mozartpc27 wrote:TenuredVulture wrote:I don't think the problem with Cheers is its not aging well. I think the Kirstie Allie episodes are weak, and while Norm and Cliff and Sam and even Woody are still funny, without Diane, the show lost the zing that made it one of the best sit coms ever. So, those episodes no longer seem all that funny.
Cheers is the only American television show of which I own the complete run (I also have Fawlty Towers and I gave my wife Monty Python's Flying Circus), and is likely ot be the only show I will ever own in its entirety. Definitely my pick for greatest television show of all time.
The thing about Cheers is that, due to cast changes during its run and the period over which it was originally filmed (the early 1980s through to a post-Seinfeld world of 1993), the show is a transition show. The first five seasons have episoides featuring Larry David's despised "hugs and lessons", especially during the Coach years: Sam learns not to be bigoted toward homosexuals in a first season episode, we learn the true meaning of beauty from the relationship between Coach and his daughter, we see the true meaning of friendship when Norm is forced to tell Cliff that Carla's "sweet sister" isn't the girl Cliff thinks she is, etc. The moments don't come as often as they might in a more melodramatically written show, perhaps (such as All in the Family or even TenuredVulture's beloved Taxi), but they are there: during the first five seasons, Cheers is an expertly executed 70s/80s style sitcom.
After Nicholas Colastano passed away, the show made a move in the direction it would take more definitively later by bringing on Woody Harrelson, who played essentially the same character but absent much of the pathos that often defined "Coach episodes," but the real break comes when Diane leaves. I think, to the eternal credit of the creators of the show, the writers took the opportunity to reinvent Cheers; until it came time to wrap up the show with a final season, for the most part, any pretense that anything these people do really matters, or that they should be pitied by the audience, is abandoned. It essentially became a proto-Seinfeld in this sense; very rarely is the audience asked to do anything rather than laugh at, and not with, the characters. The show is then free to put characters in increasingly embarassing situations, without fear of losing the audience: the things that Rebecca and Cliff go through, for example, would be impossible for an audience who truly liked those characters to endure. But, for the most part, these episodes work, and there are many worthy classics among them: almost all the episodes involving Robin Colcord are among the show's best, as are shows featuring Frasier and Lilith. The episodes at the end of the season ten, centering around the unseen nuptials of Woody and Kelly, are very fine examples of how the later ensemble works together.
By the end, the show was, granted, losing a little steam (but two of my top-10 Cheers episodes date from this season: the last, and a very funny episode titled "Sunday Dinner"), and the humor was not helped by two decisions evident in the writing: one, to virtually retire the notion that Sam Malone (played by a Ted Danson who seems to have aged hard between the end of season 10 and the opening of season 11, partly because they've allowed his hair to go a lot lighter in color) is a relentless "babe hound" and two, to try to reintroduce some of the pathos the show had more or less dropped for the previous five seasons. The problem was, with almost no fresh material left to cover and with an important plot point closed off to the writers (Sam's sexual prowess), the pathos is too often only lightly accompanied (if at all) by hard-edged humor, and so the show can become more maudalin than funny at times. It is telling that in the final season, a third go-nowhere pathetic barfly (Paul), who had been one of the many extras given occasional lines ever present in the bar since the show began, suddenly develops a bigger role, as a sort of comic relief from the rest of the characters.
That said, the final season isn't terrible; there are some memorable episodes and the strength of the characters the writers have drawn over several years plus the nostalgia that was present throughout the show's final season carry it through to an ending that was one of the best-executed in television history, and provides a nice link between the two distinct phases of Cheers.
I think your analysis hits on something that may be generational, in that I always found the unlikeability of sitcom characters something of a flaw. Of course, the excessive nobility of Hawkeye in MASH could go over the top as well, which is probably part of why MASH doesn't age so well. And the transition of Archie Bunker from Bigot to concerned foster father didn't work well either.
So, yes, Taxi was very much a 70s era sitcom, as you say, "hugs and lessons". But the show had major acting talent--all except the hapless Jeff Conaway had pretty successful careers after the show. And it was funny, consistently. But it had a lot more in common with MASH than Seinfeld, to be sure. The difference was the total weirdness of Latka and Jim.
