User:سائغ/D1
The Cheers writing staff assembled in June 1985, at the start of the production of the fourth season, to discuss how to deal with the absence of Coach. They quickly discarded the idea that he might have moved away, as they felt he would never abandon his friends. In addition, as most viewers were aware of Colasanto's death, the writing staff decided to handle the situation more openly. The season four opener, "Birth, Death, Love and Rice", dealt with Coach's death and introduced Woody Harrelson, Colasanto's replacement.[1][2]
Episodes[edit]
| Season | Episodes | Originally aired | Rank[3] | Rating[3] | Households (seasons 1-6)/ Viewers (seasons 7-11) (millions) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First aired | Last aired | ||||||
| 1 | 22 | September 30, 1982 | March 31, 1983 | 74 | 13.1 | 10.9 | |
| 2 | 22 | September 29, 1983 | May 10, 1984 | 34 | 16.6[a] | 13.8 | |
| 3 | 25 | September 27, 1984 | May 9, 1985 | 13 | 19.7 | 16.7 | |
| 4 | 26 | September 26, 1985 | May 15, 1986 | 5 | 23.7 | 20.4 | |
| 5 | 26 | September 25, 1986 | May 7, 1987 | 3 | 27.2 | 23.8 | |
| 6 | 25 | September 24, 1987 | May 5, 1988 | 3 | 23.4 | 20.7 | |
| 7 | 22 | October 27, 1988 | May 4, 1989 | 4 | 22.3 | 33.9 | |
| 8 | 26 | September 21, 1989 | May 3, 1990 | 3 | 22.7 | 34.7 | |
| 9 | 26 | September 20, 1990 | May 2, 1991 | 1 | 21.3 | 32.7 | |
| 10 | 26 | September 19, 1991 | May 14, 1992 | 4 | 17.6 | 27.3 | |
| 11 | 28 | September 24, 1992 | May 20, 1993 | 8 | 16.1[b] | 28.2 | |
Themes[edit]
Nearly all of Cheers took place in the front room of the bar, but the characters often went into the rear pool room or the bar's office.[4] Cheers did not show any action outside the bar until the first episode of the second season, which took place in Diane's apartment.
The show's main theme in its early seasons was the romance between intellectual waitress Diane Chambers and the bar's owner Sam Malone, a former Major League Baseball pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and recovering alcoholic.[5] After Shelley Long (Diane) left the show, the focus shifted to Sam's new relationship with Rebecca Howe, a neurotic corporate-ladder climber.
Many Cheers scripts centered or touched upon a variety of social issues, albeit humorously. As Toasting Cheers puts it, "The script was further strengthened by the writers' boldness in successfully tackling controversial issues such as alcoholism, homosexuality, and adultery."[6]
Social class was a subtext of the show. The "upper class" —represented by characters like Diane Chambers, Frasier Crane and Lilith Sternin— rubbed shoulders with middle- and working-class characters —Sam Malone, Carla Tortelli, Norm Peterson and Cliff Clavin. An extreme example of this was the relationship between Woody Boyd and a millionaire's daughter, Kelly Gaines. Many viewers enjoyed Cheers in part because of this focus on character development in addition to plot development.[7]
Feminism and the role of women were also recurring themes throughout the show, with some critics seeing each of the major female characters portraying an aspect as a flawed feminist in her own way.[8] Diane was a vocal feminist, and Sam was the epitome of everything she hated: promiscuity and chauvinism. (See "Sam and Diane".)
Homosexuality was dealt with from the first season, which was rare in the early 1980s on American television.[9] In the first-season episode "The Boys in the Bar" (the title being a reference to the play and subsequent movie The Boys in the Band), a friend and former teammate of Sam's comes out in his autobiography. Some of the male regulars pressure Sam to take action to ensure that Cheers does not become a gay bar. The episode won a GLAAD Media Award, and the script's writers, Ken Levine and David Isaacs, were nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.
Addiction also plays a role in Cheers, almost exclusively through Sam. He is a recovering alcoholic who had bought a bar during his drinking days. Frasier has a notable bout of drinking in the fourth-season episode "The Triangle", while Woody develops a gambling problem in the seventh season's "Call Me Irresponsible". Carla and other characters drink beer while pregnant, but nobody seems to mind.
Cheers owners[edit]
Cheers had several owners before Sam, as the bar was opened in 1889. The "Est. 1895" on the bar's sign is a made-up date chosen by Carla for numerology purposes, revealed in season 8, episode 6, "The Stork Brings a Crane", which also revealed the bar's address as 1121⁄2 Beacon Street and that it originated under the name Mom's. In the series' second episode, "Sam's Women", Coach tells a customer looking for Gus, the owner of Cheers, that Gus was dead. In a later episode, Gus O'Mally comes back from Arizona for one night and helps run the bar.
The biggest storyline surrounding the ownership of Cheers begins in the fifth-season finale, "I Do, Adieu", when Sam and Diane part ways, due to Shelley Long's departure from the series. In addition, Sam leaves on a trip to circumnavigate the globe. Before he leaves, Sam sells Cheers to the Lillian Corporation. He returns in the sixth-season premiere, "Home is the Sailor", having sunk his boat, to find the bar under the new management of Rebecca Howe. He begs for his job back and is hired by Rebecca as a bartender. In the seventh-season premiere, "How to Recede in Business", Rebecca is fired and Sam is promoted to manager. Rebecca is allowed to keep a job at Lillian vaguely similar to what she had before, but only after Sam had Rebecca (in absentia) "agree" to a long list of demands that the corporation had for her.
From there, Sam occasionally attempted to buy the bar back with schemes that usually involved the wealthy executive Robin Colcord. Sam acquired Cheers again in the eighth-season finale, when it was sold back to him for 85¢ by the Lillian Corporation, after he alerted the company to Colcord's insider trading. Fired by the corporation because of her silence on the issue, Rebecca is hired by Sam as a hostess/office manager. For the rest of the episode, to celebrate Sam's reclaiming the bar, a huge banner hung from the staircase, reading "Under OLD Management"!
Sam had two main battles, one with Gary's Olde Towne Tavern, trying to beat them at some activity or another but always failing, except for one episode when Diane helped Cheers win the bowling trophy, extending to the practical jokes they played on each other. The second was with Melville's owner John Allen Hill who kept annoying Sam with his pettiness and ego. Hill had an ongoing relationship with Carla.
Production[edit]
Creation and concept[edit]
Some believe that the show is a rehashing of Boston's American Broadcasting Company affiliate WCVB's locally produced 1979 sitcom Park Street Under featuring Steve Sweeney and American Repertory Theater founder Karen MacDonald.[10] Three men developed and created the Cheers television series: Glen and Les Charles ("Glen and Les") and James Burrows,[11] who identified themselves as "two Mormons and a Jew."[12] They aimed at "creating a show around a Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn-type relationship" between their two main characters, Sam and Diane.[11] Malone represents the average man, while Chambers represents class and sophistication.[11] The show revolves around characters in a bar under "humorous adult themes" and "situations."[11]
The original idea was a group of workers who interacted like a family, the goal being a concept similar to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The creators considered making an American version of the British Fawlty Towers, set in a hotel or an inn. When the creators settled on a bar as their setting, the show began to resemble the radio programming Duffy's Tavern, a program originally written and co-created by James Burrows' father Abe Burrows. They liked the idea of a tavern, as it provided a continuous stream of new people, for a variety of characters.[13] An early concept revolved around a woman becoming the new owner of the bar and the animosity created between her and the regulars, an idea which was used later in Season 6 when the character of Rebecca Howe was introduced.[14]
Early discussions about the location of the show centered on Barstow, California, then Kansas City, Missouri. They eventually turned to the East Coast and finally Boston. The Bull & Finch Pub in Boston, which was the model for Cheers, was chosen from a phone book.[15] When Glen Charles asked the bar's owner, Tom Kershaw, to shoot exterior and interior photos, he agreed, charging $1. Kershaw has since gone on to make millions of dollars, licensing the pub's image and selling a variety of Cheers memorabilia. The Bull & Finch became the 42nd-busiest outlet in the American food and beverage industry in 1997.[13] During initial casting, Shelley Long, who was in Boston at the time filming A Small Circle of Friends, remarked that the bar in the script resembled a bar she had come upon in the city, which turned out to be the Bull & Finch.[16]
Production team[edit]
The crew of Cheers numbered in the hundreds. The three creators—James Burrows and Glen and Les Charles—kept offices on Paramount's lot for the duration of the Cheers run. The Charles Brothers remained in overall charge throughout the show's run, frequently writing major episodes, though starting with the third season they began delegating the day-to-day running of the writing staff to various showrunners. Ken Estin and Sam Simon were appointed as showrunners for the third season, and succeeded by David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee the following year. Angell, Casey and Lee would remain as showrunners until the end of the seventh season when they left to develop their own sitcom, Wings, and were replaced by Bill and Cheri Steinkellner and Phoef Sutton for the eighth through tenth seasons. For the final season, Tom Anderson and Dan O'Shannon acted as the showrunners.
James Burrows is regarded as being a factor in the show's longevity, directing 243 of the 270 episodes and supervising the show's production.[17] Among the show's other directors were Andy Ackerman, Thomas Lofaro, Tim Berry, Tom Moore, Rick Beren, as well as cast members John Ratzenberger and George Wendt.[7]
Craig Safan provided the series' original music for its entire run except the theme song. His extensive compositions for the show led to his winning numerous ASCAP Top TV Series awards for his music.
Casting[edit]
The character of Sam Malone was originally intended to be a retired football player and was slated to be played by Fred Dryer, but Danson was chosen in part because he was younger and had more acting experience than Dryer.[18] After casting Ted Danson, it was decided that a former baseball player (Sam "Mayday" Malone) would be more believable than a retired football player.[19][20] Dryer, however, would go on to play sportscaster Dave Richards, an old friend of Sam, in three episodes. Bill Cosby was also considered early in the casting process for the role of Sam, after being recommended by the network.[21]
Shelley Long was recommended by various sources to the producers for the role of Diane Chambers, but Long wished to be offered the part straight out and had to be coaxed into giving an audition. When she did read for the part, according to Glen Charles, "that was it, we knew that we wanted her."[21] Before the final decision was made, three pairs of actors were tested in front of the producers and network executives for Sam and Diane: Danson and Long, Fred Dryer and Julia Duffy, William Devane and Lisa Eichhorn.[18] The chemistry was so apparent between Long and Danson that it secured them the roles.[18][21] Ted Danson was sent to bartending school to prepare him for the part and, according to Burrows, had to learn "how to pretend that he knew a lot about sports" since Danson was not a sports fan in real life and had never been to a baseball game.[18]
The character of Cliff Clavin was created for John Ratzenberger after he auditioned for the role of Norm Peterson, which eventually went to George Wendt. While chatting with producers afterward, he asked if they were going to include a "bar know-it-all", the part which he eventually played.[22] Alley joined the cast when Shelley Long left, and Woody Harrelson joined when Nicholas Colasanto died. Danson, Perlman and Wendt were the only actors to appear in every episode of the series; Ratzenberger appears in all but one (and his name wasn't part of the opening credit montage during the first season).
Filming styles and locations[edit]
"On Cheers, we never did everything twice. On Cheers, we went through the scene and I only reshot jokes that didn't work or I went back and picked up shots I missed."
Most Cheers episodes were, as a voiceover stated at the start of each, "filmed before a live studio audience" on Paramount Stage 25 in Hollywood, generally on Tuesday nights. Scripts for a new episode were issued the Wednesday before for a read-through, Friday was rehearsal day, and final scripts were issued on Monday. Burrows, who directed most episodes, insisted on using film stock rather than videotape. He was also noted for using motion in his directorial style, trying to constantly keep characters moving rather than standing still.[24] Burrows and the Charles brothers emphasized to the cast to "never assume that you're not being watched" because the camera would be focused on the actors at all times, so they had to always be reacting and "always be funny".[14] During the first season when ratings were poor Paramount and NBC asked that the show use videotape to save money, but a poor test taping ended the experiment and Cheers continued to use film.[25]
Due to a decision by Glen and Les Charles, the cold open was often not connected to the rest of the episode, with the lowest-ranked writers assigned to create the jokes for them. Some cold opens were taken from episodes that ran too long.[26]
The first year of the show took place entirely within the confines of the bar, the first location outside the bar being Diane's apartment. When the series became a hit, the characters started venturing further afield, first to other sets and eventually to an occasional exterior location. The exterior location shots of the bar were of the Bull & Finch Pub, located directly north of the Boston Public Garden. The pub has become a tourist attraction because of its association with the series, and draws nearly one million visitors annually.[13][27] It has since been renamed Cheers Beacon Hill; its interior is different from the TV bar. The pub itself is at 84 Beacon Street (on the corner of Brimmer Street). In August 2001, there was a replica made of the bar in Faneuil Hall to capitalize on the popularity of the show.
After the show ended, the 1,000 square foot bar set from Cheers was offered to the Smithsonian, which turned it down because it was too large.[28] It was displayed for a short time at the defunct Hollywood Entertainment Museum, but later returned to storage, where it remained for many years. In 2014, CBS donated the set to the Museum of Television after a years-long campaign by James Burrows and his office on behalf of the museum's founder, James Comisar. At the time of the donation, Comisar initiated a planned $100,000 restoration of the set using former conservators from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, although a site for the 10,000 item collection of the Museum had not been decided upon.[29][28]
Theme song[edit]
Before "Where Everybody Knows Your Name", written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo, became the show's theme song, Cheers' producers rejected two of Portnoy's and Hart Angelo's songs. The songwriters had collaborated to provide music for Preppies, an unsuccessful Broadway musical. When told they could not appropriate "People Like Us", Preppies' opening song, the pair wrote another song "My Kind of People", which resembled "People Like Us" and intended to satirize "the lifestyle of old decadent old-money WASPs," but, to meet producers' demands, they rewrote the lyrics to be about "likeable losers" in a Boston bar. The show's producers rejected this song, as well. After they read the script of the series pilot, they created another song "Another Day". When Portnoy and Hart Angelo heard that NBC had commissioned thirteen episodes, they created an official theme song "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" and rewrote the lyrics.[30] On syndicated airings of Cheers, the theme song was shortened to make room for additional commercials.
Reception[edit]
Critical reception[edit]
Cheers was critically acclaimed in its first season, though it landed a disappointing 74th out of 77 shows in that year's ratings.[31] This critical support, the early success at the Primetime Emmy Awards, and the support of the president of NBC's entertainment division Brandon Tartikoff, are thought to be the main reasons for the show's survival and eventual success.[32] Tartikoff stated in 1983 that Cheers was a sophisticated adult comedy and that NBC executives "never for a second doubted" that the show would be renewed.[11] Writer Levine believes that the most important reason was that the network recognized that it did not have other hit shows to help promote Cheers; as he later wrote, "[NBC] had nothing else better to replace it with."[33]
In 2013, GQ magazine held an online competition to find the best TV comedy. Cheers was voted the greatest comedy show of all time.[34] In 2017, James Charisma of Paste magazine ranked the show's opening sequence No. 5 on a list of The 75 Best TV Title Sequences of All Time.[35]
Ratings[edit]
Ratings improved for the summer reruns after the first season.[36] The cast went on various talk shows to try to further promote the series after its first season. By the second season Cheers was competitive with CBS's top-rated show Simon & Simon.[11] With the growing popularity of Family Ties, which ran in the slot ahead of Cheers from January 1984 until Family Ties was moved to Sundays in 1987, and the placement of The Cosby Show in front of both at the start of their third season (1984), the line-up became a runaway ratings success that NBC eventually dubbed "Must See Thursday". The next season, Cheers ratings increased dramatically after Woody Boyd became a regular character as well. The fifth season earned the series the highest rating for the year that it would ever achieve. Although ratings mostly declined each year after that, the show retained a competitive advantage and rose to rank number one for the year for its first and only time in the ninth season. Although ratings and ranking both lost ground in the last two seasons, it still performed well, as it was the only show on NBC during those seasons to be in the top 10. By the end of its final season, the show had a run of eight consecutive seasons in the top ten of the Nielsen ratings; seven of them were in the top five.[37]
- ^ Snauffer, Douglas (2008). The Show Must Go On: How the Deaths of Lead Actors Have Affected Television Series. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-3295-0.
- ^ "Birth, Death, Love and Rice". Movpod.in. Retrieved September 13, 2012.[dead link]
- ^ a b "The Classic Sitcoms Guide to...Cheers".
- ^ "Why 'Cheers' Looks Sharp Each Week". Chicago Tribune. March 30, 1986. Retrieved October 30, 2010.
- ^ Television Heaven (2002)(2006). Cheers – A Television Heaven Review
- ^ Bjorklund, p. ix
- ^ a b The Museum of Broadcast Communications (2006).
- ^ Dr. Caren Deming. "Talk: Gender Discourse in Cheers!", in Television Criticism: Approaches and Applications edited by Leah R. Vande Berg and Lawrence A Wenner. White Plains, NY: Longman, 1991. 47–57. The essay is co-authored by Mercilee M. Jenkins, who teaches at San Francisco State University.
- ^ Becker, Ron (2006). Gay TV And Straight America. New Brunswick (N.J.): Rutgers University Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-8135-3689-7.
- ^ "The Cheers Conspiracy" by Dan McCarthy, Boston Magazine, March 20, 2018
- ^ a b c d e f Cite error: The named reference
Kerr_11_29_1983was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "'Cheers' co-creator looks back at series finale: 'Ted Danson's decision to quit caught us by surprise'".
- ^ a b c Bjorklund, p. 3.
- ^ a b University of California Television (UCTV) (January 13, 2014). The 30th Anniversary of Cheers. YouTube.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-24. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
- ^ Bjorklund, p. 4.
- ^ Bjorklund, p. 7.
- ^ Bjorklund, p. 2.
- ^ a b c d FoundationINTERVIEWS (January 17, 2012). James Burrows discusses casting "Cheers". YouTube.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-24. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
- ^ Meade, Peter. "We'll Cry In Our Beers As Sam, Diane Split." Spartanburg Herald-Journal TV Update [Spartanburg, NC] April 29, 1984: 14. Google News. Web. January 21, 2012. Editions of April 27–29, 1984, are inside the webpage. Article in Google News is located in page 85.
- ^ Balk, Quentin, and Ben Falk. Television's Strangest Moments: Extraordinary but True Tales from the History of Television. London: Robson–Chrysalis, 2005. 166. Google Books. Web. February 10, 2012.
- ^ a b c FoundationINTERVIEWS (December 12, 2012). Glen and Les Charles on Casting "Cheers". YouTube.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-24. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
- ^ Newport Under the Stars (2005)(2006). John Ratzenberger's Newport Under the Stars
- ^ Jacobson, Mitch (2010). Mastering multicamera techniques : from preproduction to editing and deliverables (1st ed.). Amsterdam: Focal Press/Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-240-81176-5.
- ^ Bjorklund, p. 7–8.
- ^ Levine, Ken (March 18, 2012). "Another thing about CHEERS you didn't know". ...by Ken Levine. Retrieved March 18, 2012.
- ^ Levine, Ken (January 28, 2011). "My favorite CHEERS teaser". ...by Ken Levine. Retrieved January 28, 2011.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
synd1was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b Bryn Elise Sandberg (August 7, 2014). "'Cheers' Bar Finally Finds a Museum Home". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved June 6, 2020.
- ^ Abram Brown (July 1, 2015). "From Superman's Suit to The 'Cheers' Bar, Inside the World's Greatest Collection of TV Memorabilia". Forbes. Retrieved June 6, 2020.
- ^ "The Story Behind the Cheers Theme". GaryPortnoy.com. Archived from the original on January 18, 2013. Click "The Cheers Story".
- ^ Anscher, Matthew. "Part III: Brandon at the Bat". How NBC Got Its Groove Back. tvparty.com. Retrieved July 6, 2012.
- ^ Variety (May 20, 2003) (2006). Review – Cheers Archived November 9, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Levine, Ken (April 6, 2012). "How to find a writing partner". ...by Ken Levine. Retrieved April 6, 2012.
- ^ Brian Raftery. "Cheers: The Best TV Show That's Ever Been – GQ". GQ.
- ^ Charisma, James (January 4, 2017). "The 75 Best TV Title Sequences of All Time". Paste. Retrieved January 16, 2017.
- ^ Raftery, Brian (October 2012). "The Best TV Show That's Ever Been". GQ. Retrieved September 27, 2012.
- ^ Bjorklund, p. 16.
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