Family Home Theater

Grade:  A-/B+

TV comedy

Rated TV-PG

In 1982, producers Glen and Les Charles were cruising along with their Taxi, having accelerated past All in the Family in 1979 to win the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series—a title the cabbie sitcom retained in 1980 and 1981. So hey, why not serve up another workplace/customer comedy?

The first episode of Cheers aired on September 30, 1982, and that week the Boston bar sitcom from James Burrows and the Charles boys finished dead last in the Nielsen ratings at #77. Nobody wanted to spend time in the fictional bar where “everybody knows your name,” even if Bostonians did recognize the location as the Bull & Finch Pub at 84 Beacon Street.   

But critics took notice. Three of the first-season’s smartly written episodes received Emmy nominations, and Glen and Les Charles won for “Give Me a Ring Sometime.” Cheers earned 13 total Primetime Emmy nominations that first season, with additional wins coming for Outstanding Lead Actress (Shelley Long), Outstanding Individual Achievement (Graphic Design and Title Sequences), Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series (James Burrows), and the big one: Outstanding Comedy Series. Cheers would also win Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1984, 1988, and 1990.

Viewers were another matter. Cheers didn’t crack the Nielsen Top 30 until its third season, though after that it became entrenched in the Top 10 and finished as America’s #1 most watched TV show in 1990-91, its ninth season. More recently, Cheers was ranked #11 on “TV Guide Magazine’s 60 Best Series of All Time”—a happy coincidence, considering the series ran for 11 seasons.    

So what made it so successful, despite the slow start?

Like any great sitcom, Cheers had smart writing, a great ensemble cast of endearing characters, and an adaptability that kept the show fresh when key actors left and new ones joined. But it had a solid core of characters to begin with: 

—Sam Malone, an ex-Red Sox pitcher and recovering alcoholic who owns the bar and thinks of himself as the Cy Young of skirt chasers (Ted Danson, who earned two Primetime Emmys for the role)

—Coach, his former coach (Nicholas Colasanto) who tends bar and does the best he can with a noggin that took too many fastballs back in the day

—Carla Tortelli (four-time Outstanding Supporting Actress winner Rhea Perlman), an abrasive, pugnacious waitress who has more children than she can keep tabs on

—Diane Chambers (Long), an educated new waitress who has an opinion about everything and struts her intellectualism, though she was hired because Sam a) felt sorry for her and b) found her attractive

—Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger), a mailman who considers his job to be right up there with first responders and prides himself in being an Encyclopedia Triviana (though he clearly makes most of it up)

—“NORM!” (George Wendt), who elicits a moniker cheer every time he enters Cheers because he spends more time there than he does at home.

After Colasanto died, Woody Harrelson brought a fresh take on the clueless character when he took over as bartender Woody from rural Iowa (and won an Outstanding Supporting Actor Emmy). Then the creators felt another egghead was needed and brought in the character of psychologist Dr. Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), who would go on to have his own even more successful spin-off series, and fellow stuffed-shirt psychologist (and love interest) Dr. Lilith Sternin (two-time Outstanding Supporting Actress winner Bebe Neuwirth).

Shelley Long left after the fifth season, but the creators pulled a 180 and changed the dynamic so that Sam wasn’t just hiring another waitress—he sold the bar and bought a boat to sail around the world. And when that didn’t work out, he returned to a corporate-owned pub run by Rebecca Howe (Outstanding Lead Actress winner Kirstie Alley) and worked for “the man.” But some things never change. Sam still finds most women too attractive not to proposition, and in addition to the usual entanglements that drive sitcoms—the family relationships, love interests, worker conflicts, etc.—the creators developed a rivalry between Cheers and another Boston bar.

By Season 9 the series got a little soapy, with a corporate CEO (Roger Rees) needing to skip town and Rebecca wallowing in pity, but audiences loved it. That was the season Cheers finished in the top Nielsen spot.

This handsomely packaged set features all 270 22-minute episodes on 33 discs, housed in Blu-ray cases by season and contained in a reasonably sturdy cardboard slipcase. The audio-video quality is very good, but the bonus features appear to have been an afterthought. The longest one runs only a little over eight minutes, and most are brief talking-heads spots. The show deserved better . . . though maybe the most fitting tribute is that the Bull & Finch Pub, once cited by Boston Magazine as the best neighborhood bar, is now simply named Cheers.

But the final toast goes to Judy Hart-Angelo and Gary Portnoy for writing one of the best TV theme songs ever: “Where Everybody Knows Your Name.”

Entire family:  No (‘tweens and older)

Run time:  110 hrs 46 min., Color

Studio/Distributor:  CBS/Paramount

Aspect ratio:  1.33:1

Featured audio:  DTS-HDMA 2.0

Bonus features:  C-

Amazon link

Rated TV-PG for adult themes, sexual innuendo, and some language

Language:  3/10—This is network television, so the “damns” and “hells” and “asses” are fairly limited and equally innocuous

Sex:  3/10—The show frequently deals with adult relationships and Sam’s conquests or attempted conquests, but innuendo is the extent of it

Violence:  3/10—In 11 seasons there was only one fight in Cheers, and two instances of comic hold-ups and one comic choking—plus a poignant off-stage death

Adult situations:  5/10—The series is shot mostly inside a bar, so I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the premise itself is one big adult situation, with drinking mostly beer) and attempted seductions in the bar and elsewhere

Takeaway:  Cheers has the distinction of producing a role—Dr. Frasier Crane—that Kelsey Grammer would play for a record 20 years:  9 as a minor character on Cheers, and 11 as the title character on the spin-off sitcom Frasier

Grade:  A-

TV comedy

Not rated (would be PG)

From 1993-2004 the king of sitcoms was Frasier, a spin-off from the popular sitcom Cheers starring Kelsey Grammer as a pompous but endearing psychologist who reveled in his intellect and haute culture tastes, but also yearned to be “one of the guys.” Frasier won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series for each of its first five seasons and 37 Primetime Emmys over 11 seasons—though ironically it wasn’t a runaway hit with audiences. Its best showing came with Season 6, when Frasier finished as the #3 most watched TV show in America, behind Friends and ER.

In Boston’s Cheers bar, Grammer made arrogance endearing as he played a good-but-jilted doctor who hung out with a dim-witted Iowa bartender, a narcissistic ex-ballplayer, a know-it-all mailman, and an overweight, professional barfly. Sometimes you laughed with him, while at other times (most of the time, actually) the humor came at the doctor’s expense—a book smarts vs. street smarts face-off. In Seattle, fresh from a divorce from his domineering wife Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth), Frasier found a fresh start as a Dr. Phil-style radio psychologist and acquired a new hangout: Café Nervosa, where he and equally effete brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) would indulge their cappuccino tastes and parade their knowledge in front of a generally apathetic public.

The show, with chapter tiles that played with puns, had two main sets. The first was KACL-Radio, where Frasier dispensed his psychiatric bromides and producer Roz Doyle (Peri Gilpin) was a perfect “give it a rest” foil to his pompous side. Obnoxious sportscaster Bob “Bulldog” Briscoe (Dan Butler) took him down a few more pegs with his cuts and practical jokes, and restaurant critic Gil Chesterton (Patrick Kerr) was the uncomfortable mirror that showed reflections of what Frasier might be like without such irreverent and frequent shots to keep him grounded. Much of the at-work time is spent with Frasier talking to unseen call-ins with a host of problems, and much of the fun for fans is watching the end-credits to see what famous celebrities posed as the callers from week to week.

At home, the brandy-oriented Frasier met his match with his blue-collar dad (John Mahoney), a Ballantine-loving ex-cop who walks with a limp and has a live-in therapist, a Brit named Daphne (Jane Leeves). With dad and son facing off and Daphne offering her humorous third-party, third-culture take on things, it made for more dry humor. And Niles visited so often that it felt as if the four of them lived . . . and bantered there.

The Crane brothers were American bluebloods without the pedigree, lovers of the good life who aspire to be accepted by high society. It was their continuing lack of acceptance by the true snobs that make those of us in the hoi polloi tickle inside. The humor was twofold: highbrow verbal comedy delivered in droll fashion by the fussy Crane brothers, and comedy of character as the “average” viewer identified with the lowbrows in each episode that cut them down to size or highlighted their comparative ridiculousness. That was something that their father, former cop Marty Crane (Mahoney) relished pointing out with regularity. The show also heavily relied on misunderstandings and good intentions that backfired.

Not all of the show’s 11 seasons were great. By the ninth season, you can tell that Grammer and Pierce weren’t savoring their on-screen rivalry as psychiatrist brothers as much as in previous years. A number of the shows also don’t seem as crisply written as the best episodes from earlier seasons, and yet one of my favorite episodes, “Caught in the Act,” aired as Episode 15 in Season 11. In that hilarious outing, Frasier’s first wife, a kiddie show author-performer known as Nanny G, comes to Seattle and Roz begs Frasier to try to get tickets to the sold-out concert so she can take her niece. At a very funny booksigning event she and Frasier reconnect, the group gets their tickets, and the married Nanny G confesses to the doctor how unhappy she’s been. As the pair “reconnects” in a prop room at the venue, the show starts and the bed they’re in raises up to the stage via a mechanical opening. The rest plays out in typical Frasier farcical fashion.

Another very funny episode, “The Ski Lodge,” (Season 5, Episode 14) is a classic bedroom farce updated to contemporary times, as the gang goes to a lodge together with their respective mates or love interests, and all of their hopes for romance are scuttled by misunderstandings and room-hopping shenanigans.

Not all of the episodes involve sex. Some highlight the differences between father and sons, or track each son’s dating mishaps. Others revolve around their sibling rivalry and their need to out-do the other socially, whether in their snooty wine club or an exclusive country club. Others take place mostly in the studio and the various characters and call-ins that can make each day seem like a radio version of The Bob Newhart Show.

Most Blu-ray complete series are space-savers, but this set is actually a half-inch wider than the most recent DVD compilation. But this one is easier to navigate. The 263 episodes and bonus features are contained on 33 discs and housed in 11 standard blu-ray cases according to season. And those are all housed in a sturdy slipcase.  Alas, CBS disappoints again with episode titles only printed on each disc label, so finding favorite episodes won’t be easy.

Entire family:  No (‘tweens and older)

Run time:  5885 min., Color

Studio/Distributor:  CBS/Paramount

Aspect ratio:  1.33:1 (Seasons 1-9) and 1.78:1 (Seasons 10-11)

Featured audio:  DTS-HDMA 2.0 

Bonus features:  C+

Amazon link

Not rated (would be TV-PG for innuendo, some alcohol, states of undress, and some mild language)

Language:  2/10—A few mild swear words (damn, hell)

Sex:  5/10—Mostly innuendo, but “Caught in the Act” features an audience of small children and their moms as Frasier emerges in a diaper and pretends to be a baby, and in other episodes it’s clear that people are sleeping/have slept together, though the worst is seeing Frasier’s bare chest

Violence: 0/10—None

Adult situations:  3/10—mostly social drinking, though Daphne’s brother is a drunken soccer hooligan played for laughs; mostly sexual situations, with everything implied and nothing shown

Takeaway:  It’s nigh impossible to watch these episodes without thinking that Frasier has to be the most successful spin-off American TV series of all time