The Introduction

It's a hot July afternoon in the year 2011 and I am sitting at my desk with air conditioning blasting at my back creating a blog devoted to a noble, if not silly, challenge in which I have decided to indulge myself.

The challenge? Simple - I am going to watch every episode of the TV sitcom Cheers. All 270 episodes, in order and presumably over the next several months. When I came up with his asinine goal, the initial plan was to spend my entire summer watching nothing but Cheers episodes and to have completed the task by Labor Day. I quickly realized this was something I did not want to do for a numbers of reasons, including the fact that I do not want to compare myself to Morgan Spurlock nor do I want to deny myself the trashy reality TV programming I hate myself for loving. (CT and Adam are teammates on The Challenge this season! I have to watch that.)

So instead of watching only episodes of Cheers, I will instead allow myself to watch other things throughout the summer both in order to keep a mild level of sanity and also to potentially find other shows in which I can draw comparisons.

What am I getting out of this? To be honest, I'm not quite sure if there is anything to be gained. By blogging about my experience, I am not trying to create a "Julie and Julia" for men (though that comparison has been mentioned by nearly every friend I mentioned this idea to). I'm trying to catapult myself to Internet stardom and position myself into meeting Ted Danson. I'm a 27-year-old college instructor and struggling writer of stories, novels and poems -- believe me, any delusions of grandeur on my end have evaporated long ago.

Rather, I believe the only possible thing that can be gained from watching all these episodes, and subsequently blogging about said watching, is some form of connectedness. To the past, is one obvious connection since we're talking about a TV show that's been off the air for nearly two decades. I can already see myself tagging posts with words and phrases such as: "Larry Bird", "Reaganomics", and "Berlin Wall foreshadowing."

There is also a connectedness to my own childhood; after all, I wasn't even born when this show began airing. I did watch the show as a child, both in first-run and syndication and vaguely enjoyed it, but as a child the learned wit of Frasier Crane, the not-so-subtle alcoholism of Norm Peterson, and the abundant innuendo from the tomcating Sam "Mayday" Malone were by and large over my head.

So without further ado, I shall begin a challenge that I make no claim to be unique or inspiring. Yet from the day I thought it up some weeks ago, I've felt a sense of obligation to see this idea through.

And on a holiday weekend where the most popular event is televised gluttony (the Nathan's Four of July Hot Dog Eating Contest), beginning the journey of devouring 270 episodes of an iconic American sitcom seems only fitting. So let's begin, shall we?

Cheers!

-Brandon