The Curious Case of the Missing Coach

Two characters I've talked little about thus far for this blog have been Carla and the Coach. The simple reason for this is that storyline hardly ever revolve around either of these characters. Another reason I haven't discussed either of them much is because, to be honest, their characters are pretty flat compared to the others in this show.

Carla is the constantly pregnant, foul-mouthed waitress who cannot stand Diane. And Coach is, well, the Coach. A lovable old man whose good at his job and dumber than dirt. Great minor characters for a sitcom, but alas static.

That said, I've become concerned as I've closed out season 3 of Cheers as The Coach appears to be missing.

In episode 60, all is well as Mayday and Coach go back to school to get their GEDs -- Coach, it is explained, went off to war while Sam was offered a minor league contract and thus neither one finished high school. Coach works hard to pull out an A in his last required class, geography, while Mayday simply bangs the teacher to get his A. Again, in episode 60 all is well a good.

Yet he doesn't appear to be around in episode 61. And ep 62, which I've already blogged about, is Coachless as well. The reason, as Sam explains, is that the Coach went up to Vermont to renew his driver's license because their test is easier than that in Massachusetts. Something's fishy...

In the following episode, Sam explains that the Coach is in Ohio for a family reunion. The only problem is it's not Coach's family but rather an African-American family who sent an invite to Coach's address by mistake. Not wanting to be rude, it is explained by dialogue, the Coach attended the reunion. That was in 1977, Sam explains, and Coach has made it out to Ohio every year since.

Mayday explains Coach's absence in the following episode, 64, by stating that he's visiting his sister in Minnesota. The kicker with this story is that Coach told his sister to pick him up from the airport so she, apparently also dumber than dirt, drove from Minnesota to Boston to meet him at the airport.

Again, something's afoot.

There's no sign of Coach, and no explanation for his absence, in the following episode. Yet in episode 66, Coach is back! And yet, he doesn't appear again in the series until episode 69 in which he's only in the cold open.

Not to spoil things -- because I'm going to do that in my next post -- but I do believe I know the reason behind all of this. But I'm going to have to do some research to find out what the hell happened to Coach and why, apparently, many of the final episodes of season 3 were shot out of order.