her fiasco with Robin, Rebecca decides to buy back the bar for herself, after John Allen Hill, their upstairs neighbor, becomes the new owner of Melville's Fine Sea Food. Mr. Hill also becomes a rival of Sam Malone, and he obtains half of Cheers, forcing Sam to pay rent in addition to using Cheers as the waiting lounge of Melville's. Rebecca receives an allowance from her father and helps Sam buy back half of Cheers, resulting in their co-owning the bar. She also becomes the super of her apartment complex.
Rebecca has had many ideas on how to improve Cheers, most of which that ended poorly. One instance, she has a tea room, where she serves chili. The chili provides success to her tea room, but Sam misuses the chili cooker, resulting in a huge explosion and a gigantic hole in the wall. She responds by smashing the windows of Sam's Corvette.
She has a sister Susan, a movie actress. When Susan comes to visit, Sam tries playing each of the women against the other, for his own advantage—until Rebecca and Susan compare notes. They stage a confrontation in the bar's office, in which Rebecca takes a pistol and shoots her sister six times, sending Sam into a state of shock. He gets his comeuppance when the "deceased" Susan, whom he has dragged out into the main bar area, says "I'm dead!" and Carla, Woody, Frasier, Lilith, Cliff, and Norm stand up inside the bar area to witness Sam's humiliation.
Rebecca constantly throws herself at the feet of rich men, first Evan Drake and then Robin Colcord, but she eventually sleeps with Sam when the two of them decide to conceive a child together. In the penultimate episode, Rebecca meets a plumber named Don Santry (played by Tom Berenger), whom she marries in the series finale. Later, in an episode of the Cheers spinoff Frasier, Sam visits Frasier and tells him that Don left Rebecca after making a fortune on a plumbing-related invention, and that Rebecca was "back at the bar." When Frasier asks if that meant she was working at Cheers again, Sam replies, "No, she's just back at the bar."
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