Things Are Looking Up for the Fras...

It's taken me forever to get through season 4 of Cheers. This has been for a number of reasons, such as my other professional obligations.

But perhaps one of the reasons it's taken me months to get through this season is the fact that Frasier's downfall is (pathetically) hitting a little too close to home for me. This of course led to the well-received posts on what I dubbed "the art of hitting rock bottom." And throughout the season, the Fras has floated along on this show being depressed, unable to stand being around Diane while simultaneously unable to stay away from her, and trying in vein to fit in with Norm, Cliff and the gang by being just one of the regular joes.


And through that drifting along, something curious has happened -- Frasier has let go of Diane. It happened in episode 15, the appropriately titled "Triangle." In typical sitcom fashion, Diane convinces Sam to fake being depressed so that the actually depressed Frasier can get his mojo back by professionally treating Sam. Fras buys into Sam's depression but is convinced that it spurs from his love for Diane, thus complicating matters even worse than they were before.

By the episode's end, Frasier is able to accept that Diane and Sam are made for each other and pushes Sam to admit this fact to himself and to Diane. This all comes from the contrived nature of sitcom plots, sure, yet the episode's last scene has some realistic weight behind it with Frasier forcing Sam and Diane to address the elephant in the room. Of course it's a laugh out loud moment since Frasier ends up screaming at the two of them for being so naive to not see the obvious, but it still works as a great scene.

And with this episode, it seems Frasier Crane has come into his own as a main-stay character on Cheers. He will forever be intertwined into the SamAndDianeWillTheyWontTheyLoveDrama (which I'm stylizing as one word because, honestly, at this point it deserves to be it's own pronoun). But rather than just being the third person involved in the triangle, Frasier begins to come into his own as a character as season 4 pushes towards its conclusion.

He's beginning to come into the bar without any pretext of wanting to speak to Diane, leading to more scenes between he, Norm and Cliff, which works well with the three's dialouge bouncing off one another. And it doesn't hurt that nearly everything Frasier says goes over Woody's head, similar to what we used to see in the first two seasons of the show with Coach misinterpreting nearly everything coming out of Diane's mouth.

Another important development of Frasier's resurgence is the debut of Lilith, the character who becomes Frasier's wife and ex-wife. He introduces the gang to her as they stop by for a drink on their first date.

If you're familiar with Lilith at all, it should come as no surprise that she comes across as cold, impersonal, and uptight. The big laugh from her debut is her declaration that Frasier should not expect any sugar post-date. This would be fine with, and probably welcomed by, the Frasier we once knew. But fully developed Frasier, who considers Mayday Malone a good friend, is more than frustrated by the declaration.

Thus, sparks do not (yet) fly between Fras and Lilith in season 4. So, once again feeling the need to help out a friend, Mayday sets Fras up with one of his countless number of bimbos. Note that bimbo is not editorializing on my part, the actual description of the episode reads "Sam sets Frasier up with one of his young bimbos."

The bimbo in question here is a young Jennifer Tilly who plays her role pitch perfectly. She's exceptionally dumb, even by Mayday's low standards. But the kicker is she is just what Frasier needs after his bad date with Lilith. The two have nothing in common yet hit it off and get engaged. Of course typical sitcom storywriting rears its head and the two come to their senses after a talking down to by Sam and Diane. Still, this is a Frasier more personable and laid-back than we've seen before.

And perhaps most important of all, it is clear that Frasier has finally come into his own because Kelsey Grammar has finally been moved from a guest star to a regular cast member.

On 8th Grade, Surrealism, Realism and Adam Sandler

When I was in eighth grade, I broke my leg in three spots by snowboarding in my front yard. It is an infamous story of which every person that went to Carman-Ainsworth Junior High School in 1998 is aware.

To make a long story short, it was kind of a rough several months. I was in a cast up to my thigh and spent several weeks in a wheel chair. This made me popular for a brief moment in time as students would fight over who would push me to my next class (getting dismissed 5 minutes early in the process). I then had a cast put on that went past me knee and used clutches to get around. Eventually a smaller cast was put on me and finally a walking boot. I went through months of physical rehab and eventually had to walk with a cane, which would sometimes get taken from me at lunch by obnoxious assholes who I assume now are all leading miserable existences. :-)

The reason I bring all of this up is because of the fact that I was out of school for two weeks. Again, this was 1998, otherwise known as the heyday of America Online and that magical, trailblazing thing known as the private group chat. From my family's dinning room (where my dad had placed our Compaq computer)I would eagerly sit awkwardly and wait for my friends to get home and get online.

Late at night, I would watch 90% of all Winter Olympics programming while during the day I watched the news (the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was just developing). Additionally, I spent those two weeks doing something else -- I watched the movie Happy Gilmore in its entirety every single day.

(I also ate a pepperoni Hot Pocket every day, which is why I'm typing this in gym clothes as I struggle everyday to get my BMI to a respectable level, but that's neither here nor there...)

So it is within this context that I hope you can imagine my irrational excitement when Norm has a meeting with a potentinal client whose wife is Grandma Gilmore! As you can see, Grandma looks practically the same here in 1985 as does in 1996. As the episode progresses, we learn she's playing the wife of a diary farmer, leading to Norm trying in vain connect with the couple. Naturally, Cliff easily makes friends with them and the three leave the bar with Norm having not closed the deal.

Despite playing the wife of a diary farmer, Grandma Gilmore doesn't request a glass of warm milk as she did, so hilariously in 1996:


Back in the summer, as this blog began taking shape, I wrote about the guest appearance by Shooter McGavin, who played a former teammate's of Sam Malone. Thus, we have two principal actors from Happy Gilmore making appearances on Cheers.

Coincidentally, the connections don't stop there as another actor from a 1996 Adam Sandler film stops by Cheers:


This guy, who played Carl in Billy Madison, has an even more minor role than Grandma Gilmore both in the Sandler movies and in their respective cameos on Cheers.

And for those of you keeping score at home, both Grandma Gilmore and Carl had notable roles on Seinfeld . (First one to leave a comment on this post and name who they were on that show will win an imaginary prize!)

Leaving behind the surrealism of seeing people who played a significant role in my life in the mid to late 90's showing up in Cheers episodes that aired when I was 2, I want to lastly talk about realism for a minute.


For nearly four seasons, Cliff Clavin has been seen wearing his uniform at the bar in every non-Halloween inspired episode. Yet in an episode that occurs on a Sunday, Cliff is wearing a plaid shirt and a vest. He makes no mention of not working, but by now everyone realizes he's a mailman, and thus wouldn't be working on Sunday. It's a nice, subtle touch. I appreciate the nod to realism while at the same time, seeing Norm donning a suit on that same Sunday, I can't help but criticize the show's lack of consistency.

Then again, who the hell am I to talk? I just took you from 1998, and the days of AOL, the Lewinsky scandal, and Hot Pockets, to an in-depth discussion of no-name actors to an unrelated discussion of Cliff Clavin's wardrobe. Consistency ain't this blog's bag...

Michael Richards, Phone Books, Travel Agents, and Other Things Horribly Outdated

Yeah, yeah, I know it's been nearly a month since my last post (in which I vowed to make one post a week). If you don't like the infrequency of my posts, you're more than welcome to go find someone else on the Internet who was lame enough to watch every single episode of Cheers and then blog about the experience.

In all seriousness, I am going to make the effort to blog more regularly. And it should be easier now that things have really started to pick up on this show.

Today, I want to talk about sitcom plot devices and the rapid change they encountered thanks to advancements in technology. Also, I want to talk about the HOLY SHIT! moment I witnessed in episode 62 of the series when Cosmo Kramer himself, Michael Richards, walked into the bar.

As you can see to your left, Richards looks, well, normal playing a customer sitting in a Boston tavern in 1985. Throughout the episode, he shows no signs of eccentricity or physical hilarity from the Seinfeld days. That said, Richards plays a character named Eddie who has all the makings of the asshole we all saw on stage at the LA Laugh Factory in the fall of 2007.

You see, the premise of the episode is this: Some years ago, back when Sam Malone was still a raging alcoholic and on his way out of the majors, he made a bet with Eddie that he could marry the actress Jacqueline Bisset by a set date. If Mayday fails in this goal, the bar belongs to Eddie. By this point, in the here and now of 1985, Sam has forgotten both the bet and Eddie himself. In typical a-hole fashion, however, Eddie has with him the signed paper from that drunken night and threatens legal action against Sam if he doesn't hold up to his end of the deal.

Typical sitcom fodder, no? Of course it is. And, also in typical sitcom fashion, it's foul-mouthed Carla (who, it should be noted, is at this point in the series preggerz with her SIXTH child!) who suggests to Mayday that the terms of the contract dictate he most marry a woman named Jackie Bisset, not necessarily the Jackie Bisset.

With this epiphany, Mayday, Norm and Cliff set off to find a woman named Jackie Bisset by -- wait for it -- combing over Cliff's extensive collection of phone books from every metropolitan area in the United States. Granted, I was only a 2-year-old at the time, but I had no idea how tough life was in 1985. It's amazing how so many dilemmas in movies and TV shows from the 70's, 80's, and even 90's would easily be solved with either Google or a cell phone. A quick search on Facebook would have easily gotten Sam a list of a hundred Jackie Bissets.

(This, by the way, raises the question: What would a Facebook profile of Mayday Malone look like, anyway? Would he be a celebrity athlete that people could "like" on Facebook? Or would Mayday have an actual regular person profile with upwards of 2,000 "friends," half of whom would have been former lovers and the other half of whom would be girls he'd actively be trying to nail? I think I'm on to something here...)

While on the topic of technology, it should also be noted that Sam could easily take the paper contract he signed with Eddie Google legal counsel who charge reasonably so that he can determine if the contract even has a leg to stand on. Hell, he could even look up Massachusetts law precedents himself to check the validity of the drunken contract signing.

Though I will get into this in a post in the very near future, the show goes on to date itself several more times in Season 3 with Sam struggling to hook up an answering machine for his office phone and later on needing Cliff to help him find a travel agent who can look into the possibility of there being any flights going from Boston to Italy that night. (Spoiler alert: A certain someone has run off to Italy with a certain Frasier Crane and a certain Mayday has mixed feelings about this certain someone...)

Eventually Cliff finds a Jackie B living in West Virginia who is willing to come up to Boston (based on the lie that she's won a free vacay from a radio station contest). She doesn't want to marry Mayday but eventually falls for him. Eddie comes back to the bar, ready to collect his prize, only to find Mayday has stumped him. Showing that he's not quite the a-hole he's been made out to be, Eddie calls off the bet. Diane talks Jackie B out of wanting to marry Sam and Mayday keeps the bar. Everyone wins and nothing changes.

Again, is this the stuff of typical sitcom narrative? Absolutely. And was the whole story wholly outdated by watching it in 2011? Of course. And I was obviously taken out of the episode so much that I wrote two legal pad pages worth of notes and paused Netflix to snap a photo of pre-Kramer, pre-racist ranter Michael Richards. But I did laugh a number of times. And I did enjoy myself. And more than being entertained by this show, I've come to learn that the 1980's were really tough in Reagan's America...